But where to find Dogger? He could be in his room … or in the kitchen. He might even be in the greenhouse … or the coach house.
I needn’t have worried. As I came flapping like a demented bat down the west staircase, there was Dogger in the foyer helping Cynthia and the vicar to remove their coats. They looked like survivors of a failed Antarctic expedition, as did Sergeant Graves, who stood behind them.
“Blizzard now,” the vicar was croaking through ice-rimed lips. “We should have frozen to death if the sergeant hadn’t come upon us.”
Cynthia stood quaking in an apparent daze.
Rude or not, I whispered into Dogger’s ear:
“Dr. Darby needs you in the Tennyson bedroom. Transverse dorsolateral. Shoulder presentation.”
I had planned on dashing up the stairs ahead of him to lead the way, but Dogger beat me to it. He took the steps as if he had suddenly been granted wings, and I was left to tumble along behind in his wake as best I could.
Dogger paused at the door just long enough to say, “Thank you, Miss Flavia. These particular cases can sometimes come on quite quickly. When I need you I’ll call.”
I dropped myself into a chair outside the bedroom and whiled away the time by chewing my nails. After what seemed like a string of eternities, but was probably no more than a few minutes, I heard Nialla cry out three times sharply, followed by something that sounded like a startled bleat.
What were they doing in there? Why wasn’t I allowed to watch?
Daffy had once told me how a baby was born, but her story was so ridiculous as to be beyond belief. I’d made a mental note to ask Dogger, but had somehow never got round to it. This could be my golden opportunity.
Time dragged on and I was drawing concentric circles with the toes of my shoes when the door opened and Dogger crooked a finger at me.
“Just a peek,” he said. “Miss Nialla is quite tired.”
I stepped cautiously into the room, looking this way and that, as if something was going to leap out and bite me, and there was Nialla propped up with pillows in the bed holding something in her arms that seemed at first to be a large water rat.
I edged closer and as I watched, its mouth opened and it gave out a squeak like a rubber toy.
It’s hard to describe how I felt at that moment. A mixture, I suppose, of profound happiness and quite crushing sadness. The happiness, I understood; the sadness, I did not.
It had something to do with the fact that suddenly, I was no longer the last baby who had cried at Buckshaw, and I felt as if one of my most secret possessions had been stolen from me.
“How was it?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Oh, kid,” she said, “you have no idea.”
How odd. Weren’t those the words Bun Keats had used when I’d extended my sympathy on Phyllis Wyvern’s death?
“It’s a beautiful baby,” I said untruthfully. “It looks just like you.”
Nialla looked down at the bundle in her arms and began to sob.
“Ohhh,” she said.
Then Dogger’s hand was on my shoulder and I was being steered gently but firmly towards the door.
I walked slowly back to the chair in the corridor and sat down. My mind was overflowing.
Over there, behind a closed door, was Nialla, with her newborn baby. And there, just along the corridor, behind her own closed door, was the newly dead—relatively speaking—Phyllis Wyvern.
Was there any meaning in this or was it just another stupid fact? Did living bodies come into being from dead bodies or was that just another old wives’ tale?
Daffy had told me about the girl in India who claimed to be the reincarnation of an old woman who had died in the next village, but was it true? Dr. Gandhi had certainly thought so.
Was there even the remotest possibility, then, that the soggy creature in Nialla’s arms contained the soul of Phyllis Wyvern?
I shuddered at the thought.
Still, I’d have to admit that, of the two, to my mind, the dead Phyllis Wyvern was more interesting.
To be perfectly honest, far more interesting.
There had been a time, not long after Nialla’s last visit to Buckshaw, that I had begun to worry about my fascination with the dead.
After a number of sleepless nights and a patchwork of dreams involving crypts and walking corpses, I had decided to talk it over with Dogger, who had listened in silence as he always does, nodding only occasionally as he polished Father’s boots.
“Is it wrong,” I finished up, “to find enjoyment in the dead?”
Dogger had dredged with the corner of his cloth into the tin of blacking.
“I believe a man named Aristotle once said that we delight to contemplate things such as dead bodies, which in themselves would give us pain, because in them, we experience a pleasure of learning which outweighs the pain.”
“Did he really?” I asked, hugging myself. This Aristotle, whoever he may be, was a man after my own heart, and I made a mental note to look him up sometime.
“As best I recall,” Dogger said, and a shadow had passed across his face.
I was thinking about this when, along the corridor, the door of the Blue Bedroom opened and the mountainous Detective Sergeant Woolmer began lifting his bulky photo kit out of Phyllis Wyvern’s late bedroom.
He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“Got the dabs, and so forth?” I asked pleasantly. “Scene-of-the-crime photos?”
The sergeant stared at me for a few moments, and then a smile spread across his usually stony face.
“Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t Miss de Luce. Hot on the trail, are you?”
“You know me, Sergeant,” I said, with what I hoped was a mysterious grin. I began sauntering towards him, hoping for at least a glance over his shoulder at the deceased Miss Wyvern.
He quickly closed the door, gave the key a twist, and dropped it into his pocket.
“Uh-uh-uh,” he said, cutting me off in mid-thought. “And don’t you even go thinking about Mrs. Mullet’s key chain, miss. I know as well as you do that old houses like this have spare keys by the bagful. If you lay so much as a fingerprint on this door, I’ll have you up on charges.”
Coming from a fingerprint expert, this was a serious threat.
“What did you use for your camera settings?” I asked, trying to distract him. “A hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a second at f eleven?”
The sergeant scratched his head—almost in pleasure, I thought.
“It’s no good, miss,” he said. “We’ve already been warned about you.”
And with that, he walked away.
Warned about me? What the deuce did he mean by that?
I could think of only one thing: Inspector Hewitt, the traitor, had lectured his men against me on their way to Buckshaw. He had specifically cautioned them against my ingenuity, which must have grated upon them in the past like a fingernail on slate.
Did he think he could outwit me?
We shall see, my dear Inspector Hewitt, I thought. We shall see.
I had become aware, as I chatted with Sergeant Woolmer, of quiet conversation in the adjacent room—two women talking, by the sound of it.
I knocked firmly at the door and waited.
The voices fell silent, and a moment later the door opened no more than a crack.
“Sorry to bother you,” I said to the single slightly bloodshot eye that appeared, “but Mr. Lampman wants to see you.”
The door swung inwards and I saw the rest of the woman’s face. She was one of the bit players in the film.
“Wants to see me?” she asked in a surprisingly brassy voice. “Wants to see me, or wants to see both of us?
“Mr. Lampman wants to see us, Flo,” she called over her shoulder, without waiting for an answer.
Flo wiped her mouth and put down a bowl from which she had been eating.
“Both of you,” I said, trying to put a touch of grimness into my voice. “I think he’s outside in one of the lorries,” I added, “so you’d better bundle up.”