Why hadn’t I thought of this stupidly simple point sooner and saved myself all the trouble?
But wait! Hadn’t I been up here myself, earlier, to set up my pots of fireworks?
Of course! What a little fool you are, Flavia!
I was looking at my own footprints.
And yet … almost before that thought came to mind, I knew it could not possibly be true. It had been hours since I was last on the roof. With the blowing wind and the drifting snow, my own earlier footprints would surely have been filled in within minutes. Even my fresh-made prints were already losing their sharply defined edges.
A couple of leaps brought me to the trail of tracks, and I could see at a glance, close up, that they led away from the door, not towards it.
Someone besides Flavia and Father Christmas had been up here on the roof.
And quite recently, if I was not mistaken.
Furthermore, if I had read the signs correctly, they were still up here, hiding somewhere in the snowy wastes.
“Run for it, Flavia!” the ancient, instinctive part of my brain was shrieking, and yet I was still hovering—frozen by the moment, reluctant to move even an inch—when a dark figure stepped silently out from behind the chimney pot of Harriet’s boudoir.
It was dressed in a long, old-fashioned leather aviator’s coat that reached halfway down its riding boots, the high collar turned up above the ears. Its eyes were covered with the small, round green lenses of an ancient leather helmet of the sort Harriet had worn in her flying days, and its hands gloved in long, stiff leather gauntlets.
My first thought, of course, was that this specter was my mother, and my blood froze.
Although I had longed, all of my life, to be reunited with Harriet, I did not want it to be like this. Not masked—not on a windswept roof.
I’m afraid I whimpered.
“Who are you?” I managed.
“Your past,” I thought the figure whispered.
Or was it just the wind?
“Who are you?” I demanded again.
The figure took a menacing step towards me.
Then suddenly, somewhere inside my head, a voice was speaking as calmly as the BBC wireless announcer reading out the shipping forecasts for Rockall, the Shetlands, and the Orkneys.
“Keep your head,” it was saying. “You know this person—you simply haven’t realized it yet!”
And it was true. Although I had all the information I needed, I hadn’t put together all of the pieces. This specter was really no more than someone who had dressed themselves up from the film studio’s wardrobe—someone who did not want to be recognized.
“It’s no good, Mr. Lampman,” I said, standing my ground. “I know you murdered your mother.”
Somehow it didn’t seem right to call him “Val.”
“You and your accomplice did her in and rigged her up in the costume she wore in Dressed for Dying—the role you had promised to your—what do you call it?—your mistress.”
It was almost comforting to hear the words of that old formula coming out of my mouth—the final exchange between a cold-blooded killer and the investigator who had cracked the case. It had taken a great deal of poring over the pages of Cinema Secrets and Silver Screen to dig out that final incriminating tidbit. I was proud of myself.
But not for long.
The figure made a sudden lunge, taking me by surprise, almost knocking me backwards into a snowdrift. Only by windmilling my arms and making a blind and off-balance leap backwards was I able to stay on my feet.
With my attacker blocking the way to the staircase, there was no point in making a dash for it. Better to find safety in height, like a cat.
I scrambled, slipping and sliding up onto one of the chimney collars—one that I hadn’t slathered with glue. From up here I could hold on with one arm while kicking the killer in the face, should the need arise.
It didn’t take long.
With a hiss like an infuriated snake, my attacker pulled from one of its large coat pockets a stick which I believe is called by the police a truncheon, or a billy club, and brought the thing crashing down just inches from my feet.
Whack! it went—and whack! again, the blows raining down on the brick ledge of the chimney pot with a series of sharp, sickening sounds, like bones being broken.
I had to leap like a highland dancer to keep my toes from being pulverized.
Behind me, I remembered, on the drawing room chimney, were the fuses for the fireworks—perhaps no more than ten yards away. If only I could reach them … touch the striker to the fuse … summon help … the rest of it would be in the hands of Fate.
But now the gauntlets were grabbing at my ankles, and I was kicking back at them for all I was worth.
This time I was rewarded with the sound and the feel of shoe leather on skull, and the figure reeled back with a hoarse cry of pain, clutching at its face.
Taking advantage of the moment, I edged my way round to the far side of the chimney. From there, I could leap down unseen, I hoped, onto the roof.
I had to risk it. There was no other choice.
I landed more lightly than expected and was already halfway to the drawing room chimney when my attacker spotted me and, with a cry of rage, came charging across the roof, its boots throwing up clods of snow as it came.
Out of breath, I threw myself at the chimney, this one larger than the first, and pulled myself up to safety, my hand already digging into my pocket for the igniter.
The fuses were now just below me at shoe level. With any luck, just one click would do the trick.
I ducked down and squeezed the spring handle.
Click!
And nothing more.
Too late now. My attacker was already clawing at the ledge like a maddened animal, preparing to haul itself up beside me. If that happened I was finished.
I swung at its goggled face with the torch—and missed!
The torch slipped out of my hand and fell, as if in slow motion, tumbling end over end down onto the roof, where it lay half buried in a snowdrift, shooting a crazily angled beam up into my attacker’s eyes, half blinding it.
I didn’t waste a single instant. I ducked down and flicked the igniter again.
Click! … Click! … Click! … Click! …
Infuriating! I should have coated the fuses with candle wax, but one can’t think of everything. Obviously, they had become damp.
The clutching gloves were coming uncomfortably closer. It was only a matter of time before they managed to seize my ankle and drag me down onto the roof.
With that disturbing thought in mind, I shimmied a little higher up the clay chimney pot, again working my way, as I climbed, fully round to the east side of the structure.
On the roof, my attacker followed me around, perhaps half expecting me to slip and fall. High above its horribly helmeted head, my every breath visible on the cold air, I clung like a limpet to the upper section of the chimney.
A moment passed—and then another.
I became aware of a growing warmness. Had the wind let up, or had summer suddenly come? Perhaps I was running a fever.
I thought of the thousand warnings of Mrs. Mullet.
“Sudden chills fills the ’ills,” she never tired of telling me. “The ’ills meanin’ them little ’ills in the churchyard, of course. Dress up warm, dear, if you want to get your ’undred years birthday letter from the king.”
I clutched my cardigan closed beneath my chin.
Below me, the figure had turned abruptly and was walking off towards the battlements of the west wing. It seemed like a peculiar thing to do, but almost instantly I saw the reason.
At a point on the roof directly above the drawing room, the aerial for our wireless was stretched between a pair of slender vertical bamboo poles.