The Golden Tresses of the Dead Read online

  And I might as well mention that, in order not to be outdone, they both also wore tiaras, with Juliet caps embroidered with pearls and silver beads.

  Not that I care a rat’s rompers what they draped themselves with, but I’m always trying to sharpen my already formidable powers of observation.

  I, having fallen in behind, was able to follow the procession closely down the aisle to the porch, where the Misses Puddock, Lavinia and Aurelia, perched on matching shooting sticks, had already staked out their vantage point.

  Cameras large and small flashed and clicked as the happy couple paused in the porch and smiled out upon the assembled villagers, some of whom, although not present in the church for the ceremony, had gathered in the churchyard to cheer and tug their forelocks in respect, and as a way of getting an hour or so off work with hopes of a free drink or two.

  When the wedding was being planned, the Misses Puddock had tried to horn in, as they always did, by offering to perform one of their dreary musical offerings free of charge.

  “Oh no,” Feely had told them. “You must be at the door to catch my bouquet.”

  * * *

  —

  Now, with a modest, maidenly backhand, Feely tossed her bouquet into the air. For a girl who could bowl a cricket ball with the best of them when she felt like it, it seemed a frail and puny effort.

  Although Miss Lavinia and Miss Aurelia were both in their seventies, and well past the age when most females traipse to the altar, hope still burned eternal, apparently, in their respective withered breasts. These two ancient sisters shot off their respective shooting sticks like ancient skyrockets, and fell upon the flowers as hounds upon the fox, clawing and hissing at each other as if it were a catfight rather than a celebration of Holy Matrimony. Blows and several shocking words were exchanged. It was not a pleasant spectacle.

  The real horror, however, was not to come until the reception.

  · TWO ·

  DINNER HAD BEEN DULY eaten and the speeches made, including a gracious yet entertaining address by Bunny Spirling, who recalled his first meeting with Feely. “She vomited copiously on my spats and cravat,” he said. “In spite of her tender years, I recognized at once that Ophelia was a most thorough young lady, and she has since done nothing to change my opinion.”

  There was much laughter and clinking of glasses, and then Dieter’s father, with great grace and tenderness, recalled his son’s childhood, including an early attempt to launch himself from the housetop in a glider made from bedsheets, broom handles, and willow branches. “The tin seat he made from our best coal scuttle. When afterward we asked him why, he replied, ‘It had sufficient tensile strength to protect my Gesäß…’—meaning his bottom—‘…in case of an unforeseen crash.’ ”

  Even Aunt Felicity laughed at that one. How many of his listeners, I wondered, realized the irony of the tale? Dieter had, indeed, fallen to earth, not in Germany, but in England. And in another time: in a future he could not possibly have foreseen in his boyish adventures.

  Dieter’s father went on: “You will understand why we have always been so proud of our son, and never more so than today, when he gives to us, in Ophelia, the daughter we have always prayed for.”

  After a prolonged round of applause, Feely pushed back her chair and, taking Dieter by the hand, headed for the wedding cake. This creation stood on a low wrought iron table which Dogger had brought from the conservatory for the occasion, and which Mrs. Mullet had draped with white lace.

  “It’s me own weddin’ dress,” she had confided in a whisper, “for good luck and to keep down the costs.”

  Mrs. M had outdone herself with the wedding cake. It rose up from the table in tier after tier like the Tower of Babel in the painting by Pieter Bruegel, but not nearly so lopsided.

  Because the de Luce silver had been sold up several years ago to settle my father’s pressing debts, we were dining today with an array of unmatched cutlery collected from round about the parish. The knife with which the cake was to be cut had been loaned by the vicar: a wicked-looking thing more suited to the foggy back streets of Limehouse than a country-house wedding.

  “It’s Tudor silver,” he had warned Dieter and Feely, “but wickedly sharp all the same. Belonged to Henry the Eighth. Probably one of his hunting knives, originally, but used upon royal ceremonial occasions for the past four hundred years and more. Not really supposed to be in private hands, you know, but the hands that actually own the thing are not in effect private, if you take my meaning. Mind your fingers when you cut the cake.”

  Feely and Dieter had promised they would, and the nasty-looking weapon was wrapped in oilcloth and tucked away for safekeeping at the back of the handy drawer—originally designed to hold secateurs and so forth—until such time as it was required.

  But now that moment had come.

  Dieter reached deftly under the fringe of the lacy tablecloth and a moment later the knife was in his hands.

  The bride and groom struck a smiling pose and held it, fingers entwined, the blade hovering above the cake.

  Cynthia Richardson and a dozen ladies from the Altar Guild closed in with their Brownie cameras. They had worked for weeks behind the scenes to plan this reception, and they weren’t going to miss an instant of it.

  Flashbulbs popped as the room rang with applause, and when the moment had been stretched to the utmost, down went the blade into the rich soil of the wedding cake. With the second cut Feely seemed to be struggling a bit at the task. Laughing and tossing her head, she brushed away Dieter’s hand as if to ask, “Do I have to do it myself?” and bore heavily down upon the blade.

  The blood ran out of her face. I watched her go as white as her wedding dress. She screamed and dropped the knife. Dieter seized her by the elbow and guided her back to her chair, where she sank down into her seat like a sack of flour, her face pressed tightly into Dieter’s breast, sobbing uncontrollably.

  Had she cut herself?

  Dr. Darby began making his way toward her, pushing along behind the head table. By the time he got within ten feet of her, Feely had fled.

  I leaped to my feet. Everyone else in the room seemed frozen in shock. No one paid me the slightest attention as I stepped behind the wedding cake.

  The knife lay on the floor where Feely had dropped it. The first thing I noticed was that there was no blood on the blade. I left it where it was and turned my attention to the cake itself.

  The single slice that Feely had managed to cut lay tumbled on its side, and in the V-shaped hole which it had left lay a severed finger.

  A human finger.

  I reached for one of the nearby napkins which had been provided for the guests, quickly wrapped the finger in its folds, shoved it into my pocket, and left the room.

  Up the stairs I ran to my chemical laboratory in the east wing of the house. Once inside, I locked the door and carefully unwrapped the dead digit.

  I pulled a powerful magnifying lens from a drawer and examined my find.

  Except for the cake crumbs, it was an ordinary enough finger. The nail was nicely manicured, the skin soft enough, with no apparent calluses or scars. The clean cut at the lower end indicated that it had been sliced with almost surgical precision from its owner’s hand.

  The finger of someone not accustomed to manual labor, I decided. Someone who worked more with their brains than with their hands.

  The important thing was to take a fingerprint impression before I was interrupted. With a stamp pad of India ink and a piece of paper, this was easily accomplished. I was just washing off the inky fingertip when there came a knock at the door.

  “Are you all right, Miss Flavia?” a voice called out.

  “I’m fine, Dogger,” I replied. “I’ll let you in.”

  As I opened the door, I asked, “How’s Feely?”

  “She’ll be all right,” Dogger
said. “Dr. Darby is attending to her. She had rather a bad shock. She claims there was a finger in the cake, but no finger was to be found.”

  “I brought it upstairs,” I admitted.

  “Ah,” said Dogger. “I thought you might have. May I have a look?”

  “I wonder who it belonged to?” I said.

  “I expect we shall find out in due course,” he replied, bending over the finger. “The philosopher Locke wondered if consciousness remained in a severed finger. If it did, it could, perhaps, even indicate to us the identity of the assailant.”

  “Like a Ouija board!” I said, enthusiastically. “It could spell out the killer’s name by dragging itself to one letter at a time.”

  “Killer?” Dogger smiled. “What makes you think that the former owner of this prize specimen is no longer alive?”

  “Formaldehyde!” I crowed. “The smell of formaldehyde. This finger came from an embalmed body.”

  “I was wondering if you’d notice that,” Dogger said. “Well done.”

  “What do you make of it, Dogger?” I asked. “I’ve already noted the manicured nail and the lack of calluses.”

  “Indeed,” Dogger said, bending in again for an even closer look. “We shall note also the very slight depression encircling the digit at the approximate position of the metacarpophalangeal joint.”

  “The cut end, you mean?” I asked.

  Dogger nodded. “Indicating that we are missing a ring.”

  “Of course!” I said. “I ought to have spotted it. Did someone remove a finger to steal a ring?”

  “It is not unknown,” Dogger answered, “in the slimier headlines, as well as in folklore. There have been many tales, some dating back to the Middle Ages, in which a wealthy woman is disinterred by a grave robber in order to steal a valuable ring, only to have the dead lady awaken.”

  “Premature burial! Do you think that’s what’s happened here?”

  “Perhaps,” Dogger said. “We mustn’t discount it. But if we keep to the facts, we can be quite confident that what we have here is a fourth phalanx: a ring finger. We can still see quite clearly, in its lateral aspect, the two small distinguishing facets which interface with the third metacarpal bone.”

  I shook my head sagely. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “A married woman,” he said.

  “Married because of the ring!” I said excitedly.

  “Yes,” Dogger said. “And a woman because of the dainty anatomy. A married woman who was proficient upon the classical guitar.”

  My eyebrows must have shot up like roller blinds. “Classical guitar?”

  “Indeed,” Dogger said. “Observe the fingernail. It is sloped across the end at an oblique angle. Professional performers, I believe, trim their nails so as to slope away from the thumb, the more correctly to strike the strings. By the fact that this nail is nicely angled from left to right, rather than the usual reverse manner, we can deduce that its owner was left-handed.

  “Now, then,” he added. “I see that you have already taken a fingerprint.”

  I nodded eagerly.

  “Excellent,” he said, picking up the dead digit and examining it closely. He pinched the tip beneath the nail.

  “Ah,” he said. “The anticipated thickening of the flesh. Produced by constant striking of the strings. Not a callus, and not visible superficially, but present and palpable nonetheless.”

  He held it out for my inspection. I felt the finger. Sure enough, as Dogger had observed: a definite thickening of the otherwise soft skin.

  “A Spanish lady!” I exclaimed, noticing for the first time the slight olive tone to the skin.

  “Well done,” Dogger said, and I basked in the glow of his words, knowing that he meant it.

  “Not that it helps,” I said. “There are a great many Spanish ladies in the world.”

  “Indeed there are,” Dogger agreed. “But far fewer in England, and fewer still who are proficient upon the guitar, and no others, perhaps, who have been buried at Brookwood within the past month or so.”

  “Brookwood?” I exclaimed.

  “Brookwood Cemetery, in Surrey,” Dogger said.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  Although it was not like him, Dogger was pulling my leg. I was sure of it.

  “You’re joking,” I said.

  “Not at all,” Dogger said, peering closely at the severed finger. “In its most recent issue, the magazine Gramophone carried an obituary for Mme. Adriana Castelnuovo, the noted guitar impresario. She studied under Andrés Segovia, the acknowledged master of the instrument, and made a number of pretty transcriptions for guitar of the works of the elder Scarlatti, Alessandro. I have a few of her recordings in my small collection. Mme. Castelnuovo’s interment took place at Brookwood in August.”

  “Dogger, you amaze me,” I said. I didn’t bother mentioning also that I love it when someone uses the word interment. It comes from the Old French word enterrer, which means the act of placing into the earth; of burying. It’s a comfortable word, all in all, since it conveys precisely the general idea of what’s taking place without actually raising images of the worms and slugs and squishiness, et cetera. Personally, I delight in deliquescence, although I am aware that not everyone shares my enthusiasms.

  The idea of human hearts and brains turning to cheese is not everyone’s cup of tea.

  “So then,” I said. “The first official act of Arthur W. Dogger & Associates is to be a trip to Brookwood?”

  “It would seem so,” Dogger said, rewrapping the finger in the napkin. “Did you know the London Necropolis Company has its own railway? Or had, at least until the Blitz. They still run the occasional train from Waterloo.”

  Why have I never heard of this? I wondered. Who has been shielding me?

  “A railway for the dead?” I asked. I could scarcely contain myself.

  “Precisely,” Dogger said.

  As it turned out, we were not able to set out for Brookwood until the next day. Circumstances combined to keep us at home, the most pressing of these being the prying of Feely off the ceiling and getting her fit to depart upon her honeymoon. The plan had been to get her to London in the early evening to catch the boat train for the Continent. Dieter was taking her on a tour of musical shrines in Germany, culminating with two weeks in Vienna, with visits to the State Opera and the birthplace of Mozart.

  With Feely still sobbing madly in her bedroom, and now refusing to admit even dear old Dr. Darby, it seemed unlikely that my sister would make it even to the W.C., never mind the former haunts of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

  Dieter was at his wits’ end. He had begged, he had pleaded, he had hugged and cooed and coddled her, but Feely was having none of it. Save for an occasional retching scream, she refused to communicate.

  “She’s had a very bad shock,” Dr. Darby said. “I’ve seen many such instances.”

  I was longing to ask him where and when, but I managed to restrain myself.

  The vicar and his wife were huddled in a corner with Dieter and his parents. Dieter had the look of a man whose cat has been skinned. “In these cases, time is the great healer,” the vicar was telling him, which may have been comforting to some, but not to Dieter.

  “I have the tickets,” he said. “We booked them months ago. I cannot possibly change them.”

  Poor Dieter! I could have cried for him. Was there nothing I could do to ease his agony?

  “I’ll talk to her,” I said, making a sudden decision. I had taken several steps toward the door when Dr. Darby seized my arm.

  “Hold on,” he said, and then in a low voice, he added: “What did you actually see in that cake? There’s no use denying it: I saw you at the table.”

  “Nothing,” I told him. “There was nothing remarkable in the cake.”

  Which wa
s partly true. There was nothing remarkable in the cake—at least, there hadn’t been after I wrapped the severed finger in a napkin and shoved it into my pocket.

  I drew Dr. Darby slightly aside.

  “She’s under a lot of stress,” I said. “First, Father; then her engagement; now her wedding. I’ve noticed that she’s been rather nervy lately. I thought we might be able to get her away on her honeymoon before it did her in entirely.”

  I touched the doctor’s arm, patting him reassuringly. “Which is why I’ve offered to go up and talk to her.”

  “Well…” he said, and before he could utter another word, I strode away with a confidence I didn’t really possess—but which I hoped was convincing.

  I didn’t bother knocking, but barged into Feely’s bedroom as if I were the Bishop’s Lacey Volunteer Fire Brigade.

  Feely had flung herself on a Victorian couch in front of the window, the back of one wrist covering her eyes as she sobbed great strangled sobs into a knotted silk handkerchief.

  “Get up, Feely!” I commanded. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Get up and go back to your guests. Everyone’s waiting for you. You can’t let people down like that. What would Father say?”

  I paused to let my words sink in.

  “There was a—a—human finger…in the— Oh! It was—”

  “It was a sausage,” I said. “Daffy and I put it there as a joke. I’m sorry if we upset you.”

  I would make my peace with God later for such a blatant lie. He would forgive me, but Daffy wouldn’t.

  “A sausage,” I repeated. “A stale, stupid sausage.”

  I sent up a silent prayer of apology to the ghost of the late Mme. Castelnuovo, wherever it might presently be. A sausage, indeed!

  The sniveling abated slightly. Had Feely believed me? It was hard to tell.

  “I told them the wine had upset your tummy,” I said. “They understand.”

  “How dare you!” Feely hissed. “How dare you! All the chins in the village will be wagging now.”

  Already she was more like her old self.