The Golden Tresses of the Dead Read online

  “Off you go,” I said, planting my hands on my hips to make myself appear larger. “Your bridegroom awaits you.”

  Feely mopped at her eyes with the soggy handkerchief. “You’ve made me ruin my makeup.”

  “Oh, bosh,” I told her. “It was ruined before I came upstairs. They’ve already taken the photos, so who cares. Smile through the old tears. Off to Vienna with you. And don’t come back until your disposition has improved.”

  Feely tried to catch my eye, but I wasn’t having any of it.

  “Don’t bother with the basilisk look,” I said. “I’ve been vaccinated against them. Now shoo!”

  And to my utter amazement, she obeyed me.

  “Have a happy honeymoon!” I shouted after her, but she either didn’t hear me or decided I didn’t deserve an answer.

  The life of a go-between is not an easy one.

  And so, in due course, and just in the nick of time, Feely and Dieter were carried off in Bunny’s car in a shower of confetti, tears, and old boots.

  There was a long, awkward silence among those gathered at the front door. No one seemed to want to be the first to speak.

  My own first thought was one of relief that she was gone: that Feely no longer lived at Buckshaw.

  No, that’s not true. That’s what I wanted to think.

  In truth, it hit me like a hod of bricks that I was now alone in a way that I had never been alone before. Of course, I still had Daffy and Dogger and Mrs. Mullet, but Feely was gone. Feely, with whom I had been engaged in an eternal joust since the day of my birth; Feely whom I always loved; Feely whom I sometimes hated.

  But it is not easy to keep alive a grudge against a person who has written music in your honor, even if it was only a short piano piece: a cascade of vividly ascending octaves, composed to commemorate the dramatic and unforgettable outcome of an occasion when I had unwisely gobbled down a few too many of Mrs. Mullet’s Cornish pasties. Feely called the piece “Whoops-a-Daisy!” and would perform it for visitors at the drop of a hat or—as Daffy liked to say—at the rise of a gorge.

  “Beast!” I would hiss, whenever she tortured me like this, but she would merely transpose the melody into an even more upward-tending key and start over from the beginning.

  But yet, although we three despised one another, there were certain occasions when we could be, suddenly and surprisingly, as thick as thieves.

  There were those instances, for instance, such as the Christmas Eve service at St. Tancred’s, when Daffy and I would stand shoulder to shoulder with all the other parishioners, caroling our hearts out, but inserting the wrong words.

  “Braise my soul the King of Heaven,” we would bellow. That and “While shepherds washed their socks by night…”

  And at the conclusion of every hymn, we would sing “Ah, men!”—as if we were despairing of every male who had ever drawn breath.

  With practice, and a good bit of nerve, you could pull this off while smiling broadly at your neighbors across the aisle and they would smile back, never for an instant detecting the difference.

  And then there had been the year all three of us had contracted mumps at the Christmas Concert. Confined strictly to the house, we had given one another names: I was Mumpso, Daffy was Mumpsis, and Feely was Mumpsissimus. Never had we been so close as we were then, howling with swollen glands and laughter.

  Feely, especially, had been a rock. But as Dogger once told me, every rock has its underside.

  Still, I was going to miss her.

  It was Daffy who broke the silence at last.

  “Now, then, Helmut and Inge…” (She meant Mr. and Mrs. Schrantz. Daffy was never one to stand on ceremony.) “Let’s go have a look at those first edition Pickwick Papers I promised to show you. You’ll find Dickens’s signature especially suggestive. It’s in green ink on the title page of each number.”

  “Nineteen signatures of the divine Dickens,” Helmut marveled. “Remarkable. Lead on, dear Daphne.”

  And with that, they were gone.

  Mrs. Mullet was already bustling about, cleaning up. It seemed a good time to tackle her.

  “Take a break, Mrs. M,” I said. “You must be exhausted. Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.”

  Mrs. Mullet beamed upon me like the sun. “You know me like a book, don’t you, dear?” she asked.

  “I try,” I said. “One must always keep one’s dearest hearts happy.”

  All right, I was pandering, I admit it. But a little of that goes a long way when soliciting tittle-tattle.

  “Poor Feely,” I continued. “Her nerves gave out. I thought they might. She doesn’t like having strangers around at the best of times.”

  “But most of them were ’er friends!” Mrs. Mullet protested.

  “Most,” I said, “but not all. I’ve been drawing up a list of everyone that’s been in the house. You know—in case we’re missing any of the family jewels.”

  Making a joke can sometimes produce unforeseen results.

  Mrs. Mullet laughed.

  That was step one.

  “With strangers, you never know which are the good ones, and which the villains,” I added.

  “They ought to ’ave ’ats,” Mrs. Mullet said, getting into the spirit of things. “Like in the cinema. Alf always likes a good western at the cinema, Alf does. Roy Rochester or Gene Artery, or one o’ them. Alf says you can always tell ’oo’s got the best ’earts by the color of their ’ats an’ ’orses.”

  “He’s very observant, your Alf,” I said. “He ought to have been a tec rather than wasting his time in the army.”

  Mrs. Mullet drew herself up to her full height, which was very little when she was seated.

  “Alf is very proud of ’is military detachments,” she sniffed. “ ’E ’as the Military Cross, you know. ’E says ’e wouldn’t trade it for all the tea in China.”

  As a matter of fact, I didn’t know. Alf had never mentioned being the recipient of such a distinguished medal. The Military Cross was awarded for acts of great gallantry against the enemy, and I couldn’t help wondering what he had done to deserve it.

  “I was teasing, Mrs. M,” I said, and she eventually broke into a grin.

  “Well,” she said, “you’ll ’ave to jot down the ones as brought the chairs from the parish ’all, them as brought the flowers, the one as came to fix the telephone, the one as came six times with telegrams, the milk float man, the butcher, the baker—”

  “And the candlestick maker,” I added with a smile to show that I was joking.

  “No. ’E didn’t come. We ’ave enough candles left over from the war, in the pantry.”

  “Was Feely’s wedding cake in the pantry?” I asked, suddenly inspired.

  Mrs. Mullet nodded. “You saw me put it there yourself, remember?”

  I did remember. Dogger had helped her roll the heavy cake into the pantry on a tea trolley, where it had languished for weeks under a tent of netting, waiting to be iced at the last moment.

  “ ’Member I said what a waste it would be if they called the whole thing off?” She laughed. “That we should ’ave to eat the ’ole blessed thing ourselfs?”

  “So you did, Mrs. Mullet. I recall it perfectly.”

  I also remembered that Mrs. Mullet guarded her pantry as jealously as the Beefeaters at the Tower of London guard the Crown Jewels.

  Who, then, had had access to the cake between the time it was iced and the time it was cut? It seemed evident that the finger in question had been thrust into the cake at some point in between those two events, and the hole patched by smearing a bit of icing to conceal it.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. M,” I said. “I think I’ll go see if there’s anything else I can do to help.”

  I left her alone with her cup of tea and a look of utter fatigue on her face.

  There was little left of the wedding cake but wreckage. Somehow, the slice that Feely had cut had been left untouched, as if out of respect. A fresh incision had obviously been made in the opposite side of the cake, and the tall tower gutted.

  Which made no difference to my investigation. Feely’s preliminary slice still lay on its side exactly as it had fallen. I examined the curved edge of the piece, which appeared to be pristine.

  To one side, though, just where the knife had gone through, was a small, dimpled depression in the icing.

  Someone had shoved the finger—either deliberately or as a way of quickly disposing of it—into the side of Feely’s wedding cake.

  Who could have done such a thing, and how? Was it a cruel joke—or part of a larger, darker tale? How had an embalmed finger found its way from the hand of a dead woman in a Surrey cemetery into the heart of a wedding cake at Buckshaw?

  It was promising to be a very pretty puzzle.

  · THREE ·

  IT’S AMAZING WHAT A wedding can take out of you, even if it’s not your own. I had gone to my room to lie down and collect my thoughts. The past few days had been like being thrown into a millstream, tossed and buffeted by other people’s plans, like a cork in the millrace.

  I must have nodded off for some time when I was awakened by a knocking at the door. I managed to work myself up onto one elbow, my brain groggy with sleep.

  “Wha—” I managed, the inside of my mouth feeling like the newspaper in the bottom of the canary’s cage.

  “It’s Dogger, Miss Flavia. May I come in?”

  “Of course,” I said, clawing at my hair to make it look decent as I sprang up from the bed and took up a pose at the window, gazing reflectively out upon the garde
n as if I were Olivia de Havilland.

  “Sorry to disturb you, miss,” Dogger said, “but I believe we have a client. Where would you like to receive her?”

  Her? My heart began to accelerate. Would our first paying client turn out to be some mysterious woman in black? A woman who was being held to ransom by a coven of witches? But witches didn’t usually blackmail, did they? Weren’t they far more likely to seek revenge by black magic than by blackmail?

  “Show her into the drawing room, Dogger,” I said, trying to calm my breathing. “I shall be down directly.”

  As soon as I heard Dogger’s departing footsteps on the stair, I dashed next door into my chemical laboratory and grabbed a pair of glasses, a notebook with a professional-looking marbled cover, and one of my late uncle Tarquin’s Waverley fountain pens, which had once been advertised everywhere with the jingle: “They come as a boon and a blessing to men, the Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley pen.”

  Uncle Tar had owned several of each model.

  After changing my wedding outfit for a more businesslike skirt and blouse, set off by a pair of ghastly oxfords left over as a grim reminder of my detention at Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, I counted slowly to one hundred and eighty and then began my leisurely descent.

  “Mrs. Prill,” Dogger said, as I entered the room, “I should like to introduce Miss Flavia de Luce. Miss Flavia, Mrs. Anastasia Prill.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, removing my glasses and giving her a firm, businesslike handshake.

  With her prim gray suit and a dove-winged gray hat on her head, she looked like a cross between a Trafalgar Square fountain pigeon and the winged god Mercury.

  I was expecting her voice to be a harsh, birdlike cry, but when it came, it took me by surprise, for it was a voice like old mahogany polished with beeswax: rich, warm, and surprisingly deep. The voice of a trained vocalist. A contralto. An opera singer, perhaps?

  “I’m very happy to meet you, Flavia,” she said, which was probably an appropriate way of addressing me, given that she was considerably older than I was, but still, I didn’t want a too-easy familiarity to ruin our relationship. She needed to keep in mind that she was the client, and Dogger and I the consultants.

  Accordingly, I kept my gob shut, and began to leaf quickly through the pages of the notebook as if seeking to remind myself of some important fact. That done, I replaced my spectacles and waved Mrs. Prill to a nearby chair.

  “Would you care for a cup of tea?” I asked. The business of Arthur W. Dogger & Associates would be, if nothing else, conducted in a civilized manner.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “Tea is not among my weaknesses.”

  So there was I, put firmly in my place.

  “Well then, how may we assist you, Mrs. Prill?” I asked.

  She colored slightly. “Actually, I’ve come upon a quite delicate matter.”

  “It’s all right, Mrs. Prill,” I reassured her. “Mr. Dogger and I are quite accustomed to delicate matters. Are we not, Mr. Dogger?”

  Dogger made a slight but beautiful bow from the waist. What a joy he was to work with!

  “Well, you see, certain letters have been stolen and—”

  “And they are of a nature such that their loss cannot be reported to the police,” I finished for her.

  I believed my train of thought was obvious, but Mrs. Prill sucked in her breath.

  “Amazing,” she said. “You’re uncanny. Just as they told me you would be.”

  “And who are they?” I asked, trying to crinkle the corners of my eyes to make myself appear a little more human: a little less like a thinking machine.

  “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say,” Mrs. Prill said, biting her lip.

  “Not that it matters,” I said, hoping to leave the impression, without actually saying so, that I’d find out anyway.

  Dogger stepped into the uneasy silence. Good old Dogger!

  “I believe that what Miss de Luce wishes to stress is that, if we are to look into this matter on your behalf, we must establish, at the outset, a basis of perfect trust and frankness.”

  I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  “Very well,” Mrs. Prill said. “I presume that all communication between us is in the strictest confidence?”

  I nodded discreetly, as if the walls had ears.

  “Well then, the ‘they’ to whom I refer are Dr. Darby and the vicar, as well as their respective wives. They all told me that your abilities are quite remarkable.”

  I nodded again. Why hide your light under a bushel? is—or will be—my motto.

  “Go on,” I said, opening the notebook and taking up my fountain pen. “Please begin at the beginning.”

  She took me literally. “My name is Anastasia Brocken Prill, and I was born at Boswell Magna, in Kent, the only daughter of a successful medical man. After a private education, I—”

  “Ah! Your father was Dr. Augustus Brocken, the noted homeopathic practitioner,” Dogger interrupted. “Yes, I see the resemblance. Dr. Brocken was a very famous man in his day.”

  “And still is,” Mrs. Prill said. “Although no longer active, he remains—he is—”

  Her face clouded over.

  “In the care of others,” Dogger suggested.

  “Precisely,” Mrs. Prill said. “Precisely the phrase I was searching for. Thank you, Mr. Dogger.”

  Seemingly renewed, she went on: “These letters of which I speak had to do with my father’s medical practice. You will understand, of course, why I cannot allow them to be made public.”

  “Just a moment,” I said. “Involving the police in stolen letters is hardly the same as making them public.”

  “It may as well be in a village as small as Bishop’s Lacey, where secrets are no more sacred than sieves.”

  I knew she was referring indirectly to our village policeman, Constable Linnet, who was said to have suffered a serious loosening of the lips on more than one occasion in the public bar of the Thirteen Drakes.

  “When did you first notice these letters were missing?” Dogger asked.

  “On Friday. Friday evening. I came down from London after a day of committee meetings. I found Stars and Garters outside in the garden.”

  “Stars and Garters?” I asked.

  “My cats. They’re named for their markings. I had locked them in the house when I left in the morning.”

  “Does anyone else have a key to your house?” I asked. “A neighbor? A relative?”

  Mrs. Prill shook her head vigorously. “I am extremely attentive to my own security and that of my possessions,” she said.

  Why? I wondered.

  She must have read my mind.

  “I have been aware of certain…threats in the past.”

  “Could you give us a few details?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” she said. “The field of homeopathic remedies is a fiercely competitive one. It can also be unbelievably bitter. Patents, and so forth. Legal wrangling. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Of course,” Dogger said. “Brocken’s Balsamic Electuary. The Best Balm for Man or Beast. One used to see the advertising everywhere: railway platforms, omnibuses, newspapers, hoardings, even men with sandwich boards in the street.”

  Mrs. Prill seemed to preen a little.

  “Ours was a household name.” She smiled smugly.

  “We understand perfectly your wish for privacy,” Dogger said. “Pray, continue.”

  “Well, as I’ve said, I arrived home at 9:50 on the dot. I remember glancing at my wristwatch as I opened the gate. I make a point of recording my comings and goings in my diary.”

  “Indeed,” Dogger said. “Very wise. Very useful.”

  He beamed upon her and she beamed back.

  “I let Stars and Garters into the house—”

  “Did you find the door unlocked?” Dogger interrupted.

  “No. I should have noticed if it were,” Mrs. Prill answered. “I have something of a ritual of checking it scrupulously—twice, in fact—whenever I leave.”

  “Very wise,” Dogger said. “Security of possessions.”

  He smiled at me and I wrote it down.

  “In hindsight,” she continued, “I ought to have noticed. Stars and Garters seemed restless and did an inordinate bit of sniffing round the house. I put it down to their having been outdoors all day. Reclaiming their territory, that sort of thing.