A Red Herring Without Mustard

I stood there, dumbfounded. What had I done?

“Oh, God! Hilda Muir! We are all dead!” she groaned. “Now we are all dead!”

THREE

SEEN FROM THE REAR, at the edge of the ornamental lake, Buckshaw presented an aspect seldom seen by anyone other than family. Although the tall brick wall of the kitchen garden hid some parts of the house, there were two upper rooms, one at the end of each wing, that seemed to rise up above the landscape like twin towers in a fairy tale.

At the southwest corner was Harriet’s boudoir, an airless preserve that was kept precisely as it had been on that terrible day ten years ago when news of her tragic death had reached Buckshaw. In spite of the Italian lace that hung at its windows, the room inside was a curiously sanitized preserve as if, like the British Museum, it had a team of silent gray-clad scrubbers who came in the night to sweep away all signs of passing time, such as cobwebs or dust.

Although I thought it unlikely, my sisters believed that it was Father who was the keeper of Harriet’s shrine. Once, hiding on the stairs, I had overheard Feely telling Daffy, “He cleans in the night to atone for his sins.”

“Bloodstains and the like,” Daffy had whispered dramatically.

Far too agog for sleep, I had lain in bed for hours, open-eyed and wondering what she meant.

Now, at the southeast corner of the house, the upstairs windows of my chemical laboratory reflected the slow passage of the clouds as they drifted across the dark glass like fat sheep in a blue meadow, giving no hint to the outside world of the pleasure palace that lay within.

I looked up at the panes happily, hugging myself, visualizing the array of gleaming glassware that awaited my pleasure. The indulgent father of my great-uncle Tarquin de Luce had built the laboratory for his son during the reign of Queen Victoria. Uncle Tar had been sent down from Oxford amidst some sort of scandal that had never been quite fully explained—at least in my presence—and it was here at Buckshaw that he had begun his glorious, if cloistered, chemical career.

After Uncle Tar’s death, the laboratory was left to keep its secrets to itself: locked and forgotten by people who were more concerned with taxes and drainage than with cunningly shaped vessels of glass.

Until I came along, that is, and claimed it for my own.

I wrinkled my nose in pleasure at the memory.

As I approached the kitchen door, I felt proud of myself to have thought of using the least conspicuous entrance. With Daffy and Feely forever scheming and plotting against me, one could never be too careful. But the excitement of the fête and the moving of the Gypsy’s caravan to the Palings had caused me to miss lunch. Right now, even a slice of Mrs. Mullet’s stomach-churning cabbage cake would probably be bearable if taken with a glass of ice-cold milk to freeze the taste buds. By this late in the afternoon Mrs. M would have gone home for the day, and I would have the kitchen to myself.

I opened the door and stepped inside.

“Got you!” said a grating voice at my ear, and everything went dark as a sack was pulled over my head.

I struggled, but it did no good. My hands and arms were useless, as the mouth of the sack was tied tightly about my thighs.

Before I could scream, my assailants—of whom I was quite sure there were two, judging by the number of hands that were grabbing at my limbs—turned me head over heels. Now I was upside down, standing on my head, with someone grasping my ankles.

I was suffocating, fighting for breath, my lungs filled with the sharp earthy smell of the potatoes that had recently occupied the sack. I could feel the blood rushing to my head.

Damn! I should have thought sooner of kicking them. Too late now.

“Make all the noise you want,” hissed a second voice. “There’s no one here to save you.”

With a sinking feeling I realized that this was true. Father had gone up to London to a philatelic auction, and Dogger had gone with him to shop for secateurs and boot polish.

The idea of burglars inside Buckshaw was unthinkable.

That left Daffy and Feely.

In an odd way I wished it had been burglars.

I recalled that in the entire house there was only one doorknob that squeaked: the door to the cellar stairs.

It squeaked now.

A moment later, like a shot deer, I was being hoisted up onto the shoulders of my captors and roughly borne, headfirst, down into the cellars.

At the bottom of the stairs they dumped me heavily onto the flagstones, banging my elbow, and I heard my own voice shrieking with pain as it came echoing back from the vaulted ceilings—followed by the sound of my own ragged breathing.

Someone’s shoes shifted in the grit not far from where I lay sprawled.

“Pray silence!” croaked a hollow voice, which sounded artificial, like that of a tin robot.

I let out another shriek, and I’m afraid I might even have whimpered a little.

“Pray silence!”