A Red Herring Without Mustard

“Top marks!” the sergeant said.

I turned away as if to wipe a bit of grit from my eye and stuck out my tongue at Feely.

“But surely these are for dusting?” I protested. “… and not needed for recording prints?”

“Right enough,” the sergeant said. “I just thought you’d be interested in seeing the tools of the trade.”

“Oh, I am indeed,” I said quickly. “Thank you for the thought.”

I did not suppose it would be polite to mention that I had upstairs in my chemical laboratory enough mercury and graphite to supply the needs of the Hinley Constabulary until well into the next century. Great-uncle Tar had been, among many other things, a hoarder.

“Mercury,” I said, touching the bottle. “Fancy that!”

Sergeant Graves was now removing from its protective padding a rectangular sheet of plain glass, followed in quick succession by a bottle of ink and a roller.

Deftly he applied five or six drops of the ink to the surface of the glass, then rolled it smooth until the plate was uniformly covered with the black ooze.

“Now then,” he said, taking my right wrist, and spreading my fingers until they were just hovering above the glass, “relax—let me do the work.”

With no more than a slight pressure, he pushed my fingertips down and into the ink, one at a time, rolling each one from left to right on the ball of my fingertip. Then, moving my hand to a white card, which was marked with ten squares—one for each finger—he made the prints.

“Oh, Sergeant Graves!” Feely said. “You must take mine, too!”

“Oh, Sergeant Graves! You must take mine, too!”

I could have swatted her.

“Happy to, Miss Ophelia,” he said, taking up her hand and dropping mine.

“Better ink the glass again,” I said, “otherwise you might make a bad impression.”

The sergeant’s ears went a bit pink, but he soldiered on. In no time at all he had recoated the glass with a fresh film, and was taking up Feely’s hand as if it were some venerable object.

“Did you know that, in the Holy Land, they have the fingerprints of the angel Gabriel?” I asked, trying desperately to regain his attention. “At least they used to. Dr. Robert Richardson and the Earl of Belmore saw them at Nazareth. Remember, Feely?”

For nearly a week—before our recent set-to—Daffy had been reading aloud to us at the breakfast table from an odd volume of the doctor’s Travels along the Mediterranean and Parts Adjacent, and some of its many wonders were still fresh in my mind.

“They also showed him the Virgin Mary’s Kitchen, at the Chapel of the Incarnation. They still have the cinders, the fire irons, the cutlery—”

Something in the back room of my brain was thinking about our own fire irons: the Sally Fox and Shoppo firedogs that had once belonged to Harriet.

“That will be quite enough, thank you, Flavia,” Feely said. “You may fetch me a rag to wipe my fingers on.”

“Fetch it yourself,” I flung at her, and stalked from the room.

Compared with my life, Cinderella was a spoiled brat.

EIGHT

ALONE AT LAST!

Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little. Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.

In the kitchen garden, I grabbed my faithful old BSA Keep-Fit from the greenhouse. The bicycle had once belonged to Harriet, who had called her l’Hirondelle, “the Swallow”: a word that reminded me so much of being force-fed cod-liver oil with a gag-inducing spoon that I had renamed her “Gladys.” Who, for goodness’ sake, wants to ride a bicycle with a name that sounds like a sickroom nurse?

And Gladys was much more down-to-earth than l’Hirondelle: an adventurous female with Dunlop tires, three speeds, and a forgiving disposition. She never complained and she never tired, and neither, when I was in her company, did I.

I pedaled southeast from Buckshaw, wobbling slowly along the edge of the ornamental lake. To my left was a somewhat flat expanse called the Visto which had been cleared by Sir George de Luce in the mid-nineteenth century to serve as what he described in his diary as a “coign of vantage”: a grassy green plain across which one was supposed to contemplate the blue enfolding hills.

In recent times, however, the Visto had been allowed to become little more than an overgrown cow pasture: a place where nettles ran riot and the contemplator’s clothing was at risk of being ripped to tatters. It was here that Harriet had kept Blithe Spirit, her de Havilland Gypsy Moth, which she had flown regularly up to London to meet her friends.

All that remained now of those happy days were the three iron rings, still rusting somewhere among the weeds, to which Blithe Spirit had long ago been tethered.

Once, when I had asked Father how Buckshaw looked from the air, he had gone all tight around the temples.

“Ask your aunt Felicity,” he’d said gruffly. “She’s flown.”

I’d made a mental note to do so.