A Red Herring Without Mustard

“Brookie Harewood?” Feely had sniffed, the day Mrs. Mullet suggested that Brookie be hired to help Dogger with weeding the garden and trimming the hedges at Buckshaw. “But he’s a remittance man, isn’t he? Our lives wouldn’t be worth tuppence with him hanging about the place.”

“What’s a remittance man?” I asked when Feely had flounced from the kitchen.

“I don’t know, luv, I’m sure,” Mrs. M had replied. “His mother’s that lady as paints over in Malden Fenwick.”

“Paints?” I had asked. “Houses?”

“Houses? Bless you! No, it’s pitchers she paints. The gentry on ’orseback and that. P’raps she’ll even paint you someday in your turn. You and Miss Ophelia and Miss Daphne.”

At which I had let out a snort and dashed from the room. If I were to be painted in oils, shellacked, and framed, I would be posed in my chemical laboratory and nowhere else.

Hemmed in by beakers, bell jars, and Erlenmeyer flasks, I would be glancing up impatiently from my microscope in much the same way as my late great-uncle Tarquin de Luce is doing in his portrait, which still hangs in the picture gallery at Buckshaw. Like Uncle Tar, I would be visibly annoyed. No horses and gentry for me, thank you very much.

A light pall of smoke still hung over the churchyard. Now that most of the onlookers had wandered off, the charred and smoldering remains of the Gypsy’s tent were clearly visible beside the path. But it wasn’t so much the scorched circle in the grass that interested me as what had been hidden behind it: a brightly painted Gypsy caravan.

It was butter yellow with crimson shutters, and its lathwork sides, which sloped gently outwards beneath a rounded roof, gave it the look of a loaf of bread that has puffed out beyond the rim of the baking pan. From its spindly yellow wheels to its crooked tin chimney, and from its arched cathedral windows to the intricately carved wooden brackets on each side of the door, it was something that might have come rumbling out of a dream. As if to perfect the scene, an ancient, swaybacked horse was grazing in a picturesque manner among the leaning gravestones at the far corner of the churchyard.

It was a Romany cob. I recognized it at once from photographs I had seen in Country Life. With its feathered feet and tail, and a long mane that overhung its face (from beneath which it peered coyly out like Veronica Lake), the cob looked like a cross between a Clydesdale and a unicorn.

“Flavia, dear,” said a voice behind me. It was Denwyn Richardson, the vicar of St. Tancred’s. “Dr. Darby would be most obliged if you’d run in and fetch a fresh pitcher of lemonade from the ladies in the kitchen.”

My ruffled glance must have made him feel guilty. Why is it that eleven-year-old girls are always treated as servants?

“I’d go for it myself, you see, but the good doctor feels that the poor lady may well be put off by my clerical collar and so forth and, well …”

“Happy to, Vicar,” I said cheerily, and I meant it. Being the Lemonade Bearer would give me access to the St. John’s Ambulance tent.

Before you could say “snap!” I had loped into the parish hall kitchen (“Excuse me. Medical emergency!”), made off with a frosty jug of iced lemonade, and was now in the dim light of the first-aid tent, pouring the stuff into a cracked tumbler.

“I hope you’re all right,” I said, handing it to the Gypsy. “Sorry about the tent. I’ll pay for it, of course.”

“Mmmm,” Dr. Darby said. “No need. She’s already explained that it was an accident.”

The woman’s awful red-rimmed eyes watched me warily as she drank.

“Dr. Darby,” the vicar said, sticking his head through the flaps of the tent like a turtle, so that his dog collar wouldn’t show, “if you can spare a moment … it’s Mrs. Peasley at the skittles pitch. She’s come all over queer, she says.”

“Mmmm,” the doctor said, snapping shut his black bag. “What you need, my old gal,” he said to the Gypsy, “is a good rest.” And to me: “Stay with her. I shan’t be long.

“Never rains,” he remarked to no one in particular on his way out.

For the longest time I stood awkwardly staring at my feet, trying to think of something to say. I dared not look the Gypsy in the eye.

“I’ll pay for the tent,” I repeated. “Even though it was an accident.”

That set her off coughing again and it was evident, even to me, that the fire had taken its toll on her already shaky lungs. I waited, helpless, for the gasping to subside.

When at last it did, there was another long, unnerving silence.

“The woman,” the Gypsy said at last. “The woman on the mountain. Who was she?”

“She was my mother.” I said. “Her name was Harriet de Luce.”

“The mountain?”

“Somewhere in Tibet, I think. She died there ten years ago. We don’t often speak of it at Buckshaw.”

“Buckshaw means nothing to me.”

“It’s where I live. South of the village,” I said with a vague wave of my hand.

“Ah!” she said, fixing me with a piercing look. “The big house. Two wings folded back.”

“Yes, that’s it,” I said. “Not far from where the river loops round.”