A Red Herring Without Mustard

A little deeper … a little farther to the left. Although I couldn’t see it, my fingers closed around something hard. I took a firm grip and lifted it towards the surface.

As the object came up towards me through the water it became visible. It was eerie.

Hard … transparent … invisible in the water … becoming visible as it came into the air.

A sudden sinking feeling told me that my heart already knew what the thing was before my head did, and both had already begun to pound as I realized that the object I was holding in my streaming hands was Fenella’s crystal ball—the ball with which some unknown person had bashed in her skull: the ball with which someone had tried to kill her.

The thing had been lying on the river bottom for days, its transparency making it invisible in the water even though it was in plain sight. No wonder the police had missed it!

Only if they had waded around in the shallows—and only then if they had stepped upon it by accident, as I had—would they have found the object of their search.

I would, of course, take it to Inspector Hewitt at once.

As I climbed the bank, I noticed that a silence had fallen upon the Palings, as if the birds were afraid to make even a peep.

The crystal ball was cold in my hands, refracting distorted images of earth, trees, and sky, its swirling colors like dye dropped into water.

If it hadn’t been for the glass, I might have missed the flash of blue among the trees—a color that didn’t belong there.

I stopped in my tracks as if preoccupied. Don’t look directly at it, I thought.

I twisted the hem of my dress uselessly, as if trying to wring it dry, then made a little hammock of the material in which to sling the crystal ball.

Would my wet hands leave fingerprints? Who knew? It was the best I could do.

“Blast it all!” I said loudly, more for effect than anything, but signaling that I thought I was alone.

With my peripheral vision, I could see that there was a swatch of color among the bushes. By shifting my gaze slightly, I could see that it appeared to be a scarf—a flowered scarf.

Could it be one of the pixies Daffy and Feely had told me about—one of those malevolent water sprites that stole babies? Perhaps it was the very one that had taken Mrs. Bull’s child! But no … pixies didn’t exist. Or did they?

I let my eyes drift slowly to the right.

Quite abruptly, as if by magic, an image snapped into place. It was like one of those optical illusions in The Girl’s Own Annual in which a silhouette of two faces in profile is suddenly seen to be an egg cup.

Gray hair … gray eyes, staring straight at me … a scarf at the throat … riding breeches—even the monocle hanging by a black cord round the neck.

It was Vanetta Harewood’s companion, Ursula, standing motionless among the bushes, counting on the camouflage of stillness to keep me from spotting her—Ursula who gathered willow withies from the riverbank to twist into her dreadful baskets.

I let my eyes meet hers, then drift away, as if I hadn’t seen her. I looked to her right—to her left—and finally above her, letting my mouth fall open slackly.

I scratched my head, and then, I’m afraid, my bottom.

“I’m coming, Gladys,” I shouted. “It’s only a squirrel.”

And with that, I made off across the bridge, muttering away to myself like the mad daughter of an eccentric squire.

Damn! I thought. I hadn’t had a chance to examine the police diggings.

Still, my day had been remarkably productive. In my pocket was the silver de Luce lobster pick that I was quite sure had been used to put an end to Brookie Harewood, and cradled in my skirt, the crystal ball that was almost certainly the object with which Fenella had been bashed. After all, if it wasn’t, then why would it have been tossed into the river?

An idea began to take shape.

Of course I would hand over these weapons at once to Inspector Hewitt—I had planned to do so all along, for various reasons.

But first, I wondered, was it possible to retrieve fingerprints from an object that had been immersed for days in running water?

TWENTY-THREE

I HAD CLIMBED NO more than a dozen stairs when Father’s voice, from somewhere below me in the foyer, said, “Flavia—”

Thwarted!

I stopped, turned, and came down one step out of respect. He was standing at the entrance to the west wing.

“My study, please.”

He turned and was gone.

I trudged down the steps and trailed along behind him, making a point of hanging well back.

“Close the door,” he said, and sat down at his desk.

This was serious. Father usually delivered his little lectures while standing at the window, gazing out into the grounds.

I perched on the edge of a chair, and tried to look attentive.

“I’ve had a call from Nurse Hammond on the—” He pointed in the general direction of the telephone, but could not bring himself to say the word. “… instrument. She tells me that you took Dr. Kissing out into the rain.”

The hag! I’d done no such thing.