A Red Herring Without Mustard

Daffy sat bolt upright on the divan, glaring at me with what I took to be hatred in her eyes—as if she held me responsible for all of Father’s misfortunes.

Feely’s hand was at her mouth.

All of these details were frozen on the instant, as if a photographer’s flash had gone off and preserved forever a thin and uncomfortable slice of time. The silence in the room was audible.

“Killed Brookie Harewood?” Inspector Hewitt said at last, turning to me. “This lobster pick? Please explain what you mean by that.”

“It was in his nose,” I said, “when I found his body hanging from the Poseidon fountain. Surely you saw it?”

Now it was the Inspector’s turn to stare in disbelief at the object in his hand.

“You’re quite sure?” he asked.

“Positive,” I said, a little peeved that he should doubt me.

I could see that the Inspector was choosing his words carefully before he spoke.

“We found no lobster pick at the scene of the crime—and none has turned up subsequently.”

No lobster pick at the scene of the crime? What a ludicrous statement! It was like denying the sun in the sky! The thing had been there, plain as day, stuck up Brookie’s nostril like a dart in a corkboard.

If the pick had fallen out through force of gravity, for instance, the police would have found it in the fountain. The fact that they hadn’t could mean only one thing: that someone had removed it. And that someone, most likely, was Brookie’s killer.

Between the time Porcelain and I had walked away from the fountain, and the time that the police arrived—no more than, say, twenty minutes—the killer had crept back, scaled the fountain, and removed the weapon from Brookie’s nose. But why?

The Inspector was still staring at me intently. I could see his cogs turning.

“Surely you don’t think I killed Brookie Harewood?” I gasped.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t,” Inspector Hewitt said, “but something tells me that you know who did.”

I didn’t move a muscle, but inwardly I positively preened!

Fancy that! I thought. Recognition at last!

I could have hugged the man, but I didn’t. He’d have been mortified, and so—but only later, of course—would I.

“I have my suspicions,” I said, fighting to keep my voice from sliding into an upper register.

“Ah,” the Inspector said, “then you must share them with us sometime. Well, thank you all. It has been most illuminating.”

He summoned Sergeant Graves with his eyebrows, and went to the door.

“Oh, and Colonel,” he said, turning back. “You will keep Flavia at home?”

Father did not reply, and for that, I decided on the spot, his name would be inscribed forever in my private book of saints and martyrs.

And then, with a rustle of officialdom, the police were gone.

“Do you think he likes me?” Feely asked, making a beeline for the looking glass on the chimneypiece.

“I should say so,” Daffy replied. “He was all green eyes, like the monster cuttlefish in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”

With no more than a look of perplexity, Father left the room.

Within minutes, I knew, he would be submerged in his stamp collection, alone with whatever squids and cuttlefish inhabited the depths of his mind.

At that moment I remembered Porcelain.

It didn’t come easily to me to knock at the door of my own laboratory, but knock I did. No point in startling Porcelain and ending up with my throat slit from ear to ear.

But when I stepped inside, the laboratory was empty, and I felt my anger rising. Blast her! Hadn’t I told her to stay where she was until I returned?

But when I opened my bedroom door, there she was, sitting cross-legged on my bed like a malnourished Buddha, reading my notebook.

It was too much.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted, running across the room and snatching the book from her hand.

“Reading about myself,” she said.

I’ll admit it: I saw red.

No, that’s not quite true: I first saw white—a silent, brilliant white that erased everything—like the A-bombs that had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Only after this deadly burst of flower petals had begun to cool and fade, passing first from yellow through orange, did it at last simmer down to red.

I had been angry before, but this was like something ripped from the pages of the Book of Revelation. Could it be some secret fault in the de Luce makeup that was manifesting itself in me for the first time?

Until now, my fury had always been like those jolly Caribbean carnivals we had seen in the cinema travelogues—a noisy explosion of color and heat that wilted steadily as the day went on. But now it had suddenly become an icy coldness: a frigid wasteland in which I stood unapproachable. And it was in that instant, I think, that I began to understand my father.

This much was clear: I needed to get away—to be alone—until the tidal wave had passed.

“Excuse me,” I said abruptly, surprising even myself, and walked out of the room.

I sat for a while on the stairs—neither up nor down.