strode from the room.
'Lawks-a-mercy!' Daffy had said, but only after he had gone.
And so Aunt Felicity's ghastly gifts had continued to be received in silence--at least in my presence.
Before I could even begin to recall her trespasses on my own good nature, Father went on: 'Her train gets in to Doddingsley at five past ten, and I'd like you to be there to meet her.'
'But--'
'Please don't argue, Flavia. I've made plans to settle up a few accounts in the village. Ophelia is giving some sort of recital for the Women's Institute's morning tea, and Daphne simply refuses to go.'
Boil me dry! I should have known that something like this would happen.
'I'll have Mundy send round a car. I'll book him when he comes tonight for Mrs. Mullet.' Clarence Mundy was the owner of Bishop Lacey's only taxicab.
Mrs. Mullet was staying late to finish off the semiannual scouring of the pots and pans: a ritual that always filled the kitchen with greasy, superheated steam, and Buckshaw's inhabitants with nausea. On these occasions, Father always insisted on sending her home afterwards by taxicab. There were various theories in circulation at Buckshaw about his reasons for doing so.
It was obvious that I couldn't be en route to or from Doddingsley with Aunt Felicity and, at the same time, be helping Rupert and Nialla set up their puppet show. I would simply have to sort out my priorities and attend to the most important matters first.
Although there was a sliver of gold in the eastern sky, the sun was not yet up as I barreled along the road to Bishop's Lacey. Gladys's tires were humming that busy, waspish sound they make when she's especially content.
Low fog floated in the fields on either side of the ditches, and I pretended that I was the ghost of Cathy Earnshaw flying to Heathcliff (except for the bicycle) across the Yorkshire moors. Now and then, a skeletal hand would reach out of the bramble hedges to snatch at my red woolen sweater, but Gladys and I were too fast for them.
As I pulled up alongside St. Tancred's, I could see Rupert's small white tent set up in the long grass, at the back of the built-up churchyard. He had pitched it in the potter's field: the plots where paupers had been laid to rest and where, consequently, there were bodies but no tombstones. I supposed that Rupert and Nialla had not been told of this, and I decided that they would not hear it from me.
Before I had waded more than a few feet through the sodden grass, my shoes and socks were soaking wet.
'Hello?' I called quietly. 'Anyone home?'
There was no reply. Not a sound. I started as one of the curious jackdaws slipped down from the top of the tower and landed with a perfect aerodynamic plop on the crumbling limestone wall.
'Hello?' I called again. 'Knock, knock. Anyone home?'
There was a rustling in the tent and Rupert stuck his head out, his haystack hair falling over his eyes, which were as red as if they were driven by electric dynamos.
'Christ, Flavia!' he said. 'Is that you?'
'Sorry,' I said. 'I'm a bit early.'
He withdrew his head into the tent like a turtle, and I heard him trying to rouse Nialla. After a few yawns and grumbles, the canvas began poking out at sudden odd angles, as if someone inside with a besom broom were sweeping up broken glass.
A few minutes later, Nialla came half crawling out of the tent. She was wearing the same dress as yesterday, and although the material looked uncomfortably damp, she had pulled out a Woodbine and lighted it even before she had fully straightened up.
'Cheers,' she said, flapping an inclusive hand towards me, and causing her smoke to drift off and mingle with the fog that hung among the gravestones.
She coughed with a sudden horrid spasm, and the jackdaw, cocking its head, took several steps sideways on the wall, as if in disgust.
'You oughtn't to be smoking those things,' I said.
'Better than smoking kippers,' she replied, and laughed at her own joke. 'Besides, what do you know?'
I knew that my late great-uncle, Tarquin de Luce, whose chemical laboratory I had inherited, had, in his student days, been hooted down and ejected bodily from the Oxford Union when he took the affirmative in a debate, Resolved: That Tobacco Is a Pernicious Weed.
I had, not long before, come across Uncle Tar's notes tucked into a diary. His meticulous chemical researches seemed to have confirmed the link between smoking and what was then called 'general paralysis.' Since he had been, by nature, a rather shy and retiring sort, his 'utter and abject humiliation,' as he put it, at the hands of his fellow students, had contributed greatly to his subsequent reclusive life.
I wrapped my arms around myself and took a step back. 'Nothing,' I said.
I had said too much. It was cold and clammy in the churchyard, and I had a sudden vision of the warm bed I'd climbed out of to come here and help.
Nialla blew a couple of what were supposed to be casual smoke rings straight up into the air. She watched them ascend until they had dissipated.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I'm not at my best at the crack of dawn. I didn't mean to be rude.'
'It's all right,' I said. But it wasn't.
A twig cracked, surprisingly loud in the muffling silence of the fog. The jackdaw unfolded its wings and flapped off to the top of a yew tree.
