shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows, revealing arms that, except for their excessive hairiness, might have been a pair of Christmas hams. His shirt, open at the neck, revealed a forest of black, springy chest hair, and his fists clenched and unclenched as he strode purposefully towards the door.
Whoever he was, it was clear that he was unhappy. The man was powerful enough to tear me open like a packet of cigarettes. I couldn’t let him find me here.
It was unnerving to work my way back through the maze of furniture. Twice I startled at a movement close by, only to find that it was a reflection of myself in an uncovered mirror.
The man was already opening the door as I reached the caged cubicle. I slipped inside—thank goodness for bare feet and straw on the floor!—then lowered myself to hands and knees, then flat on my face, and began to crawl through the narrow hole to the outside.
The rooster was on me like a champion fighting cock. As I crawled, I tried to keep my hands up to protect my face, but the bird’s spurs were razor sharp. Before I was even halfway through, my wrists were bleeding.
Up the wire wall I swarmed, the rooster throwing himself again and again at my feet and legs. There was no time even to think of what the wire mesh was doing to my toes. At the top, I threw myself over the wooden bar and dropped heavily to the ground.
“Who’s there?” Inside the coach house, the man’s voice sounded as if he was no more than a few feet away. But unless he got down on his belly and crawled, he could not follow me—could not even see me in the outside pen.
He would have to return to his car, then come round behind the coach house in the lane.
I heard his footsteps retreating on the wooden floor.
Again I made a crouching scuttle along the crumbling fence—but wait: I’d forgotten my shoes and socks!
Back again I went to retrieve them, my breath now coming in quick painful gasps. Once more along the fence and I ducked behind the hedge where I had left Gladys.
Just in time. I froze behind the box hedge—trying not to breathe—as the human bulldog went lumbering past.
“Who’s there?” he demanded again, and I heard the rooster throw himself at the wire mesh with a wild crowing.
A few more coarse oaths and my pursuer was gone. I cannot bring myself to record his exact words, but will keep them in mind against the day I can put them to good use.
I waited for a minute or two to be sure, then dragged Gladys from behind the hedge and set off for home.
As I pedaled along I did my best to look like a respectable English girl out for a bracing bicycle ride in the fresh air.
But somehow I doubted that my charade would convince anyone: My hands and face were filthy, my wrists and ankles were bleeding, my knees were scraped to the bone, and my clothing would have to be tossed in the dustbin.
Father would not be amused.
And what if, in my absence, they had discovered Porcelain in my bedroom? What if she had awakened and wandered downstairs? Or into Father’s study!
Although I had never before cringed on a bicycle, I cringed.
“I caught her crawling in at one of the windows of the picture gallery,” Feely said. “Like a common housebreaker. Can you imagine? I’d gone there to study the Maggs painting of Ajax, and—”
Maggs was a ruffian painter who had lived in the vicinity of Bishop’s Lacey during the Regency, and Ajax a horse that had been bought on a whim by one of my ancestors, Florizel de Luce. Ajax had rewarded his new owner by going on to win enough races that Florizel was able to have himself elected to a rotten borough.
“Thank you, Ophelia,” Father said.
Feely cast down humble eyes and drifted out the door, where she would sit on the chair in the hallway to eavesdrop comfortably upon my humiliation.
“Do you know what day it is, Flavia?” Father began.
“Sunday,” I said without hesitation, although yesterday’s fete at St. Tancred’s seemed as far removed in time as the last ice age.
“Precisely,” Father said. “And what have we done on Sundays since time immemorial?”
“Gone to church,” I replied like a trained macaw.
Church! I’d forgotten all about it.
“I’d thought to let you lie in this morning to recover from that nasty business in the Palings. Next thing I know, there’s an inspector at the door and you’re wanted for fingerprinting.
“Now I’m informed that there’s a dead body on the Trafalgar Lawn and that you’re nosing about the village asking impertinent questions.”
“Miss Mountjoy?” I ventured.
Give a little, learn a lot. That was going to be my Motto of the Month. I would have to remember to jot it down in my notebook.
But wait! How could Miss Mountjoy have known about the body on the lawn? Unless—
“Miss Mountjoy,” Father confirmed. “She telephoned to ask if you’d got home safely.”
The old harpy! She must have got up from her settee and been peering out through the trailing seaweed fronds of the willow tree, spying on my encounters with the rooster and the bulldog-man.
