A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel

were thick; some thin. Some were single; others double; and a few were shaded in various schemes of cross- hatching.

At first I thought it was a railway map, so dense were the tracks—perhaps an ambitious expansion scheme for the nearby Buckshaw Halt, where trains had once stopped to put down guests and unload goods for the great house.

Only when I recognized the shape at the bottom of the map as the ornamental lake, and the unmistakeable outline of Buckshaw itself, did I realize that the document was, in fact, not a map at all, but a diagram: Lucius “Leaking” de Luce’s plan for his subterranean hydraulic operations.

Interesting, I thought, but only vaguely. I shoved the paper into my pocket for future reference and resumed my search for books that might contain some mention of the Hobblers.

Sermons for Sailors; God’s Plan for the Indies; Remains of Alexander Knox, Esq.

And suddenly there it was: English Dissenters.

I must say—it was an eye-opener!

I suppose I had been expecting a dry-as-dust account of hellfire parsons and dozing parishioners. But what I had stumbled upon was a treasure trove of jealousy, backbiting, vanity, abductions, harrowing midnight escapes, hangings, mutilations, betrayal, and sorcery.

Wherever there had been savage bloodshed in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English history, there was sure to have been a Dissenter at the heart of it. I made a note to take some of these volumes up to my bedroom for a bit of horrific bedtime reading. They would certainly be more lively than Wind in the Willows, which had been languishing on my night-table since Aunt Felicity had sent it to me for Christmas, pretending to believe it was a history of corporal punishment.

With English Dissenters in hand, I climbed down the ladder, dropped into the upholstered wing-back chair that Daffy usually occupied, and began flipping through its pages in search of the Hobblers.

Because there was no index, I was forced to go slowly, watching for the word “Hobblers,” trying not to become too distracted by the violence of the religious text.

Only towards the end of the book did I find what I was looking for. But then, suddenly, there it was, at the bottom of a page, in a footnote marked by a squashed-spider asterisk, set in quaint old-fashioned type.

“The mischief of Infant-baptism,” it said, “is an innovation on the primitive practice of the church: one of the corruptions of the second or third century. It is, moreover, often made the occasion of sin, or is turned into a farce as, for example, in that custom of the sect known as the Hobblers, whose dipping of a child held by the heel into running water, must be understood as no more than a bizarre, not to say barbaric, survival of the Greek myth of Achilles.”

It took several moments for the words to sink in.

Mrs. Mullet had been right!

TWENTY-SEVEN

UP THE EAST STAIRCASE I flew, English Dissenters clutched in my hand.

I couldn’t contain myself.

“Listen to this,” I said, bursting into my bedroom. Porcelain was sitting exactly as I had left her, staring at me as if I were a madwoman.

I read aloud to her the footnote on infant baptism, the words fairly tumbling from my mouth.

“So what?” she said, unimpressed.

“Mrs. Bull,” I blurted out. “She lied! Her baby drowned! It had nothing to do with Fenella!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Porcelain said.

Of course she didn’t! I hadn’t told her about the encounter with the enraged Mrs. Bull in the Gully. I could still hear those frightening, hateful words in my mind:

“Gypsy! Gypsy! Clear off!” she had screamed at Fenella. “ ’Twas you as stole my baby. Tom, get out here! That Gypsy’s at the gate!”

Thinking to spare Porcelain’s feelings, I skated quickly over the story of the Bull baby’s disappearance, and of the furious outburst its mother had directed at Fenella in the Gully.

Mrs. Mullet’s friend had told her the Hobblers dipped their babies by the heel, like Achilles in the River Styx. She didn’t quite put it that way, but that’s what she meant.

“So you see,” I finished triumphantly, “Fenella had nothing to do with it.”

“Of course she didn’t,” Porcelain scoffed. “She’s a harmless old woman, not a kidnapper. Don’t tell me you believe those old wives’ tales about Gypsies stealing babies?”

“Of course I don’t,” I said, but I was not being truthful. In my heart of hearts I had, until that very minute, believed what every child in England had been made to believe.

Porcelain was becoming huffy again, and I didn’t want to risk another outburst, either from her, or worse, from me.

“She’s that redhead, then?” she said suddenly, bringing the topic back to Mrs. Bull. “The one that lives in the lane?”

“That’s her!” I said. “How did you know?”

“I saw someone like that … hanging about,” Porcelain said evasively.