She ignored me. I decided to risk my life.
'Speaking of lips,' I said, 'where's Feely?'
'At the doctor's,' she said. 'She had some kind of allergic outbreak. Something she came in contact with.'
Aha! My experiment had succeeded brilliantly! No one would ever know. As soon as I had a moment to myself, I'd record it in my notebook:
I let out a quiet snort. Daffy must have heard it, for she rolled over and crossed her legs.
'Don't think for a moment you've got away with it,' she said quietly.
'Huh?' I said. Innocent puzzlement was my specialty.
'What witch's brew did you put in her lipstick?'
'I haven't the faintest what you're talking about,' I said.
'Have a peek at yourself in the looking-glass,' Daffy said. 'Watch you don't break it.'
I turned and went slowly to the chimneypiece where a cloudy leftover from the Regency period hung sullenly reflecting the room.
I bent closer, peering at my image. At first I saw nothing other than my usual brilliant self, my violet eyes, my pale complexion: but as I stared, I began to notice more details in the ravaged mercury reflection.
There was a splotch on my neck. An angry red splotch! Where Feely had kissed me!
I let out a shriek of anguish.
'Feely said that before she'd been in the pit five seconds she'd paid you back in full.'
Even before Daffy rolled over and went back to her stupid sword story, I had come up with a plan.
ONCE, WHEN I WAS ABOUT NINE, I had kept a diary about what it was like to be a de Luce, or at least what it was like to be this particular de Luce. I thought a great deal about how I felt and finally came to the conclusion that being Flavia de Luce was like being a sublimate: like the black crystal residue that is left on the cold glass of a test tube by the violet fumes of iodine. At the time, I thought it the perfect description, and nothing has happened over the past two years to change my mind.
As I have said, there is something lacking in the de Luces: some chemical bond, or lack of it, that ties their tongues whenever they are threatened by affection. It is as unlikely that one de Luce would ever tell another that she loved her as it is that one peak in the Himalayas would bend over and whisper sweet nothings to an adjacent crag.
This point was proven when Feely stole my diary, pried open the brass lock with a can opener from the kitchen, and read aloud from it while standing at the top of the great staircase dressed in clothing she had stolen from a neighbor's scarecrow.
These thoughts were in my mind as I approached the door of Father's study. I paused, unsure of myself. Did I really want to do this?
I knocked uncertainly on the door. There was a long silence before Father's voice said, “Come.”
I twisted the knob and stepped into the room. At a table by the window, Father looked up for a moment from his magnifying lens, and then went on with his examination of a magenta stamp.
'May I speak?' I asked, aware, even as I said it, that it was an odd thing to be saying, and yet it seemed precisely the right choice of words.
Father put down the glass, removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of blue writing paper into which I had folded the Ulster Avenger. I stepped forward like a supplicant, put the paper on his desk, and stepped back again.
Father opened it.
'Good Lord!' he said. 'It's AA.'
He put his spectacles back on and picked up his jeweler's loupe to peer at the stamp.
Now, I thought, comes my reward. I found myself focused on his lips, waiting for them to move.
'Where did you get this?' he said at last, in that soft voice of his that fixes its hearer like a butterfly on a pin.
'I found it,' I said.
Father's gaze was military—unrelenting.
'Bonepenny must have dropped it,' I said. 'It's for you.'
Father studied my face the way an astronomer studies a supernova.
'This is very decent of you, Flavia,' he said at last, with some great effort.
And he handed me the Ulster Avenger.
'You must return it at once to its rightful owner.'
'King George?'
Father nodded, somewhat sadly, I thought. “I don't know how you came to have this in your possession and I don't want to know. You've come this far on your own and now you must see it through.”
