THREE
“THIS ONE IS SUNNIER, miss,” Dogger was saying. “If you don’t mind, we shall put you in here until your assigned bedroom has been made ready.”
We had been looking at bedrooms, and had arrived at last at Feely’s.
Since we didn’t get much sun at this time of year, I guessed that Dogger could only be thinking of former days.
“It will do admirably,” Phyllis Wyvern said, drifting to the window. “View of a little lake—check … a romantic ruin—check … glimpses of the wardrobe van. What more could a leading lady ask?”
“May I unpack?” Dogger asked.
“No, thank you. Bun will take care of it. She’ll be along directly.”
“It’s no trouble, I assure you,” Dogger said.
“Most kind of you, Dogger, but no—I must insist. Bun is very possessive. She’d swear like blue lightning if she thought anyone else had laid hands on my belongings.”
“I understand,” Dogger said. “Will there be anything else? May I ask Mrs. Mullet to bring you a pot of tea?”
“Dogger, you are a treasure beyond rubies. I’d love nothing better. I’m going to slip into something more comfy and immerse myself in Val’s abominable script. It’s as much as your life is worth if one isn’t word perfect by the time the lights are set up.”
“Thank you, miss,” Dogger said, and was gone.
“Funny old stick,” she said. “He’s been with you forever, of course?”
“Father and Dogger were in the army together,” I said, bristling slightly.
“Ah, yes, companions-in-arms. Quite common nowadays, I understand. Tit for tat. You save my life now and I’ll save yours later. Perhaps you saw me in The Trench in the Drawing Room? Much the same plot.”
I shook my head.
At that instant the door flew open and Feely came rushing in.
“What in hell do you think you’re doing?” she shouted. “I told you before what would happen if I caught you in my room again.”
She had not noticed Phyllis Wyvern standing at the window.
She made a grab for me.
“No!”
Feely spun round to see who had spoken. Her raised hand fell to her side, where it hung limply.
For a moment they stood there staring at each other, Feely as if she had been confronted by some ghastly specter, Phyllis Wyvern as she looked when she’d clung defiantly to the rain-lashed spire of the cathedral in the final moments of The Glass Heart.
Then Feely’s lower lip began to quiver, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears.
She turned and fled.
“So,” said Phyllis Wyvern after a long silence, “you have an older sister, too.”
“That was Feely,” I said. “She—”
“No need to explain. Older sisters are much alike the world over: half a cup of love and half one of contempt.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself!
“My sister’s the same,” she said. “Six years older?”
I nodded.
“Mine, too. I see we have a great deal more in common than a taste for horrific murder, Flavia de Luce.”
She came across the room and, putting a finger under my chin, raised my eyes to hers. And then she hugged me.
She actually hugged me, and I breathed in her jasmine—synthetic or not.
“Let’s go down to the kitchen for tea. It will save Mrs. Mullet a trip upstairs.”
I beamed at her. I almost took her hand.
“It will also,” she added, “give us a chance to pick up the latest gossip. Kitchens are hotbeds of scandal, you know.”
“Ohhhhh!” Mrs. Mullet said as we walked into the kitchen. Aside from that, and gaping a bit, she handled it quite well.
“We decided to come down to the Command Center,” Phyllis Wyvern said. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
I could see that she had won Mrs. Mullet over—just like that.
“No, no, no,” she said breathlessly, “sit yourself down, miss. The water’s almost at the boil, and I’ve got a nice lardy cake comin’ out the oven.”
“Lardy cake!” Phyllis Wyvern exclaimed, putting her hands in front of her eyes and peeking out through her fingers. “Good lord! I haven’t had lardy cake since I was in pigtails!”
Mrs. Mullet beamed.
“I makes ’em for Christmas, as did my mother before me, and ’er mother before ’er. Lardy cake runs in the family, so to speak.”
And so it did, but I wasn’t going to let the cat out of the bag.
“ ’Ere now,” she said, pulling the cake from the oven with a pair of pot holders and placing it on a wire rack. “Look at that. Almost good enough to eat!”
It was an old joke, and although I’d heard it a hundred times before, I laughed dutifully. There was more truth in it than Phyllis Wyvern knew, but I wasn’t going to spoil her treat. Who knew? She might even find the stuff edible.
If cooking were a game of darts, most of Mrs. Mullet’s concoctions would be barely on the board.
Mrs. Mullet sliced the cake into twelve pieces.
“Two for each soul in the ’ouse’old,” she proclaimed, with a glance at Dogger as he came into the kitchen. “That’s what they taught us up at Lady Rex-Wells’s place: ‘Two slices a soul, keeps you out of the ’ole.’ Meanin’ the grave, of course. The old lady said it meant everyone from ’erself right on down to the gardener’s boy. A reg’lar tartar she was, but she lived to be ninety-nine and a half, so there must be somethin’ in it.”
“What do you think, Dogger?” Phyllis Wyvern asked Dogger, who was taking his tea unobtrusively, standing in the corner.
“Good lard makes good bile. Good bile makes good digestion, which results in great longevity,” Dogger said rather tentatively, looking into his cup. “Or so I have heard.”