As Adam spoke, Antigone Hewitt and the vicar stepped from the porch and came strolling across the grass toward us. He was still holding her hand, chatting away in an animated manner, their faces both luminous.
Close behind them came Feely and Daffy trailed by Sheila Foster, with Feely stopping every few feet to receive compliments, curtsies, and kissings-of-her-hand from her admiring subjects.
But soon enough they were all of them surrounding us in a ring, listening intently as Adam finished his tale. It reminded me of a village Maypole dance with the villagers, dressed in their Easter finery, swarming in from every point of the compass for an impromptu gathering upon the green.
“And so the Heart of Lucifer was buried with the saint at Bishop’s Lacey,” Adam concluded, “where it has lain hidden these five hundred years. Until recently.”
He looked round at the gaping faces like a born storyteller.
“And where is it now?” Inspector Hewitt asked. “This stone of Saint Tancred?—this Heart of Lucifer?”
I couldn’t resist for a moment longer.
“Here!” I shouted. “In my tummy!” I patted said part of myself proudly. “I swallowed it!”
The crowd fell into an uneasy silence, looked at one another in astonishment, and then broke into an excited babble as at Babylon. I knew, even as I spoke, that until the Heart of Lucifer made its eventual reappearance, Bishop’s Lacey would be following my every movement with keen interest.
“I found it in the Gemshorn pipe where Mr. Collicutt had hidden it,” I explained. “Magistrate Ridley-Smith and his gang were going to—”
“That’s quite enough for now, Flavia,” Inspector Hewitt said. “This is neither the time nor the place.”
“Quite right, Inspector,” I agreed, neatly deflecting his condescending manner. “Especially in view of the fact that there’s just been an attempted murder a stone’s throw from here in Cater Street. You’ll be wanting to get to that, I expect. Constable Linnet’s been left alone with a cold-blooded killer.”
It was a saucy thing to say, I know, but I was staking everything on my assumption that PC Linnet had been unable to get through by telephone to the Inspector before he left for church. Even if police headquarters in Hinley had radioed, the Inspector and his two detective sergeants would not, except for a few minutes, have been in their car to receive the message.
“Attempted murder?” the Inspector asked.
“Cater Street,” I said casually. “Miss Tanty’s house. The intended victim was me.
“No rush, though,” I added. “As I said, Constable Linnet is already on the scene.”
I have to give the Inspector full marks, though, for neatly handling a wobbly situation.
“Antigone,” he said, turning to his wife, “would you mind running Miss de Luce and her sisters home to Buckshaw in your own car? I’ll pop in later for tea and questioning.”
Tea and questioning!
I loved the man! Absolutely adored him.
“Thank you, Inspector,” I said. “How terribly kind of you.”
I’m afraid I pronounced it “teddibly.”
“What delicious simnel cake,” Antigone Hewitt was saying. “You really must give me your recipe, Mrs. Mullet.”
I had tried to warn her off with various signs such as crossed eyes, tongue lolling out, and half an upper lip drawn up like a mad dog as the plate was passed round, but it was no use.
“I always makes it for Easter,” Mrs. Mullet said, “but nobody’s ’ungry this year. ’Ave an ’ot cross bun else I’ll ’ave to toss ’em out.”
This was said with a dark look at Feely, Daffy, and me, but it didn’t do the slightest bit of good. We sat on our hands as if we had been born that way.
“Thank you, I shall,” Antigone said, and she buttered a bun in the way I imagine Moira Shearer should have done if Moira Shearer buttered hot cross buns.
“Mmmm, delicious,” she lied through her perfect white teeth.
“You played beautifully this morning,” she said, turning to Feely.
Feely blushed prettily.
“Thanks to Flavia,” she said. “The organ has been sounding sickly recently because of that stone detuning one of the stops.”
Thanks to Flavia? I could hardly believe my ears!
Praise from Feely was as scarce as water on the sun and yet this was the second time in days she had thrown me a compliment.
I hardly knew what to do with it.
And to refer to the Heart of Lucifer as “that stone”!
I had not yet broken the news of Saint Tancred being a de Luce. It was a thunderbolt I was keeping for Father.
Even if it were a piece of news which meant the saving of Buckshaw, it was crucial that it be broken only when the moment was precisely right. It wasn’t that long ago that Father had refused to sell a rare Shakespeare folio which might have secured our family’s future. He needed to be tackled tactfully.
“May I be excused?” I asked. “I need to feed my hen.”
Daffy snorted, as if I were surreptitiously headed for the WC.
“Perhaps you could bang out some Beethoven for Mrs. Hewitt,” I suggested to Feely. “I shall be back in a few minutes.”
Without waiting for permission, I made for the foyer, and for the cubicle beneath the stairs in which the forbidden instrument was caged. A quick glance into the Hinley telephone directory gave me the information I needed.
“Hinley 80,” I told Miss Goulard at the exchange. It was the perfect number for an eye doctor—a pair of spectacles on edge followed by a monocle.
“Mr. Gideon’s surgery,” said a gravelish female voice. “Sondra speaking.”
It sounded as if she were suppressing a titter.
“Good morning, Sondra,” I began, diving in with both feet. “I’m calling for Miss Tanty in Bishop’s Lacey. She seems to have mislaid the card for her next appointment. I wonder if you could check your diary?”
“The office is closed. It’s Easter Sunday, you know.”
Of course it was! How could I have forgotten that.
“Call back next week,” she said, and let off a convulsive round of smoker’s cough.
“I’m afraid we can’t,” I improvised. “We shall be in … Wales.”
I didn’t care whether this made sense or not. The great thing was to keep her on the line.
“Sorry—call back Monday.”
“Hold on,” I said. “What are you doing there if the office is closed?”
“I’m just the char, luv. Eyes are nothing to do with me. Not my department.”
“Then why did you pick up the telephone?”
Another ominous cough, and then a strangulated chuckle.
“Truth be told, luv, I thought it was Nigel, my fie-yancey. Nigel always rings me up to see how my sweater’s fitting. Always been a card, has Nigel. Call back next week.”
“Listen, Sondra,” I said. “Just between you and me this is a matter of life and death. Miss Tanty is likely to be charged with attempted murder if she hasn’t been already. She needs to prove that she was at Mr. Gideon’s surgery on Shrove Tuesday—the sixth of February.”
Even over the telephone I could hear Sondra’s eyes widen.
“Murder, you say?”
“Murder! Or worse—” I said in a horrible whisper, cupping the speaking part of the instrument in my hands and pressing my lips almost into the thing.
“Hang on,” Sondra said, and I could hear a rustling of paper at the other end.
“February sixth?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“Yes, here it is. The Tuesday. Your Miss Tanty was down for nine-thirty, but she called to cancel it.”
“Do you happen to know the time?”
“Right now?” Sondra asked.
“No! The time it was canceled.”
“Nine o’clock. I have it right here: ‘Miss T called nine-oh-five A.M. cancellation. Rang D. Robertson to fill vacancy.’ Initials LG. That would be Laura Gideon, Mr. Gideon’s wife.”
“Thank you, Sondra,” I said. “You’re a brick.”
“You won’t breathe a word, will you? Nigel would be livid if I got the sack.”
“My lips are sealed,” I vowed, but I don’t think she heard me. A new crackle of coughing fought its way through the telephone wires.
As I was making my way back across the foyer, the doorbell rang. It was Inspector Hewitt.
He took off his hat, which meant he intended to come in.
“We’re in the drawing room,” I told him. “Would you care to join us?”
As if it were a meeting of the Bell-ringers League.