Well, not quite, actually—although that was how I felt at the time.
Since Harriet’s body had been found in a Himalayan glacier, our lives at Buckshaw seemed to have fallen under the control of some unseen force. We were told the when, the where, and the how of everything, but never the why.
Somewhere, in some far-off vastness, arrangements were being made, plans being laid, all of which seemed to trickle down to us as if they were the freshly melted decrees of some unknown ice god.
“Do this, do that—be here, be there,” they commanded, and we obeyed.
Blindly, it seemed.
That was what I was thinking when my acute hearing picked up a clattering noise coming from the direction of the gates. I turned just in time to see a most unusual vehicle appearing from among the chestnuts and the hedges and coming to a halt on the gravel forecourt.
The thing was mint green and boxy, like the caged lift from a Welsh coal mine. It had an open frame upon which a canvas roof could be strapped in case of rain, and a winch mounted on its nose. I recognized it at once as a Land Rover: We had seen a similar model not all that long ago in a safari film at the cinema.
Seated at the wheel was a middle-aged woman in a black short-sleeved dress. She braked and yanked the Liberty scarf off her head as if it were the starting cord for an outboard motor, letting her long red hair tumble to her shoulders in the process.
She stepped down from the Land Rover as if she owned the world and looked about at her surroundings with what was either partial amusement or total contempt.
“Undine, come,” she said, extending a hand in the manner of God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. There was an alarming flutter in the depths of the Land Rover, and a most peculiar child shot up her head.
She bore no resemblance to the woman, whom I took to be her mother. She had a pasty moon face, pale blue eyes, black-rimmed spectacles of the National Health variety, and the haunting, ageless look of one of those bruised-looking baby birds that has fallen helpless and unfinished from the nest.
Some primal fear stirred inside of me.
They crunched across the gravel and stopped in front of Father.
“Lena?” Father said.
“Sorry we’re late,” the woman answered. “The Cornish roads were—well, you know what Cornish roads can be, and the ones in—good heavens! Could this be little Flavia?”
I said nothing. If the answer was “yes,” she wasn’t going to hear it from me.
“She’s awfully like her mother, isn’t she?” the supposed Lena asked, still talking to Father and not looking at me at all, as if I wasn’t there.
“And you are?” I asked, just as I had asked the stranger at the station. It may have been rude, but on such an occasion as today, one was entitled to a certain brittleness.
“Your cousins, dear—Lena and Undine, of the Cornwall de Luces. Surely you’ve heard of us?”
“I’m afraid not,” I said.
And all the while, Feely and Daffy were standing open-mouthed. Aunt Felicity had already turned abruptly away and vanished into the black maw of the open door.
“Shall we go inside?” Lena said, and it was not a question. “Come along, Undine, it’s chilly here. We’re likely to catch our deaths of cold.”
It was chilly all right, but not the way she meant. How could you be chilly on such an unseasonably sunny day?
Undine stuck out her tongue as she marched past me and into the house.
In the foyer, Father spoke quietly to Dogger, who went quickly about removing the intruders’ luggage from the Land Rover and hauling it to an upstairs room.
With that seen to, Father turned and began to trudge heavily up the stairs himself, as if his shoes were filled with lead.
Bonggggggg!
A sudden deafening explosion of noise filled the foyer. Father stopped in his tracks and I spun round. Undine was hacking away at the Chinese dinner gong with Father’s prize malacca walking stick, which she had pulled from the umbrella stand inside the front door.
Bonggggggg! Bonggggggg! Bonggggggg! Bonggggggg! Bonggggggg!
The mother seemed oblivious. Cousin Lena—if indeed that’s who the woman was—stood staring appreciatively, with her head thrown back, at the paneling and the paintings as if she were the Prodigal Daughter being welcomed home, peeling off her black gloves almost obscenely as she mentally totted up the value of the artwork.
Now the child was running up and down the staircase—upon which Father had stopped in disbelief—clattering the cane along the uprights of the banister as if they were a picket fence.
Drrrrrrrrrr! Drrrrrrrrrr! Drrrrrrrrrr!
Feely and Daffy were, for the first time in living memory, speechless.
Feely was the first to make a move: She drifted off towards the drawing room. Daffy opened her mouth, then shut it and made for the library at full speed.
“Flavia, dear,” Lena said, “why don’t you show Undine round the house. She’s quite keen on paintings and so forth, aren’t you, Undie?”
I felt what tasted like black vomit rising in my throat.
“Yes, Ibu,” Undine said, slashing at the air with the cane as if she were cutting her way through the jungle.
I kept my distance.
“Perhaps Miss Undine would like to view the sharks,” Dogger suggested. He had reappeared suddenly and silently on the staircase.
There were no sharks at Buckshaw, I was quite sure of that, but part of me was hoping desperately that Dogger had rounded up a few. Perhaps he had secretly stocked the ornamental lake.