I Am Half-Sick Of Shadows by Alan Bradley Page B

months—half a year, perhaps—since he had suffered a full-blown episode of such terror, and I knew that this time it was going to take a while.
    I walked slowly to the window and stood gazing out through a wreath of frost. To the left, in the steadily falling snow, the lorries of Ilium Films were almost hidden beneath the thick white blanket as if, at the end of the darkening day, they were tucked in for a winter’s sleep.
    Behind me, Dogger let out a pitiful little whimper.
    “It’s snowing again,” I said. “Fancy that.”
    In the stillness I could almost hear the falling flakes.
    “Isn’t it a wonder, with that number of snowflakes, that no one has ever thought to write a book called
The Chemistry of Snow
?”
    There was silence behind me, but I did not turn round.
    “Just think, Dogger, of all those atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, joining hands and dancing ring-around-a-rosy to form a six-sided snowflake. Sometimes they form around a particle of dust—it says so in the encyclopedia—and because of it the form is misshapen. Hunchbacked snowflakes. Fancy that!”
    He stirred a little, and so I continued.
    “Think of the billions of trillions of snowflakes, and the billions of trillions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in every single one of them. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, who wrote the laws for the wind and the rain, the snow and the dew? I’ve tried to work it out, but it makes my head spin.”
    I could see Dogger reflected three times over in the triple looking glass on Harriet’s dressing table as he struggled slowly to his feet, and stood at last with his hands dangling limply at his side.
    I turned away from the window and, taking one of his hands, led him, shambling, to Harriet’s canopied and ruffled bed.
    “Sit down here,” I said. “Just for a minute.”
    Surprisingly, Dogger obeyed, and dropped down heavily onto the edge of the bed. I had thought he would balk at the very idea of taking a seat in Father’s shrine to Harriet, but the fact that he did not was probably due to his confusion of mind.
    “Put your feet up,” I told him, “while I gather my thoughts.”
    I piled a mound of snowy pillows at his back.
    With glacially slow speed, Dogger eased himself back until at last he was reclining in what looked, at least, like a comfortable position.
    “
Stiff Water
, we could call it,” I said. “The book, I mean. Yes, that would probably have more appeal.
Stiff Water
—I quite like that. I expect some people would buy it thinking it was a detective novel, but that’s all right. We wouldn’t care, would we?”
    But Dogger was already asleep, his chest rising and falling in gentle swells, and if the tiny crease at the corner of his mouth was not the seed of a smile, it was, perhaps, a lessening of his distress.
    I covered him to the chin with an afghan, and returned to the window and there, for what might have been an eternity, I stood staring out into the gathering gloom, into the cold, blowing universes of hydrogen and oxygen.

    TEN
     
    AT FIVE-THIRTY THE PEOPLE of Bishop’s Lacey began to arrive. First were the Misses Puddock, Lavinia and Aurelia, the proprietresses of the St. Nicholas Tea Room.
    Incredibly, these two creaking relics had walked the mile through deep drifts of snow, and now their round faces glowed like little red furnaces.
    “We didn’t want to be late, so we set out early,” Miss Lavinia said, looking round appreciatively at the decorated foyer. “Very, very swank, isn’t it, Aurelia?”
    I knew that they were sizing up the situation, sniffing out the possibilities of being asked to perform. The Misses Puddock had managed to insinuate themselves into every public performance in Bishop’s Lacey since the year dot, and I knew that at this very moment, stuffed handily somewhere into the depths of Miss Lavinia’s handbag would be the sheet music for “Napoleon’s Last Charge,” “Bendemeer’s Stream,” and “Annie Laurie” at the very