The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley Page A

flying boots, draped themselves in canvas deck chairs in the grass, awaiting the grated voice from the Tannoy system to call them to action.
    I couldn’t wait to introduce Tristram Tallis to Dieter! And to Feely!
    “When I heard about your mother,” he said, “I knew I needed to bring
Blithe Spirit
back to Buckshaw. I—I mean—dash it all! I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”
    But I understood him perfectly.
    “My mother would have been grateful,” I told him. “And she’d have wanted me to thank you.”
    “Look, this is deuced awkward,” he said. “I don’t know what your family will think of me barging in at a time like this—” He waved his hand vaguely towards where the long queue of villagers shuffled slowly and mournfully towards the house. “Dash it all! I mean, landing on your lawn as if Buckshaw were the bally old airfield at Croydon. I mean—”
    “Think nothing of it, Mr. Tallis,” I told him, desperately trying to cover up the fact that I was floundering badly. When it came to the social graces, I was in far over my head.
    How would Feely handle this?
I wondered. I tried to put myself for a moment into my sister’s shoes.
    “Perhaps you’d care to come in and freshen up,” I said, touching his wrist lightly and flashing him my most charming smile. “I expect flying gives you the most awful craving for a cup of tea.”
    It was exactly the right thing to say. A broad schoolboy grin split his face, and a moment later he was leading the way, with alarmingly long strides, towards the kitchen door.
    “You seem to have been here before,” I called to him, struggling to keep up.
    I had meant it as a joke, but almost instantly, I realized what I had said. In a hidden room of my mind, a clinker fell in the bars of an iron grate and the fire blazed up.
    That tall figure in the ciné film at the window of the laboratory. “Six foot three, or perhaps four,” Dogger had said
.
    Tristram Tallis stopped so abruptly in his tracks that I almost collided with his posterior.
    He turned round. Too slowly …?
    He pinned me with his hooded flyer’s eyes.
    “Of course I’ve been here before,” he said. “The day your mother handed over
Blithe Spirit.”
    “Were you wearing an American corporal’s uniform?”
I wanted to ask, but I did not.
“Were you poring over papers at the window of Uncle Tar’s laboratory?”
    “Oh, yes—of course,” I said. “I’d forgotten. How foolish of me.”
    The shadow passed, and a moment later we were strolling side by side along the red brick wall of the kitchen garden as if we were old pals.
    I thought—but only for a moment—of taking his hand, but rejected the idea at once.
    It would have been excessive.
    “I hope you don’t mind using the kitchen entrance,” I said, thinking of the long queue of mourners at the front of the house.
    “It wouldn’t be the first time.” He grinned, holding the door open for me in an elaborate manner.
    “Mr. Tristram!” Mrs. Mullet shrieked when she saw his face. “Or should I call you Squadron Leader now?”
    She came rushing towards us, extending a soapy hand, withdrawing it before he could grasp it, and collapsing into a sort of comic curtsy that left her stuck on one knee.
    Tristram hoisted her gallantly to her feet. “Is the kettle on, Mrs. M? I’ve come for a cup of that wizard tea of yours.”
    “Just go right through to the drawing room,” she said, suddenly formal. “If you’ll be so good as to show Mr. Tristram in, Miss Flavia, I shall be in with the tea directly.”
    “I’d prefer to stay here with you in the control tower,” he said. “Rather like old times.”
    Mrs. Mullet was now blushing like billy-ho, rushing round the kitchen, darting into the pantry, and clasping her hands whenever she looked at him.
    “I’ve come at a sad time,” he said, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table and folding himself into it.
    “That’s right. Sit yourself down. I shall fetch you a bit of my