The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches by Alan Bradley Page B

Arval bread. I made it special, like, for Miss ’Arriet—for ’er funeral, I mean, bless ’er soul.”
    She mopped at her eyes with her apron.
    Meanwhile, my mind was flying circles above the conversation.
“Squadron Leader,”
Mrs. Mullet had said. And hadn’t Tristram himself claimed to have been with one of the Biggin Hill fighter squadrons during the Battle of Britain?
    How on earth, then, could he possibly have been at Buckshaw before the War dressed in the uniform of an American corporal?
    Well, of course, there had been that laughable film
A Yank in the R.A.F.
, which we had been made to sit through as part of the parish hall cinema series, in which Tyrone Power and Betty Grable hopped across the pond to help save us from a fate worse than death.
    But Tristram Tallis was no Yank. I was sure of it.
    “I’ll leave you two to catch up,” I said, with what I hoped was a considerate smile. “I have a few things to do.”
    Up the east staircase I flew, two steps at a time.
    First things first. The very thought of Lena being left alone in my laboratory was enough to give me the crow-jinks. I should have shown her out politely before making my mad dash to the Visto, but there hadn’t been time to think.
    I needn’t have worried, though. The laboratory door was closed, and the room itself was empty of everyone butEsmeralda, who still sat dreamily perched on the test-tube rack, much as I had left her.
    I checked the various traps I always leave set for unwary intruders: single hairs gummed across cupboards, ends of paper sheets jammed haphazardly in drawer openings (on the assumption that no snoop would ever be able to resist straightening them), and, behind each of the inner doors, a thimble filled to the brim with a solution of insoluble ferrocyanide of iron, or Prussian blue, which, once spilled, could not be washed away if seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year.
    My bedroom, too, was untouched, and I grudgingly awarded Lena a couple of mental marks for honesty.
    Now, at last, having set the stage, I was ready to undertake the next and most difficult act: the tackling of Feely.
    I had not forgotten my plan to resurrect Harriet: Oh no!—far from it. I had been banishing the idea from the forefront of my mind simply to keep from shrieking out with delight.
    The very thought of how ecstatic Father would be was enough to make me hug myself inwardly.
    As I crossed the foyer, the strains of the Adagio cantabile from Beethoven’s
Pathétique
came drifting along the hall from the drawing room in the west wing. Each note hung for an instant in the air like a cold, crystalline drop of water melting from the end of an icicle. I had once referred to this sonata as “the old
Pathetic
” in Feely’s hearing, and had been rewarded with a near miss by a flung metronome.
    This particular bit of Beethoven is, I think, the saddest piece of music ever written since the beginning of time,and I knew that Feely was playing it because she was devastated. It was meant for Harriet’s ears alone—or for her soul—or for whatever might remain of her in this house.
    Even listening to it from as far away as the foyer made my eyes damp.
    “Feely,” I said at the drawing room door, “that’s beautiful.”
    Feely ignored me and played on, her eyes fixed firmly on something in another universe.
    “The sonata
Pathétique
, isn’t it?” I asked, taking great care to pronounce it as if I had been born on the Left Bank and baptized in Notre-Dame.
    I could do such things when I wanted to.
    Feely slammed down the lid and the piano let out an injured roar of strings, which went echoing on and on for an impressive amount of time.
    “You just can’t resist, can you?” she shouted, waving her arms in the air as if she was still at the keyboard. “You do it every time!”
    “What?” I asked. I don’t mind having my knuckles rapped when I’m guilty, but I hate it when I’ve done nothing.
    “You know perfectly well,”