Flavia de Luce 3 - A Red Herring Without Mustard Read Online Free PDF Page A

the Ranters, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Diggers, the Levellers, the Sliders, the Swadlers, the Tumblers, the Dunkers, the Tunkers, and yes, even the Incorrupticolians, had made his way to Bishop’s Lacey, where at this very bend in the river he had begun baptizing converts to his weird faith.
    Mrs. Mullet, after glancing over each of her shoulders and dropping her voice to a furtive whisper, had once told me that Nicodemus Flitch’s strange brand of religion was still said to be practiced in the village, although nowadays strictly behind closed doors and drawn curtains.
    “They dips their babies by the ’eels,” she said, wide-eyed. “Like Killies the ’Eel in the River Stynx, my friend Mrs. Waller says ’er Bert told ’er. Don’t you ’ave nothin’ to do with them ’Obblesr. They’ll ’ave your blood for sausages.”
    I had grinned then and I smiled now as I recalled her words, but I shivered, too, as I thought of the Palings, and the shadows that swallowed its sunshine.
    My last visit to the glade had been in spring when the clearing was carpeted with cowslips—“paigles,” Mrs. Mullet called them—and primroses.
    Now the grove would be hidden by the tall elder bushes that grew along the river’s bank. It was too late in the season to see, and to inhale the delicious scent of, the elder flowers. Their white blossoms, like a horde of Japanese parasols, would have turned brown and vanished with the rains of June. Perhaps more cheerful was the thought that the purplish-black elderberries which took their place would soon be hanging in perfectly arranged clusters, like a picture gallery of dark bruises.
    It was at the Palings, in the days of the early numbered Georges, that the river Efon had been diverted temporarily to form the ornamental lake and feed the fountains whose remnants dotted the lawns and terraces at Buckshaw. At the time of its construction, this marvel of subterranean hydraulic engineering had caused no end of hard feelings between my family and the local landowners, so that one of my ancestors, Lucius de Luce, had subsequently become known as “Leaking de Luce” to half the countryside. In his portrait, which still hangs in our picture gallery at Buckshaw, he seems rather bored, overlooking the northwest corner of his lake, with its folly, its fountains, and the—now long gone—Grecian temple. Lucius is resting the bony knuckles of one hand on a table, upon which are laid out a compass, a pocket watch, an egg, and a piece of gadgetry meant for surveyors, called a theodolite. In a wooden cage is a canary with its beak open. It is either singing or crying for help.
    My cheerful musings were interrupted by a barking cough.
    “Pull up,” the Gypsy said, snatching the reins from my hands. Her brief nap must have done her some good, I thought. In spite of the cough, there was now more color in her dusky cheeks and her eyes seemed to burn more brightly than ever.
    With a clucking noise to Gry and a quick ease that showed her familiarity with the place, she steered the caravan off the narrow road, under a leafy overhang, and onto the little bridge. Moments later, we had come to a stop in the middle of the glade.
    The Gypsy climbed heavily down from her seat and began unfastening Gry’s harness. As she saw to her old horse, I took the opportunity to glory in my surroundings.
    Patches of poppies and nettles grew here and there, illuminated by the downward slanting bars of the afternoon sun. Never had the grass seemed so green.
    Gry had noticed it, too, and was already grazing contentedly upon the long blades.
    The caravan gave a sudden lurch, and there was a sound as though someone had stumbled.
    I jumped down and raced round the other side.
    It was evident at once that I had misread the Gypsy’s condition. She had crumbled to the ground, and was hanging on for dear life to the spokes of one of the tall wooden wheels. As I reached her side, she began to cough again, more horribly than