Speaking From Among The Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

help myself.
    “Wot?” I added for emphasis.
    “Flavia, dear,” the vicar said. “How nice to see you. I expect you’re looking for Mr. Haskins. It’s about the floral baskets, isn’t it? Yes, I thought as much. I believe he’s up the ringing chamber tidying the bell ropes and so forth. Mustn’t have chaos for Good Friday, must we?”
    Floral baskets? The vicar was including me in some little drama of his own creation. I was honored! I had barged in at an indelicate moment and he obviously wanted me to buzz off.
    The least I could do was play along. “Righty-ho, then. I thought as much. Father will be ever so glad to know the lilies are all sorted out.”
    And with that I leapt like a young gazelle onto the first step of the tower’s steep spiral staircase.
    Once out of sight, I trudged upward, recalling that ancientstairs in castles and churches wind in a clockwise direction as you ascend, so that an attacker, climbing the stairs, is forced to hold his sword in his left hand, while the defender, fighting downward, is able to use his right, and usually superior, hand.
    I turned back for a moment and made a few feints and thrusts at an imaginary Viking—or perhaps he was a Norman—or maybe a Goth. When it comes to the sackers and raiders I am quite hopeless.
    “Hollah!” I cried, striking a fencer’s pose, my sword arm extended. “
En garde
, and so forth!”
    “Blimey, Miss Flavia,” Mr. Haskins said, dropping something and putting a hand to where his heart was presumably pounding. “You gave me a fair old start.”
    I’m afraid I gave a small smirk of pride. It’s no easy matter to startle a grave-digger, especially one who, in spite of his age, was as sturdily constructed as a sailor. I suppose it was his corded arms, his knotted hands, and his bandy legs which made me think of the sea.
    “Sorry, Mr. Haskins,” I said, as I removed my mackintosh and hung it on a handy coat hook. “I should have whistled on my way up. What’s in the trunk?”
    An ancient and much-battered wooden chest stood open against the far wall, a length of rope snaking over its lip where the sexton had let it drop—rather guiltily, I thought.
    “This lot? Not much. Bunch of rubbish, really. Left over from the war.”
    I craned my neck to see round him.
    In the chest were several more lengths of rope, a foldedblanket, half a pail of sand, a stirrup pump with a rotted rubber hose, a second length of India rubber hose, a rather dirt-clodded shovel, a black steel helmet with a white “W” on it, and a rubber mask.
    “Gas mask,” Mr. Haskins said, lifting the thing and holding it in the palm of his hand like Hamlet. “The ARP lads and the fire-watchers had a post up here during the war. Spent a good many nights here myself. Lonesome, like. Strange things, I used to see.”
    He had my undivided attention. “Such as?”
    “Oh, you know … mysterious lights floatin’ in the churchyard, and that.”
    Was he trying to frighten me? “You’re pulling my leg, Mr. Haskins.”
    “P’raps I am, miss … an’ p’raps I amn’t.”
    I grabbed the grotesque, goggle-eyed mask and pulled it on over my head. It stank of rubber and ancient perspiration.
    “Look, I’m an octopus!” I said, waggling my tentacles. Muffled by the mask, my words came out sounding like “Mook, mime um mocknofoof!”
    Mr. Haskins peeled the thing from my face and tossed it back into the chest.
    “Kids have died playing with them things,” he said. “Smothered ’emselves to death. They’re not meant for toys.”
    He lowered the lid of the chest, and, slamming shut the brass padlock, he pocketed the key.
    “You forgot the rope,” I said.
    Giving me what I believe is called a narrow look, hedug in his pocket for the key, snapped open the hasp, and retrieved the rope from the chest.
    “Now what?” I asked, trying to look eager.
    “You’d best run along, miss,” he said. “We’ve work to do, and we don’t need the likes of you