Read Online Flavia de Luce 3 - A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alan Bradley
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remained in one spot, rather than risking the possibility of flushing out the Gypsy’s attacker by walking home alone to Buckshaw.
I gave the doctor a halfhearted thumbs-up. More than that would have been out of place.
He let in the clutch and the car, with its weird cargo, began teetering slowly across the grove. As it crept over the humpbacked bridge, I had my last glimpse of the Gypsy, her face dead white in the light of a sudden moon.
FIVE
NOW I WAS TRULY alone.
Or was I?
Not a leaf stirred. Something went plop in the water nearby, and I held my breath. An otter, perhaps? Or something worse?
Could the Gypsy’s attacker still be here in the Palings? Still hiding … still watching … from somewhere in the trees?
It was a stupid thought, and I realized it instantly. I’d learned quite early in life that the mind loves nothing better than to spook itself with outlandish stories, as if the various coils of the brain were no more than a troop of roly-poly Girl Guides huddled over a campfire in the darkness of the skull.
Still, I gave a little shiver as the moon slipped behind a cloud. It had been cool enough when I’d first come here with the Gypsy, chilly when I’d ridden Gry into the village for Dr. Darby, and now, I realized, I was beastly cold.
The lights of the caravan glowed invitingly, warm patches of orange in the blue darkness. If a wisp of smoke had been floating up from the tin chimney, the scene might have been one of those frameable tear-away prints in the weekly magazines: A Gypsy Moon, for instance.
It was Dr. Darby who had left the lamp burning. Should I scramble aboard and turn it out?
Vague thoughts of saving paraffin crossed my mind, and even vaguer thoughts of being a good citizen.
Saints on skates! I was looking for an excuse to get inside the caravan and have a jolly good gander at the scene of the crime. Why not admit it?
“Don’t touch anything,” Dr. Darby had said. Well, I wouldn’t. I’d keep my hands in my pockets.
Besides, my footprints were already everywhere on the floor. What harm would a few more do? Could the police distinguish between two sets of bloody footprints made less than an hour apart? We shall see, I thought.
Even as I clambered up onto the footboard I realized that I should have to work quickly. Having arrived at the hospital in Hinley, Dr. Darby would soon be calling the police—or instructing someone else to call them.
There wasn’t a second to waste.
A quick look round showed that the Gypsy lived a frugal life indeed. As far as I could discover, there were no personal papers or documents, no letters, and no books—not even a Bible. I had seen the woman make the sign of the cross and it struck me as odd that a copy of the scriptures should not have its place in her traveling home.
In a bin beside the stove, a supply of vegetables looked rather the worse for wear, as if they had been snatched hastily from a farmer’s field rather than purchased clean from a village market: potatoes, beets, turnips, onions, all jumbled together.
I shoved my hand into the bin and rummaged around at the bottom. Nothing but clay-covered vegetables.
I don’t know what I was looking for, but I would if I found it. If I were a Gypsy, I thought, the bottom of the veggie bin would have been high on my list of hiding places.
But now my hands were thoroughly covered not only with dried blood, but also with soil. I wiped them on a grubby towel that hung on a nearby nail, but I could see at once that this would never do. I turned to the tin basin, took down a rose-and-briar ewer from the shelf, and poured water over my filthy hands, one at a time. Bits of earth and caked blood turned it quickly to a muddy red.
A goose walked over my grave and I shuddered slightly. Red blood cells, I remembered from my chemical experiments, were really not much more than a happy soup of water, sodium, potassium, chloride, and phosphorus. Mix them together in the proper proportions,
I gave the doctor a halfhearted thumbs-up. More than that would have been out of place.
He let in the clutch and the car, with its weird cargo, began teetering slowly across the grove. As it crept over the humpbacked bridge, I had my last glimpse of the Gypsy, her face dead white in the light of a sudden moon.
FIVE
NOW I WAS TRULY alone.
Or was I?
Not a leaf stirred. Something went plop in the water nearby, and I held my breath. An otter, perhaps? Or something worse?
Could the Gypsy’s attacker still be here in the Palings? Still hiding … still watching … from somewhere in the trees?
It was a stupid thought, and I realized it instantly. I’d learned quite early in life that the mind loves nothing better than to spook itself with outlandish stories, as if the various coils of the brain were no more than a troop of roly-poly Girl Guides huddled over a campfire in the darkness of the skull.
Still, I gave a little shiver as the moon slipped behind a cloud. It had been cool enough when I’d first come here with the Gypsy, chilly when I’d ridden Gry into the village for Dr. Darby, and now, I realized, I was beastly cold.
The lights of the caravan glowed invitingly, warm patches of orange in the blue darkness. If a wisp of smoke had been floating up from the tin chimney, the scene might have been one of those frameable tear-away prints in the weekly magazines: A Gypsy Moon, for instance.
It was Dr. Darby who had left the lamp burning. Should I scramble aboard and turn it out?
Vague thoughts of saving paraffin crossed my mind, and even vaguer thoughts of being a good citizen.
Saints on skates! I was looking for an excuse to get inside the caravan and have a jolly good gander at the scene of the crime. Why not admit it?
“Don’t touch anything,” Dr. Darby had said. Well, I wouldn’t. I’d keep my hands in my pockets.
Besides, my footprints were already everywhere on the floor. What harm would a few more do? Could the police distinguish between two sets of bloody footprints made less than an hour apart? We shall see, I thought.
Even as I clambered up onto the footboard I realized that I should have to work quickly. Having arrived at the hospital in Hinley, Dr. Darby would soon be calling the police—or instructing someone else to call them.
There wasn’t a second to waste.
A quick look round showed that the Gypsy lived a frugal life indeed. As far as I could discover, there were no personal papers or documents, no letters, and no books—not even a Bible. I had seen the woman make the sign of the cross and it struck me as odd that a copy of the scriptures should not have its place in her traveling home.
In a bin beside the stove, a supply of vegetables looked rather the worse for wear, as if they had been snatched hastily from a farmer’s field rather than purchased clean from a village market: potatoes, beets, turnips, onions, all jumbled together.
I shoved my hand into the bin and rummaged around at the bottom. Nothing but clay-covered vegetables.
I don’t know what I was looking for, but I would if I found it. If I were a Gypsy, I thought, the bottom of the veggie bin would have been high on my list of hiding places.
But now my hands were thoroughly covered not only with dried blood, but also with soil. I wiped them on a grubby towel that hung on a nearby nail, but I could see at once that this would never do. I turned to the tin basin, took down a rose-and-briar ewer from the shelf, and poured water over my filthy hands, one at a time. Bits of earth and caked blood turned it quickly to a muddy red.
A goose walked over my grave and I shuddered slightly. Red blood cells, I remembered from my chemical experiments, were really not much more than a happy soup of water, sodium, potassium, chloride, and phosphorus. Mix them together in the proper proportions,
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