Read Online I Am Half-Sick Of Shadows by Alan Bradley - Free Book Online Page B

peculiarly shaped objects projecting from the windows and lashed to the roof. As soon as they climbed out of the car, I could tell that Father and Aunt Felicity had been quarreling.
    “For heaven’s sake, Haviland,” she was saying, “anyone who can’t tell a chaffinch from a brambling ought not to be allowed to look out the window of a railway carriage.”
    “I’m quite sure it
was
a brambling, Lissy. It had the distinctive—”
    “Nonsense. Bring my bag, Denwyn. The one with the large brass padlock.”
    The vicar seemed a bit surprised to be ordered about in such an offhanded manner, but he pulled the carpetbag from the backseat of the car and handed it to Dogger.
    “Clever of you to think of winter tires and chains,” Aunt Felicity said. “Most ecclesiastics are dead washouts when it comes to motorcars.”
    I wanted to tell her about the bishop, but I kept quiet.
    Aunt Felicity bore down on the front door in her usual bulldog manner. Beneath her full-length motoring coat, I knew, she would be wearing her complete Victorian explorer’s regalia: two-piece Norfolk jacket and skirt, with extra pockets sewn in for scissors, pens, pins, knife, and fork (she traveled with her own: “You never know who’s eaten what with strange cutlery,” she was fond of telling us); several lengths of string, assorted elastics, a gadget for cutting the ends off cigars, and a small glass traveling container of Gentleman’s Relish: “You can’t find it since the war.”
    “You see?” she said, stepping into the foyer and taking in the jungle of motion picture equipment at a glance. “It’s just as I told you. The ciné moguls have their hearts set on laying waste to every noble home in England. They’re Communists to the last man Jack. Who do they make their pictures for? ‘The People.’ As if the people are the only ones who need entertaining. Pfagh! It’s enough to make the heavenly hosts bring up their manna.”
    I was glad she hadn’t said God, as that would have been blasphemous.
    “Mornin’, Lissy!” someone called out. “Tryin’ to go straight, are you?” It was Ted, the same electrician Desmond Duncan had spoken to. He was occupied on a scaffold with an enormous light.
    Aunt Felicity stifled an enormous sneeze, rummaging in her purse for a handkerchief.
    “Aunt Felicity,” I asked incredulously, “do you know that man?”
    “Ran into him somewhere during the war. Some people never forget a name or a face, you know. Quite remarkable. In the blackout, I daresay.”
    Father pretended he hadn’t heard, and made straight for his study.
    “If it was in the blackout,” I asked, “how could he see your face?”
    “Impertinent children ought to be given six coats of shellac and set up in public places as a warning to others.” Aunt Felicity sniffed. “Dogger, you may take my luggage up to my room.”
    But he had already done so.
    “I hope they haven’t put me in the same wing of the house as those Communists,” she muttered.
    But they had.
    They’d given her the room next to Phyllis Wyvern’s.
    Aunt Felicity had no sooner stumped off to her quarters than Phyllis Wyvern herself strolled casually into the foyer, script in hand, mouthing words as if she were memorizing some particularly difficult lines.
    “My dear vicar.” She smiled as she spotted him lurking just inside the door. “How lovely to see you again.”
    “The pleasure belongs to Bishop’s Lacey,” the vicar said. “It is not often that our sequestered little village is honored with a visitation of someone of … ah … such stellar magnitude. I believe the first Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, was the last such. There’s a brass plaque in the church, you know …”
    It was easy to see that he’d said precisely the right thing. Phyllis Wyvern fairly purred as she replied.
    “I’ve been giving some thought to your proposal …” she said, leaving a long pause, as if to suggest the vicar had asked her hand in marriage.
    He went a