The Curious Case of the Copper Corpse by Alan Bradley Read Free Book Online

In which eleven-year-old Flavia de Luce, chemical connoisseur, is immersed in her element.
    I was peering through the microscope at the tooth of an adder I had captured behind the coach house that very morning after church, when there came a light knock at the laboratory door.
    “Excuse me, Miss Flavia,” Dogger said, “but there’s a letter for you. I shall leave it on the desk.”
    And with that, he was gone. One of the things I love most about Father’s jack-of-all-trades is his uncanny sense of decency. Dogger knows instinctively when to come and when to go.
    Curiosity, of course, got the better of me. I switched off the illuminator and reached for the butter knife I had pinched from the kitchen, which doubled for crumpets and correspondence.
    The envelope was a plain one, with no distinctive markings: the sort sold in any stationer’s shop at eleven pence per hundred. There was no postmark—there wouldn’t be on a Sunday—which indicated that it had been shoved through the letter slot at the front door.
    I sniffed it, then sliced it open.
    Inside was a letter written in pencil on lined paper. That and the horrid scrawl suggested that the sender was a schoolboy.
    Murder!
it said.
Come at once. Anson House, Greyminster, Staircase No. 3,
and it was signed
J. Haxton
or
Plaxton.
The writer had pressed so hard that the pencil had snapped in the middle of his signature, which seemed to have been hastily completed with the broken bit of graphite squeezed between a grubby thumb and forefinger.
    Murder, urgency, frenzy, fear: Who could resist? It was my cup of tea.
    —
    Gladys’s rubber tires hissed happily along the rainy road. My rapid pedaling had transformed the inside of my yellow mackintosh into a superheated tent, and I was now so soaked with perspiration that I might as well not have bothered: The rain would have been cooler.
    Greyminster School was shrouded in mist. Acres of green lawns produced a ghostly, floating fog which gave only brief, unnerving glimpses of ancient stone and staring windows.
    Father’s old school seemed to exist simultaneously in both past and present, as if all of its Old Boys, back to the year dot, were hovering somewhere in the wings. More dangerous than phantoms, however, was Ruggles, the nasty little porter who had accosted me on my last visit. I had not forgotten him, and it was unlikely that Ruggles had forgotten me.
    I parked Gladys beneath a sign that said
Faculty Bicycles Only,
and went round the end of the building. The staircases, I remembered, were also accessible from the rear.
    Staircase No. 3 was at the farthest corner of the building: a dark, narrow climb with black paneling and no windows. I made my way upward, trying to ascend in silence. The studies on the first landing were marked with white cards in holders:
Lawson
,
Somerville
,
Henley
. A fourth door revealed a cramped WC and bathtub. On the second floor, the doors were marked
Wagstaffe,
Baker,
and
Smith-Pritchard
.
    Up I climbed, into an increasing cloud of smells: boots, jam, ink, and unwashed shirts mingled with the unmistakable odors of brilliantine, leather dressing, and mislaid bits of baking, all with an underlying whiff of tobacco smoke.
    The staircase ended at the top in near darkness. Only by putting my nose to the doors could I read the names of the last three occupants:
Cosgrave,
Parker,
and
Plaxton
.
    I had found my man—so to speak.
    Before I could knock, the door came open just enough for a reddened eyeball to look me up and down. “Flavia de Luce?” a cracked voice asked, and I nodded. The opening widened to allow me to squeeze inside, and the door was closed instantly behind me.
    I’ve seen frightened people in my life, but never one so terrified as the boy who stood before me. His face was the color of mildewed bread dough, his hands were trembling, and he looked as if he had been crying. “Did anyone see you?” he demanded.
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I said no, didn’t I?”
    He