The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 by Alan Bradley Read Free Book Online Page A

he said at last. “I was out this morning. In the coach house.”
    I had to suppress a smile. Sherlock Holmes once remarked of his brother, Mycroft, that you were as unlikely to find him outside of the Diogenes Club as you were to meet a tramcar coming down a country lane. Like Mycroft, Father had his rails, and he ran on them. Except for church and the occasional short-tempered dash to the train to attend a stamp show, Father seldom, if ever, stuck his nose out-of-doors.
    “What time would that have been, Colonel?”
    “Four, perhaps. Perhaps a bit earlier.”
    “You were in the coach house for—” Inspector Hewitt glanced at his wristwatch. “—five and a half hours? From four this morning until just now?”
    “Yes, until just now,” Father said. He was not accustomed to being questioned, and even though the Inspector did not notice it, I could sense the rising irritation in his voice.
    “I see. Do you often go out at that time of day?”
    The Inspector’s question sounded casual, almost chatty, but I knew that it wasn’t.
    “No, not really, no, I don’t,” Father said. “What are you driving at?”
    Inspector Hewitt tapped the tip of his nose with his Biro, as if framing his next question for a parliamentary committee. “Did you see anyone else about?”
    “No,” Father said. “Of course I didn’t. Not a living soul.”
    Inspector Hewitt stopped tapping long enough to make a note. “No one?”
    “No.”
    As if he’d known it all along, the Inspector gave a sad and gentle nod. He seemed disappointed, and sighed as he tucked his notebook into an inner pocket.
    “Oh, one last question, Colonel, if you don’t mind,” he said suddenly, as if he had just thought of it. “What were you doing in the coach house?”
    Father’s gaze drifted off out the window and his jaw muscles tightened. And then he turned and looked the Inspector straight in the eye.
    “I’m not prepared to tell you that, Inspector,” he said.
    “Very well, then,” Inspector Hewitt said. “I think—”
    It was at this very moment that Mrs. Mullet pushed open the door with her ample bottom, and waddled into the room with a loaded tray.
    “I’ve brought you some nice seed biscuits,” she said. “Seed biscuits and tea and a nice glass of milk for Miss Flavia.”
    Seed biscuits and milk! I hated Mrs. Mullet’s seed biscuits the way Saint Paul hated sin. Perhaps even more so. I wanted to clamber up onto the table, and with a sausage on the end of a fork as my scepter, shout in my best Laurence Olivier voice, “Will no one rid us of this turbulent pastry cook?”
    But I didn’t. I kept my peace.
    With a little curtsy, Mrs. Mullet set down her burden in front of Inspector Hewitt, then suddenly spotted Father, who was still standing at the window.
    “Oh! Colonel de Luce. I was hoping you’d turn up. I wanted to tell you I got rid of that dead bird what we found on yesterday’s doorstep.”
    Mrs. Mullet had somewhere picked up the idea that such reversals of phrase were not only quaint, but poetic.
    Before Father could deflect the course of the conversation, Inspector Hewitt had taken up the reins.
    “A dead bird on the doorstep? Tell me about it, Mrs. Mullet.”
    “Well, sir, me and the Colonel and Miss Flavia here was in the kitchen. I’d just took a nice custard pie out of the oven and set it to cool in the window. It was that time of day when my mind usually starts thinkin’ about gettin’ home to Alf. Alf is my husband, sir, and he doesn’t like for me to be out gallivantin’ when it’s time for his tea. Says it makes him go all over fizzy-like if his digestion’s thrown off its time. Once his digestion goes off, it’s a sight to behold. All buckets and mops, and that.”
    “The time, Mrs. Mullet?”
    “It was about eleven, or a quarter past. I come for four hours in the morning, from eight to twelve, and three in the afternoon, from one to four, though,” she said, with a surprisingly black scowl at Father,