Acclaim for Alan Bradley and the Flavia de Luce novels
I AM HALF-SICK of SHADOWS
“Every Flavia de Luce novel is a reason to celebrate, but Christmas with Flavia is a holiday wish come true for her fans.”
—USA Today (four stars)
“This is a classic country house mystery in the tradition of Agatha Christie, and Poirot himself would approve of Flavia’s skills in snooping and deduction. Flavia is everything a reader wants in a detective—she’s smart, logical, intrepid and curious.… This is a refreshingly engaging read.”
—RT Book Reviews
“With its sharply drawn characters, including the hiss-worthy older de Luce sisters, and an agreeable puzzle playing out against the cozy backdrop of a British village at Christmas, this is a most welcome holiday gift for Flavia fans.”
—Publishers Weekly
“This is a delightful read through and through. We find in Flavia an incorrigible and wholly lovable detective; from her chemical experiments in her sanctum sanctorum to her outrage at the idiocy of the adult world, she is unequaled. Charming as a stand-alone novel and a guaranteed smash with series followers.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Bradley masterfully weaves a ghoulish Yuletide tale.… The story breathes characters full of charisma, colour and nuance.… Bradley gives a thrilling ride.”
—The Globe and Mail
A RED HERRING Without MUSTARD
“Alan Bradley’s third Flavia de Luce mystery, A Red Herring Without Mustard, exceeds in every way, if that’s even possible, his first two. Flavia uses her trademark cunning by scheming to get even with her older sisters, who lie in wait to torment her. She saves a Gypsy’s life, befriends Porcelain, the Gypsy’s granddaughter, solves a puzzling and bizarre murder involving an ancient nonconformist cult, collects clues the police have missed, and fearlessly ventures into danger. She is always feisty, always smart. I adore her. And while it is wonderful to read her as an adult, I wish I’d had Flavia as a role model while growing up. It’s cool to be smart. It’s cool to be Flavia! And it’s great to be among her legion of fans.”
—LOUISE PENNY, bestselling author of The Brutal Telling
“Outstanding … In this marvelous blend of whimsy and mystery, Flavia manages to operate successfully in the adult world of crimes and passions while dodging the childhood pitfalls set by her sisters.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Bradley’s third book about tween sleuth Flavia de Luce will make readers forget Nancy Drew.”
—People
“Oh, to be eleven again and pal around with irresistible wunderkind Flavia de Luce.… A splendid romp through 1950s England led by the world’s smartest and most incorrigible preteen.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“As satisfying as the mystery is, the multiple-award-winning Bradley offers more.… Beautifully written, with fully fleshed characters … [Bradley] secures his position as a confident, talented writer and storyteller.”
—The Globe and Mail
“Think preteen Nancy Drew, only savvier and a lot richer, and you have Flavia de Luce.… Don’t be fooled by Flavia’s age or the 1950s setting: A Red Herring isn’t a dainty tea-and-crumpets sort of mystery. It’s shot through with real grit.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Whether battling with her odious sisters or verbally sparring with the long-suffering Inspector Hewitt, our cheeky heroine is a delight. Full of pithy dialog and colorful characters, this series would appeal strongly to fans of Dorothy Sayers, Gladys Mitchell, and Leo Bruce as well as readers who like clever humor mixed in with their mysteries.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“[Flavia] remains irresistibly appealing as a little girl lost.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Delightful … The book’s forthright and eerily mature narrator is a treasure.”
—The Seattle Times
“Bradley has created a marvelous character in Flavia—very adult in some ways, very childish in others, full of energy and curiosity. His story should appeal to readers of all ages looking to escape into a thoroughly entertaining world.”
—Tulsa World
“Bradley’s characters, wonderful dialogue and plot twists are a most winning combination.”
—USA Today
The WEED That STRINGS the HANGMAN’S BAG
“Flavia is incisive, cutting and hilarious … one of the most remarkable creations in recent literature.”
—USA Today
“Bradley takes everything you expect and subverts it, delivering a smart, irreverent, unsappy mystery.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“The real delight here is her droll voice and the eccentric cast.… Utterly beguiling.”
—People (four stars)
“Brisk, funny and irrepressible, Flavia is distinctly uncute, and the cozy village setting has enough edges to keep suspicions sharp.… Bradley gives a pitch-perfect performance that surpasses an already worthy debut.”
—Houston Chronicle
“Her sleuthing skills both amaze and amuse.”
—Mystery Scene
“Endlessly entertaining … The author deftly evokes the period, but Flavia’s sparkling narration is the mystery’s chief delight. Comic and irreverent, this entry is sure to build further momentum for the series.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Smart, funny … His second novel confirms the promise of the first.… Bradley is a writer of great charm and insight, and he infuses even minor characters with indelible personality.… Flavia de Luce, both eleven and ageless, is a marvel and a delight.”
—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
The SWEETNESS at the BOTTOM of the PIE
“Sophisticated, series-launching … It’s a rare pleasure to follow Flavia as she investigates her limited but boundless-feeling world.”
—Entertainment Weekly (A–)
THE MOST AWARD-WINNING BOOK OF ANY YEAR!
WINNER:
Macavity Award for Best First Mystery Novel
Barry Award for Best First Novel
Agatha Award for Best First Novel
Dilys Award
Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel
Spotted Owl Award for Best Novel
CWA Debut Dagger Award
“If ever there was a sleuth who’s bold, brilliant, and, yes, adorable, it’s Flavia de Luce.”
—USA Today
“A wickedly clever story, a dead-true and original voice, and an English country house in the summer: Alexander McCall Smith meets Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please, please, Mr. Bradley, tell me we’ll be seeing Flavia again soon?”
—LAURIE R. KING, bestselling author of Pirate King
“Impressive as a sleuth and enchanting as a mad scientist … Flavia is most endearing as a little girl who has learned how to amuse herself in a big lonely house.”
—MARILYN STASIO, The New York Times Book Review
“A delightful new sleuth. A combination of Eloise and Sherlock Holmes … fearless, cheeky, wildly precocious.”
—The Boston Globe
Speaking from Among the Bones is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Alan Bradley
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE P
RESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bradley, C. Alan
Speaking from among the bones : a Flavia de Luce novel / Alan Bradley.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53868-0
1. Detectives—England—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR9199.4.B7324S63 2012
813′.6—dc23 2012028396
www.bantamdell.com
Case design: Joe Montgomery
Case art: Ben Perini
v3.1
Now from yon black and fun’ral yew,
That bathes the charnel-house with dew,
Methinks I hear a voice begin;
(Ye ravens, cease your croaking din;
Ye tolling clocks, no time resound
O’er the long lake and midnight ground)
It sends a peal of hollow groans,
Thus speaking from among the bones.
THOMAS PARNELL
A Night-Piece on Death (1721)
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Other Books by This Author
About the Author
• ONE •
BLOOD DRIPPED FROM THE neck of the severed head and fell in a drizzle of red raindrops, clotting into a ruby pool upon the black and white tiles. The face wore a grimace of surprise, as if the man had died in the middle of a scream. His teeth, each clearly divided from its neighbor by a black line, were bared in a horrible, silent scream.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the thing.
The woman who proudly held the gaping head at arm’s length by its curly blue-black hair was wearing a scarlet dress—almost, but not quite, the color of the dead man’s blood.
To one side, a servant with downcast eyes held the platter upon which she had carried the head into the room. Seated on a wooden throne, a matron in a saffron dress leaned forward in square-jawed pleasure, her hands clenched into fists on the arms of her chair as she took a good look at the grisly trophy. Her name was Herodias, and she was the wife of the king.
The younger woman, the one clutching the head, was—at least, according to the historian Flavius Josephus—named Salome. She was the stepdaughter of the king, whose name was Herod, and Herodias was her mother.
The detached head, of course, belonged to John the Baptist.
I remembered hearing the whole sordid story not more than a month ago when Father read aloud the Second Lesson from the back of the great carved wooden eagle which served as the lectern at St. Tancred’s.
On that winter morning I had gazed up, transfixed, just as I was gazing now, at the stained-glass window in which this fascinating scene was depicted.
Later, during his sermon, the vicar had explained that in Old Testament times, our blood was thought to contain our lives.
Of course!
Blood!
Why hadn’t I thought of it before?
“Feely,” I said, tugging at her sleeve, “I have to go home.”
My sister ignored me. She peered closely at the music book as, in the dusky shadows of the fading light, her fingers flew like white birds over the keys of the organ.
Mendelssohn’s Wie gross ist des Allmächt’gen Güte.
“ ‘How great are the works of the Almighty,’ ” she told me it meant.
Easter was now less than a week away and Feely was trying to whip the piece into shape for her official debut as organist of St. Tancred’s. The flighty Mr. Collicutt, who had held the post only since last summer, had vanished suddenly from our village without explanation and Feely had been asked to step into his shoes.
St. Tancred’s went through organists like a python goes through white mice. Years ago, there had been Mr. Taggart, then Mr. Denning. It was now Mr. Collicutt’s kick at the cat.
“Feely,” I said. “It’s important. There’s something I have to do.”
Feely jabbed one of the ivory coupling buttons with her thumb and the organ gave out a roar. I loved this part of the piece: the point where it leaps in an instant from sounding like a quiet sea at sunset to the snarl of a jungle animal.
When it comes to organ music, loud is good—at least to my way of thinking.
I tucked my knees up under my chin and huddled back into the corner of the choir stall. It was obvious that Feely was going to slog her way through to the end come hell or high water, and I would simply have to wait it out.
I looked at my surroundings but there wasn’t much to see. In the feeble glow of the single bulb above the music rack, Feely and I might as well have been castaways on a tiny raft of light in a sea of darkness.
By twisting my neck and tilting my head back like a hanged man, I could just make out the head of Saint Tancred, which was carved in English oak at the end of a hammer beam in the roof of the nave. In the weird evening light, he had the look of a man with his nose pressed flat against a window, peering in from the cold to a cozy room with a cheery fire burning on the hearth.
I gave him a respectful bob of my head, even though I knew he couldn’t see me since his bones were moldering away in the crypt below. But better safe than sorry.
Above my head, on the far side of the chancel, John the Baptist and his murderers had now faded out almost completely. Twilight came quickly in these cloudy days of March and, viewed from inside the church, the windows of St. Tancred’s could change from a rich tapestry of glorious colors to a muddy blackness in less time than it would take you to rattle off one of the longer psalms.
To tell the truth, I’d have rather been at home in my chemical laboratory than sitting here in the near-darkness of a drafty old church, but Father had insisted.
Even though Feely was six years older than me, Father refused to let her go alone to the church for her almost nightly rehearsals and choir practices.
“A lot of strangers likely to be about these days,” he said, referring to the team of archaeologists who would soon be arriving in Bishop’s Lacey to dig up the bones of our patron saint.
How I was to defend Feely against the attacks of these savage scholars, Father had not bothered to mention, but I knew there was more to it than that.
In the recent past there had been a number of murders in Bishop’s Lacey: fascinating murders in which I had rendered my assistance to Inspector Hewitt of the Hinley Constabulary.
In my mind, I ticked off the victims on my fingers: Horace Bonepenny, Rupert Porson, Brookie Harewood, Phyllis Wyvern.…
One more corpse and I’d have a full hand.
Each of them had come to a sticky end in our village, and I knew that Father was uneasy.
“It isn’t right, Ophelia,” he said, “for a girl who’s—for a girl your age to be rattling about alone in an old church at night.”
“There’s nobody there but the dead.” Feely had laughed, perhaps a littl
e too gaily. “And they don’t bother me. Not nearly so much as the living.”
Behind Father’s back, my other sister, Daffy, had licked her wrist and wetted down her hair on both sides of an imaginary part in the middle of her head, like a cat washing its face. She was poking fun at Ned Cropper, the potboy at the Thirteen Drakes, who had the most awful crush on Feely and sometimes followed her about like a bad smell.
Feely had scratched her ear to indicate she had understood Daffy’s miming. It was one of those silent signals that fly among sisters like semaphore messages from ship to ship, indecipherable to anyone who doesn’t know the code. Even if Father had seen the gesture, he would not have understood its meaning. Father’s codebook was in a far different language from ours.
“Still,” Father had said, “if you’re coming or going after dark, you are to take Flavia with you. It won’t hurt her to learn a few hymns.”
Learn a few hymns indeed! Just a couple of months ago when I was confined to bed during the Christmas holidays, Mrs. Mullet, in giggling whispers and hushed pledges of secrecy, had taught me a couple of new ones. I never tired of bellowing:
“Hark the herald angels sing,
Beecham’s Pills are just the thing.
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
Two for a man and one for a child!”
Either that or:
“We Three Kings of Leicester Square,
Selling ladies’ underwear,
So fantastic, no elastic,
Only tuppence a pair.”
—until Feely flung a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern at my head. One thing I have learned about organists is that they have absolutely no sense of humor.
“Feely,” I said, “I’m freezing.”
I shivered and buttoned up my cardigan. It was bitterly cold in the church at night. The choir had left an hour ago, and without their warm bodies round me, shoulder to shoulder like singing sardines, it seemed even colder still.