Free The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 by Alan Bradley

world’s first postage stamp—in all of its many variations. The Kissing collection was the envy—and I say that advisedly—of all the world. These vile creatures convinced Uncle Grenville to intercede and arrange a private viewing of the Head’s stamps.
    “While examining the crown jewel of this collection, a Penny Black of a certain peculiarity—I’ve forgotten the details—the stamp was destroyed.”
    “Destroyed?” I asked.
    “Burned. One of the boys set it alight. He meant it to be a joke.”
    Miss Mountjoy took up her tea and drifted like a wisp of smoke to the window, where she stood looking out for what seemed like a very long time. I was beginning to think she’d forgotten about me, but then she spoke again:
    “Of course, my uncle was blamed for the disaster …”
    She turned and looked me in the eye. “And the rest of the story you’ve learned this morning in the Pit Shed.”
    “He killed himself,” I said.
    “He did not kill himself!” she shrieked. The cup and saucer fell from her hand and shattered on the tile floor. “He was murdered!”
    “By whom?” I asked, getting a grip on myself, even managing to get the grammar right. Miss Mountjoy was beginning to grate on my nerves again.
    “By those monsters!” she spat out. “Those obscene monsters!”
    “Monsters?”
    “Those boys! They killed him as surely as if they had taken a dagger into their own hands and stuck him in the heart.”
    “Who were they, these boys … these monsters, I mean? Do you remember their names?”
    “Why do you want to know? What right have you coming here to stir up these ghosts?”
    “I’m interested in history,” I said.
    She passed a hand across her eyes as if commanding herself to come out of a trance, and spoke in the slow voice of a woman drugged.
    “It’s so long ago,” she said. “So very long ago. I really don’t care to remember … Uncle Grenville mentioned their names, before he was—”
    “Murdered?” I suggested.
    “Yes, that’s right, before he was murdered. Strange, isn’t it? For all these years one of their names has stuck most in my mind because it reminded me of a monkey … a monkey on a chain, you know, with an organ grinder and a little round red hat and a tin cup.”
    She gave a tight, nervous little laugh.
    “Jacko,” I said.
    Miss Mountjoy sat down heavily as if she’d been poleaxed. She stared at me with goggle eyes as if I’d just materialized from another dimension.
    “Who are you, little girl?” she whispered. “Why have you come here? What’s your name?”
    “Flavia,” I said as I paused for a moment at the door. “Flavia Sabina Dolores de Luce.” The “Sabina” was real enough; “Dolores” I invented on the spot.
    Until I rescued her from rusty oblivion, my trusty old three-speed BSA Keep Fit had languished for years in a toolshed among broken flowerpots and wooden wheelbarrows. Like so many other things at Buckshaw, she had once belonged to Harriet, who had named her l’Hirondelle : “the swallow.” I had rechristened her Gladys.
    Gladys’s tires had been flat, her gears bone dry and crying out for oil, but with her own onboard tire pump and black leather tool bag behind her seat, she was entirely self-sufficient. With Dogger’s help, I soon had her in tiptop running order. In the tool kit, I had found a booklet called Cycling for Women of All Ages , by Prunella Stack, the leader of the Women’s League of Health and Beauty. On its cover was written with black ink, in beautiful, flowing script: Harriet de Luce, Buckshaw .
    There were times when Harriet was not gone; she was everywhere.
    As I raced home, past the leaning moss-covered headstones in the heaped-up churchyard of St. Tancred’s, through the narrow leafy lanes, across the chalky High Road, and into the open country, I let Gladys have her head, swooping down the slopes past the rushing hedges, imagining all the while I was the pilot of one of the Spitfires which, just five years