Free Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew'd by Alan Bradley Page A

she’s begged off with a headache. She ought to marry Dieter and sort it out for once and for all.”
    “Hmmm,” I said. I didn’t want to become involved in Feely’s love strategy—not, at least, through Undine.
    “The concert begins at half two,” Undine said. “They’re having gingerbread for the children and oolong tea for the grown-ups. I adore oolong tea. You can pilfer some for me.”
    Although I was flattered to be classed as a grown-up, I was not all that fond of oolong tea, which I found to leave a fishy taste in your mouth and a faint craving for rice.
    “No, thanks,” I said. “I’ve got better things to do.”
    “Such as…?”
    “Don’t be a pest. Go swing on your rope and eat a banana. Oh, and by the way, give my regards to Jane.”
    Undine regarded me with sad eyes. “You don’t love me, do you?”
    “Of course I love you! I could simply smother you with HP Sauce and eat you up. Gobble! Gobble! Gobble!”
    Talking to Undine brought out a part of me that I didn’t particularly like, but giving in to it was easier than trying to reason with her.
    “Ugh!” Undine said. “You’re repulsive. Come on, Flavia. Carla Sherrinford-Cameron is singing, and you wouldn’t want to miss
that,
would you?”
    She opened her mouth wide and jabbed her forefinger rapidly in and out, as if inducing a vomit.
    Ten minutes later, under a leaden sky, we were galloping across the rain-soaked fields towards the village.

· FIVE ·
    C ARLA S HERRINFORD- C AMERON, HER HANDS clasped together at her waist like lobster’s claws, was singing “The Lass with the Delicate Air,” and I found myself wishing I had thought to bring a firearm with me—although whether to put Carla out of her misery or to do away with myself, I had not quite yet decided.
    With her huge eyes, lank red hair, and pale buttermilk skin, she looked like a sea creature by Botticelli: a googly-eyed mermaid dredged up in a fisherman’s net, caught between two worlds with nowhere to hide.
    It could only have been Fate, operating flat out and in top gear, that had plunked Carla almost literally on my doorstep at the very instant she was required. It saved me a most tiresome trip to Hinley and although I could easily have looked up her address in the telephone directory, the fact that a fond Fate had snatched Carla up by the scruff of the neck and dumped her at my feet as a dog brings a bone was oddly satisfying.
    Carla was a student of the Misses Lavinia and Aurelia Puddock, those musical spinster sisters whose musty talents made a misery of every public event in Bishop’s Lacey.
    Although she lived in Hinley, several miles away, Carla came by bus to sing in our village at frequent intervals, on the principle that it was better to be a big frog in a small pond than a tadpole in a large one.
“With the deh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh, heh-heh-heh-heh-ell-hick-cut air
    Men call her the lass with the del-hick-cut air.”
    Her voice hung shrill in the air like a shot partridge.
    I have nothing against singing provided it’s done properly—I do it myself occasionally—but there are times when enough is too much, and this was one of them.
    Perhaps in unconscious imitation of Carla’s pose, I wrung my hands.
“Men call her the lass with the
-
uh…”
    In the brief and dramatic silence that followed her hovering high E—which is called a fermata, my sister Feely had told me, and can be held for as long as the performer wishes—my knuckles gave off a sickening
crunch!
All ten of them.
    Simultaneously.
    All of us in the parish hall, including Carla and me, whipped our necks round to locate the source of the ghastly disturbance.
    Undine gave out a horrible, wet snicker, followed by a thumbs-up, and a grin of outright admiration.
    To give her credit, Carla was game. She went on to the end:
“del…lick…hut air.”
    And then she fled.
    —
    I found her sobbing in the churchyard.
    I remembered that the poet Walter de la Mare had once written:
It’s a very