Read The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 for Free Online Page A

rather unpleasantly from the cucumbers.
    “Morning, Fred,” he said. “Thought you’d best come have a look.”
    “Um,” Dr. Darby said. He opened his bag and rummaged inside for a moment before pulling out a white paper bag. He reached into it with two fingers and extracted a single crystal mint, which he popped into his mouth and sucked with noisy relish.
    A moment later he had waded into the greenery and was kneeling beside the corpse.
    “Anyone we know?” he asked, mumbling a bit round the mint.
    “Shouldn’t seem so,” Inspector Hewitt said. “Empty pockets … no identification … reason to believe, though, that he’s recently come from Norway.”
    Recently come from Norway? Surely this was a deduction worthy of the great Holmes himself—and I had heard it with my own ears! I was almost ready to forgive the Inspector his earlier rudeness. Almost … but not quite.
    “We’ve launched inquiries, ports of call and so forth.”
    “Bloody Norwegians!” said Dr. Darby, rising and closing his bag. “Flock over here like birds to a lighthouse, where they expire and leave us to mop up. It isn’t fair, is it?”
    “What shall I put down as the time of death?” Inspector Hewitt asked.
    “Hard to say. Always is. Well, not always, but often.”
    “Give or take?”
    “Can’t tell with cyanosis: takes a while to tell if it’s coming or going, you know. Eight to twelve hours, I should say. I’ll be able to tell you more after we’ve had our friend up on the table.”
    “And that would make it …?”
    Dr. Darby pushed back his cuff and looked at his watch.
    “Well, let me see … it’s eight twenty-two now, so that makes it no sooner than about that same hour last evening and no later than, say, midnight.”
    Midnight! I must have audibly sucked in air, since both Inspector Hewitt and Dr. Darby turned to look at me. How could I tell them that, just a few hours ago, the stranger from Norway had breathed his last breath into my face?
    The solution was an easy one. I took to my heels. I found Dogger trimming the roses in the flower bed under the library window. The air was heavy with their scent: the delicious odor of tea chests from the Orient.
    “Father not down yet, Dogger?” I asked.
    “Lady Hillingdons are especially fine this year, Miss Flavia,” he said, as if ice wouldn’t melt in his mouth; as if our furtive encounter in the night had never taken place. Very well, I thought, I’ll play his game.
    “Especially fine,” I said. “And Father?”
    “I don’t think he slept well. I expect he’s having a bit of a lie-in.”
    A lie-in? How could he be back in bed when the place was alive with the law?
    “How did he take it when you told him about the—you know—in the garden?”
    Dogger turned and looked me directly in the eye. “I didn’t tell him, miss.”
    He reached out and with a sudden snip of his secateurs, pruned a less-than-perfect bloom. It fell with a plop to the ground, where it lay with its puckered yellow face gazing up at us from the shadows.
    We were both of us staring at the beheaded rose, thinking of our next move, when Inspector Hewitt came round the corner of the house.
    “Flavia,” he said, “I’d like a word with you.”
    “Inside,” he added.

four
    “And the person outside to whom you were speaking?” Inspector Hewitt asked.
    “Dogger,” I said.
    “First name?”
    “Flavia,” I said. I couldn’t help myself.
    We were sitting on one of the Regency sofas in the Rose Room. The Inspector slapped down his Biro and turned at the waist to face me.
    “If you are not already aware of it, Miss de Luce—and I suspect you are—this is a murder investigation. I shall brook no frivolity. A man is dead and it is my duty to discover the why, the when, the how, and the who. And when I have done that, it is my further duty to explain it to the Crown. That means King George the Sixth, and King George the Sixth is not a frivolous man. Do I make myself