As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (13 page)

Get a grip, Flavia
, I thought, for the umpty-umpth time. It was becoming my theme song, my national anthem.

The science lab and the chemistry lab, I knew, were located in one of the wings: far enough away that the stinks wouldn’t pollute the holy atmosphere. I had had a glimpse of test tubes and beakers from the hockey field, and I knew from a casual remark Van Arque had made that the science department and its attendant natural history museum were immediately adjacent.

“Science?” I said to a girl who ducked round me and went clattering down the stairs, a cardigan tied over her shoulders and a squash racket gripped in her hands.

She paused just long enough to give her head a sharp
jerk to the left, her hair coming unfastened and flying into her face, and then she was gone.

Left I went, and there it was, stenciled on the green wall at eye level in official-looking black capital letters: SCIENCE & CHEMISTRY.

The two departments seemed to occupy the entire wing. A series of doors, each with its own small window, receded into the distance in a rather odd effect that made it seem like an optical illusion. I cupped my hands and peered through the glass into the first room.

This must be the natural history museum. Not large, but remarkably complete for its size. Glass cases round all the visible walls seemed to house a cross section of all creation: birds—I recognized a stuffed specimen of the extinct passenger pigeon, of which I had seen a photograph in one of Arthur Mee’s endlessly fascinating encyclopedias—butterflies, bees, moths, and other insects, all pinned neatly to cards and labeled: everything from small mammals to minerals, and from fossils to fish.

I tried the door, but it was locked.

By craning my neck, I could see hanging in a corner, on a wrought-iron stand, an articulated human skeleton. The very sight of it brought a momentary lump to my throat as I thought of Yorick, my own dear skeleton, hanging patiently back home in my laboratory at Buckshaw. Yorick had been given as a gift to Uncle Tar by the great naturalist Frank Buckland, who had not only autographed the skull but had also neatly printed on the frontal bone the playful inscription
Multum in parvo
—“much in little”: a great deal
in a small space—which might have been meant as something of a joke.

Beside the skeleton was a glass case in which animal skulls were displayed in neat rows, all boiled and bleached, ordered by size, and containing everything from what I guessed to be a mouse all the way up the scale to a human skull, which ended the series.

Above the case, mounted on the wall, was the enormous skull, complete with antlers, of a moose—what we call back home an elk. This, too, seemed to be meant as a joke for those in the know: “From mouse to moose.” Or vice versa.

I’m beginning to suspect that, everywhere on earth, professionals in the life sciences must share with Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson that same vein of pawky humor. Fun, perhaps, but childish, when you come to think of it. You certainly don’t catch chemists behaving like that.

Well, hardly ever.

Still, I must admit that I trifled with the idea of sneaking down to the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, pinching some eggs, and whipping up a dish of chocolate mousse. I would sneak it into the glass display case to be discovered in the morning.

Anyone clever enough would make an immediate connection: moose … mouse … mousse.

If they didn’t, so much the better. All the more mysterious.

The school newsletter would have a field day.

“Midnight Marauder Monkeys with Museum!”

But, as with so many of my best ideas, I kept it to myself, and moved on.

At the end of the hall was the entrance to the chemistry lab. I felt my breath quickening with excitement as I approached. I was now entering the domain of Mildred Bannerman: chemistry mistress … acquitted murderess … Faerie Queene.

I could see at once through the window that Mrs. Bannerman was busy with the fifth form.

How I would have loved to join them, shoulder to shoulder, peering through safety spectacles at the lovely liquids, jotting down penciled observations, and inhaling the vapors of boiling and deliriously happy distillations.

But it was not to be: As a lowly fourth-former I would be stuck with general science, and would probably end up dissecting maple leaves—or snails. And with my luck, they wouldn’t even be my favorite cone snails, those denizens of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the effects of whose venom are so disgusting that they can only be fully described in medical texts with plain brown wrappers.

I lingered, longingly, reluctant to tear myself away from this glimpse of Paradise.

My eyes scanned the room, drinking it in, memorizing every detail.

But wait!

What was that object on a side bench—just there, to the left?—so strange, and yet so familiar: a black box the length of a yardstick, no more than eight or ten inches deep.

A hydrogen spectrophotometer! Could it possibly be?

My heart gave a joyful leap in its cage of ribs.

Not just any hydrogen spectrophotometer, but by all that was sacred, a Beckman model DU if I was not mistaken! I had seen a photograph of one in the pages of
Chemical Abstracts & Transactions
. This baby, I knew, could see and analyze blood and poisons well into the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum.

And look—just there in an alcove!

That large vertical tube, so like a silver stovepipe, and connected by a black umbilical cable to a squat desk swarming with meters and gauges—was it not an electron microscope?

Good lord! There were barely a handful of these things in the world!

Aunt Felicity had told me outright that Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy was well-endowed financially, and she had been right.

Holy Halifax, had she been right!

I realized with a start I was licking my lips, perhaps even drooling a little, and quickly wiped my mouth dry on my sleeve.

How I envied these girls on the other side of the windowed door. I’d have given half my heart—no, the whole of it—to be among them.

But I didn’t dare intrude. A chemistry class was a sacred session and … well, you don’t barge in on prayers, do you?

I was about to steal away when a voice behind me said, “What are you up to, girl?”

I spun round and nearly tripped over her. I hadn’t heard her coming, and the reason for this was easy enough to
spot: The hard rubber tires of her wheelchair had allowed her to float along the floor in utter silence.

I gaped, not knowing what to say. In fact, I’m afraid I stared openly at this sinister apparition.

For a moment, I thought I had bumped into Edward G. Robinson: the unnervingly froggish face and the thick lips turned down at the corners like blankets, the head too big for the squat body, the black menacing eyes under black, arched brows, fixing me with their relentless gaze through thick spectacles … almost as if—

“Well, girl? What do you have to say for yourself?”

I couldn’t find words. I could only stand goggling at this curious wheeled creature and her fittings. Polio, I guessed, but I couldn’t be sure. How I wished Dogger was here to suggest a diagnosis.

The chair was equipped with a sort of hinged shelf or desk in the front, like a baby’s high chair, which was cluttered with all the necessities of a life on wheels: paper, ink, pen, letter opener, stamps, a box of paper tissues, another of throat lozenges, matches, a package of cigarettes (Sweet Caporal: the same brand that Fabian smoked), a china cup and saucer, and, incredibly, what I guessed to be a large teapot under a quilted cozy: a Brown Betty, by the size of it.

“Well? Haven’t you a tongue?”

“Yes,” I managed.

“Yes,
Miss Moate
,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Moate,” I echoed.

“I asked you what you were up to. Favor me with a reply, if you please.”

“Nothing … Miss Moate,” I said.

“Nonsense! You were tampering with the doorknob of my laboratory. I saw you.”

Her eyes had never left mine for an instant, and now they were crinkling at the corners, as if she had amused herself by catching me up in a particularly clever trap.

“I—I was just looking—”

“You were spying on me! Admit it.”

“No, Miss Moate. I was just looking—at the skulls.”

“You have some specific interest in skulls, do you? Is that it?”

I could have been truthful and said yes, but I didn’t. Actually, I was keen on skulls, but this was hardly the time to say so.

“I’d never seen a moose before,” I said, letting my lower lip tremble a little. “We don’t have them in England, you see, and—”

As if it were a robot appendage, her arm reached for the cozy, lifted it, and poured a cup of steaming tea: valerian, by the cheesy smell of it.

I took the distraction as an opportunity to change the subject.

“I’m Flavia de Luce,” I said, as if that explained everything. Perhaps she had already been briefed on my background, and the mere mention of my name would be all that was required. “I’m a new girl,” I added, almost wishing it were true.

“I know well enough who you are,” she said. “You’re the daughter of Harriet de Luce, and I might as well tell you, that cuts no ice with me whatsoever.”

Oh! The things I could have said to her—the clever retorts I could have made.

But I held my tongue.

Was it fear?

Or could maturity be setting in?

“No, Miss Moate,” I said, and that seemed to be the right reply.

Much in little.

Multum in parvo
.

“I taught your mother, you know,” she said, still fixing me with her gimlet eye. “And I shall teach you.”

Was this a promise? Or a threat?

“Yes, Miss Moate,” I said dutifully.

When you’re in the front lines, you have to learn fast, even if it’s only to surrender.

Or appear to.

With an unnerving squeak of tires on hardwood, her hands clawing at the wheels, she spun round on her axis and trundled herself away, growing smaller and smaller as she went in much the same way as the characters do at the end of an animated cartoon, until she disappeared in the distance.

Did I imagine it, or had I heard a little
“Pop!”
at the end of the hall?

I
THINK IT WAS
Aristotle who first said that Nature abhors a vacuum. Others, such as Hobbes, Boyle, and Newton, climbed onto Aristotle’s soapbox at a much later date. But for all their collective brains, these brilliant boys got it only half right. Nature
does
abhor a vacuum, but she equally abhors pressure. If you stop to think for even a second, it should be obvious, shouldn’t it?

Give Nature a vacuum and she will try to fill it. Give her localized pressure and she will try to disperse it. She is forever seeking a balance she can never achieve, never happy with what she’s got.

I am not only surprised, but proud, to be the first to point this out.

There are times when my personal pressure is mounting that I crave a vacuum to counteract it. One thing was perfectly clear: I was going to get no peace and quiet in Edith
Cavell. No privacy, no time to think, no place of my own where I could come and go as I pleased.

In short, I was in dire need of a bolt-hole.

Where, I asked myself, is the one place that the inhabitants of a bustling academy are least likely to go?

And the answer came at once, as if sent down on a mental lightning bolt from Heaven. It wasn’t carved on a stone tablet, but it might as well have been.

The laundry.

Of course!

The laundry was a detached hut of painted brick. A faint humming came from within and a column of steam rose from a tall brick chimney into the autumn air.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The place was like Dante’s
Inferno
, but with plumbing—a vast steaming cavern. The heat of the gargantuan washing and drying machines swept over me in a wave, almost knocking me off my feet, and the noise was infernal: a hissing, clanking clatter of machinery gone mad.

Why had I thought I’d ever find a quiet haven here?

Like a dark castle looming over a medieval village in a valley, an enormous boiler at the end of the single large room overshadowed the place, looming above the deep sinks, the scattered mangles and presses, the wringers and the sewing machines alike. The high roof was crisscrossed with steam pipes, all wrapped like mummies in eternal-looking bandages.

The air smelled of steam, soap, washing soda, and starch,
their odors floating uneasily upon a faint background reek of scorched bedsheets.

A little woman in a gray uniform, with her grayish-red hair in a net, was busily sorting nightgowns into two piles.

So much for solitude. I needed to change my plans this very instant.

It had been ever so long since I had last made use of my “little girl lost” demeanor, and I must say that it was like pulling on a cozy old cardigan to arrange my face and body: shoulders slightly hunched (check), hands arranged in a wringing position (check), hair tousled (check), eyes rubbed a little to make them red and watery, then widened and set to shifting nervously from side to side (check), voice up half an octave: “Hello?” “Hello?” (check), toes turned in, knees together, a touch of the trembles: check, check, and check.

“Excuse me, please, Miss.”
I put on my tiniest voice.

She paid me not the slightest attention.

I crossed the floor and tugged at her sleeve.

She leaped with surprising agility quite high into the air.

“Gaw blazes!” she shouted. “Who the dickens are you, and what the devil do you want?”

“Please, miss, I’m sorry,” I began.

“Spit it out! Who are you? What’s your name?”

“De Luce,” I told her. “Flavia. I’m in the fourth form.”

“I don’t care if you’re in the Forty-eighth Highlanders. You oughtn’t to be in here. You’re not allowed.”

“Please, miss, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve lost my best handkerchief. Miss Fawlthorne is going to kill me if I don’t find it. I think I left it in the pocket of my dressing gown.”