As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (6 page)

Like a reluctant robot, Fitzgibbon hauled Collingwood to her feet and led her to the door, quilt and all.

“It was quick of you to have thought of the sheet,” Miss Fawlthorne said when they were gone, shooting me a piercing look above the candle’s flame. “You have made an excellent start, Flavia.

“Except for allowing Collingwood in your room,” she added. “Both of you must be punished, of course.”

I might have pointed out, I suppose, that Collingwood had come into the room uninvited and that since I was asleep at the time, I could scarcely have prevented it. To say nothing of the fact that, being newly arrived, I had not been informed of the stupid rule.

But I kept my bun trap shut.

It is decisions like this, for better or for worse, which make you who you are.

Instead, I stooped to lift the corner of the sheet.

“No! Don’t! Please!” Miss Fawlthorne snapped, and I let it fall.

What harm could there possibly be in having another squint? But I knew in that moment that there would never be another chance.

Generally, when you discover a body, you have the luxury of close examination before the police are called in to
trample the scene like cows at a picnic. But not always—and this was going to be one of those times. I had seen all that I was going to see. Whatever the physical evidence, it was already in my head.

Besides, I should have thought Miss Fawlthorne might want to learn as much as she could about the cadaver that had, until recently, inhabited her chimney.

Or did she know already?

I stood primly by, allowing her to regain control.

“I suppose I shall have to report it,” she said for the second time, almost as if thinking aloud—as if she were being forced into it. Perhaps she was thinking of the academy’s reputation. I could already see the headlines:

Carcass Cooked in Chimney

Body at Miss Bodycote’s

Girls’ School Aghast!

If the newspapers here in Canada were anything like the ones back home, we could be in for a jolly couple of days.

“But you must be absolutely exhausted!” she said, and until that moment I hadn’t thought about it. Six days at sea and another on the train—to say nothing of the fact that it was now the middle of the night …

Miss Fawlthorne’s words were hypnotic. I was suddenly yawning like the Cheddar Gorge, my eyes full of grit.

“You can’t sleep here, obviously,” she said, waving a hand at the sheet-covered form on the floor. “I shall put you up in my sitting room.”

I had a fleeting vision of Miss Fawlthorne nailing my
severed head to the wall as if I were a mounted trophy: some wild animal that she had shot in Africa, or in the Arctic wastes.

“Come along, then,” she said, leading the way by candlelight.

The electric lamps remained switched off.

At Miss Bodycote’s, a rule, I could see, was a rule was a rule.

Daffy would have been delighted with my insight.

I would never have thought it possible, but I missed my sister. She had been the lemon on my fish, the vinegar on my chips, I realized with a sudden pang, and that without her, life from now on was going to be less tasty. It was an odd thought to have at that particular moment, but then, life itself was odd. At least mine was.

Get a grip, Flavia
, I remember thinking.
Steady on
.

We were now walking along a paneled corridor, Miss Fawlthorne leading the way.

“This is our Old Girls’ Gallery,” she said, raising the candlestick so I could better see the long rows of black-framed photographs that lined the gallery on either side.

Tier upon tier they rose up round us, flickering in the candlelight: faces of every size and shape imaginable, and again I thought of the hordes of angels.

Well, I had been told that Miss Bodycote’s had strong ties with the church, hadn’t I?

Even so, it hadn’t prepared me for the sight of all these scores of black-framed souls, each one staring directly down at me—and none of them laughing—as if they were some solemn heavenly jury and I the prisoner at the bar.

“And here, of course,” Miss Fawlthorne said, “is your mother.”

She should have warned me. I was not prepared.

Here was Harriet, in her black frame, gazing levelly out at me with such a look …

In that young face—my face!—was everything that needed to be said, and in her look, all the words that she had never had the chance to speak.

Directly beneath Harriet’s photograph was a small wall sconce, and in it was a spray of heartbreakingly fresh flowers.

Suddenly I was quaking.

Miss Fawlthorne put a hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think. I ought to have prepared you.”

We stood for a moment in silence, as if we were the only two left alive in that catacomb of the dead.

“She is much honored here,” Miss Fawlthorne said.

“She is much honored everywhere,” I said, perhaps a little too sharply. I realized, almost as I said it, that there was a certain resentment in my words. I had caught myself by surprise.

“Are they all dead?” I asked, pointing to the portraits, partly to change the subject and partly to show that there were no hard feelings.

“Good lord, no,” Miss Fawlthorne said. “This one went on to become a swimming medalist … this one, Nancy Severance, a film star. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. This one the wife of a prime minister … and this one … well, she became famous in her own way.”

“That’s what I should like to do,” I said. “To become famous in my own way.”

That was it in a nutshell, and I was pleased that I had finally realized it.

I did not want to be Harriet. I wanted to be myself.

Flavia de Luce. Full stop.

“And who is this?” I asked, pointing to a striking and rather enigmatic-looking girl who gazed out at us with hooded eyes.

“Mrs. Bannerman is still with us at Miss Bodycote’s,” she said. “You shall meet her tomorrow. She is our chemistry mistress.”

Mildred Bannerman! Of course! She had been charged and acquitted—a number of years ago after a sensational trial—of the murder of what the
News of the World
had called “her wayward husband.”

It was claimed by the prosecution that she had poisoned the blade of the carving knife with which he cut up the Christmas turkey.

It was an old trick but a good one: Parysatis, the wife of Darius II of Persia, in the third century B.C., had murdered her daughter-in-law, Stateira, in precisely the same way.

By applying the poison to only the outer side of the blade, and serving Stateira the first slice, she was able to dispatch her victim and yet eat from the bird herself with little or no risk.

It was called “having your turkey and eating it, too.”

By great good fortune and an even greater defense attorney, Mildred Bannerman had been spared the hangman’s
noose, and indeed, had been portrayed to the jury as the real victim of the crime.

And just think: In no more than a few hours I would be meeting her!

We moved on through an endless maze of darkened corridors until, after what seemed like an eternity, Miss Fawlthorne produced a set of keys.

“These are my rooms,” she said, flicking on the lights.

Presumably the rules didn’t apply to her.

“You may sleep on that couch,” she said, pointing to a black leather monstrosity with a pattern of stitched dimples. “I shall bring you a blanket and a pillow.”

And with that, she was gone, leaving me standing in the middle of her sitting room: a room that reeked of cold, silent unhappiness.

Was I picking up vibrations from the Old Girls who had been punished here for switching on a light after curfew? Or worse?

I remembered the words that Daffy had read aloud from
Nicholas Nickleby
, the words of the schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers: “Let any boy speak a word without leave, and I’ll take the skin off his back.”

But no, girls were not caned, Daffy had told me. They were reserved for the more exquisite tortures.

Miss Fawlthorne was back with a pillow and a tartan motoring blanket. “Sleep now,” she said. “I shall try not to disturb you when I return.”

She switched off the light and the door closed with a chilling click. I listened for a key in the lock. But even
with my acute hearing, there was nothing more than the sound of her retreating footsteps.

She was going to her study to call the police: That much seemed certain.

I was straining my brain to think of ways I might contrive to be present in Edith Cavell at the moment the sheet was removed and the body revealed.

Perhaps I could wander in, rubbing my eyes and claiming a history of sleepwalking; or that I was in desperate need—due to some hereditary tropical disorder—of a glass of cold water.

But before I could put either of these plans into action, I fell asleep.

I dreamed, of course, of Buckshaw.

I was riding my bicycle, Gladys, up the long avenue of chestnuts. Even in the dream I was thinking how remarkable it was that I could hear a skylark singing and smell the trampled chamomile of the defunct south lawn. That and the decay of the old house itself.

Dogger was waiting at the front door.

“Welcome home, Miss Flavia,” he said. “We have missed you.”

I rode past him, into the foyer, and up the east staircase—which goes to show how ridiculous dreams can be: Although I had ridden down the stairs, I had never, ever been guilty of riding
up
them.

In my chemical laboratory, an experiment was in busy
progress. Beakers bubbled, flasks simmered, and various colored liquids flowed importantly to and fro in twists and coils of glass tubing.

Although I couldn’t remember the purpose of the experiment, I was full of excitement at the outcome.

I would write it up in my laboratory notebook: from
Hypothesis
to
Conclusion
, all neatly presented so that even an idiot could follow each step of my brilliant thinking.

The chemical journals would come to fisticuffs over the rights to publish my work.

And yet there was an indescribable sadness about this dream: the kind of sadness that comes when the heart and the brain do not agree.

Half of me was filled with joy. Half of me wanted to weep.

When I awoke, a bell was ringing somewhere.

M
Y EYES REFUSED TO
open. It was as if, as I slept, someone had glued them shut.

“Hurry up,” Miss Fawlthorne’s voice was saying. “The bell has already gone.”

I looked up at her from bleary sockets.

“Your uniform is on the chair,” she said. “Put it on and come down for breakfast. There’s a ewer on the table. Wash your face. Brush your teeth. Try to look presentable.”

And then she was gone.

How could anyone be so changeable?
I wondered.

The woman’s moods appeared to be connected to some inner weathercock that swung wildly round with every wind. One moment she was almost tender, and the next a harridan.

Even the mercurial Daffy—from whom I had learned
both words—was no match for these cyclonic changes of character.

The cold horsehair stuffing gave out a groan as I sat up and levered myself to my feet. My back was sore, my knees were numb, and I had a crick in my neck.

I already had the feeling that this was not going to be a red-letter day.

I forced myself to crawl into the school uniform Miss Fawlthorne had laid out for me: a sort of navy blue wool pinafore dress with a pleated skirt, black tights, white blouse, and necktie—the latter striped diagonally in the school colors, yellow and black. A navy blazer completed the horror.

I winced as I examined my reflection in a silver tea service that stood on a side table. Hideous! I looked like someone in one of those baggy bathing costumes that you see on Victorian postcards.

I pinched a sugar cube and washed it down with a swig of slightly soured milk from the creamer.

Curse this life!
I thought.

And then I remembered the dead body upstairs and I cheered up at once.

Had the police come in the night? Surely they must have, by now.

I was hardly in a position to ask, but there is no law against keeping your eyes peeled and your ears open, is there?

* * *

I had been worried that I would be stared at, but no one gave me so much as a second glance as I came tentatively down the staircase and paused on the landing. From some far corner of the house came the sound of a distant regiment of girls, all talking and laughing at the same time.

I won’t say that my blood ran cold, but it distinctly cooled. I was not at my best with hordes: a fact that I had not entirely realized until the day I was sacked (unfairly) from the Girl Guides.

My case had been debated from the vicarage kitchen all the way up to the solemnly paneled council chamber of the Girl Guide Imperial Headquarters in London.

But it was no use. The die, as someone or another had said, was cast.

I recalled with bitterness the moment that Miss Delaney ripped my badges from my sleeves as the troop was made to chant in unison:
“Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!… Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!”

I knew suddenly how the children of Israel must have felt when they were cast out by the Lord.

Farewell to the Scarlet Pimpernel Patrol! And farewell to their motto, “Do good by stealth.” I had done my best to fulfill that commandment, but it was hardly my fault that things had gone so badly wrong.

Fate loves slight miscalculations, the vicar had told me later, and it was true. I would not likely ever live it down.

“Better hustle your bustle,” someone said, touching my arm—a short, stocky girl with black-framed spectacles.

I almost jumped out of my skin. My nerves were edgy.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to startle you, but at Bod’s, punctuality is paramount. Translated into English, that means if you’re late for breakfast, they’ll nail your hide to the barn door.”

I nodded acknowledgment and followed her down the stairs.

At the bottom, I stuck out a hand. “De Luce, F. S.,” I said, sticking to the formula Collingwood had used.