As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (8 page)

But whatever the reason, I held my tongue.

And it paid off. Van Arque couldn’t resist demonstrating her superior knowledge.

“The guff has it that Miss Fawlthorne found you standing over a dead body in Edith Cavell, and Collingwood in hysterics. I told you—you’re notorious. Now hurry up before they skin us and use our guts for snowshoes.”

A
S WE MADE OUR
way along the dark passage that led from the back entrance to the Great Hall, the bell clanged again.

“Oh, corn!” Van Arque whispered in the sudden silence that followed. “Now we’re in for it. We’ll be blacked.”

“Blacked?” I said. Collingwood had used this term, but I still had no idea what being “blacked” involved, although I must say it didn’t sound like much fun. I had visions of being painted with boot polish, like the vicar as Othello in the parish play. It seemed rather an extreme punishment for missing a stupid bell.

As if by chance, another bell sounded: this one closer and less loud.

“It’s the doorbell,” Van Arque said.

As sometimes happens when you’re in a pinch, Fate offered up a free spin of the wheel, and I took it.

Rather than following Van Arque, I veered across the hall and opened the door.

There, with his finger still on the electric bell button, stood a tall and excessively slender man. He had the long face and long fingers of a carved medieval saint and the body of a long-distance runner.

A younger, shorter man in a dark blue uniform stood sturdily to one side, his feet apart and his hands clasped—I assumed—behind his back. He might as well have had “ASSISTANT” stamped across his forehead with indelible ink.

“Yes?” I asked, taking the upper hand.

Behind me, Van Arque sucked in a noisy breath at my boldness.

“Miss Fawlthorne,” said the medieval saint. I could tell already that he was a man of few words. Rather like Gary Cooper.

“Ah!” I said. “You must be the police.”

It was, of course, a dim-witted thing to say, and yet at the same time, precisely right.

The tall man nodded, almost reluctantly. “That’s correct,” he said. He was giving nothing away.

“I’m Flavia de Luce,” I said, sticking out my hand. “And you are …?”

“Inspector Gravenhurst.”

“Ah!” I said, as if I had been already half-expecting that to be his name.

He gave me a quick but firm handshake. I could see that he was sizing me up even as our hands went up and down.

“And Sergeant …?” I said, taking a chance. Surely an
inspector’s right-hand man would be a sergeant of one kind or another.

“LaBelle,” the sergeant said, not correcting me.

“I shall tell Miss Fawlthorne you wish to see her,” I said.

The inspector nodded, stepping inside and looking round the Great Hall with keen interest, taking in every detail with his penetrating gaze.

I liked this man already.

“By the way,” I said, turning back toward him. “I’m the one who discovered the body.”

This was not precisely true, but it was my only chance of becoming involved in the case. I resisted the powerful urge to tell him that this corpse was not my first: that in fact, cadavers were my calling card.

Modesty, though, prevailed.

The inspector brightened immediately.

“Indeed?” he said, and I liked him even more. Pity, though, that he wasn’t a member of the legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police. That would have made things perfect, but it wasn’t likely his fault. His height had probably exceeded some idiotic and arbitrary physical requirement.

“Van Arque,” I said, surprised by my own boldness, “run upstairs and tell Miss Fawlthorne the inspector’s here.” I resisted adding, “There’s a good ducks.”

Van Arque’s mouth fell open.

“Van Arque’s a monitress,” I explained to the inspector. “She has first dibs on fetching the head.”

It was the right thing to say. Van Arque squeezed off a proud smile and was off up the stairs like a galloping rocket.

“You’re English,” Inspector Gravenhurst said.

“Yes,” I replied. My accent alone made me stand out among these Canadian girls like a—

“Been over long?” the inspector asked.

“Since last night,” I said. “Well, yesterday, actually.”

How I loved talking to this man! What a breath of fresh air it was to converse with someone who didn’t natter endlessly on and on like a village spinster.

I wanted desperately to tell him about Inspector Hewitt, my great friend back home in Bishop’s Lacey, but there would be time enough for that later. I would find a plausible way of dragging my dear inspector and his goddess wife, Antigone, into the conversation at a more appropriate time.

There was a clatter behind me on the stairs as Van Arque came scuttering quickly down, followed at a much more solemn pace by Miss Fawlthorne.

Blast them!
I had barely got started. Well, there was nothing for it now but to play along. I clasped my hands daintily at my waist and went all submissive, staring up attentively at Miss Fawlthorne as if I were a beagle waiting for her to throw the ball.

“Thank you, Flavia. You are dismissed. Take her along to the fourth, Van Arque.”

I couldn’t help myself. I curtsied.

Van Arque tugged at my arm, and I had time only to flash the inspector a fleeting—but dazzling—smile.

“You’ll pay for that, you know,” Van Arque said when we were far enough along the corridor.

“Pay for what?” I asked.

She didn’t reply and on we marched.

* * *

“I’ve brought the new girl, Mrs. Bannerman.”

Van Arque paused, holding open the door.

I nearly swooned as the teacher turned round: She was, of course, the sweet-faced pixie! The elflike creature who looked as if she would be more at home perched on a foxglove leaf, sipping dewdrops from a fairy thimble.

“Come in, Flavia,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

Flavia? Did the murderess (acquitted) Mildred Bannerman know my name?

I’m afraid that, for the first time ever in my life, although I may have been speechless, my heart was singing.

“Come in, Flavia,” she repeated, and I entered in a zombie trance.

Needless to say, I was the center of attention, which I loathe being. The girls all stared at me openly and I made a point of staring just as openly back. I was as curious about them as they were about me.

Who, for instance, was this girl with the needle-sharp nose and the hole in her stocking? And who the plump one with the pleasant face and fingernails bitten to the elbows? Who was the girl staring so intently at me from the farthest corner of the room? If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn she had some ancient grievance.

And who was the girl that, in the middle of a room bubbling with curiosity, was so studiously ignoring me? I made special note of this one, recording her details in my mental notebook: small mouth, small nose, and hooded eyes; long
black hair and a general air of self-importance, as if she were a wealthy tourist shopping in a bazaar swarming with ragged beggars.

After marking up what I took to be an attendance sheet, Mrs. Bannerman left the room to take a chemistry class with the fifth form, and was replaced by the gray-haired woman I had spotted at breakfast. I was right—she
was
the French mistress.

The girls all stood as she entered the room, and I went along with it.

For the next hour, Miss Dupont—I found out later whom she was—twittered away at the class, asking what seemed to be useless questions and nodding wisely at the useless answers. I didn’t understand a word of their palaver but, because she addressed each girl by name, the time wasn’t entirely wasted.

“Flav-ee-ah,”
she said at last, mispronouncing my name and then rattling off a string of gibberish. I studied my fingernails, pretending I hadn’t heard.

“Elle est très timide,”
she remarked to the class, and everyone laughed except me.

I felt like a chump.

What a jolly good idea it had been for my ancestors to forsake France in the days of William the Conqueror, I thought; otherwise, I, too, should have been brought up speaking through my nose.

And what utterly useless rot these girls were made to rehearse!

“The niece of my gardener has given me a blue handkerchief
.
Who has left Grandmother’s best photographic album in the garden in the rain?”
(What a silly-sounding word
“pluie”
was: like the outcome of too many hot beans on toast.)
“Run for the doctor, Marie—Madame has suffered a gastric explosion.”

I only know these things because Van Arque told me later what had actually been said.

Pitiful!

I won’t bother with the rest of that morning, except to say that it was uncomfortable. As I have said, I hate being the center of attention, and yet at the same time I can’t tolerate being ignored.

How I longed for a brisk knock at the door, and for someone to announce that Inspector Gravenhurst wished to consult with me.

Not that he would put it that way, of course. No, he would be much more discreet than that.

“Inspector Gravenhurst presents his compliments,”
they would say,
“and begs that Miss de Luce favor him with her assistance.”
No,
“her
valuable
assistance.”

Or
“
invaluable
assistance.”

Were things still done that way in Canada? Somehow I doubted it. Even in England nowadays, in my experience, the police were more likely to send you off to fetch them a cup of char or, when they finally came to their senses, to wring you dry as a dishrag before collaring all the credit for themselves.

Life wasn’t fair. It simply wasn’t fair, and I meant to make a note of it.

Before I left home, Aunt Felicity had presented me with a small leather notebook and a miniature propelling pencil, the latter cleverly concealed in a gold crucifix which I wore round my neck.

“Even a barbarian will think twice before meddling with
that
,” she had said.

The crucifix itself was altogether quite remarkable, modeled, Aunt Felicity told me, on the idea of the Trinity, three-in-one: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

And so it also contained, besides the pencil, a small but powerful magnifying glass that swung out from inside the cross, and a surprisingly complete set of lock picks.

“For quiet Sundays,” she had said, giving me what I would have sworn was a glacially slow, lizardlike wink.

It wasn’t until after dinner that the call actually came. I was walking with Van Arque toward the hockey field when the police sergeant, LaBelle, appeared as if from nowhere. Had he been lying in wait behind the laundry?

“The inspector wants to see you,” he said, his words reeking of cigarette smoke.

Just like that. No niceties.

I gave Van Arque a helpless shrug and followed the sergeant indoors.

“Big place you’ve got here,” he said as we climbed the stairs to Miss Fawlthorne’s study. “Roomy but gloomy.”

And he was right. Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy was a shadowed maze: a place in which daylight never strayed far from the windows. It was a place designed not to be
lived in, but to be prayed in; a place whose narrow zigzag corridors were meant, perhaps, to confound the Devil.

“All that ever escapes a convent,” Daffy had once told me, after reading a rather sensational book about a nun’s life, “is the prayers and the smoke.”

Which brought me back to the body in the chimney.

I had been kept so busy I had scarcely been able to give it more than a moment’s thought.

Who was she? How had she died? How long had she been hidden in the chimney?

And—most tantalizing—how and why had she come to be wrapped in a Union Jack?

We paused at the door of Miss Fawlthorne’s study. The sergeant’s knuckles were raised as if to knock.

He stood for a moment, examining me from head to toe.

“Watch yourself, kid,” he said, adjusting his tie as if it were an uncomfortable noose.

And then he was tapping timidly at the door.

“Ah, Flav-ee-ah,” Inspector Gravenhurst said, mispronouncing my name in precisely the same way as Miss Dupont had done.

Miss Fawlthorne sat quietly at her desk as if she were merely a guest.

“It’s Flavia,” I told him. “The first syllable rhymes with ‘brave’ and ‘grave.’

“And ‘forgave,’ ” I added, in case he thought I was being frivolous.

He nodded, but I noticed he had not begged my pardon.

“Now, then,” he said. “Tell me about your discovery.”

It was obvious that he had not yet interviewed Collingwood;
otherwise, he would already have heard her somewhat different version. Better to face up to my fib right away and get credit for honesty.

“Actually, it was someone else, I think, who found the body. What I meant was that I just happened to be there.”

“I see,” he said. “And who might that have been?”

“Collingwood,” I said. “Patricia Anne.”

From the corner of my eye, I noticed that Miss Fawlthorne had stopped whatever she was doing and looked up from her desk.

“She was having a nightmare,” I said. “Walking in her sleep. She tried to climb up the chimney. I was trying to keep from waking her. I’ve heard that sleepwalkers can die of shock if they’re awakened too suddenly.”

I was proud of myself! Here was a sign of my great compassion, an excuse for fibbing to Miss Fawlthorne, and a plausible account all rolled up neatly into one tidy tale.

Three-in-one again: a holy trinity of truth, righteousness, and quick thinking.

“And that’s when the, ah …”

“Body,” I supplied.

“Er, yes, the body, as you say—was dislodged from the chimney.”

“No,” I said. “That didn’t happen until after Miss Fawlthorne came into the room.

“I didn’t know it was a body at the time,” I added.

“Because you were in the dark,” the inspector remarked matter-of-factly.

By the lord Harry! I had to give the man credit: He was as sharp as a tinker’s tack. It was obvious he had already
interviewed Miss Fawlthorne and heard her version of the night’s happenings.