As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: A Flavia De Luce Novel Page 3

  We swept along in comfort—except for Ryerson—beside the broad St. Lawrence River, which was studded with as many islands as there are stars in the sky, some with stone cottages perched in solitary and splendid isolation.

  I would leap off the train at the next stop, I decided. I would swim to one of the hidden islands where I would become a modern Robinson Crusoe. Canada was a wilderness of wildernesses. They could never find me.

  “Look there, Flavia!” Ryerson said, pointing to a castle of what looked like gray limestone. “That’s the Kingston Penitentiary.”

  “Where you’ll wind up if you don’t behave yourself,” Dorsey said, glancing up from her bloody thriller.

  I hadn’t the foggiest idea what a penitentiary was, but it sounded as if it described my present situation to perfection, and for a few precious moments, I imagined myself sheltered within the high walls of that bleak and stony stronghold, safe from the Rainsmiths.

  The hours trudged by with chains on their ankles.

  Outside the train’s windows, Canada rushed past, as if on a rotating turntable. It seemed to me to be composed of a remarkable amount of water.

  And then it was dark, and all I could see in the window was the reflection of the Rainsmiths. Dorsey had fallen asleep, her neck twisted awkwardly, as if from the end of a rope, her mouth hanging open in a most unpleasant but satisfying manner.

  I pretended she was the murderess Edith Thompson, whose violent drop was said to have caused John Ellis, the public hangman, to commit suicide.

  A filament of drool appeared at the corner of Dorsey’s mouth, swinging with the motion of the train like an acrobatic spider on a thread. I was trying to decide whether this spoiled or enhanced the hanged-woman effect when Ryerson touched my arm.

  I nearly leaped out of my skin.

  “Toronto soon,” he whispered, so as not to disturb his sleeping wife.

  He didn’t want her awake any more than I did.

  I turned to watch the lighted windows that were now sliding by outside in the darkness: windows in which dozens of mothers cooked in dozens of kitchens, dozens of fathers read newspapers in dozens of cozy chairs, dozens of children wrote or drew at dozens of tables, and here and there, like a candle in the wilderness, the lonely blue-gray glow of a little television screen.

  It was all so unbearably sad.

  Could things be any worse?

  • TWO •

  IT WAS RAINING IN Toronto.

  Low clouds, reddened to the shade of inflamed intestines by neon advertising signs, glowered above the towering hotels. The wet pavements were a soggy crazy-quilt of swimming colors and running waters. Trams sparked in the damp darkness, and the night air was sharp with the acrid smell of their ozone.

  Dorsey Rainsmith was not yet fully conscious, and she stood blinking on the curb beneath the umbrella her husband was holding, as if she had just awakened to find herself on an alien and most unpleasant planet.

  “Taxis are busy tonight,” her husband said, looking up the street and down. “There’s bound to be another soon.” He wigwagged his arms frantically at a lone taxicab passing on the wrong side of the street, but it splashed on, oblivious.

  “I don’t see why Merton couldn’t have met us,” Dorsey said.

  “His mother died, Dodo,” Ryerson said, forgetting I was there. “Don’t you remember? He sent us a telegram.”

  “No,” she said, going into one of her Grand Pouts.

  Ryerson was gnawing fiercely at his lower lip. If a taxicab didn’t come along in the next two minutes he was going to need stitches.

  “I shall order flowers tomorrow,” he said, “for both of you.”

  Galloping Galatians! Was that an insult? Or had my ears deceived me?

  Dorsey turned a slow, cold, reptilian eye upon him, but just at that moment, a taxicab splashed to a stop at the curb.

  “Ah! Here we are,” Ryerson said brightly, rubbing his hands together—or wringing them, I’m not sure which.

  The Rainsmiths climbed into the backseat and I was left to sit up front with the driver.

  Ryerson gave their home address.

  “We’ll put you up for the night, Flavia,” he said. “It’s too late now for Miss Bodycote’s. Well past their ‘lights-out.’ ”

  “We’ll do no such thing,” his wife said. “We haven’t a room made up, and with Merton indisposed, I can’t possibly cope. Take us directly to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, driver. We’ll wake them up.”

  And that was that.

  In the driver’s rearview mirror, I could see Dorsey Rainsmith mouthing silent but angry words at her husband. The streetlights, seeping in through the taxi’s watery windows, made Ryerson’s face look as if it were melting.

  Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy was on a cul-de-sac just off the Danforth.

  It was not at all what I had expected.

  Tall houses loomed up on both sides of the street, crowded cheek-to-cheek, their windows alight and welcoming. Standing in darkness among them in its own grounds, Miss Bodycote’s was a vast shadow in their midst: taller, larger—a couple of acres of stony darkness in the rain.

  I was to learn later that the place had once been a convent, but I didn’t know that as Ryerson yanked angrily at the bell of what appeared to be a porter’s lodge, a sort of Gothic wicket set into one side of the arched front doorway.

  Down a long flight of stone steps on the street, Dorsey waited in the taxi as I stood beside her husband on the step. Ryerson pounded on the heavy front door with his fist.

  “Open up,” he shouted at the blank, curtainless windows. “This is the chairman.

  “That ought to fetch them,” he muttered, almost to himself.

  Somewhere inside, a dim glow appeared, as if someone had lighted a candle.

  He shot me a triumphant look, and I thought of applauding.

  After what seemed like an eternity, but which was probably in reality no more than half a minute, the door was edged open by an apparition in nightgown, thick spectacles, and curlers.

  “Well?” demanded a creaky voice, and a candle in a tin holder was raised to light and examine our faces. And then a gasp. “Oh! I’m sorry, sir.”

  “It’s all right, Fitzgibbon. I’ve brought the new girl.”

  “Ah,” said the apparition, sweeping the candle in a broad arc to indicate that we were to step inside.

  The place was a vast, echoing mausoleum, the walls pitted everywhere with pointed, painted nooks and alcoves, some in the shape of seashells, which looked as if they had once housed religious statuary, but the pale saints and virgins, having been evicted, had been replaced with brass castings of sour-faced, whiskered old men in beaver hats with their hands jammed into the breasts of their frock coats.

  Apart from that, I had only time enough to register a quick impression of scrubbed floorboards and institutional varnish disappearing in all directions before the flame blew out and we were left standing in darkness. The place smelled like a piano warehouse: wood, varnish, and an acrid metallic tang that suggested tight strings and old lemons.

  “Damnation,” someone whispered, close to my ear.

  We were in what I presumed was an entrance hall when the electric lights were suddenly switched on, leaving the three of us blinking in the glare.

  A tall woman stood at the top of a broad staircase, her hand on the switch. “Who is it, Fitzgibbon?” she asked, in a voice that suggested she fed on peaches and steel.

  “It’s the chairman, miss. He’s brought the new girl.”

  I could feel my temper rising. I was not going to stand there and be discussed as if I were a mop in a shop.

  “Good evening, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said, stepping forward. “I’m Flavia de Luce. I believe you have been expecting me.”

  I had seen the headmistress’s name on the prospectus the academy had sent to Father. I could only hope that this woman on the stair was actually the headmistress, and not just some lackey.

  Slowly, she descended the s
tairs, the startling white of her hair standing out round her head in a snowy nimbus. She was dressed in a black suit and a white blouse. A large ruby pin glowed at her throat like a bead of fresh blood. Her hawk nose and dark complexion gave her the look of a pirate who had given up the sea for a career in education.

  She inspected me up and down, from top to toe.

  She must have been satisfied, because she said, finally, “Fetch her things.”

  Fitzgibbon opened the door and signaled the taxi driver, and a minute later, my luggage, soggy from the rain, was piled in the foyer.

  “Thank you, Dr. Rainsmith,” she said, dismissing the chairman. “Most kind of you.”

  It seemed short shrift for someone who had lugged me across the Atlantic and halfway across Canada, but perhaps it was the lateness of the hour.

  With no more than a nod, Ryerson Rainsmith was gone and I was alone with my captors.

  Miss Fawlthorne—I was quite sure now that it was she, because she hadn’t contradicted me—walked round me in a slow circle. “Do you have any cigarettes or alcohol either on your person or in your baggage?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well?”

  “No, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said.

  “Firearms?” she asked, watching me closely.

  “No, Miss Fawlthorne.”

  “Very well, then. Welcome to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. In the morning I shall sign you in properly. Take her to her room, Fitzgibbon.”

  With that, she switched off the electric light and became part of the darkness.

  Fitzgibbon had relighted her candle, and amid flickering shadows, up the staircase we climbed.

  “They’ve put you in Edith Cavell,” she croaked at the top, fishing a set of keys from some unspeakable crevice in her nightgown and opening the door.

  I recognized the name at once. The room was dedicated to the memory of the World War I heroine Edith Cavell, the British nurse who had been shot by a German firing squad for helping prisoners escape. I thought of those famous words, which were among her last and which I had seen inscribed upon her statue near Trafalgar Square in London: “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone.”

  I decided at that instant to adopt those words, from now on, as my personal motto. Nothing could have been more appropriate.

  At least for now.

  Fitzgibbon placed the candlestick on a small wooden desk. “Blow it out when you’re ready for bed. No electrics—it’s past lights-out.”

  “May I light a fire?” I asked. “I’m actually quite cold.”

  “Fires are not permitted until the fifth of November,” she said. “It’s a tradition. Besides, coal and wood are money.”

  And with no more than that, she left me.

  Alone.

  I will not describe that night, other than to say that the mattress had apparently been stuffed with crushed stones, and that I slept the sleep of the damned.

  I left the candle burning. It was the only heat in the room.

  I would like to be able to say that I dreamed of Buckshaw, and of Father, and of Feely and Daffy, but I cannot. Instead, my weary brain was filled with images of roaring seas, of blowing spray, and of Dorsey Rainsmith, who had taken upon herself the form of an albatross, which, perched at the masthead of a storm-tossed ship, screamed down at me wild cries of bird abuse.

  I fought my way up out of this troubled sleep to find someone sitting on my chest, pummeling me about the head and shoulders with angry fists.

  “Traitor!” a voice was sobbing. “You filthy dirty rotten traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!”

  It was still well before sunrise, and the faint light that leaked into the room from the streetlamp was too dim to make out clearly the features of my attacker.

  I gathered all my strength and gave a mighty shove.

  With a grunt and a thud someone fell heavily to the floor.

  “What the dickens do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, snatching the candlestick from the desk. As a weapon—in a pinch—it was better than nothing. The guttering flame flared up.

  Breath was sucked in. It sounded surprised.

  “You’re not Pinkham!” the voice said in the gloom.

  “Of course I’m not Pinkham. I’m Flavia de Luce.”

  The voice gulped. “De Luce? The new girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, sheep shears! I’m afraid I’ve made an awful boner.”

  There was a rustling sound and the overhead light was switched on.

  There, with what Daffy always described as “strangle eyes” blinking in the glare, stood the most remarkable-looking little person I had ever seen. Long lizard legs clad in baggy black woolen stockings protruded from the dark blue skirt of a rumpled school uniform. Her body—almost an afterthought atop those remarkably long, bandy legs—was like a flattened lump of dough: a gingerbread man carelessly made.

  “Who the deuce are you?” I demanded, taking the upper hand.

  “Collingwood, P. A. ‘P. A.’ for Patricia Anne. Gosh, I hope you’re not too cheesed off with me. I thought you were Pinkham. Honest! I’d forgotten they moved her into Laura Secord with Barton because of her nightmares. Special dispensation.”

  “And what did Pinkham do to deserve such a beating?” I wasn’t going to let her off easily.

  Collingwood colored. “I mustn’t tell you. She’d kill me.”

  I fixed her with the famous cold blue eye for which we de Luces are noted—although mine tend more toward violet, actually, especially when I’m riled.

  “Spill it,” I said, raising the candlestick in a menacing manner and taking a step toward her. I was, after all, now in North America, the land of George Raft and James Cagney—a land where plain talk was understood.

  Collingwood burst into tears.

  “Oh, come on, kid,” I said.

  Come on, kid?

  My ears couldn’t believe what my mouth was saying. A couple of hours in Canada and I was already talking like Humphrey Bogart. Could it be something in the air?

  “She ratted on me,” Collingwood said, wiping her eyes with her school tie.

  They really did talk like that here. All those afternoons with Daffy and Feely at the cinema in Hinley had not been wasted after all, as Father had claimed. I had learned my first foreign language and learned it well.

  “Ratted,” I repeated.

  “To the head,” Collingwood added, nodding.

  “Miss Fawlthorne?”

  “The Hangman’s Mistress, we call her. But don’t let on I told you. She’s done the most unspeakable things, you know.”

  “Such as?”

  Collingwood looked over both shoulders before replying. “People disappear,” she whispered, pinching her fingertips together and then, like a magician, with a quick gesture, causing them to fly open to reveal an empty hand. “Poof! Just like that. Without a trace.”

  “You’re pulling my leg,” I said.

  “Am I?” she asked, her eyes huge and damp. “Then what about Le Marchand? What about Wentworth? What about Brazenose?”

  “Surely they can’t all have vanished without a trace,” I said. “Someone would have noticed.”

  “That’s just the thing!” Collingwood said. “No one did. I’ve been making notes. Pinkham caught me at it. She ripped the book out of my hands and took it to Miss Fawlthorne.”

  “When was this?” I asked.

  “Last night. Do you think they’re going to kill me?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “People don’t do things like that. Not in real life, at any rate.”

  Although I knew perfectly well that people did. And, in my own experience, more often than you’d think.

  “Are you sure?” Collingwood asked.

  “Positive,” I lied.

  “Promise you won’t tell,” she whispered.

  “I swear,” I said, for some unfathomable reason making the sign of the cross in the air.

  Collingwood’s brow w
rinkled. “Are you an RC?” she asked.

  “Why?” I said, to stall for time more than anything. As a matter of fact, she had hit the nail on the head. Even though we appeared outwardly to be practicing Anglicans, we de Luces had been Roman Catholics since Rome was little more than seven picturesque hills in the Italian wilderness. The soul, Daffy says, is not necessarily where the heart is.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said.

  Collingwood whistled through her teeth. “I thought so! We have next-door neighbors back home in Niagara-on-the-Lake—the Connollys?—they’re RCs, too. They make those same fiddles with their fingers that you just did. It’s the sign of the cross, isn’t it? That’s what Mary Grace Connolly told me. It’s a kind of magic. She made me promise not to tell. But listen! What are you doing here? Miss Bodycote’s is—”

  “I know,” I interrupted. “So high Anglican that only a kitchen stool is required to scramble up into Heaven.”

  Where had I heard that? I couldn’t for the life of me remember. Had Aunt Felicity told me? Surely it wasn’t Father.

  “You mustn’t let on, though,” Collingwood said. “They’ll skin you alive.”

  “We Catholics have been martyrs since the invention of the flame,” I said. “We’re quite accustomed to it.”

  It was a snotty thing to say, but I said it anyway.

  “Your secret’s safe with me,” Collingwood said, sewing her lips shut with an invisible needle and thread. “Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me.”

  The last sentence came out sounding like “Wye-oh oh-ffef goodem agim ow momee.”

  “It’s not a secret,” I told her. “Actually, we’re quite proud of it.”

  At that instant there was a terrific pounding at the door: a wood-splintering banging so loud that I almost kissed a kidney good-bye.

  “Open up!” a voice demanded—a voice I had first heard only too recently, but one I knew too well.

  It was Miss Fawlthorne.

  “Turn out the lights!” Collingwood whispered.

  “It’s no use,” I whispered back. “The door’s unlocked anyway.”

  “No, it’s not. I locked it when I snuck in.”