As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: A Flavia De Luce Novel Page 7

  “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.

  “Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Miss Fawlthorne’s candle blew out and we were left in the dark.”

  “For how long?”

  “Oh, not long at all. A couple of seconds, I should say. Miss Fawlthorne lit a match almost immediately.”

  “What kind of match?”

  “A paper match. The ones that come in a booklet. They give them away in places like the Savoy, and so forth.”

  The inspector glanced at Miss Fawlthorne, who nodded to confirm my statement.

  “And then?”

  “Well, it was just then that Collingwood fell out of the chimney, and the body right behind her. She must have jarred it loose. Like a chimney sweep—or a pipe cleaner,” I suggested.

  I knew as soon as I spoke that I had gone too far.

  “Flavia!” Miss Fawlthorne exclaimed.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said. “It’s just that with the amount of soot and tar—”

  “That’s quite enough,” she said. “Inspector, I’ll not have my girls exposed to such questioning. They have, after all, been entrusted to my care.”

  My girls! She already thought of me as one of her girls. In some odd, but unknown way, that made all the difference in the world.

  “Quite right,” the inspector said. “It’s clear that Flavia here”—he pronounced it correctly this time—“has seen enough.”

  Whatever did he mean by that?

  “You’ve been very helpful,” he said. “Thank you. You may go now.”

  I looked at Miss Fawlthorne, who gave her assent.

  Although I got to my feet, I lingered at the door (an art of which I have made a particular study, and one which is greatly underestimated by amateurs) long enough to hear him say, “Now, then, Miss Fawlthorne: I’d like a list of everyone who has been in and out of this building within the past twenty-four hours.”

  In the corridor, I wondered: Why twenty-four hours? The body had been in the chimney for ages and ages. That was as plain as a pikestaff.

  Surely the inspector’s next step wouldn’t be to demand a list of everyone who had crossed the threshold of Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy for the past quarter century?

  But wouldn’t a list such as that include the name of my own mother?

  A cold chill gripped my spine.

  • SIX •

  VAN ARQUE WAS WAITING at the bottom of the stairs. Had she been listening at the door?

  “Jumbo wants to see you,” she said.

  “Jumbo?”

  “The head girl. Her name’s June Bowles, actually, but you must always call her Jumbo, or she’ll have your eyeballs for earrings.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “You darn well won’t if she does it!” Van Arque cackled, clapping her hands together with animated joy, as if she had just made the world’s greatest witticism.

  “What does she want to see me about?”

  “You’ll see.”

  All these “sees” were having a nauseating effect on me. In fact I was becoming positively “see-sick.”

  “She’s in Florence Nightingale,” Van Arque said, jabbing with a forefinger at the ceiling, so up the stairs we trudged—the same stairs I had just come down.

  It was like living on a treadmill.

  Florence Nightingale was at the far end of Athena Wing. The various wings at Miss Bodycote’s, I was to learn, were named after goddesses, the rooms after heroines, the houses after female saints, and the WCs after defunct royalty.

  “She’s in Boadicea,” meant that the person in question was communing with nature in the little closet behind the kitchen, while Anne of Cleves and Jane Seymour were two of the loos on the upper floors.

  Florence Nightingale turned out to be a rather grand study that overlooked the hockey field.

  Van Arque knocked and entered without waiting for an invitation.

  “Here she is, Jumbo,” she said. “The new girl. Her name is de Luce—Flavia.”

  Jumbo turned slowly away from the window, waving a hand idly to disperse the few wisps of tobacco smoke that still hung in the air. The room reeked of the stuff.

  Diana Dors in a tunic, was my first thought.

  Jumbo was what the cinema magazines would have called breathtakingly gorgeous. She was tall, blond, and statuesque in the way that Britannia is statuesque.

  Carved in marble is what I mean. Cool … calculating … and perhaps a little cruel.

  I was awash in impressions, some of them favorable—others not so.

  “Cigarette?” the sculpture asked, offering me a pack of Sweet Caporals.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I’m trying to give them up.”

  It was an excuse I had used before, and it seemed to work.

  “Good for you.” She smiled. “It’s a revolting habit.”

  She selected another for herself, setting fire to it with ceremonial flourishes of a small silver lighter that looked like a miniature Aladdin’s lamp, and inhaling deeply.

  “Vi
le,” she said again, the word issuing from her mouth in a cloud of acrid smoke.

  She looked for a moment like a Norse goddess: or perhaps one of the Four Winds pictured in the corners of the ancient maps, puffing a cold blue blast from the Pole.

  “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!”

  For an instant I was transported back to Buckshaw, sitting in the drawing room with Father, Feely, and Daffy, listening to King Lear on the BBC Home Service during one of our compulsory wireless nights.

  And then, just as quickly, I was returned to Miss Bodycote’s.

  It was disconcerting. My head was spinning, and it wasn’t just from the cigarette smoke.

  “Catch her, Van Arque!”

  Those were the last words I heard.

  I was crumbling.

  Into a deep, hollow, and horribly echoing well.

  * * *

  I opened my eyes and immediately wished I hadn’t. Shards of light from the window pierced my eyes like needles of bright glass.

  I squinted and whipped my head to the other side.

  “Steady,” said a voice. “It’s all right.”

  “Here, drink this,” said someone else, and the hard rim of a glass was pressed against my lower lip. I sipped, and a warm liquid slipped down my throat.

  Almost at once a heat began diffusing through my guts, as if my heart had caught fire.

  I pushed the glass away, still blinking blurrily in the harsh light.

  “Pfagh!” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  “It’s only brandy,” said the voice, which I now recognized as Jumbo’s. “You fainted. It’ll do you good.”

  “It’s not brandy,” I heard myself saying, as if an automaton had inhabited my body. “Brandy doesn’t have potassium bisulfite in it—or sulfurous anhydride.”

  My taste buds and olfactory system had detected them. I was sure of it.

  Both of those chemicals, I knew, had been approved thirty years ago by the Holy Office for use as sterilizers, preservatives, and antioxidants in Communion wine.

  And, as in Rome, so in the Anglican High Church.

  Someone had pinched this stuff from the chapel.

  It was no more than common sense.

  “Very good!” Jumbo said as she came swimming slowly into focus. “We’ll need to be more discreet, Gremly.”

  Gremly turned out to be a pasty-faced little girl with fish lips and a servile stoop.

  “Agh,” Gremly said with a guttural gurgle, as if she were handmaiden to Dr. Frankenstein. Was she laying it on with a trowel, or was this her normal way of communicating?

  “You gave us a fright,” Jumbo said. “We thought for a minute you’d bought the farm.”

  “I beg your pardon?” I asked.

  “Bought the farm. Bit the dust. Snuffed it, et cetera. Girls your age do that sometimes, you know. Constitutional weakness. Undiagnosed heart mumble. Poof! Just like that!”

  “Not me,” I said, struggling to get up. “I’m as strong as an ox.”

  I could hear my own voice echoing weirdly, as if it were coming from another room.

  Jumbo pushed me down again with a forefinger. I was powerless.

  “Relax,” she said. “You’re among friends.”

  Was I? I looked from her face to Gremly’s.

  My uncertainty must have been obvious.

  “Friends,” she repeated. “Of course you are. You’re the daughter of Harriet de Luce, aren’t you?”

  My silence was my answer.

  “She’s worshipped here as a saint, you know. Haven’t you seen her shrine in the hall?”

  I gulped and looked intentionally back at the bright window as the tears welled in my eyes.

  “The light—” I said.

  “We were all sorry to hear about your mother,” Jumbo said, touching my arm. “Damnably sorry. It must have been especially tough on you, poor kid.”

  That did it.

  I leapt to my feet, dashed from the room, and fled blindly to the little chamber at the end of the hall, which I would later learn was called Cartimandua.

  There I barricaded myself in one of the two cubicles, sat down on the WC, and had a bloody good knock-’em-down, drag-’em-out howl.

  When I was finished, I honked into a wad of lavatory paper, washed my face, and freshened up with strategic dabs of carbolic hand soap.

  What a week it had been!

  Even the last few minutes alone had been shocking. I had broken at least three of the Ten Commandments—the “Thou shalt nots” of British girlhood: I had cried, I had allowed alcohol to pass my lips, and I had fainted.

  I examined my blurry image in the hanging glass.

  The face that stared dimly—but defiantly—back at me was a hodgepodge of de Luce: a grab bag of Father’s features, Aunt Felicity’s, Feely’s, Daffy’s—but above all, Harriet’s. In the harsh glare of the flickering overhead lightbulb, it reminded me—but only for a moment—of one of those topsy-turvy paintings by Picasso we had cocked our heads at in the Tate Gallery: all pale skin and a kaleidoscope mug.

  The recollection of it made me grin, and the moment passed.

  I thought of the faded, flyblown wartime posters that still hung in Miss Cool’s confectionery in the high street of Bishop’s Lacey: “Get a Grip,” “Chin Up,” and “Best Foot Forward.”

  I took a deep breath, squared my shoulders, and gave myself a smart regulation salute in the mirror.

  How proud Father would be of me at this moment, I thought.

  “Soldier on, Flavia,” I told myself in his absence. “Soldier on, de Luce, F. S.”

  Van Arque was lurking anxiously in the hall. “Pip-pip?” she asked.

  “Pip-pip,” I told her.

  “You’ve made a friend,” she said as we walked slowly down the stairs. I was still not up to dashing.

  “Oh?”

  “Jumbo thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas,” she said. “And not just because you’re Harriet de Luce’s daughter. She’s invited you to Little Commons tonight.”

  “Little Commons?”

  “In her room. After lights-out. Just a few of her chums.”

  I should have known.

  It is difficult to look interested when you’re asleep, but I had developed a useful technique at St. Tancred’s, during some of the vicar’s excessively long sermons on Saving Faith, which I was now able to put into practice.

  First, I would lock eyes with the teacher, nodding now and then in agreement with whatever she was saying. I might even pretend to be taking voluminous notes.

  I would next plant my elbows firmly on the desktop and rest my forehead on my cupped hands, as if I were meditating on the profound wisdom of her words.

  In that way, I could catch forty winks undetected, twenty at a time, trusting in faith (there it is: faith again!) to wake me up if I were spoken to directly. But in fact, it never happened. In all of recorded history, a teacher has never been known to question a thoughtful pupil.

  Was it deceitful? Well, yes, I suppose it was, but to my mind, all’s fair in love and education.

  Although I hadn’t learned a thing by the end of the day, I had at least slept a little, so that when the last class ended (mathematics, incidentally) I was feeling surprisingly refreshed.

  By suppertime, the novelty of my presence was beginning to wear off among the girls. Nearly all of them had exchanged a word or two—almost always touching my arm as if I were some sort of talisman to be rubbed—and those who didn’t had at least stopped staring.

  In spite of the jolly companionship, I could hardly wait to be alone. Bedtime couldn’t come soon enough.

  “Are you all right?” Van Arque asked. It was becoming a ritual.

  “Yes,” I told her.

  I made my excuses: fatigue, travel, irregular meals, lack of sleep, and so forth.

  I did not mention my real reason for wanting to be alone, which was that I desperately needed solitude for my mind to be at its best: to come to grips with
the sudden and gruesome (but fascinating) appearance of the body in Edith Cavell.

  Like Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times, I wanted Facts—nothing but Facts. Even though that schoolmaster was a fictional character invented by Charles Dickens, I fancied I could hear his dry voice droning in my head: “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”

  The facts I wanted were these: (a) Who was the deceased? (b) Why was she stuffed up the chimney? (c) Who had put her there? (d) Had she been murdered? (e) If so, how? And, of course, (f) By whom?

  Hadn’t Collingwood mentioned a number of girls who had gone missing?

  I needed room and solitude to think.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I think I’ll get to bed early.”

  “But it’s only six o’clock!” Van Arque protested.

  “I know,” I said, “but my brain thinks it’s midnight. It’s still on Greenwich Mean Time, you see. I expect I’ll catch up in a day or two.”

  It was the best excuse I could come up with on the spur of the moment, but Van Arque accepted it without question.

  “Run along, then,” she said. “I’ll call you in time for Little Commons.”

  I nodded eagerly, as if I could hardly wait, and made my escape.

  * * *

  But I could not sleep. Even though the body had been removed and the room swept, swabbed, and dusted, I found myself tossing and turning, wrestling with my sheets and pillow as if they were crocodiles and I had been plucked from the burning sands of Egypt and flung into the Nile.

  I tried to imagine what the police were doing, but theorizing without any real information was agony.

  I tried counting sheep, but it was no use. Sheep bored me.

  Then I tried counting bottles of poison:

  Ninety-nine bottles of arsenic on the wall (paper),

  Ninety-nine bottles of arsenic,

  If one of the bottles should happen to fall (paper),

  There’d be ninety-eight bottles of arsenic on the wall (paper).

  Ninety-eight bottles of arsenic on the wall (paper)…

  Were the bottles of arsenic actually pictured on the wallpaper, or had each roll been soaked in the stuff? Arsenical wallpaper, I remembered, colored with the poisonous pigment Scheele’s Green, had killed Napoleon, among others, and was sadly no longer manufactured.