As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(16)

Two tables away, the large girl who had elbowed her neighbor in the ribs—this must be Druce—was staring openly.

She was the only person in the hall looking at us. Everyone else was studiously looking away, as Anglicans invariably do when faced with group embarrassment. It was a trait I had noticed even as a child, which, as nearly as I could puzzle out, was somehow connected with the famous ostrich-and-sand reaction. Roman Catholics, by contrast, would have been clambering over one another for a front-row seat.

“Let’s get out of here,” Van Arque said. “I need some fresh air. Come on. We’ve got a few minutes before the next bell.”

As we pushed back our chairs, I turned deliberately toward Druce and, as if I were talking to Van Arque, clearly pronounced the word “flap-dragon.”

It was my favorite word from Shakespeare: not as long as “Honorificabilitudinitatibus,” which preceded it in Love’s Labour’s Lost, but enough of a workout to let Druce know that when it came to lip-reading, she was not dealing with someone who was wet behind the ears.

“You’re sure you haven’t got a cigarette?”

We were leaning against the stone rim of a neglected goldfish pool in a small courtyard behind the laundry.

“No,” I said. “I told you. I don’t smoke. It’s a filthy habit.”

“Sez who?” Van Arque demanded, squinting like Popeye and taking up a boxer’s stance—squeezing her biceps to make them bulge. I knew she was joking.

“Never mind,” she said. “Here comes Fabian. She’s always good for a fag. Fabian! Over here!”

Fabian was a tall blonde who looked as if she came from Finland: a pale, cool Nordic type, who wore rather too much face powder, as if she had a lot of spots to hide. I wondered if she, like me, was exiled from her homeland.

“How much?” Fabian asked, holding out a single cigarette. She didn’t even need to be asked.

“A nickel for two,” Van Arque said.

“Three for a dime,” Fabian countered, and the deal was done.

“It’s highway robbery, that’s what it is,” Van Arque said, lighting up when Fabian was gone. “She’s only been here a year and she’s already as rich as Croesus. She pays seventeen cents for a pack and makes three hundred percent profit. It isn’t fair.”

Nickels? Dimes? I knew that cents were roughly equivalent to pence, but beyond that, Canadian currency was a veiled mystery.

Why had I ever been sent away from the land of the sixpence—the land of half-crowns, ha’pennies, florins, farthings, and shillings, the land of decent coinage, where everything made sense?

How could I possibly learn to survive in such a pagan place, where trams were streetcars, vans and lorries were trucks, pavements were sidewalks, jumpers were sweaters, petrol was gasoline, aluminium was aluminum, sweets were candy, a full stop was a period, and cheerio was good-bye?

A towering wave of homesickness broke over me: a wave even greater than the Atlantic gales through which I had safely sailed; greater than anything I could ever have possibly imagined.

I put a hand against the stone wall to steady myself.

“Are you all right?” Van Arque asked anxiously.

“Yes,” I said weakly. And then again, more strongly, “Yes.”

It was only the thought of this curious creature who stood so casually beside me, smoking, that gave me strength. If Van Arque could go from choking to joking and smoking in the wink of an eye, then surely so could I.

“Morning, ladies,” said a voice behind me, making me jump. I whirled round to find what I took at first to be a weasel in a shabby trench coat: a thin young man with an alarmingly pale, pinched face and an unconvincing mustache.

“Students, I take it?” he asked. “A couple of Miss Bodycote’s beauties?”

“Go away,” Van Arque said, pulling a nickel-plated whistle from her pocket, “before I call the police.”

“Hey, take it easy. Don’t do that,” he said, dredging a damp leather wallet from the depths of the wreckage that was his raincoat. He flipped it open and held out what appeared to be some kind of official identity card.

“Wallace Scroop,” he said, offering it. “The Morning Star. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

“We’re not allowed to speak to reporters,” Van Arque said.

“Listen,” he went on, ignoring her. “I’ve heard this place is haunted. It’s an old convent, you know … ghostly footsteps in the night—all that sort of thing. I thought it would make an interesting story. You might even get your pictures in the paper.”

“There are no such things as ghosts—or haven’t you heard, Mr. Scroop? Any footsteps in the night at Miss Bodycote’s are caused by too much lemonade at the school carnival—not by phantoms. Now please go away.”

“If I did,” Scroop said, “my editor would wring me out like a dishcloth. Come on, girls, have a heart. Let’s be honest. What do you know about the body that was carted off to the morgue last night? Someone you know, maybe? Listen, I could make it worth your while.”

I glanced at Van Arque, but she didn’t seem surprised at the news. Without further warning, she jammed the whistle between her lips and blew a long, ear-piercing blast. For a fraction of a second, Wallace Scroop looked as stunned as if she had slapped his face. And then, with a couple of surprisingly coarse words, he was gone.