As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(20)

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.

“Vile,” 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!”