As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(21)

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.”