As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(27)

“Come out of there,” I said, and surprisingly, she obeyed. The cubicle door clicked open and a moment later, this poor, pale, damp little chick was enfolded in my arms, weeping woefully into my shoulder as if her heart would break.

“I’m sorry,” I told her, honestly meaning it, and for now that had to be enough.

The possibility that the body in the chimney might be her sister must not—at least for now—be put into words. I hardly dared even think the thought for fear that she would somehow read my mind.

But perhaps she had realized it already.

Brazenose was hanging on to me as if she were a shipwreck victim, and I a floating log. And who knows? Perhaps she was.

Perhaps I was, too.

What remarkable bonds we form, I thought, as she clung to me. And what very odd ones.

She seemed reluctant to break away—reluctant to have to look me in the eyes.

“Better wash your face,” I said at last. “In case they call a snap Holy Communion service.”

That fetched the ghost of a smile.

“You are a very peculiar person, Flavia de Luce,” she said in a dampish voice.

I made a deep bow, heel to instep, sweeping an imaginary cavalier’s feathered hat toward the floor with one hand.

As Brazenose was scrubbing her face at the sink, the door opened and Fitzgibbon came into the room.

Was she surprised to see us? I couldn’t tell.

“You’re up late, girls,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

“Yes, Matron,” Brazenose said in a surprisingly strong voice, and I, as a newcomer not expected to know any better, merely nodded.

“Well, then, off to bed with the both of you,” Fitzgibbon said. “No lights, mind.”

We whispered to each other as we went along the hall.

“Don’t believe the Ouija board,” I told her. “It’s a gyp. Someone in Jumbo’s room was spelling out the words.”

Brazenose’s eyes were like lanterns in the darkness. “Are you sure?” she breathed.

“Yes,” I told her. “It was me.”

Half an hour later, as I lay in bed, unable to sleep, I wondered about what I had said.

Were points given out in Heaven for a half-truth?

I remembered from long-ago sermons at St. Tancred’s that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, but that those who act faithfully are his delight. But how did God feel about those who merely fiddled the facts?

It was true that I had been in control of the board toward the end of the séance, but not at the beginning. It was not I who had spelled out that spine-chilling name, Le Marchand.

Who, then, had been the culprit?

The only possibilities were those other girls, besides myself, who had placed their fingers on the Ouija board’s planchette. These were Jumbo herself, Gremly, Van Arque, Brazenose, Trout, and the other two whose names I had not learned.

Druce, of course, had not been present. That let her out.

It was clear that I needed to find out at once the identities of those other two girls.

Whom should I ask? It seemed obvious: the girl who was presently most obligated to me.

Dear little Brazenose.

Had I been wrong to confide in her? Had I put myself at risk by taking a chance?

Well, for better or for worse, I had done so. And now I needed to grill this girl at length.

It had been too late to begin tonight, and I had already risked—not once but twice!—being abroad after lights-out.

It would have to wait until morning.

With that decided, I rolled over and slept like the log in the proverb.

I don’t think that I shall ever forget, as long as I live, the sounds of Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy coming to life in the morning.

First would come the clanking of the pipes and steam radiators, sounding for all the world like armored knights having a practice joust with playful young dragons, who gurgled and hissed more to show off than anything else.

Then the distant tobacco-coughing of the mistresses and—I’m sorry to say—some of the more forward girls, which seemed to me were most of them.

Next was the synchronized flushing of the WCs. Somewhere a gramophone would start up as one of the sixth-form girls exercised her senior’s rights: The sounds of Mantovani’s “Charmaine” would come slithering down the staircases like liquid honey, pooling stickily on each floor before oozing on down to the next. This would be followed by “Shrimp Boats Are A’Comin,” “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “On Top of Old Smokey,” and “Aba Daba Honeymoon.”

To ears such as mine, brought up on the BBC Home Service, it was like living in a grass hut among savages on a desert island.

Voices would call to one another and sudden laughter would ring out, followed by the scuffing of shoe leather on floors and stairs and, drifting in through an open window from the street outside, the clopping of the elderly automaton horses that drew the various bread and milk wagons from door to door.

In the distance, on the Danforth, the streetcars would clang their impatient ding-ding! at foolhardy motorists and pedestrians.

How very different it all was from the seclusion of Buckshaw.

It was then, in the mornings, that homesickness would rise in my throat, threatening to choke the very life out of me.

Hold on, Flavia, it shall pass, I would tell myself.