As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(31)
Beside the skeleton was a glass case in which animal skulls were displayed in neat rows, all boiled and bleached, ordered by size, and containing everything from what I guessed to be a mouse all the way up the scale to a human skull, which ended the series.
Above the case, mounted on the wall, was the enormous skull, complete with antlers, of a moose—what we call back home an elk. This, too, seemed to be meant as a joke for those in the know: “From mouse to moose.” Or vice versa.
I’m beginning to suspect that, everywhere on earth, professionals in the life sciences must share with Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. Watson that same vein of pawky humor. Fun, perhaps, but childish, when you come to think of it. You certainly don’t catch chemists behaving like that.
Well, hardly ever.
Still, I must admit that I trifled with the idea of sneaking down to the kitchen in the wee hours of the morning, pinching some eggs, and whipping up a dish of chocolate mousse. I would sneak it into the glass display case to be discovered in the morning.
Anyone clever enough would make an immediate connection: moose … mouse … mousse.
If they didn’t, so much the better. All the more mysterious.
The school newsletter would have a field day.
“Midnight Marauder Monkeys with Museum!”
But, as with so many of my best ideas, I kept it to myself, and moved on.
At the end of the hall was the entrance to the chemistry lab. I felt my breath quickening with excitement as I approached. I was now entering the domain of Mildred Bannerman: chemistry mistress … acquitted murderess … Faerie Queene.
I could see at once through the window that Mrs. Bannerman was busy with the fifth form.
How I would have loved to join them, shoulder to shoulder, peering through safety spectacles at the lovely liquids, jotting down penciled observations, and inhaling the vapors of boiling and deliriously happy distillations.
But it was not to be: As a lowly fourth-former I would be stuck with general science, and would probably end up dissecting maple leaves—or snails. And with my luck, they wouldn’t even be my favorite cone snails, those denizens of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the effects of whose venom are so disgusting that they can only be fully described in medical texts with plain brown wrappers.
I lingered, longingly, reluctant to tear myself away from this glimpse of Paradise.
My eyes scanned the room, drinking it in, memorizing every detail.
But wait!
What was that object on a side bench—just there, to the left?—so strange, and yet so familiar: a black box the length of a yardstick, no more than eight or ten inches deep.
A hydrogen spectrophotometer! Could it possibly be?
My heart gave a joyful leap in its cage of ribs.
Not just any hydrogen spectrophotometer, but by all that was sacred, a Beckman model DU if I was not mistaken! I had seen a photograph of one in the pages of Chemical Abstracts & Transactions. This baby, I knew, could see and analyze blood and poisons well into the ultraviolet portion of the spectrum.
And look—just there in an alcove!
That large vertical tube, so like a silver stovepipe, and connected by a black umbilical cable to a squat desk swarming with meters and gauges—was it not an electron microscope?
Good lord! There were barely a handful of these things in the world!
Aunt Felicity had told me outright that Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy was well-endowed financially, and she had been right.
Holy Halifax, had she been right!
I realized with a start I was licking my lips, perhaps even drooling a little, and quickly wiped my mouth dry on my sleeve.
How I envied these girls on the other side of the windowed door. I’d have given half my heart—no, the whole of it—to be among them.
But I didn’t dare intrude. A chemistry class was a sacred session and … well, you don’t barge in on prayers, do you?
I was about to steal away when a voice behind me said, “What are you up to, girl?”
I spun round and nearly tripped over her. I hadn’t heard her coming, and the reason for this was easy enough to spot: The hard rubber tires of her wheelchair had allowed her to float along the floor in utter silence.
I gaped, not knowing what to say. In fact, I’m afraid I stared openly at this sinister apparition.
For a moment, I thought I had bumped into Edward G. Robinson: the unnervingly froggish face and the thick lips turned down at the corners like blankets, the head too big for the squat body, the black menacing eyes under black, arched brows, fixing me with their relentless gaze through thick spectacles … almost as if— “Well, girl? What do you have to say for yourself?”
I couldn’t find words. I could only stand goggling at this curious wheeled creature and her fittings. Polio, I guessed, but I couldn’t be sure. How I wished Dogger was here to suggest a diagnosis.
The chair was equipped with a sort of hinged shelf or desk in the front, like a baby’s high chair, which was cluttered with all the necessities of a life on wheels: paper, ink, pen, letter opener, stamps, a box of paper tissues, another of throat lozenges, matches, a package of cigarettes (Sweet Caporal: the same brand that Fabian smoked), a china cup and saucer, and, incredibly, what I guessed to be a large teapot under a quilted cozy: a Brown Betty, by the size of it.
“Well? Haven’t you a tongue?”
“Yes,” I managed.