As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(34)

So it couldn’t be Mr. Tugg, the handyman, for obvious reasons.

Kennedy, perhaps, or Kronk … or Kopplestone.

But it was useless to speculate.

At any rate, I knew that if I pinched Marge’s key, or Sal’s, it would be missed before the end of the day, while with any luck, the third one might just belong to someone who took it only when needed, and even then, only occasionally.

It was a risk I would have to run.

“No hankies,” Marge said suddenly at my elbow, startling me. “Periwinkle blue or otherwise. So buzz off.”

Buzz off?

It was obvious that whatever milk of human kindness had flowed briefly in the woman’s veins had evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.

The more I dealt with adults, the less I wanted to be one.

“Thank you anyway,” I said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. And now, I mustn’t keep you from your nightshirts and knickers.”

And I marched out the door with my head held high.

“Yoo-hoo! Flavia,” a voice called. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

It was Van Arque, of course. She was sitting like Humpty Dumpty on the short stone wall that shielded the wash yard from the hockey field, kicking her heels.

“Ah!” I said. “The ubiquitous Van Arque.”

“Ubiquitous” was another word I had picked up from my sister Daffy, and it meant someone who was always everywhere, and not in a nice way, either.

“You’d better hustle your bustle,” she said, vaulting down from her perch and glancing at an imaginary wristwatch. “Mrs. Bannerman wants to see you.”

By the time I reached the chemistry laboratory, my heart was pounding like a pile driver. What could the notorious Mrs. Bannerman want with me?

“Come in, Flavia,” she called as I hesitated at the door, trying to catch my breath.

Did she possess some kind of supernatural antennae with which she had detected my presence?

I shuffled into the lab, doing my darnedest not to gape at the wonderful equipment with which the room was filled. The electron microscope and the hydrogen spectrophotometer lurked in my peripheral vision like great dark gods that must not, on any account, be looked at—not even glanced at—directly.

“Come in, Flavia,” she repeated, patting the seat of a tall lab stool.

I climbed up onto it and tried to settle myself. Mrs. Bannerman remained standing.

“Well, what do you make of us so far?” she asked.

I couldn’t think of an answer, so I shrugged.

“It’s like that, is it?” She laughed.

In the presence of this poisoner—yes, I’m afraid that’s the way I thought of her, acquitted or not—I had been struck dumb. Words died in my throat as if they had been steeped in belladonna and perished in my craw.

It was mortifying. I had never in my life, so far as I could remember, been stuck for words. It was as unlikely as if the Atlantic was stuck for water. And yet—

Mrs. Bannerman threw out a lifeline. “I’ve had a little talk with Miss Fawlthorne,” she said, “and we have come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to admit you to chemistry classes.”

What!

“In spite of the fact that you are, technically, only a fourth-former.”

Were my ears deceiving me? Chemistry classes, had she said?

I must have looked like a haddock, my mouth opening and closing with nothing coming out but air.

“But—” she went on.

Crikey! There’s always a “but,” isn’t there? As sure as there’s bones in a blowfish breakfast.

“But—your admission will depend on your ability to pass a proficiency test. Miss Fawlthorne tells me that she has already given you a written assignment, the result of which she has not yet evaluated. She has left it to me to administer the oral component.”

I gulped. Coming from someone with Mrs. Bannerman’s history, these were strong—perhaps even deadly—words.

“Are you ready?” she asked brightly.

I nodded, still stricken for words.

“Very well,” she said, “now, then—”

I held my breath. In the great silence that followed, I could hear the wheels of the universe turning.

“Emil Fischer,” she said suddenly. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Professor of chemistry at Erlangen, Würzberg, and Berlin,” I blurted. “He won the Nobel Prize in 1902.”

“And?”

“He was a genius! He demonstrated that the rosaniline dyes were derived from triphenylmethane.”

“Yes?”

“He was the first to work out the formula for caffeine and uric acid. He synthesized fructose and glucose, and demonstrated the way in which the formulae of the stereo-isomeric glucoses could be deduced, which confirmed independently van’t Hoff’s theory of the asymmetric carbon atom, and opened the way to a study of fermentation: decomposition!”

“Go on.”

Go on? I was just getting started.

“He also discovered how the chemical reactions of proteins worked in living organisms, and how caffeine, xanthine, hypoxanthine, guanine, uric acid, and theobromine all shared the same nitrogenous parent substance, purine.”

“Theobromine?”