As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(35)

“C7H8N4O2. Its name means Food of the Gods.”

“Is that all?”

I wanted desperately to mention the fact that Emil Fischer’s father had once said, of his son, “The boy is too dumb to be a businessman; he should go to school,” but I didn’t want to push my luck.

“Well,” I admitted, with a sheepish grin, “I have his signed photograph stuck to my dressing table, back home in England. He was a great friend of my late Uncle Tarquin.”

Mrs. Bannerman smiled as she reached out and touched my hand. “You’ll do, Flavia de Luce,” she said.





? ELEVEN ?

SO THERE IT WAS. From now on, I would be taking regular chemistry classes with the fifth and sixth forms. A tricky schedule had been worked out which would allow me, with a certain amount of sprinting, to get from class to class by the skin of my teeth. It was like embarking upon a long railway journey with changes at every station and only seconds to spare between trains.

“You’ll manage,” Mrs. Bannerman had told me, and she was right.

As the days went on, I found myself actually looking forward to the mad dash between classes. In some vague and inexplicable way, it made me feel wanted.

My presence was required here, now, at this very moment, and then, suddenly, it was required somewhere else, and off I would bolt.

Van Arque had begun referring to me as “Lightning de Luce,” but I did not encourage it. “School nicknames stick like shite to a shoe,” Daffy had once told me. “There are old men being loaded into their coffins even as we speak, whose friends, up until yesterday, still called them ‘Icky’ or ‘Toodles’—or ‘Turnips.’ ”

I remembered that Shakespeare had once written “That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,” but even the Great Bill himself must have forgotten the cruel and indelible labels that could be attached by fellow students. I couldn’t help wondering what his own schoolmates had called him. “Quilliam”? “Shakey”?

Or even worse.

This is what I was thinking as I stood on my head in bed, my heels against the wall. I had discovered almost by accident that an inverted posture improved my thought processes because of increased blood circulation to my brain.

The few times I had to myself were those precious hours of darkness between awakening and having to get up: the only hours when I could luxuriate in being alone.

I had not forgotten the body in the chimney. It was simply that there had been no time to think about its blackened bones and clutching fingers, at least until now.

Somewhere in the recesses of my brain, a memory was shaken loose and fell with a “clunk!” into my consciousness.

The metal medallion! I had taken it from the corpse’s hand and shoved it into my pocket.

I let my legs fall and flipped out of bed onto the floor. I reached carefully into the right jacket pocket of my school uniform, which I had left hanging—against the rules—on the back of a chair. Thank heavens Miss Fawlthorne was not here to see it.

The pocket was empty. I checked the other.

Nothing.

But wait! When the body had come tumbling out of the chimney, I was wearing the outfit in which I arrived in Canada: skirt, blouse, and jumper.

It was hanging in the cupboard.

I held my breath as I dipped my hand into the folds of my former clothing.

Thank heavens!

In an instant the little object was resting tightly in the palm of my hand.

Almost without thinking, I switched on the forbidden light. When I realized what I had done, I listened intently, putting my near-supernatural hearing to the utmost test. But the house was quiet as a country crypt. Not a creature was stirring, and so forth.

Except me.

In my hand was an object no bigger than the first joint of my thumb.

A magnifying lens would have been a godsend, but alas, alas!, I was lensless. Perhaps I could improvise with a pinhole punched in a piece of paper …

But wait! I’d almost forgotten. Hadn’t Aunt Felicity given me that utility crucifix? A veritable Swiss Army knife of prayer? The very tool I needed—and it was hanging round my neck!

As I reached for it, I offered up a prayer of thanks to Saint Jerome, the patron saint of spectacles.

I flicked out the pivoted glass and examined the object I was now holding gingerly between thumb and forefinger. I knew at once from its tarnished surface that it would require special handling. It would have to wait until I was alone in the chemistry lab and able to analyze it at my leisure.

The thing had a face, though—that much I could tell. And wings!

Yes—it looked very much like a wrapped body. It brought to mind the famous statue we had seen at St. Paul’s, of John Donne, its onetime dean, who was believed to have posed for it in his shroud on his deathbed. It was also said to be the only one of the cathedral’s statues that had survived the Great Fire of 1666. Even now, after nearly three hundred years, some of the soot smudges were still visible.

And like poor Donne’s effigy, this little winged figure had been subjected to heat.

Coincidence?

I surely hoped not.

I was so intent upon peering through the magnifying glass that I did not hear the door open. I had forgotten to lock the blasted thing.

I did not know Miss Fawlthorne was there until she spoke.

“What is the meaning of this?”