As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(38)

Suddenly the world was my oyster—even if it was a dead one.

I threw my hands up into the air and launched myself into a series of exuberant triple cartwheels.

“Yaroo!” I shouted.

When I landed on my feet, I found myself face-to-face with Miss Fawlthorne.

“Most impressive,” she said. “But not ladylike, particularly.”

Joy turned to terror. My heart felt squeezed in an iron fist.

I needed to get the upper hand, even if only for a few moments before this woman killed me and shoveled me into a shallow grave. Who would ever think to look in a cemetery for a missing girl? She had planned this to perfection.

But how could she be sure that I would come to this place?

“You followed me,” I said.

“Of course I did.” She smiled.

“But I didn’t see you.”

“Of course you didn’t. That is because you failed to look in the right place.”

My face must have been as blank as the side of a barn.

“Most people who suspect they are being followed look behind themselves. Consequently, the superior tracker is always ahead of her quarry. Now, then, have you done as you were instructed? Have you reflected upon your insubordination?”

“No,” I said. “So you might as well go ahead and kill me.”

And I might as well die defiant, I thought.

“Kill you?” she said, throwing back her head, laughing with delight and showing, for the first time, a complete set of small but perfect teeth. “Why on earth should I want to kill you?”

I shrugged. It was always better to let the killer do all the talking. In that way, you were able to gain much more information than you gave up.

“Let me tell you something, Flavia. You’re right about one thing. I might have killed you just then. At least, I might have wanted to. But only if you had answered yes: only if you tried to convince me that you had reflected upon your disobedience. Only if you had spouted off some meaningless twaddle about how sorry you were; only if you had promised improvement.

“But you did not. You stood firm. You proved that you are indeed the person I believed you to be. You are, indeed, your mother’s daughter.”

It was more words than I had heard her say since we met; it was, in a way, as if the Sphinx had spoken.

A crow gave a rude “Caw!” as it landed in one of the trees, and regarded us in its hunchbacked way from the branch. How did we appear to a bird? I wondered. Two small, insignificant figures standing in a field of stones, I expect, and nothing more. I picked up a pebble and tossed it. The bird turned its back.

“Are you not at all curious about my reason for following you?” Miss Fawlthorne asked.

I shrugged again, but then thought better of it and said, “Yes.”

“It is a simple one,” she said. “It is because I wanted to be alone with you.”

Again, a small flame of fear flickered up in my mind.

“But not for any reason you may think. The truth is that today, here and now, in this churchyard, your real training begins in earnest. You must speak of it to no one. You will appear to be, for all intents and purposes, just another schoolgirl—and a rather dull one, at that.”

She paused to let her words sink in, fixing me with the same bright eye as the crow had done.

“Come over here,” she said strolling across the graveyard and beckoning me to follow. She pointed to a rather plain and unremarkable tombstone.

“ ‘Cornelia Corwin, 1907–1944,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ You’d think she was some wealthy family’s chambermaid, wouldn’t you—or perhaps a nanny? But she wasn’t. She was one of us. Without Cornelia Corwin there would have been no successful evacuation of Dunkirk. Three hundred thousand men would have perished in vain.”

She bent over and gently brushed away a dead leaf that had settled on the tombstone. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” I said, looking her straight in the eye.

“Excellent,” she said. “We must understand each other perfectly. There must be no barrier to communications between us. Now, then—”

As she spoke, she began to stroll among the tombstones and I fell into lockstep beside her.

“Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy is a house divided not by dissent, but by choice. The day girls know nothing of what goes on with the boarders such as yourself.”

“The day girls are a front, you mean,” I said.

“Flavia, you simply amaze me.”

I glanced up at her proudly.

“You will be taught everything you need to know, but you will be taught it discreetly. You will be trained in the arts of genteel mayhem. Oh, don’t look at me like that. The vegetable scraper, the cheese grater, and the corkscrew are often overlooked as effective means of disposing of an adversary, you know—even the pickle fork, in a pinch.”

Was she teasing me?

“But the war has been over for ages,” I said.

“Precisely so. You will discover that certain skills become even more essential in peacetime.”

She saw at once the look of horror on my face.

“At Miss Bodycote’s,” she went on, “we encourage our girls in all aspects.”

“But—” I said.