As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(46)

And so the deal was sealed.

“Now, then,” I said. “About Clarissa Brazenose—when did you see her last? Apart from last night, I mean.”

“It was the night of the Beaux Arts Ball, so it must have been June, the year before last. I’m quite sure of that because I was wearing my Cinderella dress with short sleeves and long gloves. I remember thinking how odd I must look creeping round the hockey pitch in that getup. Not that many people would see me, of course—not with the ball going on, and not with it being after dark. It must have been well after nine: twenty past, perhaps.”

“The Beaux Arts Ball?” I asked.

“It’s a tradition. Everyone comes to it. Faculty, staff, students, the board of guardians. Even some of the parents come as chaperones. They hand out prizes for deportment and stuff like that. I got one for washing and ironing.”

“You’re joking.”

“No, I’m not. I’ll show it to you some time if you don’t believe me. It’s a little silver-plated mangle.”

“Thank you, but no,” I said. “I’ll take your word for it. Do you mean you saw Brazenose at the same spot last night as you did two years ago, just before she vanished?”

Scarlett nodded, biting her lower lip.

“But listen—why would Brazenose be in the laundry after dark? Two years ago, I mean. Why wasn’t she at the ball?”

Scarlett shrugged. “Brazenose was a sixth-former and she’d been here for donkey’s. She must have been sixteen. She could pretty well do as she liked as long as she didn’t attract too much attention.”

“Hmm,” I said, my mind milling the possibilities. One would not ordinarily go to a laundry after dark. If one did, it would almost certainly be to pick up some piece of clothing that had been forgotten: an item that had not been retrieved during normal working hours; one that had been suddenly, and perhaps unexpectedly, required. Perhaps something had happened that made Brazenose want to run away.

But would a girl of sixteen, who had been at the school for ages, be likely to do that? Not unless something unthinkable had happened.

Perhaps she had gone to the laundry, not to pick something up, but to drop something off. But what could be so urgent that she couldn’t leave it in her room until the next day?

“What day of the week was the ball held?” I asked.

“Saturday. It’s always on a Saturday.”

The laundry would almost certainly have been locked up for the weekend, which made it even more strange. Could it be that Brazenose had crept off from the Beaux Arts Ball to meet someone?

And why the laundry? Why not the common room—or the great hall, or any of the dozens of other places where two could talk without fear of interruption?

“Did Brazenose have any particular friends?” I asked.

“No,” Scarlett said. “She was rotten popular. She played badminton, squash, and tennis. She bicycled, knitted, sewed, sketched, and painted with watercolors. She was a member of the drama club and the debating society, and she was the editor of The New Broom—that’s our school newspaper.”

Was I detecting a note of resentment in Scarlett’s words? And I couldn’t help but notice her repeated use of the past tense. But perhaps that was unavoidable when referring to someone who hadn’t been seen for more than two years.

“How did you feel about her?” I asked. Daffy would have been proud of me. It was the kind of bear-trap question that her beloved Sigmund Freud would have asked.

“She was all right, I suppose,” Scarlett said. “She made the rest of us look bad, though.”

And then she added, “In much the same way, I expect, that—”

But she cut herself off short.

“Yes?”

“Oh, nothing.”

I licked the tip of my mental pencil and made a note: Query: Brazenose resented for brains in general? Harriet and Flavia ditto?

“And what do you believe happened to her?” I asked. A sudden probe without warning.

Again I thought how remarkably time can sometimes slow to a crawl: the wings of a bird in midair slowed to the speed of breakers on a beach; an arrow suspended in flight, halfway to the bull’s-eye.

My mind flew back to the night of my arrival; to the flag-wrapped body tumbling out of the fireplace. To the skull detaching itself and rolling to a grisly halt at my feet.

Had Collingwood recognized what was left of the face? It seemed unlikely, given the condition of the corpse. But if she had … let’s just say she had …

Had she told anyone?

We had still not heard, either from Inspector Gravenhurst or from the news reports, that the body had been identified. With all the radios that blared in dormitories in the early morning we could scarcely have missed it. Which meant either that the police were withholding the information because they were having difficulty getting in touch with next-of-kin, or that they didn’t know.

And, come to think of it, I hadn’t laid eyes on Collingwood since that horrific—but utterly fascinating—night.

All of this raced through my mind as I waited for Scarlett to answer.

She seemed to be having difficulty making her mouth move.

“I believe …” she said at last, her eyes as large and damp as peeled grapes, “I believe she—”

THWEE! THWEE! THWEE!