As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(52)

Had Fitzgibbon administered a fresh dose of the stuff under my very nose? Had she roused Collingwood enough to swallow a capsule or a spoonful of syrup, or, worse, to administer an injection by hypodermic needle?

I hadn’t heard anything—but that would argue for the syringe, wouldn’t it?

Why were they keeping this child asleep? Was it to guard her own sanity, or was there a far more sinister reason? Had she, for instance, seen too much? Was it because she had been caught making notes on the missing girls?

Collingwood fell back against the pillows, her face ghastly, her breathing only slowly returning to normal.

Whoops-a-daisy!

There was more where that came from. I barely had time to get the bowl into position when she was at it again.

“Sorry,” she wheezed, gasping horribly.

A good sign—an excellent sign, in fact. Anyone who could apologize while puking still possessed a brain able to function at the highest levels of decency.

I patted her on the back.

“More?” I asked, solicitously.

She shook her head.

“Good!” I said, and I meant it.

I went to the window, opened it, and emptied the kidney dish outside, apologizing silently to the groundskeepers as I did so. I rinsed out the bowl at the sink and replaced it in the medical cupboard, which I locked, and returned the key to its mate.

“Stay quiet,” I told her as I changed back into my school uniform. “Try to get some decent rest. But do me a favor: I wasn’t here. You haven’t seen me. You woke up, threw up, and suddenly you were feeling much better, understand? Don’t let them give you any more medicine. If they try to, scream bloody murder—and keep it up: I shall hear you. All right?”

Her eyes were upon mine, huge now.

She nodded, and suddenly the tears welled up. I turned away. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

I was almost at the door when she called out to me:

“Flavia …”

I turned.

“The dead person in the chimney,” she said, “… the flag … wrapped in the flag. I know her.”





? SEVENTEEN ?

THERE IS AN ELECTRIC silence that comes with shock: a silence which is intolerable yet which, in spite of that, you are powerless to break. I stood staring at Collingwood and she at me for what seemed like an eternity of eternities.

I walked slowly back across the infirmary, placing one foot in front of the other, plod, plod, plodding toward her like some relentless zombie.

“Tell me,” I said, perhaps too harshly, because Collingwood burst immediately into tears.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, “I simply can’t,” and in an instant I was catapulted back to that moment she and the corpse had come tumbling out of the chimney. How shockingly I had treated her!

“Put a cork in it,” I had told her, and pointed out that she was drooling, and all the while the body had been lying there before us, decapitated on the floor.

And who had harvested all the sympathy? “Poor, dear, lonely, unhappy Flavia de Luce,” as Miss Fawlthorne had said, while poor, dear, lonely, unhappy Collingwood had been drugged and tossed into captivity.

Not only did it not make sense, it was rapidly becoming a nightmare.

By the time I reached Collingwood’s side I was feeling more dreadful than I ever should have thought possible.

“Tell me anyway,” I said, gripping her hands in both of mine, and now the two of us were quaking with tears.

“I can’t,” she whispered, squeezing tightly, and I saw in her eyes that she was telling the truth. In telling me that the dead body was someone she knew, she had already reached her limit. It had cost her dearly and there was, at least for the time being, nothing else to share.

What terrible kind of fear could so effectively silence the girl? Was the dead body an example of what happened to those who talked?

“What if I ask you questions?” I said, suddenly inspired. “That way you won’t be telling, technically.”

She shook her head and I knew that I was going to have to figure it out myself.

The sound of cheering girls in the distance indicated that the day’s hockey matches had come to a close. If I were to get back to my room unnoticed, I’d better be on my way.

There’s no better cover than a milling gang of rowdy winners.

I made my way back to Edith Cavell and locked myself in. I was the fox gone to earth, and if they wanted me, they could jolly well dig me out.

I got out my William Palmer notebook, and by the simple method of turning it upside down and beginning at the back, created a new one.

The Characters in the Case, I wrote at the top of the first page, and underlined it.

I would list them alphabetically, since it was more objective.





STUDENTS





Bowles, June (Jumbo): Senior girl. Seems an all-right type. Dabbles in the occult.

Brazenose major (Clarissa): Has been missing since the night of the Beaux Arts Ball two years ago—in 1949.

Brazenose minor (Mary Jane): Frightened by the message of the Ouija board. Queries: (a) Why would she believe that the board was spelling out a message from the missing Le Marchand? (b) Was she convinced that the message “One of you knows my killer” was coming instead from her missing sister?

Collingwood, Patricia Anne: Impetuous. Keeps notes on the missing girls. Claims to have known the body in the chimney. She is now too terrified to speak. Who is keeping her drugged? And why? Murky waters here.