As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(54)

Ordinary angels, I knew, all the way down to the seraphim and frankly incredible cherubim, had fluffy swans-down wings that sprouted from the shoulders: capable enough for domestic flight but nowhere near as powerful as the eagle wings of their superiors, the archangels.

This scorched relic, which I held in the palm of my now suddenly shaking hand, had belonged to one of the missing girls: Le Marchand, Wentworth, or Clarissa Brazenose.

Which of them had worn a Michael round her neck? Which had been presented with a medallion?

It would be child’s play to find out. I would pry it out of Jumbo, who, as head girl, would be most likely to know. But first I would need to catch her alone.

Fitzgibbon had not yet noticed I was missing from the infirmary—at least I didn’t think she had. There had been no hue and cry, no alarms, and no search parties. No one had even bothered to come to Edith Cavell in search of poor, sick, fevered Flavia. That, in itself, was annoying, in a way.

It was not easy trying to cut Jumbo from the herd (I’m quite proud of that little jest) particularly while keeping a low profile myself. I watched for a while from the window, hoping to catch her coming from or going to the hockey field, but no such luck.

I crept to the top of the stairwell, waiting to hear the sound of her voice. I would call out to her and then dart back into my room. It was not a perfect solution, but it might be the only one.

After an hour I was growing desperate. “Desperate”—yes, that was the word. And what was the saying? “ ‘Desperate positions require desperate measures,’ as the cardinal said to the chorus girl.” Daffy had once thrown this out casually, adding that it was in Dickens and that it was over my head.

It wasn’t, of course. It is a fairly well-known fact that most princes of the church have a love of theater, and it was no great stretch of the imagination to see that His Eminence may well have been offering advice from his own experience on the wearing of rich costume.

At any rate, desperate solutions were called for.

After listening at the door until there was a momentary lull in the voices outside, I crept from my room and down the narrow back stairs.

At the far end of the downstairs hall, in the shadows beside the ancient elevator, and almost at the rear of the building, was a black wall-mounted telephone which, I had been told, was to be used only in family emergencies. Like its counterpart at Buckshaw, there was something ominous about the instrument.

In the gloom, I peered at the grubby yellowed card which was mounted behind a circle of transparent material: GArden 5047.

I repeated it to myself several times as I slipped out the back door. It was only a jig and a jog to the laundry, and behind it, to the goldfish pool. At this hour, there were no smokers making use of the seclusion, so that I had the place to myself.

I sat on the stone rim as I had done before, but my reach was not long enough. I took off my shoes, peeled off my stockings, and waded in.

The water was cold—colder than I should have expected—but it was, after all, October. A couple of sluggish fish shimmied away to shelter in a cluster of stones and plants.

I plunged my arm elbow-deep into the slimy-feeling water, shivering at the thought of its chemical constituency. Due to refraction, it was not easy to judge the exact position of objects on the bottom, but with a bit of fishing I came up with a dripping coin which had a beaver on the back and the head of the king on the front. Five cents.

I dipped again … and again … resulting in a small silver coin with a sailing ship, and a larger one with a creature that I took to be a moose. Ten cents and twenty-five cents, respectively. I gathered a couple more for safety’s sake, put on my stockings and shoes, and made my way furtively round the laundry and through the passageway to the street.

Minutes later, coins in hand, I was marching along the Danforth, headed toward the grocer’s shop, where I had spotted a coin-operated telephone on our walk to the graveyard.

“Back again, dear?” the shopkeeper said. “Come to sing me another song, have you?”

I smiled a pale smile, picked up the handset, and dropped a coin into the slot. It fell through with an odd ching sound.

In a flash, the woman was at my elbow.

“Wrong coin,” she said, prying open my fingers and selecting another, which she dropped into the slot.

A raw buzzing noise came from the earpiece.

“That’s it, dear,” she said. “Dial the number. Local call, I hope?”

I grinned, nodded, and stuck my forefinger into the round holes of the dial. It was the first time I had used a do-it-yourself telephone. At home, we had lifted the receiver, tapped the cradle to get the operator’s attention, and given her our instructions.

With my tongue protruding from my lips, I dialed the number, GArden 5047, and after a maddening series of clicks and clacks, a robotic burr-ing began. It must have been the sound of the phone ringing at Miss Bodycote’s.

The shopkeeper was still at my elbow, looking at me with bright, birdlike eyes.

“Could I have a bottle of Orange Crush?” I pleaded, running my spare forefinger round my collar. “I’m feeling rather faint.”

I could imagine the telephone ringing in the hall at the academy, unheard, perhaps, in the noise and bustle of the place.

Burrr … Burrr … Burrr … Burrr: single, long-spaced rings, quite unlike the brisk, demanding double ring at home.

Come on! I wanted to shout. Pick up the blasted thing!