As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(55)

“Here you are, dear,” the woman said, at my elbow again. She had removed the bottle cap, and tiny tendrils of carbon dioxide gas drifted lazily up into the air.

I took an enormous swig, smiled, handed her a coin, and turned my back to her.

“Hello?” a voice said at the other end of the line. “Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. Whom were you calling, please?”

It was Fitzgibbon: There was no doubt about it.

I almost choked on my drink. Gases were forcing themselves up through my vocal cords as I spoke, giving my voice an eerie sound, as if the Grim Reaper himself were belching out the name of his intended victim.

“June Bowles,” I gargled in my best gaga grandmother voice. “Miss June Bowles.”

There was an unnerving silence, and then Fitzgibbon said, “Please stay on the line while we locate her.”

“Thank you,” I gurgled.

Jumbo must have been up the Zambezi, judging by the amount of time it took to fetch her, but in reality, it was probably no more than two or three minutes.

The shopkeeper had retreated behind her counter and picked up an enormous clod of knitting at which she dug away like a woman possessed. Every couple of stitches she would look up at me with a reassuring smile and I would grin soppily back.

“Hello?” Jumbo’s voice said, and I pressed the receiver tightly against my ear and turned away.

“It’s de Luce,” I whispered. “Flavia. I need your advice.”

I had cannily concocted my message as I walked from Miss Bodycote’s, and chosen my words carefully. There is no one, anywhere, on the planet who can refuse a request for advice, and I had meant to take full advantage of that fact.

“Of course,” she said instantly, as I knew she would. “You’re calling from the grocer’s on the Danforth, right? Where shall I meet you?”

“In my room—in Edith Cavell. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“Roger Wilco,” Jumbo said brightly. “It’s simply too, too tantalizing. I can hardly wait.”

I gently replaced the receiver.

“You’re a long way from home by the sound of you,” the woman said. “England, isn’t it?”

I nodded, feeling somehow guilty and idiotic at the same time.

“One of Miss Bodycote’s, I’m guessing,” she said. “We get a few of you in from time to time wanting this and that. What’s your name, dear? It’s always nice to know your regular customers.”

“Flavia,” I said.

“Is that it, then? Just the Flavia? Couldn’t afford a surname?”

“De Luce,” I muttered. “Flavia de Luce.”

The woman looked at me as if I were a phantom.

“De Luce, did you say?” Her eyes widened, then narrowed, the way they do when people are putting two and two together. It was obvious that she had known Harriet, but I didn’t want to hear it. I was still too raw and unprepared to be constantly compared with my late mother—besides the fact that I might have compromised myself by giving away personal information to a complete stranger.

I’m afraid I did something incredibly rude: I put down the bottle of Orange Crush and bolted.

I had taken no more than two or three steps when I saw Miss Fawlthorne walking briskly toward me. Because her attention was taken by a streetcar driver who was using a long pole to reconnect the car to the overhead electrical lines, she had not yet spotted me.

I dodged into the dim depths of an ironmonger’s next door, and watched from among the ladders and hanging hoses as the head came closer.

“Miss! Oh, miss!” It was the shopkeeper from next door.

“You’ve walked off without your change!”

She had followed me into the ironmonger’s and was beside me in an instant, prying my hand open and pressing into it two coins.

Miss Fawlthorne, thinking at first it was she who was being hailed, came to an abrupt stop in the street. After glancing quickly round in all directions, she had let her gaze follow the grocer and then fall, alas! upon me.

She paced slowly and sarcastically toward me.

“Well?” she asked, her voice hanging as coldly in the air as the Northern Lights.

“Oh, Miss Fawlthorne!” I said. “I’m so happy to see you. I’m feeling ever so much better now, and I thought that perhaps we could continue our discussions. Actually, I had just set out to see if I could find you walking in the cemetery. I’m sorry if I disappointed Miss Fitzgibbon, but fresh air was what I needed more than anything.”

I had said too much. I knew perfectly well that the most effective lies are the briefest.

Miss Fawlthorne looked down at me as if through a microscope, and the longer she looked, the smaller I felt.

“I’m afraid I have an appointment,” she said, glancing suddenly and nervously about.

I let my eyes flicker to where hers had been. A line of cars had stopped behind the stricken streetcar and behind the wheel of one of them was a familiar face.

It was Ryerson Rainsmith. I restrained myself from waving.

“All right,” I said, as if I hadn’t seen him. “I shan’t keep you. I’d better get back. William Palmer and all that.”

And off I marched, pausing to kick a couple of tin bottle caps off the curb and into the road with elaborate nonchalance, as if I hadn’t a care in the world.