As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(61)

I knew at once that it was a mistake.

“Smarten up, you clowns,” Jumbo said. “You’ll get all of us blacked. Fall in at the rear.”

And so it was that Scarlett and I found ourselves at the very fag end of the march, walking stiffly along in silence, shoulder to shoulder, but not knowing what to say to each other.

After a hundred yards of misery, she broke into a sprint and charged ahead until she was lost from view among the other girls of the fourth.

The rector was a frail old lamb with an enormous mop of white hair, who peered down at us from his pulpit like a lookout in the crow’s nest of a ship in a stormy sea. Each of us, he was insisting, was no more than a section of scaffolding being used to help erect the greater glory of God.

I could well picture him, swaying slowly from side to side in his lofty perch, as a bit of scaffolding, but as for me …?

No, thank you!

The very idea made me balk at the proceedings: so much so that when he finally gave the benediction and came creeping down to rejoin us other skeletons of steel, and the hymn was sung, I made a great point of setting myself apart from the proceedings by singing: “Braise my soul the King of Heaven …”

Not that anyone noticed. They never do.

Except Feely, of course. From her perch on the organ bench at St. Tancred’s, my older sister was always able to hear even the slightest improvisation on my part, and would swing round her burning-glass gaze to put me in my place.

I was struck by a sudden pang.

Dear God! I thought. How I miss her!

As if she were here, I fell back into line with the other singers:

“Angels, help us to adore him; ye behold him face to face;

Sun and moon, bow down before him, dwellers all in time and space.”

That was just it, wasn’t it? That’s what we were: dwellers all in time and space. Not old scraps of iron lashed together like a Meccano set by some invisible builder—not on your bloody life!

I looked over at Mrs. Bannerman. What did she think, I wondered, of being labeled a section of scaffolding? She had come within an ace of meeting her end on the most dreaded bit of scaffolding in the whole wide world. A date with the public hangman, I expect, is not one that can be easily forgotten.

And yet, here she was, head held high, caroling away, bright-eyed, and with a slight, mystical smile on her lips, as if science were her Savior.

… As if she knew something that none of the rest of us knew.

Perhaps she did. Perhaps—

In that instant, I understood what I must do. Of course I did: I had planned it all along.

There is a standing and unwritten order in most churches that a worshipper taken ill is not to be interfered with. One minute it’s “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us.” And the next it’s “Action stations!” as we flee, hand over mouth, to the nearest exit.

It is a good rule, and one that I had taken advantage of in the past.

Even before the last notes of the organ had died up among the rafters, I gave Mrs. Bannerman a tight, gulping smile.

“Excuse me,” I managed, edging my way to the end of the pew, and then I fled.

The entire academy was here at church, and would be for at least the next hour. I turned my face toward the east and ran like a scalded rabbit.

I needed to question Collingwood without interference, and this was the time to do it. After the purging I had given her, and a good night’s sleep, she should have recovered sufficiently from the chloral hydrate to be subjected to a jolly good grilling.

As I knew it would be, Miss Bodycote’s was in perfect silence.

There is always something vaguely unsettling about being alone in an empty building that is not your own. It is as if, whenever present inhabitants are away, the phantoms of former owners come shimmering out of the woodwork to protect their territory. Although you cannot see these ghosts, you can certainly feel their unwelcoming presence, and sometimes even smell them: a sort of shivering in the air that tells you that you’re not alone and not wanted.

Like layers of ancient paint, the older ones underlie the newer: fainter, paler perhaps, and yet, for all that, far more ominous.

What sights have been witnessed by these arching ceilings? I wondered. What tragedies have played out in these ancient halls?

My back sprouted goose bumps.

Up the cold, dim stairs I flew and into the infirmary, as if all the demons of hell were gnashing their teeth at my heels.

The gaunt drapes were drawn round Collingwood’s bed.

“Quickly,” I said in a hoarse whisper. “Get up. Get dressed. We’re getting you out of here.”

The curtain rings shrieked on their metal rods as I yanked back the hanging curtain.

Collingwood’s bed was not only empty: It was as neatly and as freshly made as if it had been arranged for a magazine photograph.

“Well, well,” said a voice behind me, and I spun round. Ryerson Rainsmith was closing the clasps of a black leather doctor’s bag.

Of course! Flavia, you idiot!

Doctor Rainsmith, his wife had called him on the ship, and I had not heard because I had not wanted to hear.

It was Rainsmith who had been dosing Collingwood with chloral hydrate. And it was Rainsmith whom Fitzgibbon had been referring to when she said she’d have the doctor look in later. How could I have been such a fool not to see it?