As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(65)

I saw at once that Kelly was subject to rips and grass stains, and once each to “tar” and “lock oil.”

I was standing there with the book in my hand when, from the corner of my eye, I caught a sudden movement.

I whipped round and found myself face-to-face with a cliff of hulking flesh. Where on earth had he come from? I had locked the door behind me when I came in, and the only other access to the laundry was by way of a pair of steel doors at the back which, as I could plainly see, were locked and barred.

He must have been here all along! The very thought of it made my toes curl.

“What are you up to?” he demanded in a wood-rasp voice.

The smell of alcohol almost bowled me over.

It didn’t take the brains of a Sherlock Holmes to deduce that this bruiser had been drinking behind the boilers. His red and crusted eyes told the rest of the tale: Here was a man who made the most of a quiet Sunday to have a nip and a nap. There were probably hundreds like him the world over.

“I found the door unlocked,” I said, with just a trace of recrimination in my voice, a trick I had learned from Feely. I waved the laundry book at him.

“I was just looking to see if Miss Fawlthorne’s number is listed. I intended to ring her up and then stand guard until she can come and secure the place. What I mean is that I’ve just rung her up, and I’m waiting for her to arrive.”

The fact that it was Sunday and that Miss Fawlthorne and her entire scurvy crew and officers were away at church hardly mattered to this boozy specimen—or at least I hoped it didn’t.

Alcohol is impervious to logic, my late Uncle Tarquin had written in one of his laboratory notebooks, though whether this insight was from personal experience, a specific chemical observation, or simply a bit of stray philosophy I had never been able to decide.

“No, don’t do that!” the man snarled, wrenching the book from my hands. “I’m in charge here. If the dooorss’s open—” He fumbled as if he couldn’t think of the next word. “S’because I opened it, see?”

His vaporous breath trembled in the air, making the laundry seem more than ever like Dante’s Inferno. I found myself waiting for lava to come bubbling from his mouth.

Here you are, Flavia, locked in a soundproof stone building with an angry, inebriated stranger who’s three times your size and weight: a bruiser who, with one fist, could reduce you to a splatter of jam on the floorboards. There’s no one nearby to rescue you. You’re on your own—it’s brains against brawn.

“You must be Mr. Kelly,” I said, sticking out a hand.

The Human Mountain struggled to focus, edging his feet farther apart for better balance, his stale eyes staring.

“Miss Fawlthorne has often spoken so well of you,” I added, “that I feel as if we’ve already met.”

And then, incredibly, a great oily ham of a hand came forward and seized mine. “How do you do, miss. Edward Kelly is my name.”

A wave of something swept over me, and I had a sudden vision of this pathetic human being as a boy, standing defenseless before some schoolmaster or schoolmistress, now long dead.

“Say ‘How do you do,’ Edward.”

He shuffled his feet, then and now, and I knew for a fact that those words had never, ever, since that long-ago day, escaped from his lips.

“How do you do?” he asked again, as if I hadn’t heard, the words stilted and awkward—not at home in his slack mouth.

“Very well, thank you, Mr. Kelly,” I said, retrieving my hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Was I pushing my luck? Perhaps, but his reaction told me I had chosen precisely the right words.

“Likewise,” he said, reverting to some ancient remembered formula. “Likewise indeed.”

Was he sobering a little, or was I imagining it?

“Well, then,” I said, taking charge, “I can see there’s no need for Miss Fawlthorne to be bothered. I expect she’s already on her way, so I’ll just run along and head her off at the pass. She’ll be relieved to hear everything’s under control.”

“Head off at the pass” was a phrase I had heard in the cinema films, often used by Hopalong Cassidy or Randolph Scott or Roy Rogers, which seemed somehow more appropriate here in North America than it did back home in Merrie England, where cowboy chitchat was as scarce as hens’ dentures.

I stepped to the door, Kelly tracking me with his sad eyes.

“A very great pleasure,” I added, partly for his sake and partly for my own.

My exit was as serene and duchesslike as I could manage, and it occurred to me that this leaving people standing was becoming a habit: first the Rainsmiths and now Edward Kelly. If I kept it up, the whole planet would soon be peopled with people frozen stiff on the spot by my departures.

A shout in the distance and the sound of girls laughing told me that the academy had returned from church. The aged rector had either run out of energy or ideas, or passed away in the pulpit.

I drifted toward the hockey field, wanting more than anything to be alone. It was a lovely autumn day, the sun was warm, and I still needed somewhere to think without being interrupted.

I sank down onto my knees in the soft grass, planted my hands behind me, and fell back on them, turning my face upward toward the sky like a sunflower. No one would disturb me in such a posture, which clearly indicated someone communing privately with Nature.