As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(68)

I could not entirely agree with dear, dead old John Donne. I had never felt more like an island in my life.

I was the clod washed away by the sea.

I got up from the grass, my lip trembling, and began to walk—anywhere—away from the school.

Quite frankly, I was sick and tired of being held hostage by my emotions. I needed to take a stand with my feet rooted firmly in science, rather than in the dribblings of some lurking, self-important gland. At bottom, when you got right down to it, it was all chemistry, and chemistry should be miraculous, not miserable.

I needed to rededicate myself: to follow my brain instead of my tear ducts, and to stick to cold logic, no matter what. “Come hell or hard water,” as Mrs. Mullet had once said.

I couldn’t help smiling at the thought, and a minute or so later, everything was more or less tickety-boo. It was a kind of magic I didn’t yet fully understand.

By this time I had reached the far boundary of the hockey field which was marked, for the most part, by the walls and fences of adjoining properties. In the middle of a tall hedge, a small wicket gate led to parts unknown. I opened it and squeezed myself through, onto a narrow path which passed between two tall, ragged, and moldy cedar hedges. I turned my body and edged along sideways in crab fashion to avoid being brushed by the dank, unpleasant foliage, which drooped like the ostrich feather wands of the mutes at a Victorian funeral. It smelled like a place in which cats congregated.

At its far end, the path opened out into a paved and boarded area which must, at least in winter, have been flooded and used as an outdoor skating rink. It might once have been a row of tennis courts, but their tarmac was now a cracked wilderness pierced with tufts of wild grass and weeds.

“Watch yourself!”

A metallic roaring behind me caused me to flinch—to leap aside, in fact—just as a compact cannonball appeared: a uniformed figure on roller skates, its eyes hidden behind ancient black sun goggles and a yo-yo shooting wildly out on a string from one hand.

Nevertheless, I recognized her at once. It was Gremly.

“Sorry!” she shouted, barely missing me as she shot past and rocketed into a sharp right-hand turn, her legs crossing over like scissors, as if she had been born on skates.

“Wait!” I shouted, but she didn’t hear me. She roared away, down the length of the old rink, skates and yo-yo flying, across the width, along the far side and into the final turn before passing me again.

“Two hundred and twenty yards!” she shouted as she blazed past without giving me a chance to say a word.

Round she went again, clockwise, a wound-up ball of pure energy completely compressed within her stunted frame.

I waited for the next approach.

“Mrs. Rainsmith?” I called out, trying to put the question mark into my voice as she flew past. Down the long side she raced, across the backstretch, and here she came again.

“Bad medicine!” she shouted back from inside a whirlwind of noise.

On the following lap, I kept quiet and left it to her.

“Pity. First one was nicer.”

And she was gone again.

“First what?” I called out into the ferocious roar of racing skates.

I had to wait another complete round for her reply.

“First wife. Francesca. Vanished.”

Vanished? Like Brazenose? Like Le Marchand? Like Wentworth?

It seemed scarcely credible. Was Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy the last stop on the road to oblivion?

I held up my arm, bent at the elbow, as a signal to stop. But Gremly ignored it.

“Can’t,” she panted as she came round again. “Hundred penalty laps before lunch.”

Again I waited patiently until she came round once more.

“Belching during the sermon,” she bellowed as she skated by, her words followed by a whinnying horse-laugh that trailed behind her in the air like a long, flapping scarf.

The sheer defiance of it.

And it was that, I think, more than anything, which made me decide on the spot to confront Miss Fawlthorne.

After all, what could they do to me?

Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy was, on a Sunday afternoon, like one of those vast Victorian boneyards such as Highgate Cemetery in London, minus, of course, the tombstones. An unnatural hush hung over the place like a black pall, as if the slightest sound would be a mortal sin. Even the walls and floors appeared forbidding, as if they, too, wanted to be left alone—as if I were an intruder.

I walked slowly along the Old Girls’ Gallery, giving no more than a glance to most of the black-edged portraits from the corner of my eye. A more frank stare seemed sacrilege.

But here was Harriet in her funereal frame. I stopped for a moment, then slowly touched my fingers to my lips and transferred them to hers.

Was she pleased?

I couldn’t tell. That was the trouble with being the daughter of a dead woman.

I tore my eyes away and moved on.

A little farther along, toward the end of the gallery—and I hadn’t noticed this before—was Brazenose major: Clarissa. I knew this only because her name was engraved, as were all the others, on a small silver plate at the bottom of the frame.

She bore only a passing resemblance to her younger sister. You might have missed it if you weren’t looking for it.

I sucked in my breath.

Clarissa was wearing the Michael Award round her neck: that same silver archangel with its upraised wings which was snuggled at this very moment in my pocket.