As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(78)

“Who told you this?” Marge demanded. “Was it that Scroop, from the Star?”

“As a matter of fact, it was,” I said, gilding the lily a little.

“Don’t you have nothing to do with him,” Sal said.

“Why not?” I asked, all wide-eyed and innocent.

“He’s always nosing around, isn’t he, Marge? A regular busybody. Miss Fawlthorne said not to breathe a word to him. If he tries to ask you questions, send him packing. That’s what Miss Fawlthorne said.”

“Send him to her is what she said,” Marge corrected. “But he’s never been back, not so far as I know.”

“Mrs. Rainsmith,” I said, getting back on the track. “Francesca, I mean. How did she die?”

“Originally, or recently?” Marge asked.

This Marge was a smart cookie. I had to give her credit.

“Originally,” I said. “The moonlight cruise.”

“Two years ago. Right after the Beaux Arts Ball. Their anniversary. She was all excited about it. The chairman booked it in advance as a kind of treat.”

“Dr. Rainsmith?” I asked. “Ryerson?”

“That’s right. She was all excited about it, wasn’t she, Sal. Said she’d been a bit nervy. Moonlight cruise was all she needed—just what the doctor ordered. She laughed when she said it, ’cause the doctor was her husband, you see, and he did order it.”

I smiled dutifully. “She told you this?” I asked.

“Stood right where you’re standing,” Sal said.

“And they never found the body,” I said.

“No. They were seen going up the gangplank, and from then on it was all drinks and dancing. They didn’t hobnob with the other passengers—didn’t want to, really. It was their anniversary, you see. Very romantic. They even wore their wedding outfits. It was in all the papers, you know. A real mystery. Sometime after midnight, somewhere off Port Dalhousie, the chairman told the captain he thought his wife might have fallen overboard. Might have had a drink too many. Captain kept it pretty well to himself … didn’t want to alarm the other passengers. That’s what he told the papers: didn’t want to upset the other passengers. If you ask me, what he meant was he didn’t want bad publicity. He sailed around in circles in the dark for a while—searchlights, and that—but they never spotted her. Not a trace.”

“Not a ripple,” Sal added. “I remember they called in the Air Force in the morning: boats, helicopters. No use. It was on the radio.”

“ ’Course there wouldn’t be, would there, if she was in the chimney all along,” Marge said, glancing at me knowingly, as if we had just shared a very great secret.

“And the second Mrs. Rainsmith?” I asked. “Dorsey?”

“He knew her for years,” Sal said, with an obscure kind of glance at Marge. “Met her at medical school.”

“They say she was a great comfort to him in his time of loss,” Marge said.

“Who’s ‘they’?” I asked. “Who said that?”

“Well, she did,” Marge admitted.

A shadow flitted like a bat across my mind. How could Dorsey, Miss High Muckety Muck herself, ever have happened to come into conversation with the likes of Marge, a lowly laundry lass.

“Oh!” I said, seeming surprised. “Does she bring her laundry round, as well?”

“No,” Sal said.

“Well, just the once,” Marge said reluctantly. “She had a dress—an expensive one. Pure silk, like rippling water on a lake. Bought it at Liberty’s, in London. Must have cost her an arm and a leg, I told her. ‘More than that,’ she said. ‘Far more than that.’ I remember her saying it.”

“And?”

“An emergency. She was called in to handle an emergency. Car crash. Got blood on it. She phoned me at home and asked if I could help her out. Girl to girl. She slipped me ten bucks. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Sal. I’ll split it with you, if you like.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Was this after she married the chairman?”

“No, before. A year or so. I’ll still split it with you, Sal.”

“Was it before or after the Beaux Arts Ball?” I asked, my heart accelerating.

“After,” Marge said. “Just after.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You’ve both been of enormous help, and I mean to make it up to you.”

Marge glowed, and although Sal brushed off my remark with a flick of her fingers, I knew that she was secretly pleased.

“May I ask one last question?”

“Fire away,” Marge said.

“How was it that you knew Dorsey Rainsmith before her marriage to the chairman?”

“Why, because she was on the board of guardians,” Marge said.

My head was like a spinning top as possibilities sparked and glittered off in all directions.

Was Ryerson Rainsmith a member of the Nide? Was Dorsey? Had Francesca been?

Had Francesca’s death been an official undercover act? An execution?

Was Miss Fawlthorne in on the secret?

Or was it more sordid than that? One of those Lady Chatterley affairs that Daffy was so keen on reading, and which left me bored stiff?