As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(81)

“Well?” she asked, in her permanently peeved voice. I could tell that she hated being interrupted.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Miss Moate,” I said. If I’d worn a cap I’d have been wringing it in my hands. “I wonder if you might spare me a few minutes. It’s rather a personal matter?”

I was proud of my strategy. It was one I had been saving for just such an occasion as this. Who can say no to a personal matter? Even God is curious about such things, which is why He listens to our prayers.

As a teacher, Miss Moate had presumably been trained in some dim and remote teachers college in how to handle the confidences of her pupils. Appealed to directly, she could hardly say no.

“I’m busy,” she said. “Personal matters should be taken up with the head, or with your housemistress.”

“My housemistress is Mrs. Bannerman,” I said, “and she’s been arrested.”

“What?” A fossil clattered onto the hard surface of the tray. I could tell by the genuine look of surprise on her face that Miss Moate had not yet heard the news.

“Arrested,” I said. “They took her away. In the middle of the night.”

Rat-a-tat-tat. Just like that. Shocking news is best delivered in bursts for maximum impact. I was sparing this woman nothing.

“How do you know this? Where did you hear it?”

“I didn’t hear it,” I said. “I was there. I saw it with my own eyes.”

I could see the wheels turning as she lifted the huge padded cozy from the pot and poured herself a cup of tea. Should she gossip with a student, or place herself above idle chatter?

“This … personal matter,” she said at last. “You may speak. But first, close the door.”

I did as I was told, knowing, as I began, that one of us was not good at this sort of thing.

“I’m frightened,” I said.

Her eyes considered this, and then she asked, “Of what?”

“The place is haunted,” I told her. “Footsteps are heard in the halls, and a girl who died two years ago has been seen coming out of the laundry.”

It was a bold opening, and I was proud of myself to have thought of it.

“And have you seen with your own eyes, as you put it, this dead girl? Have you heard, with your own ears, these footsteps in the halls?”

“Well, no,” I admitted.

“Science does not believe in ghosts,” she said. “And nor, as a budding chemist, should you.”

So my special classes with Mrs. Bannerman were no secret.

“Ghosts are most often seen by girls and certain young men with an iron deficiency.”

If she was referring to chlorosis, or hypochromic anemia, she might as well have saved her breath. The condition had been described as early as the sixteenth century, and a remedy containing iron, sulfuric acid, and potassium carbonate concocted more than a hundred years ago by Albert Popper, the Bohemian chemist, and it was no news to me.

“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said, turning toward the door.

“No, wait,” Miss Moate said. “Don’t take offense.”

I let my shoulders slump a little as a sign of defeat.

“You mustn’t judge an old woman too harshly,” she said, her voice softening. “Look at me.”

I didn’t want to, and I found my eyes repelled by hers as if they were the like poles of a pair of magnets. By sheer strength of my optical muscles, I forced myself to meet her gaze.

“I was not always like this, you know,” she said, her hands fluttering reluctantly to indicate her body. “No, this useless husk was not always as you see it.”

She gave a barking, seal-like laugh to indicate the irony of her situation.

“How did it happen?” I blurted, before I could stop myself.

Now that I had locked my gaze with hers I found that I could not break free.

“You are the first person at this academy who has ever asked that,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, aware, even as I spoke, what a marvelous picklock power was contained in that one little word.

“Don’t be,” she replied. “Everyone else in the world is sorry. Dare to be something more than that.”

I waited for the electric charge in the air to settle.

“As you are now, so once was I,” she said, the words seeming ancient in her throat. “You’ll find that inscribed on tombstones in old graveyards, you know.”

I was well aware of it. The churchyard at St. Tancred’s had several variations of the verse:

Remember, Friend, as you pass by,

As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, so you must be,

So Friend, prepare to follow me.

It was almost my favorite piece of poetry, as opposed to Keats, say, or Shelley, or someone who wrote less practical verse.

“It was an accident,” she said, her voice harsh, the words now suddenly raw in her mouth. “A car accident.… a village … a valley … a picnic … a friend. She was thrown clear, but I”—she touched the rubber tires of her chair, almost caressing them—“was trapped among the wheels.”

I was going to say that I was sorry, but I held my tongue.

“My only consolation is in being allowed to spend most of my time here, among my real friends.”