As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(84)

The Rainsmiths lived in an Elizabethan manor house the size of a cricket pitch. To one side of the garden, at the end of a trellised walkway, was a long, low building of yellow brick that looked as if it meant business. It had once apparently been a coach house, but was now all casement windows and gables and climbing vines.

A couple of electric lamps burning inside during daylight hours, and a swinging Georgian sign reading “Mon Repos” in gold and black curlicue letters, told me that this was the private nursing home.

Somewhere behind all that glass and ivy, Collingwood was being held prisoner.

Or was she?

There was only one way to find out.

Directly across the street, a neighboring mansion was meant to be modeled on Anne Hathaway’s cottage, complete with what appeared to be a thatched roof and what undoubtedly was an English cottage garden: one of those little jungles of artists’ colors whose owner tries to include every flower mentioned in Shakespeare. Because it was now late in the year, the garden was not at its best, but I still managed to nick a fistful of Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums: the daisies because of Saint Michael—and, I must admit, because they were pictured on the dress of one of Jack the Ripper’s victims—and the mums because I was in a hurry.

Back across the street, I was already inventing lies as I approached the glass doors of the nursing home. I needn’t have bothered: Ahead of me an endless corridor of closed doors stretched off into the distance. There was no one at the desk.

Were all nursing homes, everywhere, alike? I thought of Rook’s End, with its bubbling linoleum, where Dr. Kissing sat smoking away in his ancient bath chair. Rook’s End, too, had infinite hallways and an unattended entrance, which had always surprised me. It was as if you had arrived at the Pearly Gates only to find a sign saying “Out to Lunch.”

With the bouquet clutched in plain sight in my fist, and a look of sad resignation on my face, I walked quietly along, as if I knew where I was going. The occupants’ names were printed on removable cards—in case of death, I supposed—attached to each door, so it was easy enough to construct a list of patients.

The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep.

A metallic clatter made me spin round.

A woman in scrubber’s uniform was backing out of a room, hauling a wheeled bucket behind her. She seemed as surprised as I was, and then a grin broke her face.

“Cripes! You startled me!”

“Same here,” I said, wiping my brow with my forearm and flinging off drops of imaginary sweat.

We both laughed.

“Can I help you?” she asked. “Looking for someone in particular?”

“No,” I said. “I’m with the Girl Scouts. Rosedale Troop Number Thirty-nine, Scarlet Pimpernel Patrol. I’m working on my charity badge and Brown Owl assigned me to visit as many of the patients here as possible.”

I tried to arrange my features into a look of hopeless determination combined with wilting enthusiasm. It was not easy.

“Quota system, eh?” the woman said. “Everything’s quotas nowadays, it seems like. So many yards per floor per shift.”

She stuck the head of her mop into a mechanical squeezing mechanism and gave the lever a fierce pull.

“ ‘Life’s a tally board,’ my dad used to say, ‘where the peg won’t stay in.’ ”

I gave her a slightly conspiratorial grin—not enough to discredit the Girl Guides but enough that she would know that I wasn’t born yesterday, either.

“Carry on, then,” she said and, cracking my heels together, I gave her a two-fingered bunny salute.

At the end of the hall, the last door on the left had a bilious yellow card hanging from a thumbtack: QUARANTINE. NO ENTRY.

I had found Collingwood.

But there was no card in the slot: no name to identify the room’s occupant.

I pushed open the door.

The room was as empty as the infirmary had been at Miss Bodycote’s.

Collingwood had vanished again.

I took the precaution of checking the WC.

It, too, was empty. Where was she? What had they done with her?

I was trying to think what to do next when I heard voices in the hall, voices that were coming closer with every second. As a precaution, I dived into the WC and pulled the door to, leaving it open barely a crack.

Two people came into the room: nurses, I guessed, from their words.

“I suppose now we’ll have to burn the bedclothes,” one of them said. “And the mattress.”

I shrank back in horror. What had become of Collingwood?

“No such thing,” the second voice said. “We don’t do that anymore. Fumigation’s cheaper. Cost-saving’s the name of the game. Mattresses are money. So are sheets and towels. Better check the bathroom. I’ve already asked Gilda to clean it. God knows what—”

I pushed the door closed the last inch and positioned myself on the toilet seat.

And not a second too soon. The door was flung rudely open by a middle-aged woman in white, whose mouth fell open just before her face froze.

She slammed the door.

“There’s a girl in there,” I heard her say.

“Who?”