As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (Flavia de Luce #7)(9)

“You mustn’t let on, though,” Collingwood said. “They’ll skin you alive.”

“We Catholics have been martyrs since the invention of the flame,” I said. “We’re quite accustomed to it.”

It was a snotty thing to say, but I said it anyway.

“Your secret’s safe with me,” Collingwood said, sewing her lips shut with an invisible needle and thread. “Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me.”

The last sentence came out sounding like “Wye-oh oh-ffef goodem agim ow momee.”

“It’s not a secret,” I told her. “Actually, we’re quite proud of it.”

At that instant there was a terrific pounding at the door: a wood-splintering banging so loud that I almost kissed a kidney good-bye.

“Open up!” a voice demanded—a voice I had first heard only too recently, but one I knew too well.

It was Miss Fawlthorne.

“Turn out the lights!” Collingwood whispered.

“It’s no use,” I whispered back. “The door’s unlocked anyway.”

“No, it’s not. I locked it when I snuck in.”

She crept across the room on tiptoe and threw the switch. I blew out the candle, and we were plunged into darkness.

Well, almost. After a few seconds I could see that there was still a certain amount of light falling into the room from the street outside.

“What am I going to do?” she asked me. “We’re not allowed in others’ rooms after lights-out. I’ll be blacked.”

I looked round the room in the strange dim glow of the electric twilight. Other than the obvious bed and clothes-press, there was nowhere to hide, unless she could squeeze herself behind the wallpaper.

I’ll give Collingwood this, though—she was quick. With a single bound, she was on the hearth, crouching under the mantel, and somehow clawing her way upward. The last I saw of her was those long lizardlike legs, clad in black, standing tiptoe on the firedogs, then vanishing up the chimney.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

Desperation is capable of wonderful things.

“Open up!” the voice said again. “I know you’re in there.”

Another knock—more thunderous than the last—shook the door. If the first one hadn’t awakened the entire academy, this one surely must have.

Dozens of girls must be sitting bolt upright in their beds, sheets pulled up to their chins, their eyes wide in the darkness.

The dead silence that followed was even more terrifying than the knock.

“Open this door at once!” Miss Fawlthorne demanded. “Or I shall have Mr. Tugg come up and take the hinges off.”

I padded across the room, gave the key a twist, and pulled the door open. “What is it?” I asked, blinking and rubbing at my eyes. “Is there a fire? I was asleep.”

“It’s no use, girl,” Miss Fawlthorne said. “The lights were on in this room. Someone was talking in here.”

“I was having a nightmare,” I told her. “I expect it’s being away from home, and so forth. I quite often talk in my sleep.”

“Do you indeed,” Miss Fawlthorne said. “And do you also switch on electric lights in your sleep?”

“No,” I said. “But I didn’t know where I was when I woke up. I was disorientated.”

It’s a bold girl who tries out a new word when she’s being grilled, but I was desperate. “Disorientated” was an excuse Daffy had once used when Father had caught her pinching Christmas pudding from the pantry.

“I was disorientated,” she had claimed, and Father had believed her. Actually believed her!

I shot a quick glance behind me as I switched on the electric light, and the room was bathed in a harsh glare.

“No lights!” Miss Fawlthorne said, reaching past my face and switching them off again instantly. “ ‘Lights-out’ means lights out, you stupid girl.”

That did it. As with Ryerson Rainsmith’s calling me a drowned rat, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A week away from home and my list of people to poison was already up to two—three if you counted the insipid Dodo.

From somewhere about her person, Miss Fawlthorne produced a packet of paper matches. She struck one gravely and, without taking her eyes from mine, lit the candle. It was rather a neat trick of eye-hand coordination.

“Now, then,” she said, her gaze fixing me like a butterfly pinned to a card in a specimen box. “To whom were you talking?”

I could see that we were going to sit here until the sun came up or until I answered. It was obvious that Miss Fawlthorne was that kind of person.

“Myself,” I admitted, looking away. “I’m afraid I sometimes talk to myself when I’m upset. It’s one of my greatest faults. I’m trying to train myself not to do it.”

I was wasting my breath, and I knew it even before the words were out of my mouth.

Miss Fawlthorne was now looking round the room slowly, her head rotating like an owl’s. I wondered idly if, after a certain number of degrees, it would snap and fall off.

I rather uncharitably hoped that it did.

I didn’t dare glance at the fireplace. Doing so would surely give Collingwood away. I kept my eyes humbly on my feet.