As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust: A Flavia De Luce Novel

by Alan Bradley

  As added insurance I brought up from the very depths of my gizzard a convincing cough, and spat an imaginary substance into the crumpled handkerchief.

  Again I offered it.

  It requires a certain nerve to play at this kind of game: a kind of steely bluff combined with the innocence of a baby lily, and I must say that I was rather good at it.

  “Put that filthy thing away,” Miss Fawlthorne said with a look of disgust, before abruptly changing the subject. “Why are these lights turned on?”

  I almost said, “I thought I was coughing up blood, and wanted to have a look,” but something told me to quit while I was ahead.

  “I got up early to write my report on William Palmer,” I said, giving my mouth a final wipe and gesturing to my notebook and pen, which were—praise be!—lying on my desktop.

  What a perfect title that would make for one of the volumes of my autobiography when it comes time to write it: Lying on My Desktop. I must remember to make a note of it.

  Miss Fawlthorne said nothing, but stared at me steadily, the ruby pin at her throat rising and falling in slow, regular hypnotic waves. One breath after another.

  “I cannot allow this to pass, Flavia,” she said at last, as if she had come to a sudden decision. “Do you understand?”

  I nodded—suddenly Miss Humility herself.

  “We shall have a talk,” she said. “But not here, and not now. Immediately after your gymnasium class this morning, I want you to go out for a long walk—alone—and reflect upon your disobedience. When you have done so to my satisfaction—well, we shall see.”

  The gymnasium was an echoing canyon with a floor on several levels. It had once been a chapel, with towering stone arches, sunken aisles, gilded organ pipes, and quaint grottoes, but now the saints and martyrs in the stained-glass windows had nothing better to look down upon than a clutter of vaulting horses, parallel bars, climbing ropes, and rings suspended on chains: remarkably like the torture chamber in a castle I had once toured in Girl Guides.

  I felt even more cold and naked and doltish in the square-necked navy gym slip than I had the first time, as if I were the village idiot in a smock—or a cowering pawn on someone else’s chessboard.

  A shrill whistle blew as I entered and instructions were shouted. “Left arm upward … right arm forward … stretch! Right arm forward … left arm upward … stretch. Head forward … bend … stretch! Head left sideways … bend … stretch!”

  I must be honest about the fact that I’m made extremely uneasy by excessive noise, and that I do not care for shouted instructions. If I’d been meant to be a sheep, I reasoned, I’d have been born with wool instead of skin.

  I swarmed up a wooden ladder; dropped heavily to the mat; gave out a little cry of agony; winced in the direction of Miss Puddicombe, the games mistress; hooked my leg at an awkward angle as if to check for a broken bone; massaged my calf; and limped off to my room to get rid of the clown outfit.

  We’d deal with the paperwork later.

  I was blessed to have been born with an excellent sense of direction so that, even in the bath or the WC, I always have a fairly good idea of which way’s north.

  Standing in the street outside Miss Bodycote’s, I could have gone either north or south but decided to strike off north because it was my favorite direction. North lay the North Pole, which seemed so much closer here in Canada than it had at Buckshaw. Too far north, I knew, and you run out of trees and into polar bears, but there seemed little chance of that with trams—sorry, streetcars—clanging away at the end of the block.

  But I soon reconsidered. I was supposed to be thinking about my disobedience, but instead I found myself realizing that in street upon changing street of nearly identical houses, I might well become lost. I was, after all, in a strange city—face it, Flavia: in a strange country. Who knew what unsuspected dangers lurked just round the next corner?

  A woman in a pink knitted hat came running out of a house whose windows upstairs were covered with bedsheets and an unfamiliar flag.

  “Are you lost?” she called out, after no more than a glance at me.

  Could it be so obvious that I was a stranger?

  I smiled at her (no point in aggravating the natives), turned on my heel, and went back the way I had come.

  It didn’t take much thinking to realize that there was much greater safety in sticking to the busier streets.

  Follow the tram lines, my instinct was whispering into my ear.

  A few minutes later I found myself once more in front of Miss Bodycote’s, from which a buzz of busy voices floated to my ears. It was good to be outdoors. It was good to be alone.

  I marched off to the south until I saw a Danforth Avenue street sign, at which point I turned my face toward the west.

  It is a remarkable fact, and one not often commented upon, how hard it is to walk upon pavement after a lifetime of village streets and country lanes. Before I had gone a mile I made a pretext of stopping at what appeared to be a greengrocer’s shop for a bottle of ginger beer.

  “Your money’s no good here, dear,” the elderly woman behind the counter said after examining and handing me back my shilling. “Tell you what—I’ll give you a bottle of cold pop just for the pleasure of hearing you talk. You have such a lovely accent. Go ahead, say something.”

  I did not like thinking of myself as having an accent: It was everyone else who had one.

  “Thank you,” I said. But I knew, even as I spoke, that “thank you” was not enough to pay for a drink.

  “No, something decent,” she said. “Give us a song—or some poe-try.”

  Other than a couple of comic verses about chemistry, which didn’t seem appropriate to the occasion, the only poem that I could remember was one I had heard a couple of little girls chanting as they skipped rope in Cow Lane, back home in Bishop’s Lacey, which seemed now like a remembered scene from a previous life.

  I launched into it before shame could make me change my mind, and bolt. Striking a demure pose with my hands clasped at my waist, I began:

  “Poor Little Leo

  Was sunk by a torpedo

  They brought him back in a Union Jack

  From over the bounding sea-o.

  Poor little Leo

  He lost his life in Rio

  They brought him back in a Union Jack

  From over the bounding sea-o.”

  “That’s lovely, dear,” the woman said, reaching into a cooling cabinet and handing over a frosty bottle of Orange Crush. “I had a nephew Leo once. He wasn’t sunk by a torpedo, but he did move to Florida. What do you think about that?”

  I smiled because it seemed the proper thing to do.

  I was already on the street, strolling quickly away, when the words of the stupid rhyme came flooding back into my head: “They brought him back in a Union Jack …”

  Why did they seem so familiar? It took a moment for the penny to drop.

  Brought him back in a Union Jack—just like the body that had fallen out of the chimney!

  Could there possibly be a connection?

  Was someone—some unknown killer—murdering his victims according to the skipping rhymes of schoolchildren, in the way that Miss Christie has written about?

  Daffy had told me about the mysteries based upon nursery rhymes, railway guides, and so forth, but was it even remotely possible that a Canadian killer had decided to copy those methods?

  The very thought of it both excited and chilled me. On the one hand, I might well have part of the solution already in hand, but on the other, the killer could still be at large, and not far away.

  I’m afraid I wasn’t getting far with reflecting upon my disobedience. Miss Fawlthorne would almost certainly quiz me when I got back to the academy, and I’d need to have some kind of acceptable penitence prepared. But a body in the chimney isn’t something that falls into your lap every day, and I needed now to give it my undivided attention. All the nitpicking at Miss Bodycote’s had been so distracting that
the flag-wrapped corpse had been forced to climb into the backseat, as it were.

  By now I was crossing a tall limestone bridge or viaduct, which crossed a broad valley. I hauled myself up by the elbows on the rail and peered over the side at the muddy brown water that seeped sluggishly along far below. It was a long way down, and the very thought of it made my stomach feel ticklish.

  I walked on, unwilling or unable to turn round and go back to captivity.

  Captivity! Yes, that was it—I was the tiger caged in a zoo, longing to be returned home to its jungle. Perhaps I could escape, as tigers were occasionally reported to do in the newspapers.

  In fact, I was already out, wasn’t I?

  • TWELVE •

  PERHAPS I SHOULD MAKE a break for it. I could be well on my way to England before they even realized I was missing.

  But other than the few useless coins in my pocket I had no money.

  Perhaps I could ask a stranger for directions to the police station and throw myself, as a refugee, upon the mercy of Inspector Gravenhurst.

  Or would he be obliged by law to take me into custody? The police station, however fascinating it might be, would be far less comfortable than Miss Bodycote’s, what with the drunken prisoners in the clink, the noise, the swearing, and so forth.

  I still needed to find a quiet place to sit down and think this through.

  I had now reached the far side of the viaduct and was walking along a broad and busy city street.

  And just like that, as if by some Heaven-sent miracle, a churchyard appeared as if out of nowhere, and I made for it at once. It was not quite as good as being whisked back to Bishop’s Lacey, but for now, it would do.

  No sooner was I safely among the gravestones than a great feeling of warmth and calm contentment came sweeping over me.

  Life among the dead.

  This was where I was meant to be!

  What a revelation! And what a place to have it!

  I could succeed at whatever I chose. I could, for instance, become an undertaker. Or a pathologist. A detective, a grave digger, a tombstone maker, or even the world’s greatest murderer.

  Suddenly the world was my oyster—even if it was a dead one.

  I threw my hands up into the air and launched myself into a series of exuberant triple cartwheels.

  “Yaroo!” I shouted.

  When I landed on my feet, I found myself face-to-face with Miss Fawlthorne.

  “Most impressive,” she said. “But not ladylike, particularly.”

  Joy turned to terror. My heart felt squeezed in an iron fist.

  I needed to get the upper hand, even if only for a few moments before this woman killed me and shoveled me into a shallow grave. Who would ever think to look in a cemetery for a missing girl? She had planned this to perfection.

  But how could she be sure that I would come to this place?

  “You followed me,” I said.

  “Of course I did.” She smiled.

  “But I didn’t see you.”

  “Of course you didn’t. That is because you failed to look in the right place.”

  My face must have been as blank as the side of a barn.

  “Most people who suspect they are being followed look behind themselves. Consequently, the superior tracker is always ahead of her quarry. Now, then, have you done as you were instructed? Have you reflected upon your insubordination?”

  “No,” I said. “So you might as well go ahead and kill me.”

  And I might as well die defiant, I thought.

  “Kill you?” she said, throwing back her head, laughing with delight and showing, for the first time, a complete set of small but perfect teeth. “Why on earth should I want to kill you?”

  I shrugged. It was always better to let the killer do all the talking. In that way, you were able to gain much more information than you gave up.

  “Let me tell you something, Flavia. You’re right about one thing. I might have killed you just then. At least, I might have wanted to. But only if you had answered yes: only if you tried to convince me that you had reflected upon your disobedience. Only if you had spouted off some meaningless twaddle about how sorry you were; only if you had promised improvement.

  “But you did not. You stood firm. You proved that you are indeed the person I believed you to be. You are, indeed, your mother’s daughter.”

  It was more words than I had heard her say since we met; it was, in a way, as if the Sphinx had spoken.

  A crow gave a rude “Caw!” as it landed in one of the trees, and regarded us in its hunchbacked way from the branch. How did we appear to a bird? I wondered. Two small, insignificant figures standing in a field of stones, I expect, and nothing more. I picked up a pebble and tossed it. The bird turned its back.

  “Are you not at all curious about my reason for following you?” Miss Fawlthorne asked.

  I shrugged again, but then thought better of it and said, “Yes.”

  “It is a simple one,” she said. “It is because I wanted to be alone with you.”

  Again, a small flame of fear flickered up in my mind.

  “But not for any reason you may think. The truth is that today, here and now, in this churchyard, your real training begins in earnest. You must speak of it to no one. You will appear to be, for all intents and purposes, just another schoolgirl—and a rather dull one, at that.”

  She paused to let her words sink in, fixing me with the same bright eye as the crow had done.

  “Come over here,” she said strolling across the graveyard and beckoning me to follow. She pointed to a rather plain and unremarkable tombstone.

  “ ‘Cornelia Corwin, 1907–1944,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ You’d think she was some wealthy family’s chambermaid, wouldn’t you—or perhaps a nanny? But she wasn’t. She was one of us. Without Cornelia Corwin there would have been no successful evacuation of Dunkirk. Three hundred thousand men would have perished in vain.”

  She bent over and gently brushed away a dead leaf that had settled on the tombstone. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes,” I said, looking her straight in the eye.

  “Excellent,” she said. “We must understand each other perfectly. There must be no barrier to communications between us. Now, then—”

  As she spoke, she began to stroll among the tombstones and I fell into lockstep beside her.

  “Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy is a house divided not by dissent, but by choice. The day girls know nothing of what goes on with the boarders such as yourself.”

  “The day girls are a front, you mean,” I said.

  “Flavia, you simply amaze me.”

  I glanced up at her proudly.

  “You will be taught everything you need to know, but you will be taught it discreetly. You will be trained in the arts of genteel mayhem. Oh, don’t look at me like that. The vegetable scraper, the cheese grater, and the corkscrew are often overlooked as effective means of disposing of an adversary, you know—even the pickle fork, in a pinch.”

  Was she teasing me?

  “But the war has been over for ages,” I said.

  “Precisely so. You will discover that certain skills become even more essential in peacetime.”

  She saw at once the look of horror on my face.

  “At Miss Bodycote’s,” she went on, “we encourage our girls in all aspects.”

  “But—” I said.

  “In all aspects. Do you understand, Flavia?”

  “What about poisons?” I asked, hoping against hope.

  “Of course you’ll be taught the more traditional skills,” she continued, ignoring my question, “such as ciphers and code breaking, and so forth, as well as the more modern and inventive arts that are not yet dreamed of by even the most sensational of our novelists.”

  “My aunt Felicity told me I was to become a member of the Nide—” I began.

  The Nide was the name of the hush-hush organization into wh
ich I was to be inducted, my reason for being in Canada.

  “Shhh!” she said, reaching out and touching my lips. “You must never utter that word again. Never.”

  “But how will I know which of the boarders—”

  She touched a gentle finger to my lips. “They will make themselves known to you. Until they do, trust no one.”

  “What about Jumbo? What about Van Arque?”

  “All in due time, Flavia.”

  How easy, I supposed, it would have been at that moment to ask Miss Fawlthorne if she had heard anything about the identity of the corpse that had plummeted out of the chimney, and yet it was not.

  A conversation between a person of my age and a person of hers is like a map of a maze: There are things that each of us knows, and that each of us knows the other knows, that can be talked about. But there are things that each of us knows that the other doesn’t know we know, which must not be spoken of, no matter what. Because of our ages, and for reasons of decency, there are what Daffy would refer to as taboos: forbidden topics which we may stroll among like islands of horse dung in the road that, although perfectly evident to both of us, must not be mentioned or kicked at any cost.

  It’s a strange world when you come right down to it.

  “You must learn not to ask unnecessary questions,” Miss Fawlthorne went on, as if she were reading my mind. “It is a cardinal rule here that no girl may give out any information whatsoever about any other girl, past or present.”

  Her words had an eerily familiar ring. “Certain questions must not be asked,” Aunt Felicity had told me, as we walked together on the Visto at Buckshaw. Now here it was again.

  “You mean I need to deduce those facts myself,” I declared flatly, taking care to make it a statement, rather than a direct query.

  “Gold star,” she said quietly, almost as if to herself, as she looked off, almost idly, into the distance.

  A gentle wind stirred the leaves, and in it was a touch of coldness. It was, after all, autumn.

  “There will be field trips,” Miss Fawlthorne went on suddenly, “which will require a great deal of courage on your part. I trust that you will not let us down.”