As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

by Alan Bradley

  Even recognizing it, though, was a major accomplishment, and I was quite proud to have possibly done so.

  “The infirmary’s in here,” she said, leading me through a dark narrow passage that joined the front of the house to one of the more obscure wings.

  At a white-painted door she jangled her keys noisily, as if she were warning someone inside that we were about to enter.

  “Will the nurse be long?” I asked.

  “The nurse is standing before you,” she said. Spotting my bewilderment, she added, “I’m the nurse—or at least I was before the budget cuts. Nowadays I’m plain old Matron with three pairs of perfectly good white Oxfords lying unused in my portmanteau.”

  I nodded as if I understood.

  “Now in your mother’s time—ah, those were the days—we had a fully kitted-out dispensary and the authority to use it. Nowadays it’s all Band-Aids and iodine and cod-liver oil. Shocking, but there you are. The War did something to the world, and we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.”

  The door came open suddenly and she beckoned me inside.

  The infirmary overlooked the hockey field, and would have been a pleasant enough place if it hadn’t been for the rain. Curtains of green-looking water shimmered down the panes, giving the infirmary a weird glow, as if it were lit by phosphorus, which, oddly enough, made me feel more at home than I had since my arrival at the academy.

  Fitzgibbon put a finger to her lips and pointed to a hanging curtain on the far side of the room. I could see, below its gatherings, the legs of a white iron bed.

  “Collingwood,” she whispered. “She’s not doing well, poor child. I don’t expect she’ll be much trouble, though. She’s sleeping the clock away at the moment.”

  As she spoke, Fitzgibbon was turning down the sheets of another bed at the far end of the room.

  From a small glass cupboard between the windows, she selected a tentlike cotton nightgown that might have been worn by Wendy in Peter Pan.

  “Put that on and climb in,” she said, “and I’ll see to you directly.”

  Like a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, she pulled a second ring of keys from somewhere about her person and, turning away, went to another glass cupboard that was tucked away in an alcove.

  By the time she returned, I had flattened myself and pulled the sheet up to my chin.

  “Temperature first,” she said, and a clinical thermometer appeared in her hand. I noticed that it was one of the type invented in the seventeenth century at Padua by Sanctorio Santorius, but not perfected until 1867 by Sir Thomas Allbutt in Leeds: a clever device based upon the uniform expansion of mercury from a reservoir into a narrow, calibrated glass tube.

  “Open up,” she told me. “This will tell me if you’ve got a temperature.”

  I nodded dumbly as she shoved the thing under my tongue. I gave a little moan and rolled my eyes to look up at her appealingly.

  So far, things were going precisely according to plan.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s unpleasant, but we need eight minutes to get an accurate reading. Don’t move … don’t bite down on it. I’ll be right back.”

  She crossed the room and went behind the curtain that hid Collingwood’s bed. My acute sense of hearing told me she was fussing with the pillows and pouring water from a pitcher into a glass.

  I whipped the thermometer out of my mouth and began rubbing it fiercely with the corner of the bedsheet pinched tightly between thumb and forefinger.

  One of the many happy things about physics is that it works anywhere in the world. No matter whether you’re in Bishop’s Lacey or Bombay, friction is friction.

  The red column of mercury was already beginning to climb—but not quickly enough. I could still see Fitzgibbon’s legs below Collingwood’s curtain, but I wouldn’t have much time left.

  Hold on, I thought. With its more abundant free fibers, my cotton gown might have a higher coefficient of friction than the linen bedsheet.

  I put my hem to work.

  That was better! As I rubbed frantically, the red column was rising like billy-ho. It was already above 100 degrees on the Fahrenheit scale. I kept up the rubbing until I saw Fitzgibbon’s feet begin moving toward the end of Collingwood’s bed.

  I quickly shoved the instrument back under my tongue and gave another little moan to encourage Fitzgibbon to take a rapid reading.

  As she came into view from behind the curtain, I tossed restlessly.

  “Easy,” she said. “Don’t bite down, remember? We don’t want to lose you to mercury poisoning, do we?”

  I should say we didn’t!

  Mercury poisoning was one of the most ghastly poisonings in the catalog of chemistry: the hellish burning, the itching, the swelling, the shedding of skin, the strangulation, the endless stream of saliva like a cow with pasture bloat, and, finally, the loss of bodily functions.

  “No,” I whispered weakly.

  Fitzgibbon pulled the thermometer from my mouth and glanced at it. I could see her eyes widen.

  “Mmm,” she said. “A bit higher than I’d like.”

  I have observed that, unless it’s normal, they never tell you what your actual temperature is. They’d rather leave it to your fevered imagination than tell the truth. Even dear old Dr. Darby back home in Bishop’s Lacey had been evasive when I fell off the roof after my spectacular and widely tut-tutted Christmas fireworks display.

  I rolled away and groaned as Fitzgibbon reached out to feel my forehead.

  “I’ll have the doctor look at you when he comes by later,” she said. “For now I’ll give you an aspirin for your fever. Try to have a little sleep. It’s remarkable what a little sleep can do.”

  I nodded and closed my eyes. The sooner I could get her out of the room the better. At least the doctor wasn’t coming until later, by which time I would have done what I had come to do, and would be well on the way to the most miraculous recovery in medical history.

  Was it wrong to be so deceitful? Well, yes, it probably was. But if God hadn’t wanted me to be the way I am, He would have arranged to have me born a haddock instead of Flavia de Luce—wouldn’t He?

  As soon as Fitzgibbon was out of the room, I counted to twenty-three, then leaped out of bed and dashed to Collingwood’s bedside. If I were caught out, I would pretend that I was delirious.

  Collingwood’s face was as white as the pillow, her long hair spread out round her in waves as if she were a mermaid underwater.

  “Collingwood!” I whispered in her ear. “It’s me, de Luce. Wake up.”

  She didn’t stir.

  “Collingwood!”

  Louder this time. Although the infirmary was somewhat off the beaten track, I didn’t want to attract the attention of anyone who just happened to be passing.

  “Collingwood!”

  I pressed my thumbnail into her upper lip, a consciousness test I had learned the hard way at a Girl Guides summer camp.

  She groaned.

  “Collingwood! Wake up! It’s me, Flavia!”

  One bloodshot eye came slowly open and stared out at me blearily.

  “Wha …” she managed, and the smell of her breath made my blood curdle.

  I recognized it at once: that acrid stab of chlorine embedded in an exotic aromatic odor—like a diamond in a dung heap.

  Chloral hydrate. I’d know it anywhere. C2H3Cl3O2. Unmistakable.

  I had once happened upon a box of the jellied red capsules in the bedside table of the vicar’s wife, broken one open for a sniff, and added it to my store of chemical memories.

  The stuff was, I knew, a powerful hypnotic.

  If I were myself, I should have spotted at once how troubling Fitzgibbon’s statement was: that Collingwood was sleeping the clock away. I could understand her being badly shocked by the body tumbling out of the chimney, but that was ages ago. How could she still be sleeping so much after all this time?

  I should have thought of it sooner, but living in this Alice in Wonderland world h
ad obviously blunted my usually razor-keen perceptions.

  “Everything’s fine,” I told her, even though it wasn’t.

  Except for beds, curtains and windows, and a sink, the room was bare.

  But wait! My eyes and my brain lighted upon the cupboard in the alcove.

  In less than half a flash I was peering through the glass at the school’s medical supplies. Band-Aids and cod-liver oil, Fitzgibbon had said. But there was quite a bit more than that, actually: gauze bandages, surgical cotton, tape and scissors, iodine, Mercurochrome, aspirin, mustard (for making plasters and poultices, I supposed), a folded sling, a white enamel kidney bowl, tweezers, rubber gloves, tongue depressors … all of it, unfortunately, behind glass.

  I tried the door but it was locked. I let slip a quiet curse.

  I could, in a pinch, break the glass, but that seemed a bit extreme, and besides, the noise would more than likely attract attention.

  I had foolishly left my crucifix lock picks on the washstand when I scrubbed my face and neck: another proof that cleanliness, besides being next to godliness, could also be foolhardy.

  A quick glance round the room showed that there was nothing from which I could quickly improvise a suitable tool. A bedspring might have served in a pinch, but there wasn’t time.

  My eye fell upon the glass cupboard from which Fitzgibbon had taken my nightgown. It was identical! Both white, both glass-plated. They had been bought as a pair.

  I must have looked like a harpy in a tent as I flapped quickly toward the windows.

  Let there be … let there be … let there be …

  And yes … there was a key in the keyhole! My prayers had been answered.

  Identical cupboards—identical keys … or so I hoped.

  The key was cold in my hand as I flew back across the infirmary and, to my ears, anyway, the resulting click! was as welcome as a lost symphony of Beethoven.

  In all these years it had never occurred to anyone that the key for the linen cupboard would also open the dispensary.

  With not a moment to waste, I took the tin of mustard to the sink, turned on the tap, and waited for the water to run hot. I took the glass of water Fitzgibbon had poured for Collingwood, dumped it down the drain, and refilled it with warmish water.

  Into this I added what I judged to be six teaspoons of the powdered mustard, which I stirred with the surgical scissors.

  “Collingwood!” I whispered urgently, hauling her up with an arm behind her shoulders. “Drink this!”

  Her eyes came open—both of them this time—dreadful upon mine.

  “Drink,” I told her. “You must!”

  Somehow her lips attached themselves to the rim of the glass: like a bivalve trying to climb out of a swimming pool. She choked—gagged twice—and wrenched her head away.

  All things considered, she was remarkably strong, but I was stronger.

  I wedged her head back with the rim of the glass and dumped the liquid down her throat, struggling all the while.

  It was not a pleasant task—something like trying to force-feed a bedridden grampus—but I persisted. In the end, I managed to get about half the stuff into her stomach, with the other half splattered equally upon myself, the bed, and the floor.

  She was coughing and choking and sobbing, and through it all, her eyes blazed at me as if they were weapons.

  I stood by with the kidney dish: a pillar of strength dressed in a Bedouin’s tent. For just a moment I had a horrid flashback to being Balthazar in the Christmas pageant at St. Tancred’s and being made to sing:

  “Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume,

  Breathes a life of gathering gloom;

  Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,

  Sealed in a stone-cold tomb.”

  At first it seemed as if nothing was going to happen: the darkness before dawn, the calm before the storm.

  But it didn’t take long. Collingwood gave a couple of surprised hiccups, followed by a long sigh. Her face was almost placid, and then, suddenly, she gave a great gulp, her lips dragged themselves down at the corners, and up it all came.

  I held her head as great gouts of the reeking stuff came gushing out of her and into the waiting kidney dish.

  It was my own spur-of-the-moment vomiting at the camp that had given me the idea: that and the knowledge that a mustard-induced tossing of the cookies was the best—and perhaps only—antidote to poisoning by chloral hydrate.

  Had Fitzgibbon administered a fresh dose of the stuff under my very nose? Had she roused Collingwood enough to swallow a capsule or a spoonful of syrup, or, worse, to administer an injection by hypodermic needle?

  I hadn’t heard anything—but that would argue for the syringe, wouldn’t it?

  Why were they keeping this child asleep? Was it to guard her own sanity, or was there a far more sinister reason? Had she, for instance, seen too much? Was it because she had been caught making notes on the missing girls?

  Collingwood fell back against the pillows, her face ghastly, her breathing only slowly returning to normal.

  Whoops-a-daisy!

  There was more where that came from. I barely had time to get the bowl into position when she was at it again.

  “Sorry,” she wheezed, gasping horribly.

  A good sign—an excellent sign, in fact. Anyone who could apologize while puking still possessed a brain able to function at the highest levels of decency.

  I patted her on the back.

  “More?” I asked, solicitously.

  She shook her head.

  “Good!” I said, and I meant it.

  I went to the window, opened it, and emptied the kidney dish outside, apologizing silently to the groundskeepers as I did so. I rinsed out the bowl at the sink and replaced it in the medical cupboard, which I locked, and returned the key to its mate.

  “Stay quiet,” I told her as I changed back into my school uniform. “Try to get some decent rest. But do me a favor: I wasn’t here. You haven’t seen me. You woke up, threw up, and suddenly you were feeling much better, understand? Don’t let them give you any more medicine. If they try to, scream bloody murder—and keep it up: I shall hear you. All right?”

  Her eyes were upon mine, huge now.

  She nodded, and suddenly the tears welled up. I turned away. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

  I was almost at the door when she called out to me:

  “Flavia …”

  I turned.

  “The dead person in the chimney,” she said, “… the flag … wrapped in the flag. I know her.”

  • SEVENTEEN •

  THERE IS AN ELECTRIC silence that comes with shock: a silence which is intolerable yet which, in spite of that, you are powerless to break. I stood staring at Collingwood and she at me for what seemed like an eternity of eternities.

  I walked slowly back across the infirmary, placing one foot in front of the other, plod, plod, plodding toward her like some relentless zombie.

  “Tell me,” I said, perhaps too harshly, because Collingwood burst immediately into tears.

  “I can’t,” she sobbed, “I simply can’t,” and in an instant I was catapulted back to that moment she and the corpse had come tumbling out of the chimney. How shockingly I had treated her!

  “Put a cork in it,” I had told her, and pointed out that she was drooling, and all the while the body had been lying there before us, decapitated on the floor.

  And who had harvested all the sympathy? “Poor, dear, lonely, unhappy Flavia de Luce,” as Miss Fawlthorne had said, while poor, dear, lonely, unhappy Collingwood had been drugged and tossed into captivity.

  Not only did it not make sense, it was rapidly becoming a nightmare.

  By the time I reached Collingwood’s side I was feeling more dreadful than I ever should have thought possible.

  “Tell me anyway,” I said, gripping her hands in both of mine, and now the two of us were quaking with tears.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, squeezing tightly, and I saw in her
eyes that she was telling the truth. In telling me that the dead body was someone she knew, she had already reached her limit. It had cost her dearly and there was, at least for the time being, nothing else to share.

  What terrible kind of fear could so effectively silence the girl? Was the dead body an example of what happened to those who talked?

  “What if I ask you questions?” I said, suddenly inspired. “That way you won’t be telling, technically.”

  She shook her head and I knew that I was going to have to figure it out myself.

  The sound of cheering girls in the distance indicated that the day’s hockey matches had come to a close. If I were to get back to my room unnoticed, I’d better be on my way.

  There’s no better cover than a milling gang of rowdy winners.

  I made my way back to Edith Cavell and locked myself in. I was the fox gone to earth, and if they wanted me, they could jolly well dig me out.

  I got out my William Palmer notebook, and by the simple method of turning it upside down and beginning at the back, created a new one.

  The Characters in the Case, I wrote at the top of the first page, and underlined it.

  I would list them alphabetically, since it was more objective.

  STUDENTS

  Bowles, June (Jumbo): Senior girl. Seems an all-right type. Dabbles in the occult.

  Brazenose major (Clarissa): Has been missing since the night of the Beaux Arts Ball two years ago—in 1949.

  Brazenose minor (Mary Jane): Frightened by the message of the Ouija board. Queries: (a) Why would she believe that the board was spelling out a message from the missing Le Marchand? (b) Was she convinced that the message “One of you knows my killer” was coming instead from her missing sister?

  Collingwood, Patricia Anne: Impetuous. Keeps notes on the missing girls. Claims to have known the body in the chimney. She is now too terrified to speak. Who is keeping her drugged? And why? Murky waters here.

  Fabian: Nordic. Remote. Mysterious. Sells cigarettes.

  Gremly: Jumbo’s handmaiden. Tells me to trust no one. Goes to great lengths to appear cretinous but has, perhaps, the highest IQ in the entire school. (Present company excepted, of course: Mine is somewhere north of 137, so I ought to know)