As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust

by Alan Bradley

  My whole life had been lived in doubt—doubt about my mother, doubt even about my own identity. I had been brought up not knowing sometimes if I were foundling or changeling, taunted by sisters who were capable of being as exquisitely cruel as those in any fairy tale.

  Where identity was concerned, I was a raw sore—an open wound.

  I was quickly learning that I couldn’t exist in a world of shifting shadows and whispered half-truths.

  I needed facts the way a tree needs sunshine. If ever I had met a kindred spirit, it was the hard-hearted Mr. Gradgrind, in Dickens’s Hard Times: “Stick to Facts, sir!… In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”

  His words seemed to echo in my head, just as they had that winter’s night at Buckshaw, with snow falling so beautifully outside the drawing-room windows, as Daffy read aloud to us: “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: Nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.”

  How I envied those little Gradgrinds, with their little conchological cabinet, their little metallurgical cabinet, and their little mineralogical cabinet! How lucky they were to have such a hardheaded father.

  What I needed, in order to survive, was science—not shadows.

  Chemistry—not conspiracy.

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  The silence was long and agonizing.

  It wasn’t as if Miss Fawlthorne had never before dealt with a girl who wished not to remain at Miss Bodycote’s. Hadn’t she, just now, seen off Charlotte Veneering, that jellyfish life-form from the third, who had failed to flourish?

  Why couldn’t I be an FF, too? Why couldn’t I be rushed in the night, weeping, bent over and covered with an old mackintosh, to a waiting taxicab? It might even be fun.

  I could negotiate my freedom as if I were both kidnapper and kidnapped. I was already planning how I would do so, when Miss Fawlthorne said: “I can’t allow you to leave.”

  Just as flatly and matter-of-fact as that. As if I were a captive.

  “Why not?” I asked. “Veneering left.”

  “Charlotte Veneering is to be pitied,” she said. “You are not.”

  It was a cruel cut. Like one involved in a duel with razor blades, I had to look to see if I had sustained a wound. I was almost surprised to find myself intact.

  “If I let you go, I shall have failed,” Miss Fawlthorne said. “And so shall you. But we will not. We are both better than that.”

  I saw at once that she was appealing to that same tired old court of last resort: my pride—and I hated her for it.

  But I let it pass. Why? Because, in a way, I pitied her.

  And yet, to my horror, I saw that my left hand, as if it had a life of its own, was slowly creeping across the desktop toward her. Appalled, I jerked it back and held it tightly in my lap with the other—which made things even worse, because it was now perfectly plain that I was restraining these rogue fingers as I might a trained tarantula.

  I could feel my color rising.

  Miss Fawlthorne said nothing, but sat staring at me as if I were a cyst. The air in the room was so thick that you would have needed a chisel to cut it.

  She was not going to make things easy for me, I knew. She was going to wait until I spoke, a tactic I recognized as one from my own toolbox.

  We would sit here, then, she and I, glaring at each other in stubborn silence until the cows came home from the pastures of Heaven.

  I have to hand it to her: Miss Fawlthorne was good at this game.

  But not nearly as good as I.

  I waited until it seemed that one of us must surely scream, and then I said suddenly: “Clarissa Brazenose is still alive, isn’t she?”

  No more and no less. I left it at that.

  Miss Fawlthorne blinked but she said nothing.

  “And so are Le Marchand and Wentworth. They’re all still alive, but they’ve gone undercover.”

  I think I was as surprised as Miss Fawlthorne. Actually, the idea had been forming in some back room of my brain for quite a long time, I realized, but had not revealed itself until it was needed.

  “If that were true,” Miss Fawlthorne said, “—and I’m not for a moment saying that it is—it would be very dangerous knowledge.”

  I nodded, biting my lip wisely, as if I knew far more than I did. I did not enjoy being on the outs with this woman. She had, as I had noticed from the beginning, an unexpected gentle side that was not just at odds, but perhaps even at war with her role as headmistress.

  Hadn’t she, after all, doled out to me the so-called punishment of writing a paper on William Palmer? And now, just today, she had sentenced Gremly to skate a hundred laps round the old rink. Gremly! Who loved roller skating as Dante loved Beatrice—as Romeo loved Juliet—and as Winnie-the-Pooh loved honey!

  In spite of whatever her grim connections to the Nide might be, the woman was at heart a softie.

  And I couldn’t help loving her for it in a complicated way.

  “All right,” I said, getting to my feet. “I understand. I am forbidden to ask and you are forbidden to tell. Neither of us much cares for it, but that’s the way things are.”

  With that, I got to my feet and walked out of the room, and she didn’t so much as lift a finger to stop me.

  The interesting thing was this: Even before I reached the door, her eyes were dampening.

  Back in Edith Cavell, I stood on my head in the bed, my heels against the wall. I needed to think.

  I had wondered this before: What if this whole business were a sham, a put-up job? What if my being banished to Canada and the sudden appearance of the body in the chimney were merely part of some gigantic war game—some vast exercise in which all of us were pawns in a game staged by inconceivably remote manipulators for their own veiled purposes?

  If so, Miss Fawlthorne might be as much at the mercy of these shadowy masters as I was, both of us in the grip of powers beyond our understanding.

  Or—and I shuddered at the thought—was this simply the way life was?

  Maybe God was master, Fate the hand that moved us on the playing board, and Chance the finger that flicked us bum-over-boiler into the ditch at the slightest misstep.

  Whatever the truth, it was all too much for me, and I fell asleep standing on my head.

  I awoke with a fierce headache and a crick in my neck. The room was in darkness. I closed my eyes again and allowed myself to come slowly awake.

  There is genuine joy in being alone in the dark inside your own head with no outside distractions, where you can scramble from ledge to rocky ledge, hallooing happily in a vast, echoing cave; climbing hand over hand from ledge to ledge of facts and memories, picking up old gems and new: examining, comparing, putting them down again and reaching for the next.

  The first thought that came to mind was that the Rainsmiths were on our side—at least according to Miss Fawlthorne. The second was that Le Marchand, Wentworth, and Clarissa Brazenose were possibly still alive.

  If that were true, then obviously the body in the chimney could be none of them.

  Or was it from a far earlier date? Because Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy had once been a convent, was there the possibility that some poor nun in the distant past had been murdered (it was fun to wonder why) and stuffed up the chimney? Fitzgibbon had said that use of the fireplaces was forbidden until November, but that in itself didn’t mean that the body hadn’t been baking away during the winter months since time out of mind. Arguing against that theory was the fact of the substitute skull, and the fact that the corpse had been clutching a fairly recent Saint Michael Award. It seemed unlikely, too, that a chimney had remained blocked for fifty or so cold Canadian winters without anyone noticing.

  I shivered and
dropped out of my headstand.

  What I needed now was information from the past: information about the first Mrs. Rainsmith—plain facts from someone who had known her personally.

  It was obvious that that someone would have to be a member of faculty, and I knew almost instinctively that there was none better than Mrs. Bannerman, who had not only been here for years, but was blessed with an analytical mind much like my own.

  I carried the clock to the window and saw that it was half ten: well after lights-out.

  Mrs. Bannerman wouldn’t be in the lab for hours, and yet I was now too wide awake to go back to sleep. I wrapped myself in a blanket and settled in a chair at the window.

  Only then did I remember that I had announced to Miss Fawlthorne my determination to drop out of Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy and go home: a resolution that I meant to keep, come Hades or high water.

  Mrs. Mullet is quite fond of saying that “Well begun is half done,” but I think there’s more to it than that. Half done is only fifty percent, but there is a satisfaction in making a firm decision which is surely closer to ninety or ninety-five percent.

  Making up your mind brings a relief, which “well begun” can’t even come close to.

  So, by hook or by crook I was going home, but it was still a long way from “Case Closed” at Miss Bodycote’s. There were more ghosts here than the ones that fiddled with Ouija boards, or those that walked these haunted halls.

  With hours to wait until Mrs. Bannerman would open the laboratory, there was no longer any excuse to delay my report on William Palmer, I thought, so I might as well get on with it.

  It made no difference whatsoever that I had no reference materials at hand. Every detail of the Rugeley Poisoner’s lurid life, having been burned happily and permanently into my memory, is forever at my fingertips. (Don’t lick them, a gnomish little voice teases. They’re covered with arsenic.)

  I opened my notebook in my lap and picked up my pen.

  Doctor William Palmer, I wrote, was particularly proud of his soft white hands, which he was perpetually washing …

  Time flew by like butter, as Mrs. Mullet once said, as I outlined the life, the crimes, the trial, and the death of that saucy strychnine artist who had the nerve to ask Throttler Smith, the public hangman, as he spotted the trapdoor, “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  I ended my assignment with that lighthearted tidbit, thinking it would do no harm to provide Miss Fawlthorne with a smile.

  How wrong I was.

  I was rubbing my tired eyes when a flash of headlights outside in the street caught my attention. A car had pulled up and stopped at the curb.

  How odd, I thought, that anyone should be coming or going at such an ungodly hour. Miss Bodycote’s was not the kind of establishment that encouraged callers, even during the daylight hours, so that a middle-of-the-night arrival or departure was most likely to be bad news.

  Had someone been taken ill? Had someone called a doctor? If that were the case, the doctor was not Ryerson Rainsmith. I knew his car, and this was not it.

  The interior light flicked on, and I could see that the passenger was a man: not anyone from Miss Bodycote’s, then. He was talking to the driver.

  After several minutes, both doors sprang open and two men stepped out. Even in the dim light of the streetlamps I recognized Inspector Gravenhurst and Sergeant LaBelle. As they came up the steps, the front door opened, and a long rectangle of yellow light was cast out into the night. Silhouetted in it was the shadow of a woman, though whose, I could not tell.

  And then the door was closed, and the entranceway was once again in darkness.

  I crept quietly out into the hall, leaving my bedroom door ajar. Thank goodness I was still wearing yesterday’s clothing and didn’t have to dress.

  At the top of the staircase, I paused, keeping to the shadows, and peeked down into the foyer.

  The inspector and Sergeant LaBelle were standing just inside the door. They had not removed their hats, so they didn’t intend to stay. Facing them was Miss Fawlthorne, and beside her, stiff as a marble statue, was Mrs. Bannerman.

  The two women had obviously been awaiting the police, since they had opened the front door at once.

  The inspector stepped forward and said something in a low voice, which I could not quite catch, and then Miss Fawlthorne opened the door for the others to step outside.

  Not wanting to miss the least detail, I tiptoed back to my room as quickly as possible without giving myself away, and flew to the window.

  Inspector Gravenhurst, with a firm grip on Mrs. Bannerman’s elbow, was easing her into the backseat of the car.

  In spite of the outward appearance of manners, I knew that Inspector Gravenhurst was no Prince Charming, and Mrs. Bannerman no Cinderella.

  It was no candlelight ball they were off to in a pumpkin coach, but rather a cold car ride to some dank, sour cell in a draughty police station.

  Mrs. Bannerman was under arrest.

  • TWENTY-FOUR •

  I FELT AS IF my heart had been shot down in flames and crashed into the sea. Primarily, of course, for poor Mrs. Bannerman, but also, I must admit, for my own lost chances.

  It was entirely my fault. I should have taken the opportunity to question her earlier about all those goings-on at Miss Bodycote’s in years past. She had certainly been there long enough to know where all—or at least most—of the bodies were buried, if I may put it in such a coarse way.

  Those early morning hours in the chemistry laboratory before the academy was awake had allowed us to form bonds that could never have developed in a classroom or on the playing field.

  Squandered, I thought. Utterly wasted.

  Without putting myself in even more of a jam than I was in already, there was no way of questioning students or faculty.

  But that had never stopped Flavia de Luce before.

  “Trust no one,” Gremly had typed out on the Morse code sender. And Miss Fawlthorne had said the same—at least before she had contradicted herself.

  Gremly, at least, was a member of the Nide, or so she had claimed. It was she, also, who had tipped me off about the first Mrs. Rainsmith. But she had distanced herself from me on the bus, and I knew, even without being told, that she did not want us to be seen together.

  Who, then, could I trust?

  Scarlett? I had asked her the cryptic pheasant question, but she, like Gremly, had recoiled with something that could only be fear.

  Inspector Gravenhurst, I supposed, but it seemed unlikely he would share the results of his confidential investigations with a mere schoolgirl such as me.

  Wallace Scroop came to mind, but I wrote him off almost immediately. He had spilled the beans about the ancient skull, but nothing more. If the truth be told, I had given him more information than he had given me—even if mine had turned out to be untrue. If Clarissa Brazenose, Wentworth, and Le Marchand were still alive, the information I had fed him was no more than a load of old horse hockey. I wondered if he knew?

  At any rate, Wallace wouldn’t likely be in much of a mood to share further confidences.

  Outside, it had begun to rain: not a downpour, but a cold drizzle which almost at once, due to condensation and the dropping temperature, began to fog the window.

  I breathed heavily upon the glass, obscuring my view of the street, and creating a blank canvas upon which I could draw a whole new world with my forefinger.

  I did it without even thinking: It came from somewhere deep inside.

  Here was Bishop’s Lacey, and here, St. Tancred’s, with its churchyard. I sketched in a couple of little tombstones with my fingernail. Over here was the High Street, and Cow Lane, and Cobbler’s Lane, and Mrs. Mullet’s cottage.

  Lord, how I missed her!

  A warm tear ran down my cheek, matching to perfection a racing raindrop on the outside of the cold glass.

  Here was her picket fence, and here her old rosebushes, which Alf kept trimmed to military standards. I almost began to s
ob as I etched in the clothesline, with someone’s shirts—Father’s, I realized with a shock—flapping wildly, sadly, in the fresh English breeze.

  Laundry! Of course! What a fool I had been! I felt a stupid grin crawling like a fly across my face.

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and the wet window with my palm. No point in leaving clues behind, even if they were drawn in dampness.

  Who was it—Daffy would know—that wanted “Here Lies One Whose Name Is Writ in Water” carved on his tombstone? Keats? Yeats?

  I couldn’t remember—which was precisely what he wanted, wasn’t it?

  It was Monday morning: washing day. The laundry would be opening early and I would be there—with bells on!

  * * *

  I let myself in and locked the door. In the early morning darkness, the laundry clanked and groaned as if it were a sleeping beast.

  Kelly must have turned up late last night, or earlier this morning, to stoke the boilers, which were now hissing like a basket of angry asps. Already, the heat was almost unbearable. By midday, it would be killing.

  I took the note I had written and placed it dead center on the table where Marge worked. She could hardly miss it.

  It had caused me a considerable amount of thought and a considerable amount of blood. I hoped it was worth it.

  Guided by the beacons of glowing pilot lights, I felt my way in the near darkness round the back of the main boiler to the ladder I had spotted on my earlier visits. Putting one hand on each rail and a foot on the bottom rung, I hauled myself up and began to climb.

  A false dawn broke as I neared the frosted window at the top of the wall, where the sickly orange glow of a yard light seeped in among the panting pipes. I inhaled the acrid smell of hot steam.

  At the top of the ladder I stepped off onto a walkway of perforated metal which spanned the room behind and above the boilers. Great valves—some painted red—sang away to themselves, like colorful barnacles on the hulk of a sunken liner.

  An enormous duct, wrapped like King Tut in some kind of insulating material (asbestos, I hoped—otherwise it would be too hot) ran in an “L” shape down and across the laundry. I hauled myself cautiously up onto it, creeping wormlike along its length until I was directly above Marge’s worktable.