As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (20 page)

“Gremly’s just telegraphed my name,
F
—
L
—
A
—
V—I—A
,” I said. “What jolly good fun!”

For an instant I considered bursting into Gilbert and Sullivan:

But I didn’t.

Miss Moate looked from one of us to the other, and without another word, moved on to lurk somewhere else.

“My turn,” I said loudly. “Let me try,” and we swapped sending key and headset.

“Where’s Collingwood?”
I tapped out slowly, picking the letters from the chart.

Gremly removed the headphones and placed them over my ears. It was an awkward way of carrying on a conversation, but it would have to do.

“Infirmary,”
she sent.
“Gone mad.”

T
HE SPATTER OF RAIN
, which had begun as we left the huts, had now become a downpour. A pair of sluggish wipers swept sheets of water from the windshield, and it had become suddenly cold. My short sleeves were no protection and I hugged my arms against my body.

Gremly did not sit with me on the bus. Quite the contrary: She had gone far to the rear to sit in the shadow of Miss Moate, leaving me up front behind the driver, pretending to appreciate the beauty of the landscape, which was made up principally of tall elms in rainswept fields, glimpses of the lake, and the occasional wrecker’s yard in which the rusting hulks of once-loved automobiles were piled like so many colossal steel ant hills.

Again the word “disorientated” flashed into my mind. It meant, essentially, having lost one’s compass bearings, which is what had happened to me.

Cast out from my childhood home, banished to a strange land, and now isolated even from the low, gooselike gabble of my classmates, I was alone in the world, at the mercy of even the slightest gust of wind.

I needed to focus my mind on something outside myself—to regain the scientific view and so to resettle my soul.

But where to begin?

“Trust no one,” Miss Fawlthorne and Gremly had each told me, and when you stopped to think about it rationally, that included even them.

I needed to seem to the faculty of Miss Bodycote’s an apt pupil; to the other girls, an invisible bore.

There was only one way I could think of to achieve this with a minimum of fuss.

“Slowly, slowly,” Fitzgibbon said, helping me up the stairs. I made my hand tremble on her arm as I tottered my way upward.

I had managed a small but convincing vomit at the curbside, which I was inordinately proud of. Miss Moate had insisted I report to the nurse—exactly as I had intended she should. A few more dry heaves on the stairs for insurance and I had won the toss, so to speak.

“Thank you, Matron,” I managed.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said. “You didn’t drink any of the groundwater at the camp, did you?”

The camp: That’s what it was called
.

I shook my head. “Milk only,” I managed.

“Good,” she said. “You’ve got at least half a chance, then.”

Was she being what Daffy called “ironical”? Irony, she had explained, was a special class of sarcasm in which the meaning was the opposite of what it seemed. It was an art at which I had not yet become as adept as I should have liked, although it was high on my list of things to do.

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. C
₂
H
₃
C
_l3
O
₂
. 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 had 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!”