Miss Fawlthorne sprang to the electrical switch like a sudden gazelle. “We mustn’t set a bad example,” she whispered. “Lights-out means what it says.”
Again we were wrapped in darkness.
But for no more than a few moments. Then a match flared and Miss Fawlthorne touched it to the candle’s wick.
“Come,” she called out, and the door opened.
At first, I saw only the round reflections of Fitzgibbon’s spectacles, floating as if weightless in the air. She took a single step forward into the room—then froze—and all at once, miraculously, she was surrounded by a sea of pale, disembodied female faces peering over her shoulder.
Oddly enough, the thought that sprang to my mind at that instant was the famous passage in which Saint Luke is describing the Nativity. As best I can recall, it goes something like this: “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.’ ”
(Although the Bible, of course, at least in the King James Version, for some reason known only to its translators and to the king himself, has no quotation marks.)
Even now, I can still see the white faces of those cherubim and seraphim, suspended eerily in the shadows behind the frozen Fitzgibbon: the students of Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy.
My classmates.
This was my first glimpse of them—and theirs of me.
“Begone, girls!” Miss Fawlthorne commanded, clapping her hands several times, smartly.
And like puppets being jerked offstage in a rather sinister Punch and Judy, they vanished.
“Take Collingwood to her bed,” Miss Fawlthorne instructed Fitzgibbon. “She’s had a bad shock.”
Did she think I hadn’t?
Like a reluctant robot, Fitzgibbon hauled Collingwood to her feet and led her to the door, quilt and all.
“It was quick of you to have thought of the sheet,” Miss Fawlthorne said when they were gone, shooting me a piercing look above the candle’s flame. “You have made an excellent start, Flavia.
“Except for allowing Collingwood in your room,” she added. “Both of you must be punished, of course.”
I might have pointed out, I suppose, that Collingwood had come into the room uninvited and that since I was asleep at the time, I could scarcely have prevented it. To say nothing of the fact that, being newly arrived, I had not been informed of the stupid rule.
But I kept my bun trap shut.
It is decisions like this, for better or for worse, which make you who you are.
Instead, I stooped to lift the corner of the sheet.
“No! Don’t! Please!” Miss Fawlthorne snapped, and I let it fall.
What harm could there possibly be in having another squint? But I knew in that moment that there would never be another chance.
Generally, when you discover a body, you have the luxury of close examination before the police are called in to trample the scene like cows at a picnic. But not always—and this was going to be one of those times. I had seen all that I was going to see. Whatever the physical evidence, it was already in my head.
Besides, I should have thought Miss Fawlthorne might want to learn as much as she could about the cadaver that had, until recently, inhabited her chimney.
Or did she know already?
I stood primly by, allowing her to regain control.
“I suppose I shall have to report it,” she said for the second time, almost as if thinking aloud—as if she were being forced into it. Perhaps she was thinking of the academy’s reputation. I could already see the headlines:
Carcass Cooked in Chimney
Body at Miss Bodycote’s
Girls’ School Aghast!
If the newspapers here in Canada were anything like the ones back home, we could be in for a jolly couple of days.
“But you must be absolutely exhausted!” she said, and until that moment I hadn’t thought about it. Six days at sea and another on the train—to say nothing of the fact that it was now the middle of the night …
Miss Fawlthorne’s words were hypnotic. I was suddenly yawning like the Cheddar Gorge, my eyes full of grit.
“You can’t sleep here, obviously,” she said, waving a hand at the sheet-covered form on the floor. “I shall put you up in my sitting room.”
I had a fleeting vision of Miss Fawlthorne nailing my severed head to the wall as if I were a mounted trophy: some wild animal that she had shot in Africa, or in the Arctic wastes.
“Come along, then,” she said, leading the way by candlelight.
The electric lamps remained switched off.
At Miss Bodycote’s, a rule, I could see, was a rule was a rule.
Daffy would have been delighted with my insight.
I would never have thought it possible, but I missed my sister. She had been the lemon on my fish, the vinegar on my chips, I realized with a sudden pang, and that without her, life from now on was going to be less tasty. It was an odd thought to have at that particular moment, but then, life itself was odd. At least mine was.
Get a grip, Flavia, I remember thinking. Steady on.
We were now walking along a paneled corridor, Miss Fawlthorne leading the way.
“This is our Old Girls’ Gallery,” she said, raising the candlestick so I could better see the long rows of black-framed photographs that lined the gallery on either side.
Tier upon tier they rose up round us, flickering in the candlelight: faces of every size and shape imaginable, and again I thought of the hordes of angels.
Well, I had been told that Miss Bodycote’s had strong ties with the church, hadn’t I?
Even so, it hadn’t prepared me for the sight of all these scores of black-framed souls, each one staring directly down at me—and none of them laughing—as if they were some solemn heavenly jury and I the prisoner at the bar.
“And here, of course,” Miss Fawlthorne said, “is your mother.”
She should have warned me. I was not prepared.
Here was Harriet, in her black frame, gazing levelly out at me with such a look …
In that young face—my face!—was everything that needed to be said, and in her look, all the words that she had never had the chance to speak.
Directly beneath Harriet’s photograph was a small wall sconce, and in it was a spray of heartbreakingly fresh flowers.
Suddenly I was quaking.
Miss Fawlthorne put a hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think. I ought to have prepared you.”
We stood for a moment in silence, as if we were the only two left alive in that catacomb of the dead.
“She is much honored here,” Miss Fawlthorne said.
“She is much honored everywhere,” I said, perhaps a little too sharply. I realized, almost as I said it, that there was a certain resentment in my words. I had caught myself by surprise.
“Are they all dead?” I asked, pointing to the portraits, partly to change the subject and partly to show that there were no hard feelings.
“Good lord, no,” Miss Fawlthorne said. “This one went on to become a swimming medalist … this one, Nancy Severance, a film star. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. This one the wife of a prime minister … and this one … well, she became famous in her own way.”
“That’s what I should like to do,” I said. “To become famous in my own way.”
That was it in a nutshell, and I was pleased that I had finally realized it.
I did not want to be Harriet. I wanted to be myself.
Flavia de Luce. Full stop.