“And who is this?” I asked, pointing to a striking and rather enigmatic-looking girl who gazed out at us with hooded eyes.
“Mrs. Bannerman is still with us at Miss Bodycote’s,” she said. “You shall meet her tomorrow. She is our chemistry mistress.”
Mildred Bannerman! Of course! She had been charged and acquitted—a number of years ago after a sensational trial—of the murder of what the News of the World had called “her wayward husband.”
It was claimed by the prosecution that she had poisoned the blade of the carving knife with which he cut up the Christmas turkey.
It was an old trick but a good one: Parysatis, the wife of Darius II of Persia, in the third century B.C., had murdered her daughter-in-law, Stateira, in precisely the same way.
By applying the poison to only the outer side of the blade, and serving Stateira the first slice, she was able to dispatch her victim and yet eat from the bird herself with little or no risk.
It was called “having your turkey and eating it, too.”
By great good fortune and an even greater defense attorney, Mildred Bannerman had been spared the hangman’s noose, and indeed, had been portrayed to the jury as the real victim of the crime.
And just think: In no more than a few hours I would be meeting her!
We moved on through an endless maze of darkened corridors until, after what seemed like an eternity, Miss Fawlthorne produced a set of keys.
“These are my rooms,” she said, flicking on the lights.
Presumably the rules didn’t apply to her.
“You may sleep on that couch,” she said, pointing to a black leather monstrosity with a pattern of stitched dimples. “I shall bring you a blanket and a pillow.”
And with that, she was gone, leaving me standing in the middle of her sitting room: a room that reeked of cold, silent unhappiness.
Was I picking up vibrations from the Old Girls who had been punished here for switching on a light after curfew? Or worse?
I remembered the words that Daffy had read aloud from Nicholas Nickleby, the words of the schoolmaster, Wackford Squeers: “Let any boy speak a word without leave, and I’ll take the skin off his back.”
But no, girls were not caned, Daffy had told me. They were reserved for the more exquisite tortures.
Miss Fawlthorne was back with a pillow and a tartan motoring blanket. “Sleep now,” she said. “I shall try not to disturb you when I return.”
She switched off the light and the door closed with a chilling click. I listened for a key in the lock. But even with my acute hearing, there was nothing more than the sound of her retreating footsteps.
She was going to her study to call the police: That much seemed certain.
I was straining my brain to think of ways I might contrive to be present in Edith Cavell at the moment the sheet was removed and the body revealed.
Perhaps I could wander in, rubbing my eyes and claiming a history of sleepwalking; or that I was in desperate need—due to some hereditary tropical disorder—of a glass of cold water.
But before I could put either of these plans into action, I fell asleep.
I dreamed, of course, of Buckshaw.
I was riding my bicycle, Gladys, up the long avenue of chestnuts. Even in the dream I was thinking how remarkable it was that I could hear a skylark singing and smell the trampled chamomile of the defunct south lawn. That and the decay of the old house itself.
Dogger was waiting at the front door.
“Welcome home, Miss Flavia,” he said. “We have missed you.”
I rode past him, into the foyer, and up the east staircase—which goes to show how ridiculous dreams can be: Although I had ridden down the stairs, I had never, ever been guilty of riding up them.
In my chemical laboratory, an experiment was in busy progress. Beakers bubbled, flasks simmered, and various colored liquids flowed importantly to and fro in twists and coils of glass tubing.
Although I couldn’t remember the purpose of the experiment, I was full of excitement at the outcome.
I would write it up in my laboratory notebook: from Hypothesis to Conclusion, all neatly presented so that even an idiot could follow each step of my brilliant thinking.
The chemical journals would come to fisticuffs over the rights to publish my work.
And yet there was an indescribable sadness about this dream: the kind of sadness that comes when the heart and the brain do not agree.
Half of me was filled with joy. Half of me wanted to weep.
When I awoke, a bell was ringing somewhere.