That did it. They were off again instantly into gales of laughter.
Marge tripped off to a large table half hidden by a partition, delicately holding up the hem of her skirt with dainty fingers, like a dairymaid who had not been given enough lines in a stage play. She and Sal began rummaging through a couple of canvas sacks, and although I couldn’t make out their words, I could hear the two of them exchanging low, tittering remarks.
I took advantage of the lull to look round the room.
Overhead, crisscrossed by metal walkways, pipes, tubes, ducts, and hoses ran everywhere in an intestinal tangle of water, steam, and air. From below, it seemed like a whole vast aerial world that simply cried out for exploration.
It was like standing in Captain Nemo’s submarine, or the belly of an iron whale.
Except for a large calendar advertising Maple Leaf soap flakes, and a board with a row of nails, which was partially hidden behind the door, the whitewashed walls were oddly bare. Upon the nails hung three keys, each attached to a wooden disc by a silver ring.
One of these was crudely marked in ink with the initial “M,” another with the letter “S.”
The third key’s disc, worn smooth and oil-stained, bore an almost illegible “K.”
I pocketed it without a moment’s hesitation, reasoning that those marked “M” and “S” belonged to Marge and Sal. The third key obviously belonged to a person with dirty hands: not someone who worked all day with their hands in soap.
A caretaker, probably: a jack-of-all-trades whose name began with “K”—“Keith,” possibly.
No, not Keith: A caretaker would never be addressed as an equal, and certainly not by the likes of Miss Fawlthorne. The “K” must be a surname.
So it couldn’t be Mr. Tugg, the handyman, for obvious reasons.
Kennedy, perhaps, or Kronk … or Kopplestone.
But it was useless to speculate.
At any rate, I knew that if I pinched Marge’s key, or Sal’s, it would be missed before the end of the day, while with any luck, the third one might just belong to someone who took it only when needed, and even then, only occasionally.
It was a risk I would have to run.
“No hankies,” Marge said suddenly at my elbow, startling me. “Periwinkle blue or otherwise. So buzz off.”
Buzz off?
It was obvious that whatever milk of human kindness had flowed briefly in the woman’s veins had evaporated as quickly as it had appeared.
The more I dealt with adults, the less I wanted to be one.
“Thank you anyway,” I said. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. And now, I mustn’t keep you from your nightshirts and knickers.”
And I marched out the door with my head held high.
“Yoo-hoo! Flavia,” a voice called. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
It was Van Arque, of course. She was sitting like Humpty Dumpty on the short stone wall that shielded the wash yard from the hockey field, kicking her heels.
“Ah!” I said. “The ubiquitous Van Arque.”
“Ubiquitous” was another word I had picked up from my sister Daffy, and it meant someone who was always everywhere, and not in a nice way, either.
“You’d better hustle your bustle,” she said, vaulting down from her perch and glancing at an imaginary wristwatch. “Mrs. Bannerman wants to see you.”
By the time I reached the chemistry laboratory, my heart was pounding like a pile driver. What could the notorious Mrs. Bannerman want with me?
“Come in, Flavia,” she called as I hesitated at the door, trying to catch my breath.
Did she possess some kind of supernatural antennae with which she had detected my presence?
I shuffled into the lab, doing my darnedest not to gape at the wonderful equipment with which the room was filled. The electron microscope and the hydrogen spectrophotometer lurked in my peripheral vision like great dark gods that must not, on any account, be looked at—not even glanced at—directly.
“Come in, Flavia,” she repeated, patting the seat of a tall lab stool.
I climbed up onto it and tried to settle myself. Mrs. Bannerman remained standing.
“Well, what do you make of us so far?” she asked.
I couldn’t think of an answer, so I shrugged.
“It’s like that, is it?” She laughed.
In the presence of this poisoner—yes, I’m afraid that’s the way I thought of her, acquitted or not—I had been struck dumb. Words died in my throat as if they had been steeped in belladonna and perished in my craw.
It was mortifying. I had never in my life, so far as I could remember, been stuck for words. It was as unlikely as if the Atlantic was stuck for water. And yet—
Mrs. Bannerman threw out a lifeline. “I’ve had a little talk with Miss Fawlthorne,” she said, “and we have come to the conclusion that it would be beneficial to admit you to chemistry classes.”
What!
“In spite of the fact that you are, technically, only a fourth-former.”