Her eyes considered this, and then she asked, “Of what?”
“The place is haunted,” I told her. “Footsteps are heard in the halls, and a girl who died two years ago has been seen coming out of the laundry.”
It was a bold opening, and I was proud of myself to have thought of it.
“And have you seen with your own eyes, as you put it, this dead girl? Have you heard, with your own ears, these footsteps in the halls?”
“Well, no,” I admitted.
“Science does not believe in ghosts,” she said. “And nor, as a budding chemist, should you.”
So my special classes with Mrs. Bannerman were no secret.
“Ghosts are most often seen by girls and certain young men with an iron deficiency.”
If she was referring to chlorosis, or hypochromic anemia, she might as well have saved her breath. The condition had been described as early as the sixteenth century, and a remedy containing iron, sulfuric acid, and potassium carbonate concocted more than a hundred years ago by Albert Popper, the Bohemian chemist, and it was no news to me.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said, turning toward the door.
“No, wait,” Miss Moate said. “Don’t take offense.”
I let my shoulders slump a little as a sign of defeat.
“You mustn’t judge an old woman too harshly,” she said, her voice softening. “Look at me.”
I didn’t want to, and I found my eyes repelled by hers as if they were the like poles of a pair of magnets. By sheer strength of my optical muscles, I forced myself to meet her gaze.
“I was not always like this, you know,” she said, her hands fluttering reluctantly to indicate her body. “No, this useless husk was not always as you see it.”
She gave a barking, seal-like laugh to indicate the irony of her situation.
“How did it happen?” I blurted, before I could stop myself.
Now that I had locked my gaze with hers I found that I could not break free.
“You are the first person at this academy who has ever asked that,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, aware, even as I spoke, what a marvelous picklock power was contained in that one little word.
“Don’t be,” she replied. “Everyone else in the world is sorry. Dare to be something more than that.”
I waited for the electric charge in the air to settle.
“As you are now, so once was I,” she said, the words seeming ancient in her throat. “You’ll find that inscribed on tombstones in old graveyards, you know.”
I was well aware of it. The churchyard at St. Tancred’s had several variations of the verse:
Remember, Friend, as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you must be,
So Friend, prepare to follow me.
It was almost my favorite piece of poetry, as opposed to Keats, say, or Shelley, or someone who wrote less practical verse.
“It was an accident,” she said, her voice harsh, the words now suddenly raw in her mouth. “A car accident.… a village … a valley … a picnic … a friend. She was thrown clear, but I”—she touched the rubber tires of her chair, almost caressing them—“was trapped among the wheels.”
I was going to say that I was sorry, but I held my tongue.
“My only consolation is in being allowed to spend most of my time here, among my real friends.”
She brought her hand round in a broad sweep to include the glass cases of stuffed creatures.
“They are trapped, also, you see? Birds of a feather! You may laugh, if you wish.”
“It’s not amusing,” I said. “It’s tragic.”
I was thinking how I would feel if I were no longer able to swoop like a swallow through a country lane, my feet on Gladys’s handlebars as we raced down Goodger Hill and swept across the little stone bridge at the Palings. “Yaroo!” I used to shout.
There was a silence in the room, and I turned away from Miss Moate, as if I had become suddenly interested in the displays in their cases.
I took down a browned skull from a shelf, turning it over in my hands.
I could hardly believe my eyes.
Steady on. Keep calm, I thought. Poker face, stiff upper lip … anything to keep from giving away what you’ve just seen.
“Don’t touch that!” Miss Moate snapped. “The specimens are not to be handled.”
“Sorry,” I said before I could stop myself, and returned the grinning head to its place among the others.
“I’ve done it again, haven’t I? But as I said, you mustn’t judge an old woman too harshly.”
“It’s all right, Miss Moate,” I said, focusing on trying to appear normal, which is much more difficult than you might think. “I understand perfectly. I have a very great friend back home in England who is confined to a wheelchair. I know how dreadful it is.”
I thought of dear old Dr. Kissing, parked in his rickety bath chair at Rook’s End, who, in his ancient quilted smoking jacket and tasseled hat, his cigarette ash drooping like an acrobatic gray caterpillar from the leaf of his lower lip, was snug as a bug in a rug. Dr. Kissing had certainly never complained about his lot in life, and I mentally begged his forgiveness for even suggesting that he might have done.
“Very well, then,” Miss Moate said abruptly, clearing her throat as if to wipe the conversational slate clean. “Now, back to this personal matter … you’re frightened, you say?”
“Well, not so much frightened as worried,” I admitted. “It’s about the Rainsmiths.”
I dared not say more.
“What about them? Has one of them done something to you?”
“Not to me,” I said, “but perhaps to someone else.”
“To who?” she demanded ungrammatically.
“I mustn’t say. School rules forbid it.”
Although I kept a sober face, I was smiling inwardly. Defending oneself by hiding behind the rules was a clever trick, like using a mouse to stampede the enemy’s elephants and causing them to trample him to death. Shakespeare had a phrase for it (as he had a phrase for everything): “hoist by his own petard,” which, according to Daffy, meant rousted by the smell of one’s own barn burners.
“Forget the school rules,” she said. “When a child is at risk, the rules must be set aside.”
Who did she think was at risk? I wondered. I had admitted being frightened and worried, but I had said nothing about being at risk—which was actually no more than a weasel word for danger.
“Now, then,” she said in a soothing voice, “tell me about the Rainsmiths.”
“I think they may have murdered someone.”
“Who?” she said instantly. “In particular.”
“Clarissa Brazenose.”
I could have mentioned the names of Le Marchand and Wentworth, but I wanted to keep things simple. I had already suggested to Miss Fawlthorne that this trio may still be alive, but Miss Moate was not aware of that.
Partial disclosure is a sharp knife that can be used again and again as long as you watch what you’re doing.
“That’s a very serious accusation,” Miss Moate said. “Are you sure?”
“No. I only think they may have. But I needed to tell someone.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. I shall certainly see that—”
Somewhere a bell went off, and moments later, the halls were filled with the sound of many feet. A babble of loud voices came closer and closer, and suddenly the horde, like a buffalo herd, was upon us.
“Later,” Miss Moate said, mouthing the words to be heard above the clamor. “We shall talk later.”
Then, her voice suddenly restored, she shouted harshly: “Girls! Girls! Girls! We are not savages!”
I nodded to let her know that I had understood and, like a salmon fighting its way upstream, I muscled my way to the door.
I forced myself to plod doggedly along the halls to my room. No one paid me the slightest attention.
When I reached Edith Cavell, I stepped inside, closed the door, and flattened my back against it. Now that it was safe to do so, my breath began coming in great, ragged gulps. I was becoming light-headed.
The skull in Miss Moate’s science lab—the skull I had held in my hands …
Before I replaced it on the shelf, I could not help spotting that three of its teeth contained amalgam fittings.