My veins were throbbing like plucked harp strings.
“Dr. Rainsmith must have been devastated,” I said. “Even though Miss Fawlthorne says that the second Mrs. Rainsmith was a great comfort.”
“I expect she was,” Elvina said, not looking at me. “Yes, I expect she was.”
There fell a great silence, and we all of us sat thinking our own thoughts, each of us cradling our teacups in our hands as if it were a family trait we shared.
For the first time in many weeks I felt at home. I could have stayed here forever in this cozy kitchen. I could have kissed the table and hugged the chairs, but of course I didn’t. Instead I offered up a little prayer of thanks to the Michaelmas daisies, and to Saint Michael himself who had brought me here.
“Can I run you home?” Merton asked. “I expect you’ll be wanting to get back, and it’s a long walk.”
How could I tell him that in my heart I was already at home—and that a ride to anywhere else would take me farther from it? That by departing I would be in some way diminished?
“Thank you, Mr. Merton,” I said. “I’d be much obliged.”
The streetlights were coming on as we drove along the Danforth.
“May I ask you a question?” I said.
“Of course, miss,” Merton said.
“What was Francesca Rainsmith wearing the night of the Beaux Arts Ball?”
Merton smiled, and then he laughed aloud. “A Cinderella costume,” he said. “Tattered gingham dress, apron, hair in a bandanna, Charlie Chaplin boots with red socks sticking out. She was ever so proud of the getup. One of the girls helped her make it. No more than a girl herself, Miss Francesca was. We miss her.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish I’d had the chance to meet her.”
We drove in silence for a while.
“How are you finding it?” Merton asked. “Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy, I mean?”
“Frankly, Mr. Merton,” I said. “Just between you and me and the gatepost—it’s a bugger.”
And I think by the look on his face that he knew what I meant.
Miss Fawlthorne was, as I knew she would be, livid.
In its proper sense, the word “livid” is used to describe someone who is black in the face from strangulation, and I wasn’t far off. Her countenance was ghastly.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, her voice trembling.
“I went for a walk,” I said, which was true, as far as it went.
“The whole academy has been turned out looking for you—do you realize that?”
Of course I didn’t. I had only just come in the door.
“We thought you’d been abducted. We—”
She was suddenly speechless.
Why ever would they think that? Did they know something that I didn’t?
“I left a note on your desk,” I said, but realizing even as I spoke that Miss Fawlthorne was near tears, and that it was no time for childish games.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and left it at that. Of course I wanted to tell her about my worrying about Collingwood—my visit to the nursing home—my interview with Merton and Elvina.
But I didn’t. The time was not yet right. I needed more facts and more time to gather them.
“I’ll go to my room,” I said, saving her the trouble.
I lay on my bed reflecting upon (a) my wickedness and (b) the fact that I hadn’t eaten all day. Thank goodness for the box of biscuits I was buying on the hire-purchase plan from the grocer’s on the Danforth. I had borrowed the down payment from Fabian with the promise to repay, at twenty-five percent interest, as soon as I received my first allowance from home, even though my hopes in that direction were beginning to fade.
Dogger’s letter was the only communication I had received from Buckshaw since my incarceration.
Dear Dogger.
I bit savagely into a cream cracker, willing myself to summon him up in spirit, if not in fact. I tried to picture the two of us, heads bent together over a bubbling beaker, nodding wisely as the liquid changed color and another neck was in the noose, but it was no use.
Magic doesn’t work when you’re sad.
I realized that I had been putting off a visit to the laboratory for that very reason, which came as something of a shock. I needed to deal with things head-on.
Someone had pinned a handwritten note to the door of the lab: ALL CHEMISTRY CLASSES CANCELED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Underneath it, someone else had penciled Praise be to St. Jude for prayers answered, and someone else had written, in red ink, DOWN WITH CHEMS.
I looked both ways to make sure no one was coming, and slipped inside.
With the green blinds closed, and dusk out of doors, the room was in near darkness, which suited me to perfection. I would not easily be seen through the window in the door, or from the outside.