“No, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said.
“Firearms?” she asked, watching me closely.
“No, Miss Fawlthorne.”
“Very well, then. Welcome to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy. In the morning I shall sign you in properly. Take her to her room, Fitzgibbon.”
With that, she switched off the electric light and became part of the darkness.
Fitzgibbon had relighted her candle, and amid flickering shadows, up the staircase we climbed.
“They’ve put you in Edith Cavell,” she croaked at the top, fishing a set of keys from some unspeakable crevice in her nightgown and opening the door.
I recognized the name at once. The room was dedicated to the memory of the World War I heroine Edith Cavell, the British nurse who had been shot by a German firing squad for helping prisoners escape. I thought of those famous words, which were among her last and which I had seen inscribed upon her statue near Trafalgar Square in London: “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone.”
I decided at that instant to adopt those words, from now on, as my personal motto. Nothing could have been more appropriate.
At least for now.
Fitzgibbon placed the candlestick on a small wooden desk. “Blow it out when you’re ready for bed. No electrics—it’s past lights-out.”
“May I light a fire?” I asked. “I’m actually quite cold.”
“Fires are not permitted until the fifth of November,” she said. “It’s a tradition. Besides, coal and wood are money.”
And with no more than that, she left me.
Alone.
I will not describe that night, other than to say that the mattress had apparently been stuffed with crushed stones, and that I slept the sleep of the damned.
I left the candle burning. It was the only heat in the room.
I would like to be able to say that I dreamed of Buckshaw, and of Father, and of Feely and Daffy, but I cannot. Instead, my weary brain was filled with images of roaring seas, of blowing spray, and of Dorsey Rainsmith, who had taken upon herself the form of an albatross, which, perched at the masthead of a storm-tossed ship, screamed down at me wild cries of bird abuse.
I fought my way up out of this troubled sleep to find someone sitting on my chest, pummeling me about the head and shoulders with angry fists.
“Traitor!” a voice was sobbing. “You filthy dirty rotten traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!”
It was still well before sunrise, and the faint light that leaked into the room from the streetlamp was too dim to make out clearly the features of my attacker.
I gathered all my strength and gave a mighty shove.
With a grunt and a thud someone fell heavily to the floor.
“What the dickens do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, snatching the candlestick from the desk. As a weapon—in a pinch—it was better than nothing. The guttering flame flared up.
Breath was sucked in. It sounded surprised.
“You’re not Pinkham!” the voice said in the gloom.
“Of course I’m not Pinkham. I’m Flavia de Luce.”
The voice gulped. “De Luce? The new girl?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, sheep shears! I’m afraid I’ve made an awful boner.”
There was a rustling sound and the overhead light was switched on.
There, with what Daffy always described as “strangle eyes” blinking in the glare, stood the most remarkable-looking little person I had ever seen. Long lizard legs clad in baggy black woolen stockings protruded from the dark blue skirt of a rumpled school uniform. Her body—almost an afterthought atop those remarkably long, bandy legs—was like a flattened lump of dough: a gingerbread man carelessly made.
“Who the deuce are you?” I demanded, taking the upper hand.
“Collingwood, P. A. ‘P. A.’ for Patricia Anne. Gosh, I hope you’re not too cheesed off with me. I thought you were Pinkham. Honest! I’d forgotten they moved her into Laura Secord with Barton because of her nightmares. Special dispensation.”
“And what did Pinkham do to deserve such a beating?” I wasn’t going to let her off easily.
Collingwood colored. “I mustn’t tell you. She’d kill me.”
I fixed her with the famous cold blue eye for which we de Luces are noted—although mine tend more toward violet, actually, especially when I’m riled.
“Spill it,” I said, raising the candlestick in a menacing manner and taking a step toward her. I was, after all, now in North America, the land of George Raft and James Cagney—a land where plain talk was understood.
Collingwood burst into tears.
“Oh, come on, kid,” I said.
Come on, kid?
My ears couldn’t believe what my mouth was saying. A couple of hours in Canada and I was already talking like Humphrey Bogart. Could it be something in the air?
“She ratted on me,” Collingwood said, wiping her eyes with her school tie.
They really did talk like that here. All those afternoons with Daffy and Feely at the cinema in Hinley had not been wasted after all, as Father had claimed. I had learned my first foreign language and learned it well.
“Ratted,” I repeated.
“To the head,” Collingwood added, nodding.
“Miss Fawlthorne?”
“The Hangman’s Mistress, we call her. But don’t let on I told you. She’s done the most unspeakable things, you know.”
“Such as?”
Collingwood looked over both shoulders before replying. “People disappear,” she whispered, pinching her fingertips together and then, like a magician, with a quick gesture, causing them to fly open to reveal an empty hand. “Poof! Just like that. Without a trace.”
“You’re pulling my leg,” I said.