The place smelled of commodes and playing cards, and before I was halfway to the end I had made a firm resolve never to begin to die. For me it would be all or nothing: no half measures, no lingering on the doorstep.
A metallic clatter made me spin round.
A woman in scrubber’s uniform was backing out of a room, hauling a wheeled bucket behind her. She seemed as surprised as I was, and then a grin broke her face.
“Cripes! You startled me!”
“Same here,” I said, wiping my brow with my forearm and flinging off drops of imaginary sweat.
We both laughed.
“Can I help you?” she asked. “Looking for someone in particular?”
“No,” I said. “I’m with the Girl Scouts. Rosedale Troop Number Thirty-nine, Scarlet Pimpernel Patrol. I’m working on my charity badge and Brown Owl assigned me to visit as many of the patients here as possible.”
I tried to arrange my features into a look of hopeless determination combined with wilting enthusiasm. It was not easy.
“Quota system, eh?” the woman said. “Everything’s quotas nowadays, it seems like. So many yards per floor per shift.”
She stuck the head of her mop into a mechanical squeezing mechanism and gave the lever a fierce pull.
“ ‘Life’s a tally board,’ my dad used to say, ‘where the peg won’t stay in.’ ”
I gave her a slightly conspiratorial grin—not enough to discredit the Girl Guides but enough that she would know that I wasn’t born yesterday, either.
“Carry on, then,” she said and, cracking my heels together, I gave her a two-fingered bunny salute.
At the end of the hall, the last door on the left had a bilious yellow card hanging from a thumbtack: QUARANTINE. NO ENTRY.
I had found Collingwood.
But there was no card in the slot: no name to identify the room’s occupant.
I pushed open the door.
The room was as empty as the infirmary had been at Miss Bodycote’s.
Collingwood had vanished again.
I took the precaution of checking the WC.
It, too, was empty. Where was she? What had they done with her?
I was trying to think what to do next when I heard voices in the hall, voices that were coming closer with every second. As a precaution, I dived into the WC and pulled the door to, leaving it open barely a crack.
Two people came into the room: nurses, I guessed, from their words.
“I suppose now we’ll have to burn the bedclothes,” one of them said. “And the mattress.”
I shrank back in horror. What had become of Collingwood?
“No such thing,” the second voice said. “We don’t do that anymore. Fumigation’s cheaper. Cost-saving’s the name of the game. Mattresses are money. So are sheets and towels. Better check the bathroom. I’ve already asked Gilda to clean it. God knows what—”
I pushed the door closed the last inch and positioned myself on the toilet seat.
And not a second too soon. The door was flung rudely open by a middle-aged woman in white, whose mouth fell open just before her face froze.
She slammed the door.
“There’s a girl in there,” I heard her say.
“Who?”
“No idea. Complete stranger.”
There was a silence with much muttering as they discussed strategy.
Then there was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” I asked, trying to sound outraged.
“Staff,” came the muffled answer.
I waited for a decent interval to pass—twenty-five seconds by actual count—then flushed the lav and walked out with my nose in the air as if I were the anointed queen of the hoolie-joolies.
“Disgraceful,” I said, pointing behind me. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
And I walked out of the room and out of the building without so much as a look back.
Chalk up another Triumphant Exit to Flavia de Luce.