As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

chairman.
    “That ought to fetch them,” he muttered, almost to himself.
    Somewhere inside, a dim glow appeared, as if someone had lighted a candle.
    He shot me a triumphant look, and I thought of applauding.
    After what seemed like an eternity, but which was probably in reality no more than half a minute, the door was edged open by an apparition in nightgown, thick spectacles, and curlers.
    “Well?” demanded a creaky voice, and a candle in a tin holder was raised to light and examine our faces. And then a gasp. “Oh! I’m sorry, sir.”
    “It’s all right, Fitzgibbon. I’ve brought the new girl.”
    “Ah,” said the apparition, sweeping the candle in a broad arc to indicate that we were to step inside.
    The place was a vast, echoing mausoleum, the walls pitted everywhere with pointed, painted nooks and alcoves, some in the shape of seashells, which looked as if they had once housed religious statuary, but the pale saints and virgins, having been evicted, had been replaced with brass castings of sour-faced, whiskered old men in beaver hats with their hands jammed into the breasts of their frock coats.
    Apart from that, I had only time enough to register a quick impression of scrubbed floorboards and institutional varnish disappearing in all directions before the flame blew out and we were left standing in darkness. The place smelled like a piano warehouse: wood, varnish, and an acrid metallic tang that suggested tight strings and old lemons.
    “Damnation,” someone whispered, close to my ear.
    We were in what I presumed was an entrance hall when the electric lights were suddenly switched on, leaving the three of us blinking in the glare.
    A tall woman stood at the top of a broad staircase, herhand on the switch. “Who is it, Fitzgibbon?” she asked, in a voice that suggested she fed on peaches and steel.
    “It’s the chairman, miss. He’s brought the new girl.”
    I could feel my temper rising. I was not going to stand there and be discussed as if I were a mop in a shop.
    “Good evening, Miss Fawlthorne,” I said, stepping forward. “I’m Flavia de Luce. I believe you have been expecting me.”
    I had seen the headmistress’s name on the prospectus the academy had sent to Father. I could only hope that this woman on the stair
was
actually the headmistress, and not just some lackey.
    Slowly, she descended the stairs, the startling white of her hair standing out round her head in a snowy nimbus. She was dressed in a black suit and a white blouse. A large ruby pin glowed at her throat like a bead of fresh blood. Her hawk nose and dark complexion gave her the look of a pirate who had given up the sea for a career in education.
    She inspected me up and down, from top to toe.
    She must have been satisfied, because she said, finally, “Fetch her things.”
    Fitzgibbon opened the door and signaled the taxi driver, and a minute later, my luggage, soggy from the rain, was piled in the foyer.
    “Thank you, Dr. Rainsmith,” she said, dismissing the chairman. “Most kind of you.”
    It seemed short shrift for someone who had lugged me across the Atlantic and halfway across Canada, but perhaps it was the lateness of the hour.
    With no more than a nod, Ryerson Rainsmith was gone and I was alone with my captors.
    Miss Fawlthorne—I was quite sure now that it was she, because she hadn’t contradicted me—walked round me in a slow circle. “Do you have any cigarettes or alcohol either on your person or in your baggage?”
    I shook my head.
    “Well?”
    “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