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

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 Itold 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.
    “Am I?” she asked, her eyes huge and damp. “Then what about Le Marchand? What about Wentworth? What about Brazenose?”
    “Surely they can’t
all
have vanished without a trace,” I said. “Someone would have noticed.”
    “That’s just the thing!” Collingwood said. “No one did. I’ve been making notes. Pinkham caught me at it. She ripped the book out of my hands and took it to Miss Fawlthorne.”
    “When was this?” I asked.
    “Last night. Do you think they’re going to kill me?”
    “Of course not,” I said. “People don’t do things like that. Not in real life, at any rate.”
    Although I knew perfectly well that people did. And, in my own experience, more often than you’d think.
    “Are you sure?” Collingwood asked.
    “Positive,” I lied.
    “Promise you won’t tell,” she whispered.
    “I swear,” I said, for some unfathomable reason making the sign of the cross in the air.
    Collingwood’s brow wrinkled. “Are you an RC?” she asked.
    “Why?” I said, to stall for time more than anything. As a matter of fact, she had hit the nail on the head. Even though we appeared outwardly to be practicing Anglicans, we de Luces had been Roman Catholics since Rome was little more than seven picturesque hills in the Italian wilderness. The soul, Daffy says, is not necessarily where the heart is.
    “As a matter of fact, yes,” I said.
    Collingwood whistled through her teeth. “I thought so! We have next-door neighbors back home in Niagara-on-the-Lake—the Connollys?—they’re RCs, too. They make those same fiddles with their fingers that you just did. It’s the sign of the cross, isn’t it? That’s what Mary Grace Connolly told me. It’s a kind of magic. She made me promise not to tell. But listen! What are you doing here? Miss Bodycote’s is—”
    “I know,” I interrupted. “So high Anglican that only a kitchen stool is required to scramble up into Heaven.”
    Where had I heard that? I couldn’t for the life of me remember. Had Aunt Felicity told me? Surely it wasn’t Father.
    “You mustn’t let on, though,” Collingwood said. “They’ll skin you alive.”
    “We Catholics have been martyrs since the invention of the flame,” I said. “We’re quite accustomed to it.”
    It was a snotty thing to say, but I said it anyway.
    “Your secret’s safe with me,” Collingwood said, sewingher lips shut with an invisible needle and thread. “Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me.”
    The last sentence came out sounding like “Wye-oh oh-ffef goodem agim ow momee.”
    “It’s not a secret,” I told her. “Actually, we’re quite proud of it.”
    At that instant there was a terrific pounding at the door: a wood-splintering banging so loud that I almost kissed a kidney good-bye.
    “Open up!” a voice demanded—a voice I had first heard only too recently, but one I