As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley Read Free Book Online Page A

discover a body, you have the luxury of close examination before the police are called in totrample the scene like cows at a picnic. But not always—and this was going to be one of those times. I had seen all that I was going to see. Whatever the physical evidence, it was already in my head.
    Besides, I should have thought Miss Fawlthorne might want to learn as much as she could about the cadaver that had, until recently, inhabited her chimney.
    Or did she know already?
    I stood primly by, allowing her to regain control.
    “I suppose I shall have to report it,” she said for the second time, almost as if thinking aloud—as if she were being forced into it. Perhaps she was thinking of the academy’s reputation. I could already see the headlines:
    Carcass Cooked in Chimney
    Body at Miss Bodycote’s
    Girls’ School Aghast!
    If the newspapers here in Canada were anything like the ones back home, we could be in for a jolly couple of days.
    “But you must be absolutely exhausted!” she said, and until that moment I hadn’t thought about it. Six days at sea and another on the train—to say nothing of the fact that it was now the middle of the night …
    Miss Fawlthorne’s words were hypnotic. I was suddenly yawning like the Cheddar Gorge, my eyes full of grit.
    “You can’t sleep here, obviously,” she said, waving a hand at the sheet-covered form on the floor. “I shall put you up in my sitting room.”
    I had a fleeting vision of Miss Fawlthorne nailing mysevered head to the wall as if I were a mounted trophy: some wild animal that she had shot in Africa, or in the Arctic wastes.
    “Come along, then,” she said, leading the way by candlelight.
    The electric lamps remained switched off.
    At Miss Bodycote’s, a rule, I could see, was a rule was a rule.
    Daffy would have been delighted with my insight.
    I would never have thought it possible, but I missed my sister. She had been the lemon on my fish, the vinegar on my chips, I realized with a sudden pang, and that without her, life from now on was going to be less tasty. It was an odd thought to have at that particular moment, but then, life itself was odd. At least mine was.
    Get a grip, Flavia
, I remember thinking.
Steady on
.
    We were now walking along a paneled corridor, Miss Fawlthorne leading the way.
    “This is our Old Girls’ Gallery,” she said, raising the candlestick so I could better see the long rows of black-framed photographs that lined the gallery on either side.
    Tier upon tier they rose up round us, flickering in the candlelight: faces of every size and shape imaginable, and again I thought of the hordes of angels.
    Well, I had been told that Miss Bodycote’s had strong ties with the church, hadn’t I?
    Even so, it hadn’t prepared me for the sight of all these scores of black-framed souls, each one staring directly down at me—and none of them laughing—as if they were some solemn heavenly jury and I the prisoner at the bar.
    “And here, of course,” Miss Fawlthorne said, “is your mother.”
    She should have warned me. I was not prepared.
    Here was Harriet, in her black frame, gazing levelly out at me with such a look …
    In that young face—my face!—was everything that needed to be said, and in her look, all the words that she had never had the chance to speak.
    Directly beneath Harriet’s photograph was a small wall sconce, and in it was a spray of heartbreakingly fresh flowers.
    Suddenly I was quaking.
    Miss Fawlthorne put a hand gently on my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think. I ought to have prepared you.”
    We stood for a moment in silence, as if we were the only two left alive in that catacomb of the dead.
    “She is much honored here,” Miss Fawlthorne said.
    “She is much honored everywhere,” I said, perhaps a little too sharply. I realized, almost as I said it, that there was a certain resentment in my words. I had caught myself by surprise.
    “Are they all dead?” I asked, pointing to