Free As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

Van Arque came scuttering quickly down, followed at a much more solemn pace by Miss Fawlthorne.
    Blast them!
I had barely got started. Well, there was nothing for it now but to play along. I clasped my hands daintily at my waist and went all submissive, staring up attentively at Miss Fawlthorne as if I were a beagle waiting for her to throw the ball.
    “Thank you, Flavia. You are dismissed. Take her along to the fourth, Van Arque.”
    I couldn’t help myself. I curtsied.
    Van Arque tugged at my arm, and I had time only to flash the inspector a fleeting—but dazzling—smile.
    “You’ll pay for that, you know,” Van Arque said when we were far enough along the corridor.
    “Pay for what?” I asked.
    She didn’t reply and on we marched.
    * * *
    “I’ve brought the new girl, Mrs. Bannerman.”
    Van Arque paused, holding open the door.
    I nearly swooned as the teacher turned round: She was, of course, the sweet-faced pixie! The elflike creature who looked as if she would be more at home perched on a foxglove leaf, sipping dewdrops from a fairy thimble.
    “Come in, Flavia,” she said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
    Flavia? Did the murderess (acquitted) Mildred Bannerman know my name?
    I’m afraid that, for the first time ever in my life, although I may have been speechless, my heart was singing.
    “Come in, Flavia,” she repeated, and I entered in a zombie trance.
    Needless to say, I was the center of attention, which I loathe being. The girls all stared at me openly and I made a point of staring just as openly back. I was as curious about them as they were about me.
    Who, for instance, was this girl with the needle-sharp nose and the hole in her stocking? And who the plump one with the pleasant face and fingernails bitten to the elbows? Who was the girl staring so intently at me from the farthest corner of the room? If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn she had some ancient grievance.
    And who was the girl that, in the middle of a room bubbling with curiosity, was so studiously ignoring me? I made special note of this one, recording her details in my mental notebook: small mouth, small nose, and hooded eyes; longblack hair and a general air of self-importance, as if she were a wealthy tourist shopping in a bazaar swarming with ragged beggars.
    After marking up what I took to be an attendance sheet, Mrs. Bannerman left the room to take a chemistry class with the fifth form, and was replaced by the gray-haired woman I had spotted at breakfast. I was right—she
was
the French mistress.
    The girls all stood as she entered the room, and I went along with it.
    For the next hour, Miss Dupont—I found out later whom she was—twittered away at the class, asking what seemed to be useless questions and nodding wisely at the useless answers. I didn’t understand a word of their palaver but, because she addressed each girl by name, the time wasn’t entirely wasted.
    “Flav-ee-ah,”
she said at last, mispronouncing my name and then rattling off a string of gibberish. I studied my fingernails, pretending I hadn’t heard.
    “Elle est très timide,”
she remarked to the class, and everyone laughed except me.
    I felt like a chump.
    What a jolly good idea it had been for my ancestors to forsake France in the days of William the Conqueror, I thought; otherwise, I, too, should have been brought up speaking through my nose.
    And what utterly useless rot these girls were made to rehearse!
    “The niece of my gardener has given me a blue handkerchief
.
Who has left Grandmother’s best photographic album in the garden in the rain?”
(What a silly-sounding word
“pluie”
was: like the outcome of too many hot beans on toast.)
“Run for the doctor, Marie—Madame has suffered a gastric explosion.”
    I only know these things because Van Arque told me later what had actually been said.
    Pitiful!
    I won’t bother with the rest of that morning, except to say that it was uncomfortable. As I have said, I hate being the