The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

  They were partners in crime, and no one would have known better than Pemberton the medical supplies that were essential to Bonepenny's survival.

  Even if Pemberton had planned a different way of dispatching his victim—a stone to the back of the head or strangulation with a green willow withy—the syringe in Bonepenny's luggage must have seemed like a godsend. The very thought of how it was done made me shudder.

  I could imagine the two of them struggling there in the moonlight. Bonepenny was tall, but not muscular. Pemberton would have brought him down as a cougar does a deer.

  Out comes the hypodermic and into the base of Bonepenny's brain it goes. Just like that. It wouldn't take more than a second, and its effect would be almost instantaneous. This, I was certain, was the way in which Horace Bonepenny had met his death.

  Had he ingested the stuff—and it would have been a near impossibility to force him to swallow it—a much larger quantity of the poison would have been required: a quantity which he would have promptly vomited.

  Whereas five cc's injected into the base of the brain would be sufficient to bring down an ox.

  The unmistakable fumes of the carbon tetrachloride would have been quickly transmitted to his mouth and nasal cavities as I had detected. But by the time Inspector Hewitt and his detective sergeants arrived, it had evaporated without a trace.

  It was almost the perfect crime. In fact it would have been perfect if I had not gone down into the garden when I did.

  I hadn't thought about this before. Was my continued existence all that stood between Frank Pemberton and freedom?

  There was a grating noise.

  I could not tell which direction it was coming from. I swiveled my head and the noise stopped instantly.

  For a minute or more there was silence. I strained my ears but could hear only the sound of my own breathing, which I noticed had become more rapid—and more jagged.

  There it was again! As if a piece of lumber were being dragged, with agonizing slowness, across a gritty surface.

  I tried to call out “Who's there?” but the hard ball of the handkerchief in my mouth reduced my words to a muffled bleat. At the effort, my jaws felt as if someone had driven a railway spike into each side of my head.

  Better to listen, I thought. Rats don't move lumber, and unless I was sadly mistaken, I was no longer alone in the Pit Shed.

  Like a snake, I moved my head slowly from side to side, trying to take advantage of my superior hearing, but the heavy tweed binding my head muffled all but the loudest of sounds.

  But the grating noises were not half as unnerving as the silences between them. Whatever it was in the pit was trying to keep its presence unknown. Or was it keeping quiet to unnerve me?

  There was a squeak, then a faint tick, as if a pebble had fallen onto a large stone.

  As slowly as a flower opening, I stretched my legs out in front of me, but when they met with no resistance, I pulled them back up beneath my chin. Better to be coiled up, I thought; better to present a smaller target.

  For a moment, I focused my attention on my hands, which were still lashed behind me. Perhaps there had been a miracle; perhaps the silk had stretched and loosened, but no such luck. Even my numbed fingers could sense that my bonds were as tight as ever. I hadn't a hope of getting free. I really was going to die down here.

  And who would miss me?

  Nobody.

  After a suitable period of mourning, Father would turn again to his stamps, Daphne would drag down another box of books from the Buckshaw library, and Ophelia would discover a new shade of lipstick. And soon—too painfully soon—it would be as if I had never existed.

  Nobody loved me, and that was a fact. Harriet might have when I was a baby, but she was dead.

  And then, to my horror, I found myself in tears.

  I was appalled. Brimming eyes were something I had fought against as long as I could remember, yet in spite of my bound-up eyes I seemed to see floating before me a kindly face, one I had forgotten in my misery. It was, of course, Dogger's face.

  Dogger would be desolate if I died!

  Get a grip, Flave… it's just a pit. What was that story Daffy read us about a pit? That tale of Edgar Allan Poe's? The one about the pendulum?

  No! I wouldn't think about it. I wouldn't!

  Then there was the Black Hole of Calcutta in which the Nawab of Bengal had imprisoned a hundred and forty-six British soldiers in a cell made to hold no more than three.

  How many had survived a single night in that stifling oven? Twenty-three, I remembered, and by morning, stark raving mad—every last one of them.

  No! Not Flavia!

  My mind was like a vortex, spinning… spinning. I took a deep breath to calm myself, and my nostrils were filled with the smell of methane. Of course!

  The pipe to the riverbank was full of the stuff. All it needed was a source of ignition to set it off and the resulting explosion would be talked about for years.

  I would find the end of the pipe and kick it. If luck were on my side, the nails in the soles of my shoe would create a spark, the methane would explode, and that would be that.

  The only drawback to this plan was that I would be standing at the end of the pipe when the thing went off. It would be like being strapped across the mouth of a cannon.

  Well, cannon be damned! I wasn't going to die down here in this stinking pit without a struggle.

  Gathering every last ounce of my remaining strength, I dug in my heels and pushed myself against the wall until I was in a standing position. It took rather longer than I expected but at last, although teetering, I was upright.

  No more time for thinking. I would find the source of the methane gas or die in the attempt.

  As I made a tentative hop towards where I thought the conduit might be, a chill voice whispered into my ear:

  "And now for Flavia."

  twenty-six

  IT WAS PEMBERTON, AND AT THE SOUND OF HIS voice, my heart turned inside out. What had he meant? “And now for Flavia”? Had he already done some terrible thing to Daffy, or to Feely… or to Dogger?

  Before I could even begin to imagine, he had seized my upper arm in a paralyzing grip, jabbing his thumb into the muscle as he had done before. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I thought I was going to vomit.

  I shook my head violently from side to side, but only after what seemed like an eternity did he release me.

  "But first, Frank and Flavia are going to have a little talk," he said, in as pleasant a conversational tone as if we were strolling in the park, and I realized at that instant I was alone with a madman in my own personal Calcutta.

  "I'm going to take the covering off your head, do you understand?"

  I stood perfectly still, petrified.

  "Listen to me, Flavia, and listen carefully. If you don't do exactly as I say, I'll kill you. It's that simple. Do you understand?"

  I nodded my head a little.

  "Good. Now keep still."

  I could feel him tugging roughly at the knots he had tied in his jacket, and almost at once its slick silk lining began to slide across my face, then dropped away entirely.

  The beam of his torch hit me like a hammer blow, blinding me with light.

  I recoiled in shock. Flashing stars and patches of black flew alternately across my field of vision. I had been so long in darkness that even the light of a single match would have been excruciating, but Pemberton was shining a powerful torch directly—and deliberately—into my eyes.

  Unable to throw up my hands to shield myself, I could only wrench my head away to one side, squeeze my eyes shut, and wait for the nausea to subside.

  "Painful, isn't it?" he said. "But not half so painful as what I'm going to do if you lie to me again."

  I opened my stinging eyes and tried to focus them on a dark corner of the pit.

  "Look at me!" he demanded.

  I turned my head and squinted at him with what must have been a truly horrible grimace. I could
see nothing of the man behind the round lens of his torch, whose fierce beam was still burning into my brain like a gigantic white desert sun.

  Slowly, taking his time about it, he swung the glaring beam away and pointed it at the floor. Somewhere behind the light he was no more than a voice in the darkness.

  "You lied to me."

  I gave something like a shrug.

  "You lied to me," Pemberton repeated more loudly, and this time I could hear the strain in his voice. "There was nothing hidden in that clock but the Penny Black."

  So he had been to Buckshaw! My heart was fluttering like a caged bird.

  "Mngg," I said.

  Pemberton thought this over for a moment but could make nothing of it.

  "I'm going to take the handkerchief out of your mouth, but first let me show you something."

  He picked up his tweed jacket from the floor of the pit and reached into the pocket. When his hand came out, it was holding a shiny object of glass and metal. It was Bonepenny's syringe! He held it out for my inspection.

  "You were looking for this, weren't you? At the inn and in your garden? And here it was all the while!”

  He laughed through his nose like a pig and sat down on the steps. Holding the torch between his knees, he held the syringe upright as he rummaged once more in the jacket and pulled out a small brown bottle. I barely had time to read the label before he removed the stopper and swiftly filled the syringe.

  "I expect you know what this stuff is, don't you, Miss Smart-Pants?"

  I met his eye but gave no other sign I'd heard him.

  "And don't think I don't know precisely how and where to inject it. I didn't spend all those hours in the dissecting room at the London Hospital for nothing. Once I'd knocked out old Bony, the actual injection was almost ridiculously simple: angle in a bit to the side, through the splenius capitus and semispinalis capitis, puncture the atlantoaxial ligament, and slide the needle over the arch of the axis. And whap! It's lights out. The carbon tet evaporates in no time, with hardly a trace. The perfect crime, if I may say so myself.”

  Just as I had deduced! But now I knew precisely how he'd done it! The man was stark, staring mad.

  "Now listen," he said. "I'm going to take that hand kerchief out of your mouth and you are going to tell me what you've done with the Ulster Avengers. One wrong word. one wrong move and."

  Holding the syringe upright, almost touching my nose, he squeezed the plunger slightly. A few drops of the carbon tetrachloride appeared for an instant, like dew, at the point of the needle, then dripped onto the floor. My nose caught the familiar reek of the stuff.

  Pemberton put the torch on the steps and adjusted its position to illuminate my face. He placed the syringe beside it.

  "Open," he said.

  This is what rushed through my mind: He would stick a thumb and forefinger into my mouth to remove the handkerchief. I would bite down with all my might—bite them clean off!

  But then what? I was still bound hand and foot, and even badly bitten, Pemberton could easily kill me.

  I opened my aching jaws a little.

  "Wider," he said, holding back. Then quick as a wink he darted in and fished the sodden handkerchief from my mouth. For a single instant the light of the torch was blocked by the shadow of his hand, so that he did not see, as I saw, the slightest flash of orange as the wet ball dropped in darkness to the floor.

  "Thank you," I whispered hoarsely, making my first move in the second part of the game.

  Pemberton seemed taken aback.

  "Someone must have found them," I croaked. "The stamps, I mean. I put them in the clock—I swear it."

  I knew instantly that I had gone too far. If I were telling the truth, Pemberton no longer had any reason to keep me alive. I was the only one who knew that he was a killer.

  "Unless." I added hastily.

  "Unless? Unless what?"

  He fell on my words like a jackal on a downed antelope.

  "My feet," I whimpered. "The pain. I can't think. I can't. Please, at least loosen them—just a bit."

  "All right," he said, with surprisingly little thought. "But I'm leaving your hands tied. That way you won't be going anywhere."

  I nodded eagerly.

  Pemberton knelt down and loosened the buckle of his belt. As the leather dropped from my ankles I gathered my strength and kicked him in the teeth.

  As he reeled back, his head cracked against the concrete, and I heard the sound of a glass object hitting the floor and skipping away into the corner. Pemberton slid heavily down the wall to a sitting position as I limped towards the steps.

  Up I went… one… two … my clumsy feet kicked the torch, which went tumbling end over end down onto the floor of the pit where it came to rest with its beam illuminating the sole of one of Pemberton's shoes.

  Three… four… my feet felt like stumps hacked off at the ankles.

  Five…

  Surely by now my head must be above the level of the pit, but if it was, the room was in darkness. There was no more than a faint bloodred glow from the windows in the folding door. It must be dark outside; I must have slept for hours.

  As I tried to remember where the door was, there was a scrabbling in the pit. The beam of the torch arced madly across the ceiling and suddenly Pemberton was up the steps and upon me.

  He threw his arms around me and squeezed until I couldn't breathe. I could hear the bones crackling in my shoulders and elbows.

  I tried to kick him in the shins, but he was quickly overpowering me.

  To and fro we went, across the room, like spinning tops.

  "No!" he shouted, overbalancing, and fell backward into the pit, dragging me with him.

  He hit the bottom with an awful thud and at the same instant I landed on top of him. I heard him gasp in the darkness. Had he broken his back? Or would he soon be on his feet again, shaking me like a rag doll?

  With a sudden eruption of strength, Pemberton threw me off, and I went flying, facedown, into a corner of the pit. Like an inchworm, I wiggled my way up onto my knees, but it was too late: Pemberton had a fierce grip on my arm, and was dragging me towards the steps.

  It was almost too easy: He squatted and grabbed the torch from where it had fallen, then reached out towards the stairs. I thought the syringe had been knocked to the floor, but it must have been the bottle I heard, for a moment later I caught a quick glimpse of the needle in his hand—then felt it pricking the back of my neck.

  My only thought was to stall for time.

  "You killed Professor Twining, didn't you?" I gasped. "You and Bonepenny."

  This seemed to catch him unawares. I felt his grip relax ever so slightly.

  "What makes you think that?" he breathed into my ear.

  "It was Bonepenny on the roof," I said. "Bonepenny who shouted 'Vale!' He mimicked Mr. Twining's voice. It was you who dumped his body down the hole.”

  Pemberton sucked air in through his nose. “Did Bonepenny tell you that?”

  "I found the cap and gown," I said, "under the tiles. I figured it out myself."

  "You're a very clever girl," he said, almost regretfully.

  "And now you've killed Bonepenny the stamps are yours. At least, they would be if you knew where they were."

  This seemed to infuriate him. He tightened his grip on my arm, again drilling the ball of his thumb into the muscle. I screamed in agony.

  "Five words, Flavia," he hissed. "Where are the bloody stamps?"

  In the long silence that followed, in the numbing pain, my mind took refuge in flight.

  Was this the end of Flavia? I wondered.

  If so, was Harriet watching over me? Was she sitting at this very moment on a cloud with her legs dangling over, saying, “Oh no, Flavia! Don't do this; don't say that! Danger, Flavia! Danger!”

  If she was, I couldn't hear her; perhaps I was farther removed from Harriet than Feely and Daffy. Perhaps she had loved me less.

  It was a sad fact that of Harriet's three childr
en I was the only one who retained no real memories of her. Feely, like a miser, had experienced and hoarded seven years of her mother's love. And Daffy insisted that, even though she was hardly three when Harriet disappeared, she had a perfectly clear recollection of a slim and laughing young woman who dressed her up in a starched dress and bonnet, set her down on a blanket on a sunlit lawn, and took her photograph with a folding camera before presenting her with a gherkin pickle.

  Another jab brought me back to reality—the needle was at my brain stem.

  "The Ulster Avengers. Where are they?"

  I pointed a finger to the corner of the pit where the handkerchief lay balled up in the shadows. As the beam of Pemberton's torch danced towards it, I looked away, then looked up, as the old-time saints were said to do when seeking for salvation.

  I heard it before I saw it. There was a muffled whirring noise, as if a giant mechanical pterodactyl were flapping about outside the Pit Shed. A moment later, there was the most frightful crash and a rain of falling glass.

  The room above us, beyond the mouth of the pit, erupted into brilliant yellow light, and through it clouds of steam drifted like little puffing souls of the departed.

  Still rooted to the spot, I stood staring straight up into the air at the oddly familiar apparition that sat shuddering above the pit.

  I've snapped, I thought. I've gone insane.

  Directly above my head, trembling like a living thing, was the undercarriage of Harriet's Rolls-Royce.

  Before I could blink, I heard the sound of its doors opening and feet hitting the floor above me.

  Pemberton made a leap for the stairs, scrabbling up them like a trapped rat. At the top he paused, trying wildly to claw his way between the lip of the pit and the front bumper of the Phantom.

  A disembodied hand appeared and seized him by the collar, dragging him up out of the pit like a fish from a pond. His shoes vanished into the light above me, and I heard a voice—Dogger's voice!—saying, “Pardon my elbow.”

  There was a sickening crunch and something hit the floor above me like a sack of turnips.

  I was still in a daze when the apparition appeared. All in white it was, slipping easily through the narrow gap between chrome and concrete before making its rapid, flapping descent down into the pit.