The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

  As it threw its arms around me and sobbed on my shoulder, I could feel the thin body shaking like a leaf.

  "Silly little fool! Silly little fool!" it cried over and over, its raw red lips pressing into my neck.

  "Feely!" I said, struck stupid with surprise, "you're getting oil all over your best dress!"

  OUTSIDE THE PIT SHED, in Cow Lane, it was a fantasy: Feely was on her knees sobbing, her arms wrapped fiercely round my waist. As I stood there motionless, it was as if everything dissolved between us, and for a moment Feely and I were one creature bathing in the moonlight of the shadowed lane.

  And then everyone in Bishop's Lacey seemed to materialize, coming slowly forward out of the darkness, clucking like aldermen at the torchlit scene, and at the gaping hole where the door of the Pit Shed had been; telling one another what they had been doing when the sound of the crash had echoed through the village. It was like a scene from that play Brigadoon, where the village comes slowly back to life for a single day every hundred years.

  Harriet's Phantom, its beautiful radiator punctured by having been used as a battering ram, now stood steaming quietly in front of the Pit Shed and leaking water softly into the dust. Several of the more muscular villagers—one of them Tully Stoker, I noticed—had pushed the heavy vehicle backwards to allow Feely to lead me up out of the pit and into the fierce intensity and the glare of its great round headlamps.

  Feely had got to her feet but was still clinging to me like a limpet to a battleship, babbling on excitedly.

  "We followed him, you see. Dogger knew that you hadn't come home, and when he spotted someone prowling round the house."

  These were more consecutive words than she had ever spoken to me in my entire lifetime, and I stood there savoring them a bit.

  "He called the police, of course; then he said that if we followed the man. if we kept the headlamps off and kept well back.Oh, God! You should have seen us flying through the lanes!"

  Good old silent Roller, I thought. Father was going to be furious, though, when he saw the damage.

  Miss Mountjoy stood off to one side, pulling a woolen shawl tightly about her shoulders and glaring balefully at the splintered cavern where the door of the Pit Shed had been, as if such wholesale desecration of library property were beyond the last straw. I tried to catch her eye, but she looked nervously away in the direction of her cottage as if she'd had too much excitement for one evening and ought to be getting home.

  Mrs. Mullet was there, too, with a short, roly-poly dumpling of a man visibly restraining her. This must be her husband, Alf, I thought: not at all the Jack Spratt I had imagined. Had she been by herself, Mrs. M would have dashed in and thrown her arms round me and cried, but Alf seemed to be more aware that public displays of familiarity were not quite right. When I gave her a vague smile, she dabbed at one of her eyes with a fingertip.

  At that moment, Dr. Darby arrived upon the scene as casually as if he had been out for an evening stroll. In spite of his relaxed manner, I couldn't help noticing that he had brought his black medical bag. His surgery-cum-residence was just round the corner in the High Street, and he must have heard the crash of breaking wood and glass. He looked me over keenly from head to toe.

  "Keeping well, Flavia?" he asked as he leaned in for a close look at my eyes.

  "Perfectly well, thank you, Dr. Darby," I said pleasantly. "And you?"

  He reached for his crystal mints. Before the paper sack was halfway out of his pocket, I was salivating like a dog; hours of captivity and the gag had made the inside of my mouth taste like a Victorian ball-float.

  Dr. Darby rummaged for a moment among the mints, carefully selected the one that seemed most desirable, and popped it into his mouth. A moment later he was on his way home.

  The little crowd made way as a motorcar turned off into Cow Lane from the High Street. As it bumped to a stop beside the stone wall, its headlamps illuminated two figures standing together beneath an oak: Mary and Ned. They did not come forward, but stood grinning at me shyly from the shadows.

  Had Feely seen them there together? I don't believe she had because she was still prattling on tearfully to me about the rescue. If she had spotted them, I might quickly have found myself referee at a rustic bare-knuckles contest: up to my knees in torn-out hair. Daffy once told me that when it comes to a good dust up, it's generally the squire's daughter who gets in the first punch, and no one knows better than I that Feely has it in her. Still, I'm proud to say that I had the presence of mind—and the guts—to give Ned a furtive congratulatory thumbs-up.

  The rear door of the Vauxhall opened and Inspector Hewitt climbed out. At the same time, Detective Sergeants Graves and Woolmer unfolded themselves from the front seats and stepped with surprising delicacy out into Cow Lane.

  Sergeant Woolmer strode quickly to where Dogger was holding Pemberton in some kind of contorted and painful-looking grip, which caused him to be bent over like a statue of Atlas with the world on his shoulders.

  "I'll take him now, sir," Sergeant Woolmer said, and a moment later I thought I heard the snick of nickel-plated handcuffs.

  Dogger watched as Pemberton slouched off towards the police car, then turned and came slowly towards me. As he approached, Feely whispered excitedly into my ear, “It was Dogger who thought of using the tractor battery to get the Royce started up. Be sure to compliment him.”

  And she dropped my hand and stepped away.

  Dogger stood in front of me, his hands hanging down at his sides. If he'd had a hat, he would have been twisting it. We stood there looking at one another.

  I wasn't about to begin my thanks by chatting about batteries. I wanted rather to say just the right thing: brave words that would be talked about in Bishop's Lacey for years to come.

  A dark shape moving in front of the Vauxhall's headlamps caught my attention as, for a moment, it cast Dogger and me into the shadows. A familiar figure, silhouetted in black and white, stood out like a paper cutout against the glare: Father.

  He began shambling slowly, almost shyly, towards me. But when he noticed Dogger at my side, he stopped and, as if he had just thought of something vitally important, turned aside to have a few quiet words with Inspector Hewitt.

  Miss Cool, the postmistress, gave me a pleasant nod but kept herself well back, as if I were somehow a different Flavia than the one who—had it been only two days ago?—had bought one-and-six worth of sweets from her shop.

  "Feely," I said, turning to her, "do me a favor: Pop back into the pit and fetch me my handkerchief—and be sure to bring me what's wrapped up inside it. Your dress is already filthy, so it won't make much difference. There's a good girl."

  Feely's jaw dropped about a yard, and I thought for a moment she was going to punch me in the teeth. Her whole face grew as red as her lips. And then suddenly she spun on her heel and vanished into the shadows of the Pit Shed.

  I turned to Dogger to deliver my soon-to-be-classic remark, but he beat me to it.

  "My, Miss Flavia," he said quietly. "It's turning out to be a lovely evening, isn't it?"

  twenty-seven

  INSPECTOR HEWITT WAS STANDING IN THE CENTER of my laboratory, turning slowly round, his gaze sweeping across the scientific equipment and the chemical cabinets like the beam from a lighthouse. When he had made a complete circle, he stopped, then made another in the opposite direction.

  "Extraordinary!" he said, drawing the word out. "Simply extraordinary!"

  A ray of deliciously warm sunlight shone in through the tall casement windows, illuminating from within a beaker of red liquid that was just coming to a boil. I decanted half of the stuff into a china cup and handed it to the Inspector. He stared at it dubiously.

  "It's tea," I said. "Assam from Fortnum and Mason. I hope you don't mind it being warmed-over."

  "Warmed-over is all we drink at the station," he said. "I settle for no other."

  As he sipped, he wandered slowly round the room, examining the chemical apparatus with professional in
terest. He took down a jar or two from the shelves and held each one up to the light, then bent down to peer through the eyepiece of my Leitz. I could see that he was having some difficulty in getting to the point.

  "Beautiful bit of bone china," he said at last, raising the cup above his head to read the maker's name on the bottom.

  "Quite early Spode," I said. "Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw drank tea from that very cup when they visited Great-Uncle Tarquin—not both at the same time, of course."

  "One wonders what they might have made of one another?" Inspector Hewitt said, glancing at me.

  "One wonders," I said, glancing back.

  The Inspector took another sip of his tea. Somehow, he seemed restless, as if there was something he would like to say, but couldn't find a way to begin.

  "It's been a difficult case," he said. "Bizarre, really. The man whose body you found in the garden was a total stranger—or seemed to be. All we knew was that he came from Norway."

  "The snipe," I said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "The dead jack snipe on our kitchen doorstep. Jack snipe are never found in England until autumn. It had to have been brought from Norway—in a pie. That's how you knew, isn't it?"

  The Inspector looked puzzled.

  "No," he said. "Bonepenny was wearing a new pair of shoes stamped with the name of a shoemaker in Stavanger.”

  "Oh," I said.

  "From that, we were able to follow his trail quite easily." As he spoke, Inspector Hewitt's hands drew a map in the air. "Our inquiries here and abroad told us that he'd taken the boat from Stavanger to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and traveled from there by rail to York, then on to Doddingsley. From Doddingsley he took a taxi to Bishop's Lacey."

  Aha! Precisely as I had surmised.

  "Exactly," I said. "And Pemberton—or should I say, Bob Stanley?—followed him, but stopped short at Doddingsley. He stayed at the Jolly Coachman."

  One of Inspector Hewitt's eyebrows rose up like a cobra. “Oh?” he said, too casually. “How do you know that?”

  "I rang up the Jolly Coachman and spoke with Mr. Cleaver."

  "Is that all?"

  "They were in it together, just as they were in the murder of Mr. Twining."

  "Stanley denies that," he said. "Claims he had nothing to do with it. Pure as the driven snow, and all that."

  "But he told me in the Pit Shed that he had killed Bonepenny! Besides that, he more or less admitted that my theory was correct: The suicide of Mr. Twining was a staged illusion."

  "Well, that remains to be seen. We're looking into it, but it's going to take some time, although I must say your father has been most helpful. He's now told us the whole story of what led up to poor Twining's death. I only wish he had decided earlier to be so accommodating. We might have saved…

  "I'm sorry," he said. "I was speculating."

  "My abduction," I said.

  I had to admire how quickly the Inspector changed the subject.

  "Getting back to the present," he said. "Let me see if I've got this right: You think Bonepenny and Stanley were confederates?"

  "They were always confederates," I said. "Bonepenny stole stamps and Stanley sold them abroad to unscrupulous collectors. But somehow they had never managed to dispose of the two Ulster Avengers; those were simply too well known. And with one of them having been stolen from the King, it would have been far too risky for any collector to be caught with them in his collection."

  "Interesting," the Inspector said. "And?"

  "They were planning to blackmail Father, but somewhere along the line, they must have had a falling-out. Bonepenny was coming over from Stavanger to do the deed, and at some point Stanley realized that he could follow him, kill him at Buckshaw, take the stamps, and leave the country. As simple as that. And it would all be blamed on Father. And so it was," I added, with a reproachful look.

  There was an awkward silence.

  "Look, Flavia," he said at last. "I didn't really have much choice, you know. There were no other viable suspects."

  "What about me," I said. "I was at the scene of the crime." I waved my hand at the bottles of chemicals that lined the walls. “After all, I know a lot about poisons. I might be considered a very dangerous person.”

  "Hmm," the Inspector said. "An interesting point. And you were on the spot at the time of death. If things hadn't gone exactly as they did, it might well be your neck in the noose.”

  I hadn't thought of that. A goose walked over my grave and I shivered.

  The Inspector went on. “Arguing against it, however, are your physical size, your lack of any real motive, and the fact that you haven't exactly made yourself scarce. Your average murderer generally gives the police as wide a berth as possible, whereas you… well, ubiquitous is the word that springs to mind. Now then, you were saying?”

  "Stanley ambushed Bonepenny in our garden. Bonepenny was a diabetic, and—"

  "Ah," the Inspector said, almost to himself. "Insulin! We didn't think to test for that."

  "No," I said. "Not insulin: carbon tetrachloride. Bonepenny died from having carbon tetrachloride injected into his brain stem. Stanley bought a bottle of the stuff from Johns, the chemists, in Doddingsley. I saw their label on the bottle when he filled the syringe in the Pit Shed. You've probably already found it under all the rubbish."

  I could tell by his face that they hadn't.

  "Then it must have rolled down the pipe," I said. "There's an old drain that runs down to the river. Some one will have to fish it out."

  Poor Sergeant Graves! I thought.

  "Stanley stole the syringe from the kit in Bonepenny's room at the Thirteen Drakes,” I added, without thinking. Damn!

  The Inspector pounced. “How do you know what was in Bonepenny's room?” he asked sharply.

  "Uh. I'm coming to that," I said. "In a few minutes.

  "Stanley believed you'd never detect any possible traces of carbon tetrachloride in Bonepenny's brain. Jolly good thing you didn't. You might have assumed it came from one of Father's bottles. There are gallons of the stuff in the study."

  Inspector Hewitt pulled out his notebook and scrawled a couple of words, which I assumed were carbon tetrachloride.

  "I know it was carbon tet because Bonepenny blew the last whiff of the stuff into my face with his dying breath," I said, wrinkling my nose and making an appropriate face.

  If an Inspector's complexion can be said to go white, Inspector Hewitt's complexion went white.

  "You're certain about that?"

  "I'm quite competent with the chlorinated hydrocarbons, thank you."

  "Are you telling me that Bonepenny was still alive when you found him?"

  "Only just," I said. "He. uh. passed away almost immediately."

  There was another one of those long, crypt-like silences.

  "Here," I said, "I'll show you how it was done."

  I picked up a yellow lead pencil, gave it a couple of turns in the sharpener, and went to the corner where the articulated skeleton dangled at the end of its wire.

  "This was given to my great-uncle, Tarquin, by the naturalist Frank Buckland," I said, giving the skull an affectionate rub. "I call him Yorick."

  I did not tell the Inspector that Buckland, in his old age, had given his gift in recognition of young Tar's great promise. “To the Bright Future of Science,” Buckland had written on his card.

  I brought the sharpened point of the pencil round to the top of the spinal column, shoving it slowly in under the skull as I repeated Pemberton's words in the Pit Shed:

  "'Angle in a bit to the side. in through the splenius capitus and semispinalis capitis, puncture the atlantoaxial ligament, and slide the needle over the—’”

  "Thank you, Flavia," the Inspector said abruptly. "That's quite enough. You're quite sure that's what he said?"

  "His precise words," I said. "I had to look them up in Gray's Anatomy. The Children's Encyclopaedia has several plates, but not nearly enough detail.”


  Inspector Hewitt rubbed his chin.

  "I'm sure Dr. Darby could find the needle mark on the back of Bonepenny's neck," I added helpfully, "if he knew where to look. He might inspect the sinuses, as well. Carbon tetrachloride is stable in air, and might still be trapped there, since the man was no longer breathing.

  "And," I added, "you might remind him that Bonepenny had a drink at the Thirteen Drakes just before he set out to walk to Buckshaw."

  The Inspector still looked puzzled.

  "The effects of carbon tetrachloride are intensified by alcohol," I explained.

  "And," he asked with a casual smile, "do you have any particular theory about why the stuff might still be in his sinuses? I'm no chemist, but I believe carbon tetrachloride evaporates very rapidly.”

  I did have a reason, but it was not one I was willing to share with just anyone, particularly not the police. Bonepenny had been suffering from an extremely nasty head cold: a head cold which, when he breathed the word “Vale" into my face, he had transmitted to me. Thanks buckets, Horace! I thought.

  I also suspected that Bonepenny's plugged nasal passages might well have preserved the injected carbon tetrachloride, which is insoluble in water—or in snot, for that matter—which would also have helped inhibit the intake of outside air.

  "No," I said. "But you might suggest that the lab in London carry out the test suggested by the British Pharmacopoeia."

  "Can't say I recall it, offhand," Inspector Hewitt said.

  "It's a very pretty procedure," I said. "One that checks the limit of free chlorine when iodine is liberated from cadmium iodide. I'm sure they're familiar with it. I'd offer to do it myself, but I don't expect Scotland Yard would be comfortable handing over bits of Bonepenny's brain to an eleven-year-old."

  Inspector Hewitt stared at me for what seemed several aeons.

  "All right," he said at last, "let's have a dekko."

  "At what?" I said, putting on my mask of injured innocence.

  "Whatever you've done. Let's have a look at it."