The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

by Alan Bradley

  As my mind swam back to the present, I realized that the Vicar was praying for the man I had found dead in the garden.

  "He was a stranger among us," he said. "It is not necessary that his name be known unto us."

  This would be news to Inspector Hewitt, I thought.

  ". in order for us to ask God to have mercy on his soul, and to grant him peace."

  So the word was out! Mrs. Mullet, I guessed, had wasted no time in scurrying across the lane yesterday to break the news to the Vicar. I could hardly believe he had heard it from the police.

  There was a sudden hollow bang as a kneeling bench slammed up, and I looked round just in time to see Miss Mountjoy edging her way crab-wise out of the pews and fleeing along the side aisle to the transept door.

  "I feel nauseous," I whispered to Ophelia, who let me slide past her without batting an eye. Feely had a particular aversion to having her shoes vomited on, a useful quirk of which I took advantage from time to time.

  Outside, a wind had sprung up, whipping the branches of the churchyard yews, and sending ripples running through the unmowed grass. I caught a glimpse of Miss Mountjoy disappearing among the moss-covered tombstones, heading towards the crumbling, overgrown lych-gate.

  What had upset her so? For a moment I considered running after her, but then I thought better of it: The river looped round St. Tancred's in such a way that the church was virtually on an island and, through the centuries, the meandering water had cut through the ancient lane beyond the lych-gate. The only possible way for Miss Mountjoy to make her way home without retracing her steps would be to take off her shoes and wade across the now-submerged stepping-stones that had once bridged the river.

  It was obvious that she wanted to be alone.

  I rejoined Father as he was shaking hands with Canon Richardson. What with the murder, we de Luces were all the rage as the villagers in their Sunday finery lined up to speak with us or, sometimes, simply to touch us as if we were talismans. Everyone wanted to have a word, but nobody wanted to say anything that mattered.

  "Dreadful business that, up at Buckshaw," they'd say to Father, or Feely or me.

  "Nasty," we'd reply, and shake hands, and then wait for the next petitioner to shuffle forward. Only when we'd serviced the entire congregation were we free to make our way home for lunch.

  AS WE CROSSED THE PARK, the door of a familiar blue car opened and Inspector Hewitt came across the gravel to meet us. Having already decided that police investigations were likely shelved on Sundays, I was a little surprised to see him. He gave Father a brisk nod and touched the brim of his hat to Feely, to Daffy, and to me.

  "Colonel de Luce, a few words. in private if you please."

  I watched Father closely, fearing he might faint again, but aside from a slight tightening of his knuckles on the handle of his walking stick, he seemed not at all surprised. He might even, I thought, have been preparing himself for this moment.

  Dogger, meanwhile, had quietly sloped off into the house, perhaps to change his stiff old-fashioned collar and cuffs for the comfort of his gardening overalls.

  Father looked round at us as if we were a gaggle of intrusive geese.

  "Come into my study," he said to the Inspector, then turned and walked away.

  Daffy and Feely stood gazing off into the middle distance as they are inclined to do when they don't know what to say. For a moment I thought of breaking the silence, but, on second thought, decided against it and walked away in a careless manner, whistling the “Harry Lime” theme from The Third Man.

  Since it was Sunday, I thought it would be appropriate to go into the garden and have a look at the place where the body had lain. It would be, in a way, like those Victorian paintings of veiled widows crouching to place a handful of pathetic pansies—usually in a glass tumbler—upon the grave of their dead husband or mother. But somehow the thought made me sad, and I decided to skip the theatrics.

  Without the dead man, the cucumber patch was oddly uninteresting, no more than a patch of greenery with here and there a broken stalk and something that looked suspiciously like the drag mark of a heel. In the grass, I could see the perforations where the sharp legs of Sergeant Woolmer's heavy tripod had pierced the turf.

  I knew from listening to Philip Odell, the private eye on the wireless, that whenever there's a sudden and unexpected death, there's bound to be a postmortem, and I couldn't help wondering if Dr. Darby had yet had the body—as I had heard him remark to Inspector Hewitt—“up on the table.” But again, that was something I dared not ask, at least not just yet.

  I looked up at my bedroom window. Reflected in it, so close I could almost touch them, images of plump white clouds floated by in a sea of blue sky.

  So close! Of course! The cucumber patch was directly below my window!

  Why, then, had I heard nothing? Everyone knows that the killing of a human being requires the exertion of a certain amount of mechanical energy. I forget the exact formula, although I know there is one. Force applied in a short span of time (for instance a bullet), makes a great deal of noise, whereas force applied more slowly may well make no noise at all.

  What did this tell me? That if the stranger had been violently attacked, it had happened somewhere else, somewhere out of earshot. If he had been attacked where I found him, the killer had used a silent method: silent and slow since, when I found him, the man had been still, although barely, alive.

  "Vale,” the dying man had said. But why would he say farewell to me? It was the word Mr. Twining had shouted before jumping to his death, but what was the connection? Was the man in the cucumbers trying to link his own death with that of Mr. Twining? Had he been there when the old man jumped? Had he been part of it?

  I needed to think—and to think without distractions. The coach house was out of the question since I was now aware that, in times of trouble, I might well encounter Father sitting there in Harriet's Phantom. That left the Folly.

  On the south side of Buckshaw, on an artificial island in an artificial lake, was an artificial ruin, in the shadow of which was a little Greek temple of lichen-stained marble. Now sunk deep in neglect and overgrown with nettles, there had been a time when it was one of the glories of England: a little cupola on four exquisitely slender legs that might have been a bandstand on Parnassus. Countless eighteenth-century de Luces had poled their guests out to the Folly on festive flower-strewn barges, where they had picnicked upon cold game and pastry as they watched the swans glide across the glassy water, and looked through quizzing-glasses at the hired hermit as he gaped and yawned at the doorway of his ivy-clad cave.

  The island, the lake, and the Folly had been designed by Capability Brown (although this attribution had been brought into question more than once in the pages of Notes and Queries, which Father read avidly, but only in case matters of philatelic interest should crop up), and there was still in the library at Buckshaw a large red leather portfolio containing a signed set of the landscaper's original drawings. These inspired a little witticism on Father's part: “Let those other wise men live in their own folly,” he said.

  There was a family tradition that it had been on a picnic at Buckshaw Folly that John Montague, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, invented the snack which was given his name when he first slapped cold grouse between two slices of bread while playing at cribbage with Cornelius de Luce.

  "History be damned," Father had said.

  Now, having waded out to the island through water no more than a foot deep, I sat on the steps of the little temple with my legs drawn up and my chin on my knees.

  First of all, there was Mrs. Mullet's custard pie. Where had it gone?

  I let my mind drift back to the early hours of Saturday morning: envisioned myself coming down the stairs, going through the hallway to the kitchen, and—yes, the pie had certainly been on the windowsill. And there had been a single piece cut out of it.

  Later, Mrs. Mullet had asked if I enjoyed the pie. Why me? I wondered. Why didn't she ask Feely
or Daffy?

  And then it struck me like a thunderclap! The dead man had eaten it. Yes. Everything was making sense!

  Here was a diabetic who had come on a long journey from Norway, bringing with him a jack snipe concealed in a pie. I had found the remains of that pie—complete with telltale feather—at the Thirteen Drakes, and the dead bird had been dumped on our doorstep. Not having eaten—even though, according to Tully Stoker, he had been served a drink in the saloon bar—the stranger had made his way to Buckshaw on Friday night, quarreled with Father, and on his way out passed through the kitchen and helped himself to a slice of Mrs. Mullet's custard pie. And he hadn't made it through the cucumbers before it brought him down!

  What kind of poison could work that quickly? I ran through the most likely possibilities. Cyanide worked in minutes: after turning blue in the face, the victim was asphyxiated almost immediately. It left behind a smell of bitter almonds. But no, the case against cyanide was that, had it been used, the victim would have been dead before I found him. (Although I have to admit that I have a soft spot for cyanide—when it comes to speed, it is right up there with the best of them. If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.)

  But was it bitter almonds I had smelt on his last breath? I couldn't think.

  Then there was curare. It, too, had an almost instant effect and again, the victim died within minutes by asphyxiation. But curare could not kill by ingestion; to be fatal, it had to be injected. Besides that, who in the English countryside—besides me, of course—would be likely to carry curare in his kit?

  What about tobacco? I recalled that a handful of tobacco leaves left to soak in a jar of water in the sun for several days could easily be evaporated to a thick black molasses-like resin which brought death in seconds. But Nicoteana was grown in America, its fresh leaves unlikely to be found in England, or, for that matter, in Norway.

  Since nobody smoked at Buckshaw, I would have to gather my own samples.

  THE REAL QUESTION WAS THIS: Who put the poison in the pie? And, even more to the point, if the dead man had eaten the thing by accident, whom had it originally been intended for?

  I shivered as a shadow passed across the island, and I looked up just as a darkening cloud blotted out the sun. It was going to rain—and soon.

  But before I could scramble to my feet it came pouring down in buckets, one of those sudden brief but ferocious storms of early June that smashes flowers and plays havoc with drains. I tried to find a dry, sheltered spot in the precise center of the open cupola where I would be most sheltered from the pelting rain—not that it made much difference, what with the cold wind that had suddenly sprung up out of nowhere. I wrapped my arms round myself for warmth. I'd have to wait it out, I thought.

  "Hullo! Are you all right?"

  A man was standing at the far edge of the lake, looking across at me on the island. Through the sheets of falling rain, I could see no more than dabs of damp color, which gave him the appearance of someone in an Impressionist painting. But before I could reply, he had rolled up his trouser legs and removed his shoes, and was swiftly wading barefoot towards me. As he steadied himself with his long walking staff, he reminded me of Saint Christopher carrying the Christ Child piggyback across the river, although as he drew closer, I could see that the object on his shoulders was actually a canvas knapsack.

  He was dressed in a baggy walking suit and wore a hat with a wide, floppy brim: a bit like Leslie Howard, the film star, I thought. He was fiftyish, I guessed, about Father's age but dapper in spite of it.

  With a waterproof artist's sketchbook in one hand, he was the very image of the strolling artist-illustrator: Olde England, and all that.

  "Are you all right?" he repeated, and I realized I hadn't answered him the first time.

  "Perfectly well, thank you," I said, babbling a bit too much to make up for my possible rudeness. "I was caught in the rain, you see."

  "I do see," he said. "You're saturated."

  "Not so much saturated as drenched," I corrected him. When it came to chemistry, I was a stickler.

  He opened his knapsack and pulled out a waterproof walking cape, the sort of thing worn by hikers in the Hebrides. He wrapped it round my shoulders and I was immediately warm.

  "You needn't. but thank you," I said.

  We stood there together in the falling rain, not speaking, each of us gazing off across the lake, listening to the clatter of the downpour.

  After a time he said, “Since we're to be marooned on an island together, I suppose there could be no harm in us exchanging names.”

  I tried to place his accent: Oxford with a touch of something else. Scandinavian, perhaps?

  "I'm Flavia," I said. "Flavia de Luce."

  "My name's Pemberton, Frank Pemberton. Pleased to meet you, Flavia."

  Pemberton? Wasn't this the man who had arrived at the Thirteen Drakes just as I was making my escape from Tully Stoker? I wanted that visit kept quiet, so I said nothing.

  We exchanged a soggy handshake, and then drew apart as strangers often do after they've touched.

  The rain went on. After a bit he said, “Actually, I knew who you were.”

  "Did you?"

  "Mmm. To anyone who takes a serious interest in English country houses, de Luce is quite a well-known name. Your family is, after all, listed in Who's Who."

  "Do you take a serious interest in English country houses, Mr. Pemberton?”

  He laughed. “A professional interest, I'm afraid. In fact I'm writing a book on the subject. I thought I would call it Pemberton's Stately Homes: A Stroll Through Time. Has rather an impressive ring, don't you think?”

  "I expect it depends upon whom you're trying to impress," I said, "but it does, yes. rather, I mean."

  "My home base is in London, of course, but I've been tramping through this part of the country for quite some time, scribbling in my notebooks. I'd rather hoped to have a look round the estate and interview your father. In fact, that's why I'm here.”

  "I don't think that will be possible, Mr. Pemberton," I said. "You see, there's been a sudden death at Buckshaw, and Father is. assisting the police with their inquiries."

  Without thinking, I had pulled the phrase from remembered serials on the wireless, and, until I said it, not realized its import.

  "Good Lord!" he said. "A sudden death? Not one of the family, I hope."

  "No," I said. "A complete stranger. But since he was found in the garden at Buckshaw, you see, Father is bound to—"

  At that moment it stopped raining as suddenly as it had begun. The sun came out to play in rainbows on the grass, and somewhere on the island, a cuckoo sang, precisely as it does at the end of the storm in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I swear it did.

  "I understand perfectly," he said. "I wouldn't dream of intruding. Should Colonel de Luce wish to be in contact at a later date, I'm at the Thirteen Drakes, in Bishop's Lacey. I'm sure Mr. Stoker would be happy to convey a message."

  I removed the cape and handed it to him.

  "Thank you," I said. "I'd best be getting back."

  We waded back across the lake together like a couple of bathers holidaying at the seaside.

  "It was a pleasure meeting you, Flavia," he said. "In time, I trust we shall become fast friends."

  I watched as he strolled across the lawn towards the avenue of chestnuts and out of sight.

  eleven

  I FOUND DAFFY IN THE LIBRARY, PERCHED AT THE very top of a wheeled ladder.

  "Where's Father?" I asked.

  She turned a page and went on reading as if I had never been born.

  "Daffy?"

  I felt my inner cauldron beginning to boil: that bubbling pot of occult brew that could so quickly transform Flavia the Invisible into Flavia the Holy Terror.

  I seized one of its rungs and gave the ladder a good shake, and then a shove to start it rolling. Once in motion, it was easy enough to sustain, with Daffy clinging to the top like a paralyzed limpet as I pushed the thing do
wn the long room.

  "Stop it, Flavia! Stop it!"

  As the doorway approached at an alarming rate, I braked, then ran round behind the ladder and raced off again in the opposite direction, and all the while, Daffy teetering away up top like the lookout on a whaler in a North Atlantic blow.

  "Where's Father?" I shouted.

  "He's still in his study with the Inspector. Stop this! Stop it!"

  As she looked a little green about the gills, I stopped.

  Daffy came shakily down the ladder and stepped gingerly off onto the floor. I thought for a moment she would lunge at me, but she seemed to be taking an unusually long while regaining her land legs.

  "Sometimes you scare me," she said.

  I was about to retort that there were times I scared myself, but then I remembered that silence can sometimes do more damage than words. I bit my tongue.

  The whites of her eyes were still showing, like those of a bolted cart-horse, and I decided to take advantage of the moment.

  "Where does Miss Mountjoy live?"

  Daffy looked blank.

  "Miss Library Mountjoy," I added.

  "I have no idea," Daffy said. "I haven't used the library in the village since I was a child."

  Still wide-eyed, she peered at me over her glasses.

  "I was thinking of asking her advice on becoming a librarian."

  It was the perfect lie. Daffy's look became almost one of respect.

  "I don't know where she lives," she said. "Ask Miss Cool, at the confectionery. She knows what's under every bed in Bishop's Lacey."

  "Thanks, Daff," I said as she dropped down into an upholstered wing back chair. "You're a brick."