The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

27

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 interest. 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."

"But I haven't done anything," I said. "I—"

"Don't play me for a fool, Flavia. No one who has had the pleasure of your acquaintance would ever believe for an instant that you haven't done your homework.”

I grinned sheepishly. “It's over here,” I said, moving towards a corner table upon which stood a glass tank shrouded with a damp tea towel.

I whisked the cloth away.

"Good Lord!" the Inspector said. "What in the name of—?"

He fairly gaped at the pinkish gray object that floated serenely in the tank.

"It's a nice bit of brain," I said. "I pinched it from the larder. Mrs. Mullet bought it at Carnforth's yesterday for supper tonight. She's going to be furious."

"And you've.?" he said, flapping his hand.

"Yes, that's right. I've injected it with two and a half cubic centimeters of carbon tetrachloride. That's how much Bonepenny's syringe held.

"The average human brain weighs three pounds," I went on, "and that of the male perhaps a little more. I've cut an extra five ounces to allow for it."

"How did you find that out?” the Inspector asked.

"It's in one of the volumes of Arthur Mee's books. The Children's Encyclopaedia again, I think.”

"And you've tested this. brain, for the presence of carbon tetrachloride?"

"Yes," I said, "but not until fifteen hours after I injected it. I judged that's how much time elapsed between the stuff being shot into Bonepenny's brain and the autopsy."

"And?"

"Still easily detectable," I said. "Child's play. Of course I used p-Aminodimethylaniline. That's rather a new test, but an elegant one. It was written up in The Analyst about five years ago. Pull up a stool and I'll show you.”

"This isn't going to work, you know." Inspector Hewitt chuckled.

"Not work?" I said. "Of course it will work. I've already done it once."

"I mean you're not going to dazzle me with lab work and skate conveniently round the stamp. After all, that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it?"

He had me cornered. I had planned on saying nothing about the Ulster Avenger and then quietly handing it over to Father. Who would ever be the wiser?

"Look, I know you have it," he said. "We paid a visit to Dr. Kissing at Rook's End."

I tried to look unconvinced.

"And Bob Stanley, your Mr. Pemberton, has told us that you stole it from him."

Stole it from him? The idea! What cheek!

"It belongs to the King," I protested. "Bonepenny nicked it from an exhibition in London."

"Well, whomever it belongs to, it's stolen property, and my duty is to see that it's returned. All I need to know is how it came into your possession."

Drat the man! I could dodge it no longer. I was going to have to confess my trespasses at the Thirteen Drakes.

"Let's make a deal," I said.

Inspector Hewitt burst out laughing. “There are times, Miss de Luce,” he said, “when you deserve a brass medal. And there are other times you deserve to be sent to your room with bread and water.”

"And which one of those times is this?" I asked.

Hooo! Better watch your step, Flave.

He waggled his fingers at me. “I'm listening,” he said.

"Well, I've been thinking," I told him. "Father's life hasn't been exactly pleasant lately. In the first place, you arrive at Buckshaw and before we know it you've charged him with murder."

"Hang on. hang on," the Inspector said. "We've already been through this. He was charged with murder because he confessed to it."

He did? This was something new.

"And no sooner had he done so, than along came Flavia. I had more confessions walking in the door than Our Lady of Lourdes on a Saturday night."

"I was just trying to protect him," I said. "At that point, I thought he might have done it."

"And whom was he trying to protect?” Inspector Hewitt asked, watching me carefully.

The answer, of course, was Dogger. That was what Father meant when he said “I feared as much” after I told him that Dogger, too, had overheard the scene in his study with Horace Bonepenny.

Father thought Dogger had killed the man; that much was clear. But why? Would Dogger have done it out of loyalty—or during one of his peculiar turns?

No—best to leave Dogger out of this. It was the least I could do.

"Probably me," I lied. "Father thought I had killed Bonepenny. After all, wasn't I the one who was found, so to speak, at the scene of the crime? He was trying to protect me."

"Do you really believe that?" the Inspector asked.

"It would be lovely to think so," I said.

"I'm sure he was," the Inspector said. "I'm quite sure he was. Now then, back to the stamp. I haven't forgotten about it, you know.”

"Well, as I was saying, I'd like to do something for Father; something that will make him happy, even for a few hours. I'd like to give him the Ulster Avenger, even if it's only for a day or two. Let me do that, and I'll tell you everything I know. I promise."

The Inspector strolled over to the bookcase, fetched down a bound volume of the Proceedings of the Chemical Society for 1907, and blew a cloud of dust from the top of the spine. He leafed idly through its pages, as if looking for what to say next.

"You know," he said, "there is nothing my wife, Antigone, detests more than shopping. She told me once that she'd rather have a tooth filled than spend half an hour shopping for a leg of mutton. But shop she must, like it or not. It's her fate, she says. To dull the experience, she sometimes buys a little yellow booklet called You and Your Stars.

"I have to admit that up until now I've scoffed at some of the things she's read out to me at breakfast, but this morning my horoscope said, and I quote, 'Your patience will be tried to the utmost.' Do you suppose I could have been misjudging these things, Flavia?"

"Please!" I said, giving the word a gimlet twist.

"Twenty-four hours," he said, "and not a minute more."

And suddenly it all came gushing out, and I found myself babbling on about the dead jack snipe, Mrs. Mullet's really quite innocent (although inedible) custard pie, my rifling of Bonepenny's room at the inn, my finding of the stamps, my visits to Miss Mountjoy and Dr. Kissing, my encounters with Pemberton at the Folly and in the churchyard, and my captivity in the Pit Shed.

The only part I left out was the bit about my poisoning Feely's lipstick with an extract of poison ivy. Why confuse the Inspector with unnecessary details?

As I spoke, he made an occasional scribble in a little black notebook, whose pages, I noticed, were filled with arrows and cryptic signs that might have been inspired by an alchemical formulary of the Middle Ages.

"Am I in that?" I asked, pointing.

"You are," he said.

"May I have a look? Just a peek?"

Inspector Hewitt flipped the notebook shut. “No,” he said. “It's a confidential police document.”

"Do you actually spell out my name, or am I represented by one of those symbols?"

"You have your very own symbol," he said, shoving the book into his pocket. "Well, it's time I was getting along."

He stuck out a hand and gave me a firm handshake. “Good-bye, Flavia,” he said. “It's been… something of an experience.”

He went to the door and opened it.

"Inspector."

He stopped and turned.

"What is it? My symbol, I mean."

"It's a P,” he said. “Capital P.”

"A P?” I asked, surprised. “What does P stand for?”

"Ah," he said, "that's best left to the imagination."

DAFFY WAS IN THE DRAWING ROOM, sprawled full-length on the carpet, reading The Prisoner of Zenda.

"Are you aware that you move your lips when you read?" I asked.

She ignored me. I decided to risk my life.

"Speaking of lips," I said, "where's Feely?"

"At the doctor's," she said. "She had some kind of allergic outbreak. Something she came in contact with."

Aha! My experiment had succeeded brilliantly! No one would ever know. As soon as I had a moment to myself, I'd record it in my notebook:

I let out a quiet snort. Daffy must have heard it, for she rolled over and crossed her legs.

"Don't think for a moment you've got away with it," she said quietly.

"Huh?" I said. Innocent puzzlement was my specialty.

"What witch's brew did you put in her lipstick?"

"I haven't the faintest what you're talking about," I said.

"Have a peek at yourself in the looking-glass," Daffy said. "Watch you don't break it."

I turned and went slowly to the chimneypiece where a cloudy leftover from the Regency period hung sullenly reflecting the room.

I bent closer, peering at my image. At first I saw nothing other than my usual brilliant self, my violet eyes, my pale complexion: but as I stared, I began to notice more details in the ravaged mercury reflection.

There was a splotch on my neck. An angry red splotch! Where Feely had kissed me!

I let out a shriek of anguish.

"Feely said that before she'd been in the pit five seconds she'd paid you back in full."

Even before Daffy rolled over and went back to her stupid sword story, I had come up with a plan.

ONCE, WHEN I WAS ABOUT NINE, I had kept a diary about what it was like to be a de Luce, or at least what it was like to be this particular de Luce. I thought a great deal about how I felt and finally came to the conclusion that being Flavia de Luce was like being a sublimate: like the black crystal residue that is left on the cold glass of a test tube by the violet fumes of iodine. At the time, I thought it the perfect description, and nothing has happened over the past two years to change my mind.

As I have said, there is something lacking in the de Luces: some chemical bond, or lack of it, that ties their tongues whenever they are threatened by affection. It is as unlikely that one de Luce would ever tell another that she loved her as it is that one peak in the Himalayas would bend over and whisper sweet nothings to an adjacent crag.

This point was proven when Feely stole my diary, pried open the brass lock with a can opener from the kitchen, and read aloud from it while standing at the top of the great staircase dressed in clothing she had stolen from a neighbor's scarecrow.

These thoughts were in my mind as I approached the door of Father's study. I paused, unsure of myself. Did I really want to do this?

I knocked uncertainly on the door. There was a long silence before Father's voice said, “Come.”

I twisted the knob and stepped into the room. At a table by the window, Father looked up for a moment from his magnifying lens, and then went on with his examination of a magenta stamp.

"May I speak?" I asked, aware, even as I said it, that it was an odd thing to be saying, and yet it seemed precisely the right choice of words.

Father put down the glass, removed his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. He looked tired.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the piece of blue writing paper into which I had folded the Ulster Avenger. I stepped forward like a supplicant, put the paper on his desk, and stepped back again.

Father opened it.

"Good Lord!" he said. "It's AA."

He put his spectacles back on and picked up his jeweler's loupe to peer at the stamp.

Now, I thought, comes my reward. I found myself focused on his lips, waiting for them to move.

"Where did you get this?" he said at last, in that soft voice of his that fixes its hearer like a butterfly on a pin.

"I found it," I said.

Father's gaze was military—unrelenting.

"Bonepenny must have dropped it," I said. "It's for you."

Father studied my face the way an astronomer studies a supernova.

"This is very decent of you, Flavia," he said at last, with some great effort.

And he handed me the Ulster Avenger.

"You must return it at once to its rightful owner."

"King George?"

Father nodded, somewhat sadly, I thought. “I don't know how you came to have this in your possession and I don't want to know. You've come this far on your own and now you must see it through.”

"Inspector Hewitt wants me to hand it over to him." Father shook his head. "Most kind of him," he said, "but also most official. No, Flavia, old AA here has been through many hands in its day, a few of them high and many low. You must see to it that your hands are the most worthy of them all."

"But how does one go about writing to the King?"

"I'm sure you'll find a way," Father said. "Please close the door on your way out."

AS IF TO COVER UP THE PAST, Dogger was shoveling muck from a wheelbarrow into the cucumber bed.

"Miss Flavia," he said, removing his hat and wiping his brow on his shirtsleeve.

"How should one address a letter to the King?" I asked.

Dogger leaned his shovel carefully against the greenhouse.

"Theoretically, or in actual practice?"

"In actual practice."

"Hmm," he said. "I think I should look it up somewhere."

"Hold on," I said. "Mrs. Mullet's Inquire Within Upon Everything. She keeps it in the pantry.”

"She's shopping in the village," Dogger said. "If we're quick about it, we may well escape with our lives."

A minute later we were huddled in the pantry.

"Here it is," I said excitedly, as the book fell open in my hands. “But wait—this was published sixty years ago. Would it still be correct?”

"Sure to be," Dogger said. "Things don't change as quickly in royal circles as they do in yours and mine, nor should they."

The drawing room was empty. Daffy and Feely were off somewhere, most likely planning their next attack.

I found a decent sheet of writing paper in a drawer, and then, dipping the pen in the inkwell, I copied out the salutation from Mrs. Mullet's greasy book, trying to make my handwriting as neat as possible:

"Apprehended," Dogger said, reading over my shoulder.

I changed it.

"What else?"

"Nothing," Dogger said. "Just sign it. Kings prefer brevity."

Being careful not to blot the page, I copied the closing from the book:

"Perfect!" Dogger said.

I folded the letter neatly, making an extra-sharp crease with my thumb. I slipped it into one of Father's best envelopes and wrote the address:

"Shall I mark it Personal?"

"Good idea," Dogger said.

A WEEK LATER, I was cooling my bare feet in the waters of the artificial lake, revising my notes on coniine, the chief alkaloid in poison hemlock, when Dogger appeared suddenly, waving something in his hand.

"Miss Flavia!" he called, and then he waded across to the island, boots and all.

His trouser legs were soaking wet, and although he stood there dripping like Poseidon, his grin was as bright as the summer afternoon.

He handed me an envelope that was as soft and white as goose down.

"Shall I open it?" I asked.

"I believe it's addressed to you."

Dogger winced as I tore open the flap and pulled out the single sheet of creamy paper which lay folded inside:

And it was signed simply “George.”