The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

5

BISHOP LACEY'S FREE LIBRARY WAS LOCATED IN COW Lane, a narrow, shady, tree-lined track that sloped from the High Street down to the river. The original building was a modest Georgian house of black brick, whose photograph had once appeared in color on the cover of Country Life. It had been given to the people of Bishop's Lacey by Lord Margate, a local boy who had made good (as plain old Adrian Chipping) and had gone on to fame and fortune as the sole purveyor of BeefChips, a tinned bully beef of his own invention, to Her Majesty's Government during the Boer War.

The library had existed as an oasis of silence until 1939. Then, while closed for renovations, it had taken fire when a pile of painter's rags spontaneously combusted just as Mr. Chamberlain was delivering to the British people his famous “As long as war has not begun, there is always hope that it may be prevented” speech. Since the entire adult population of Bishop's Lacey had been huddled round one another's wireless sets, no one, including the six members of the volunteer fire department, had spotted the blaze until it was far too late. By the time they arrived with their hand-operated pumping engine, nothing remained of the place but a pile of hot ashes. Fortunately, all of the books had escaped, having been stored for protection in temporary quarters.

But with the outbreak of war then, and the general fatigue since the Armistice, the original building had never been replaced. Its site was now nothing more than a weed-infested patch in Cater Street, just round the corner from the Thirteen Drakes. The property, having been given in perpetuity to the villagers of Bishop's Lacey, could not be sold, and the once-temporary premises that housed its holdings had now become the Free Library's permanent home in Cow Lane.

As I turned off the High Street, I could see the library, a low box of glass-brick and tile, which had been erected in the 1920s to house a motorcar showroom. Several of the original enamel signs bearing the names of extinct motorcars, such as the Wolseley and the Sheffield-Simplex, were still attached to one of its walls below the roofline, too high up to have attracted the attention of thieves or vandals.

Now, a quarter century after the last Lagonda had rolled out of its doors, the building had fallen, like old crockery in the servant's quarters, into a kind of chipped and broken decrepitude.

Behind and beyond the library, a warren of decaying outbuildings, like tombstones clustered round a country church, subsided into the long grass between the old showroom and the abandoned towpath that followed the river. Several of these dirt-floored hovels housed the overflow of books from the library's long gone and much larger Georgian predecessor. Makeshift structures that had once been a cluster of motor repair shops now found their dim interiors home to row upon row of unwanted books, their subjects labeled above them: History, Geography, Philosophy, Science. Still reeking of antique motor oil, rust, and primitive water closets, these wooden garages were called the stacks—and I could see why! I often came here to read and, next to my chemical laboratory at Buckshaw, it was my favorite place on earth.

I was thinking this as I arrived at the front door and turned the knob.

"Oh, scissors!" I said. It was locked.

As I stepped to one side to peer in the window, I noticed a handmade sign crudely drawn with black crayon and stuck to the glass: CLOSED.

Closed? Today was Saturday. The library hours were ten o'clock to two-thirty, Thursday through Saturday; they were clearly posted in the black-framed notice beside the door. Had something happened to Miss Pickery?

I gave the door a shake, and then a good pounding. I cupped my hands to the glass and peered inside, but except for a beam of sunlight falling through motes of dust before coming to rest upon shelves of novels there was nothing to be seen.

"Miss Pickery!" I called, but there was no answer.

"Oh, scissors!" I said again. I should have to put off my researches until another time. As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

No… eight days a week.

I knew that Miss Pickery lived in Shoe Street. If I left my bicycle here and took a shortcut through the outbuildings at the back of the library, I'd pass behind the Thirteen Drakes, and come out beside her cottage.

I picked my way through the long wet grass, watching carefully to avoid tripping on any of the rotting bits of rusty machinery that jutted out here and there like dinosaur bones in the Gobi Desert. Daphne had described to me the effects of tetanus: One scratch from an old auto wheel and I'd be foaming at the mouth, barking like a dog, and falling to the ground in convulsions at the sight of water. I had just managed to work up a gob of spit in my mouth for practice when I heard voices.

"But how could you let him, Mary?" It was a young man's voice, coming from the inn yard.

I flattened myself behind a tree, then peeked round it. The speaker was Ned Cropper, the odd-jobs boy at the Thirteen Drakes.

Ned! The very thought of him had the same effect upon Ophelia as an injection of novocaine. She had taken it into her head that he was the spitting image of Dirk Bogarde, but the only similarity I could see was that both had arms and legs and stacks of brilliantined hair.

Ned was sitting on a beer barrel outside the back door of the inn, and a girl I recognized as Mary Stoker was sitting on another. They did not look at one another. As Ned dug an elaborate maze in the ground with the heel of his boot, Mary kept her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she gazed at nothing in midair.

Although he had spoken in an urgent undertone, I could hear every word perfectly. The plaster wall of the Thirteen Drakes functioned as a perfect sound reflector.

"I told you, Ned Cropper, I couldn't help myself, could I? He come up behind me while I was changing his sheets."

"Whyn't you let out a yell? I know you can wake the dead. when you feel like it."

"You don't much know my pa, do you? If he knew what that bloke had done he'd have my hide for gumboots!"

She spat into the dust.

"Mary!" The voice came from somewhere inside the inn, but still it rolled out into the yard like thunder. It was Mary's father, Tully Stoker, the innkeeper, whose abnormally loud voice played a prominent part in some of the village's most scandalous old wives' tales.

"Mary!"

Mary leaped to her feet at the sound of his voice.

"Coming!" she shouted. "I'm coming!"

She hovered: torn, as if making a decision. Suddenly she darted like an asp across to Ned and planted a sharp kiss on his mouth, then, with a flick of her apron—like a conjurer flourishing his cape—she vanished into the dark recess of the open doorway.

Ned sat for a moment longer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before rolling the barrel to join the other empties along the far side of the inn yard.

"Hullo, Ned!" I shouted, and he turned, half embarrassed. I knew he'd be wondering if I'd overheard him with Mary, or witnessed the kiss. I decided to be ambiguous.

"Nice day," I said with a sappy grin.

Ned inquired after my health, and then, in order of careful precedence, about the health of Father, and of Daphne.

"They're fine," I told him.

"And Miss Ophelia?" he asked, getting round to her at last.

"Miss Ophelia? Well, to tell you the truth, Ned, we're all rather worried about her."

Ned recoiled as if a wasp had gone up his nose.

"Oh? What's the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope."

"She's gone all green," I said. "I think it's chlorosis. Dr. Darby thinks so too."

In his 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose called chlorosis “Love's Fever,” and “The Virgin's Disease.” I knew that Ned did not have the same ready access to Captain Grose's book as I did. I hugged myself inwardly.

"Ned!"

It was Tully Stoker again. Ned took a step towards the door.

"Tell her I was asking after her," he said.

I gave him a Winston Churchill V with my fingers. It was the least I could do.

SHOE STREET, like Cow Lane, ran from the High Street to the river. Miss Pickery's Tudor cottage, halfway along, looked like something you'd see on the lid of a jigsaw puzzle box. With its thatched roof and whitewashed walls, its diamond-pane leaded-glass windows, and its red-painted Dutch door, it was an artist's delight, its half-timbered walls floating like a quaint old ship upon a sea of old-fashioned flowers such as anemones, hollyhocks, gillyflowers, Canterbury bells, and others whose names I didn't know.

Roger, Miss Pickery's ginger tomcat, rolled on the front doorstep, exposing his belly for a scratching. I obliged.

"Good boy, Roger," I said. "Where's Miss Pickery?"

Roger strolled slowly off in search of something interesting to stare at, and I knocked at the door. There was no answer.

I went round into the back garden. No one home.

Back in the High Street, after stopping for a look at the same old flyblown apothecary jars in the chemist's window, I was just crossing Cow Lane when I happened to glance to my left and saw someone stepping into the library. Arms outstretched, I dipped my wings and banked ninety degrees. But by the time I reached the door, whoever it was had already let themselves in. I turned the doorknob, and this time, it swung open.

The woman was putting her purse in the drawer and settling down behind the desk, and I realized I had never seen her before in my life. Her face was as wrinkled as one of those forgotten apples you sometimes find in the pocket of last year's winter jacket.

"Yes?" she said, peering over her spectacles. They teach them to do that at the Royal Academy of Library Science. The spectacles, I noted, had a slightly grayish tint, as if they had been steeped overnight in vinegar.

"I was expecting to see Miss Pickery," I said.

"Miss Pickery has been called away on a private family matter."

"Oh," I said.

"Yes, very sad. Her sister, Hetty, who lives over in Nether-Wolsey, had a tragic accident with a sewing machine. It appeared for the first few days that all might be well, but then she took a sudden turn and it seems now as if there's a real possibility she might lose the finger. Such a shame—and she with the twins. Miss Pickery, of course…”

"Of course," I said.

"I'm Miss Mountjoy, and I'd be happy to assist you in her stead, as it were."

Miss Mountjoy! The retired Miss Mountjoy! I had heard tales about “Miss Mountjoy and the Reign of Terror.” She had been Librarian-in-Chief of the Bishop's Lacey Free Library when Noah was a sailor. All sweetness on the outside, but on the inside, “The Palace of Malice.” Or so I'd been told. (Mrs. Mullet again, who reads detective novels.) The villagers still held novenas to pray she wouldn't come out of retirement.

"And how may I help you, dearie?"

If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as “dearie.” When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poisons, and come to “Cyanide,” I am going to put under “Uses” the phrase “Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one ‘Dearie.’”

Still, one of my Rules of Life is this: When you want something, bite your tongue.

I smiled weakly and said, “I'd like to consult your newspaper files.”

"Newspaper files!" she gurgled. "My, you do know a lot, don't you, dearie?"

"Yes," I said, trying to look modest, "I do."

"The newspapers are in chronological order on the shelves in the Drummond Room: That's the west rear, to the left, at the top of the stairs,” she said with a wave of her hand.

"Thank you," I said, edging towards the staircase.

"Unless, of course, you want something earlier than last year. In that case, they'll be in one of the outbuildings. What year are you looking for, in particular?"

"I don't really know," I said. But, wait a minute—I did know! What was it the stranger had said in Father's study?

"Twining—Old Cuppa's been dead these—" What?

I could hear the stranger's oily voice in my head: “Old Cuppa's been dead these… thirty years!”

"The year 1920," I said, as cool as a trout. "I'd like to peruse your newspaper archive for 1920."

"Those are likely still in the Pit Shed—that is, if the rats haven't been at them." She said this with a bit of a leer over her spectacles as if, at the mention of rats, I might throw my hands in the air and run off screaming.

"I'll find them," I said. "Is there a key?"

Miss Mountjoy rummaged in the desk drawer and dredged up a ring of iron keys that looked as if they might once have belonged to the jailers of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo. I gave them a cheery jingle and walked out the door.

The Pit Shed was the outbuilding farthest from the library's main building. Tottering precipitously on the river's bank, it was a conglomeration of weathered boards and rusty corrugated tin, all overgrown with moss and climbing vines. In the heyday of the motor showroom, it had been the garage where autos had their oil and tires changed, their axles lubricated, and other intimate underside adjustments seen to.

Since then, neglect and erosion had reduced the place to something resembling a hermit's hovel in the woods.

I gave the key a twist and the door sprang open with a rusty groan. I stepped into the gloom, being careful to edge round the sheer sides of the deep mechanic's pit which, though it was boarded over with heavy planks, still occupied much of the room.

The place had a sharp and musky smell with more than a hint of ammonia, as if there were little animals living beneath its floorboards.

Half of the wall closest to Cow Lane was taken up with a folding door, now barred, which had once rolled back to allow motorcars to enter and park astride the pit. The glass of its four windows had been painted over, for some unfathomable reason, with a ghastly red through which the sunlight leaked, giving the room a bloody and unsettling tint.

Round the remaining three walls, rising like the frames of bunk beds, were ranged wooden shelves, each one piled high with yellowed newspapers: The Hinley Chronicle, The West Counties Advertiser, The Morning Post-Horn, all arranged by year and identified with faded handwritten labels.

I had no trouble finding 1920. I lifted down the top pile, choking with the cloud of dust that flew up into my face like an explosion in a flour mill as tiny shards of nibbled newsprint fell to the floor like paper snow.

Tub and loofah tonight, I thought, like it or not.

A small deal table stood near a grimy window: just enough light and enough room to spread the papers open, one at a time.

The Morning Post-Horn caught my eye: a tabloid whose front page, like the Times of London, was chock-full of adverts, snippets of news, and agony columns:

Lost: brown paper parcel tied with butcher's twine.

Of sentimental value to distressed owner. Generous reward offered.

Apply “Smith,” c/o The White Hart, Wolverston

Or this:

Dear One: He was watching. Same time Thursday next. Bring

soapstone. Bruno.

AND THEN SUDDENLY I REMEMBERED! Father had attended Greyminster… and wasn't Greyminster near Hinley? I tossed The Morning Post-Horn back onto its bier, and pulled down the first of four stacks of The Hinley Chronicle.

This paper had been published weekly, on Fridays. The first Friday of that year was New Year's Day, so that the year's first issue was dated the following Friday: the eighth of January, 1920.

Page followed page of holiday news—Christmas visitors from the Continent, a deferred meeting of the Ladies' Altar Guild, a “good-sized pig” for sale, Boxing Day revels at The Grange, a lost tire from a brewer's dray.

The Assizes in March were a grim catalogue of thefts, poaching, and assaults.

On and on I went, my hands blackening with ink that had dried twenty years before I was born. The summer brought more visitors from the Continent, market days, laborers wanted, Boy Scout camps, two fêtes, and several proposed road works.

After an hour I was beginning to despair. The people who read these things must have possessed superhuman eyesight, the type was so wretchedly small. Much more of this and I knew I'd have a throbbing headache.

And then I found it:

Popular Schoolmaster Plummets to Death

In a tragic accident on Monday morning, Grenville Twining, M.A. (Oxon.), 72, Latin scholar and respected housemaster at Greyminster School, near Hinley, fell to his death from the clock tower of Greyminster's Anson House. Those familiar with the facts have described the accident as “simply inexplicable.”

"He climbed up onto the parapet, gathered his robes about him, and gave us the palm-down Roman Salute. 'Vale!' he shouted down to the boys in the quad,” said Timothy Greene of the sixth form at Greyminster, “… and down he came!”

"Vale"? My heart gave a leap. It was the same word the dying man had breathed into my face! "Farewell." It could hardly be coincidence, could it? It was just too bizarre. There had to be some connection—but what could it be?

Damn! My mind was racing away like mad and my wits were standing still. The Pit Shed was hardly the place for speculation; I'd think about it later.

I read on:

"The way his gown fluttered, he seemed just like a falling angel," said Toby Lonsdale, a rosy-cheeked lad who was near tears as he was shepherded away by his comrades before giving way and breaking down altogether nearby.

Mr. Twining had recently been questioned by police in the matter of a missing postage stamp: a unique and extremely valuable variation of the Penny Black.

"There is no connection," said Dr. Isaac Kissing, who has been Headmaster at Greyminster since 1915. "No connection whatsoever. Mr. Twining was revered and, if I may say so, loved by all who knew him."

The Hinley Chronicle has learned that police inquiries into both incidents are continuing.

The newspaper's date was the 24th of September, 1920.

I reshelved the paper, stepped outside, and locked the door. Miss Mountjoy was still sitting idle at her desk when I returned the key.

"Did you find what you were looking for, dearie?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, making a great show of dusting off my hands.

"May I inquire further?" she asked coyly. "I might be able to direct you to related materials."

Translation: She was perishing with nosiness.

"No, thank you, Miss Mountjoy," I said.

For some reason I suddenly felt as if my heart had been ripped out and swapped with a counterfeit made of lead.

"Are you all right, dearie?" Miss Mountjoy asked. "You seem a little peaked."

Peaked? I felt as if I were about to puke.

Perhaps it was nervousness, or perhaps it was an unconscious attempt to stave off nausea, but to my horror I found myself blurting out, “Did you ever hear of a Mr. Twining, of Greyminster School?”

She gasped. Her face went red, then gray, as if it had caught fire before my eyes and collapsed in an avalanche of ashes. She pulled a lace handkerchief from her sleeve, knotted it, and jammed it into her mouth, and for a few moments, she sat there, rocking in her chair, gripping the lace between her teeth like an eighteenth-century seaman having his leg amputated below the knee.

At last, she looked up at me with brimming eyes and said in a shaky voice, “Mr. Twining was my mother's brother.”