The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

'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 Dantes 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 fetes, 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