The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

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.”

six

WE WERE HAVING TEA. MISS MOUNTJOY HAD EXCAVATED a battered tin kettle from somewhere, and after a dig in her carry-bag, come up with a scruffy packet of Peek Freans.

I sat on a library ladder and helped myself to another biscuit.

'It was tragic,' she said. 'My uncle had been housemaster of Anson House forever—or so it seemed. He took great pride in his house and in his boys. He spared no pains in urging them always to do their best; to prepare themselves for life.

'He liked to joke that he spoke better Latin than Julius Caesar himself, and his Latin grammar, Twining's Lingua Latina—published when he was just twenty-four, by the way—was a standard text in schools round the world. I still keep a copy beside my bed, and even though I can't read much of it, I sometimes like to hold it for the comfort it brings me: qui, quae, quod, and all that. The words have such a comforting sound about them.

'Uncle Grenville was forever organizing things: He encouraged his boys to form a debating society, a skating club, a cycling club, a cribbage circle. He was a keen amateur conjurer, although not a very good one—you could always see the ace of diamonds peeping out of his cuffs with the bit of elastic dangling down from it. He was an enthusiastic stamp collector, and taught the boys to learn the history and the geography of the issuing countries, as well as to keep neat, orderly albums. And that was his downfall.'

I stopped chewing and sat expectantly. Miss Mountjoy had slipped into a kind of reverie and seemed unlikely to go on without encouragement.

Little by little, I had come under her spell. She had talked to me woman-to-woman, and I had succumbed. I felt sorry for her… really I did.

'His downfall?' I asked.

'He made the great mistake of putting his trust in several wretched excuses for boyhood who had wormed themselves into his favor. They pretended great interest in his little stamp collection, and feigned an even greater interest in the collection of Dr. Kissing, the headmaster. In those days, Dr. Kissing was the world's greatest authority on the Penny Black—the world's first postage stamp—in all of its many variations. The Kissing collection was the envy—and I say that advisedly—of all the world. These vile creatures convinced Uncle Grenville to intercede and arrange a private viewing of the Head's stamps.

'While examining the crown jewel of this collection, a Penny Black of a certain peculiarity—I've forgotten the details—the stamp was destroyed.”

'Destroyed?' I asked.

'Burned. One of the boys set it alight. He meant it to be a joke.'

Miss Mountjoy took up her tea and drifted like a wisp of smoke to the window, where she stood looking out for what seemed like a very long time. I was beginning to think she'd forgotten about me, but then she spoke again:

'Of course, my uncle was blamed for the disaster.'

She turned and looked me in the eye. “And the rest of the story you've learned this morning in the Pit Shed.”

'He killed himself,' I said.

'He did not kill himself!” she shrieked. The cup and saucer fell from her hand and shattered on the tile floor. “He was murdered!”

'By whom?' I asked, getting a grip on myself, even managing to get the grammar right. Miss Mountjoy was beginning to grate on my nerves again.

'By those monsters!' she spat out. 'Those obscene monsters!'

'Monsters?'