The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

He gave me back a weird mirror image of my grin. For a fraction of a second I thought he was mocking me, and I felt my temper begin to rise. But then I realized he was honestly pleased to have puzzled me out. This was my opportunity.

'Ned,' I said, 'if I asked you a terrifically personal question, would you answer it?'

I waited as this sunk in. Communicating with Ned was like exchanging cabled messages with a slow reader in Mongolia.

'Of course I'd answer it,' he said, and the roguish twinkle in his eye tipped me off to what was coming next. ''Course, I might not say the truth.'

When we'd both had a good laugh, I got down to business. I'd start with the heavy artillery.

'You're frightfully keen on Ophelia, aren't you?'

Ned sucked his teeth and ran a finger round the inside of his collar. “She's a right nice girl, I'll give her that.”

'But wouldn't you like to settle down with her one day in a thatched cottage and raise a litter of brats?'

By now, Ned's neck was a rising column of red, like a thick alcohol thermometer. In seconds he looked like one of those birds that inflate its gullet for mating purposes. I decided to help him out.

'Just suppose she wanted to see you but her father wouldn't allow it. Suppose one of her younger sisters could help.'

Already his ruddy crop was subsiding. I thought he was going to cry.

'Do you mean it, Flavia?'

'Honest Injun,' I said.

Ned stuck out his calloused fingers and gave my hand a surprisingly gentle shake. It was like shaking hands with a pineapple.

'Fingers of Friendship,' he said, whatever that meant.

Fingers of Friendship? Had I just been given the secret handshake of some rustic brotherhood that met in moonlit churchyards and hidden copses? Was I now inducted, and would I be expected to take part in unspeakably bloody midnight rituals in the hedgerows? It seemed like an interesting possibility.

Ned was grinning at me like the skull on a Jolly Roger. I took the upper hand.

'Listen,' I told him. 'Lesson Number One: Don't leave dead birds on the loved one's doorstep. It's something that only a courting cat would do.'

Ned looked blank.

'I've left flowers once or twice, hopin' she'd notice,' he said. This was news to me; Ophelia must have whisked the bouquets off to her boudoir for mooning purposes before anyone else in the household spotted them.

'But dead birds? Never. You know me, Flavia. I wouldn't do a thing like that.'

When I stopped to think about it for a moment, I knew that he was right; I did and he wouldn't. My next question, though, turned out to be sheer luck.

'Does Mary Stoker know you're sweet on Ophelia?' It was a phrase I had picked up at the cinema from some American film—Meet Me in St. Louis or Little Women—and this was the first opportunity I'd ever had to make use of it. Like Daphne, I remembered words, but without an account book to jot them down.

'What's Mary have to do with it? She's Tully's daughter, and there's an end of it.'

'Come off it, Ned,' I said. 'I saw that kiss this morning as I was. passing by.'

'She needed a little comfort. 'Twas no more than that.'

'Because of whoever it was that crept up behind her?'

Ned leapt to his feet. “Damn you!” he said. “She don't want that getting out.”

'As she was changing the sheets?'

'You're a devil, Flavia de Luce!' Ned roared. 'Get away from me! Go home!'

'Tell her, Ned,' said a quiet voice, and I turned to see Mary at the door.

She stood with one hand flat on the doorpost, the other clutching her blouse at the neck like Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Close up, I could see that she had raw red hands and a decided squint.

'Tell her,' she repeated. 'It can't make any difference to you now, can it?'

I detected instantly that she didn't like me. It's a fact of life that a girl can tell in a flash if another girl likes her. Feely says that there is a broken telephone connection between men and women, and we can never know which of us rang off. With a boy you never know whether he's smitten or gagging, but with a girl you can tell in the first three seconds. Between girls there is a silent and unending flow of invisible signals, like the high-frequency wireless messages between the shore and the ships at sea, and this secret flow of dots and dashes was signaling that Mary detested me.

'Go on, tell her!' Mary shouted.

Ned swallowed hard and opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

'You're Flavia de Luce, aren't you?' she said. 'One of that lot from up at Buckshaw.' She flung it at me like a pie in the face.

I nodded dumbly, as if I were some inbred ingrate from the squire's estate who needed coddling. Better to play