The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Something told me this was a Bad Idea. Something else told me that the gutted pie was evidence that should be left untouched for Inspector Hewitt and the two sergeants to discover. I actually considered this for a moment.

'Got any paper?' I asked.

Mary shook her head. I opened the wardrobe and, standing on tiptoe, felt along the top shelf with my hand. As I suspected, a sheet of newspaper had been put in place to serve as a makeshift shelf liner. God bless you, Tully Stoker!

Taking care not to break them, I tipped the larger remnants of the pie slowly out onto the Daily Mail and folded it up into a small neat package, which I shoved into my pocket. Mary stood watching me nervously, not saying a word.

'Lab test,' I said, darkly. To tell the truth, I didn't have any idea yet what I was going to do with this revolting stuff. I'd think of something later, but right now I wanted to show Mary who was in charge.

As I set the wastepaper basket down on the floor, I was startled at a sudden slight movement in its depths, and I don't mind admitting that my stomach turned a primal hand spring. What was in there? Worms? A rat? Impossible: I couldn't have missed something that big.

I peered cautiously into the container and sure enough, something was moving at the bottom of the basket. A feather! And it was moving gently, almost imperceptibly, back and forth with the room's air currents; stirring like a dead leaf on a tree—in the same way the dead stranger's red hair had stirred in the morning breeze.

Could it have been only this morning that he died? It seemed an eternity since the unpleasantness in the garden. Unpleasantness? You liar, Flavia!

Mary looked on aghast as I reached into the basket and extracted the feather and the bit of pastry impaled upon its quill end.

'See this?' I said, holding it out towards her. She shrank back in the way Dracula is supposed to do when you threaten him with a cross. 'If the feather had fallen on the pastry in the wastepaper basket, it wouldn't be attached.

'Four-and-twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie,' I recited. 'See?'

'You think?' Mary asked, her eyes like saucers.

'Bang on, Sherlock,' I said. 'This pie's filling was bird, and I think I can guess the species.'

I held it out to her again. “What a pretty dish to set before the King,” I said, and this time she grinned at me.

I'd do the same with Inspector Hewitt, I thought, as I pocketed the thing. Yes! I'd solve this case and present it to him wrapped up in gaily colored ribbons.

'No need for you to come out here again,' he'd said to me in the garden, that saucepot. What bloody cheek!

Well, I'd show him a trick or two!

Something told me that Norway was the key. Ned hadn't been in Norway, and besides, he had sworn he didn't leave the snipe on our doorstep and I believed him, so he was out of the question—at least for now.

The stranger had come from Norway, and I had heard that straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak! Ergo (that means “therefore”) the stranger could have brought the snipe with him.

In a pie.

Yes! That made sense! What better way to get a dead bird past an inquisitive H. M. Customs inspector?

Just one more step and we're home free: If the Inspector can't be asked how he knew about Norway, and nor can the stranger (obviously, since he is dead), who, then, does that leave?

And I suddenly saw it all, saw it spread out before me at my feet the way one must see from the top of a mountain. The way Harriet must have—

The way an eagle sees his prey.

I hugged myself with pleasure. If the stranger had come from Norway, dropped a dead bird on our doorstep before breakfast, and then appeared in Father's study after midnight, he must have been staying somewhere not far away. Somewhere within walking distance of Buckshaw. Some where such as right here in this very room at the Thirteen Drakes.

Now I knew it for certain: The corpse in the cucumbers was Mr. Sanders. There could be no doubt about it.

'Mary!'

It was Tully again, bellowing like a bull calf, and this time, it seemed, he was right outside the door.

'Coming, Dad!' she shouted, grabbing the wastebasket.

'Get out of here,' she whispered. 'Wait five minutes and then go down the back stairs—same way as we came up.'

She was gone, and a moment later I heard her explaining to Tully in the hallway that she just wanted to give the wastebasket an extra clean-out, since someone left a mess in it.

'We wouldn't want somebody to die of germs they picked up at the Thirteen Drakes, would we, Dad?'

She was learning.

While I waited, I took a second look at the steamer trunk. I ran my fingers over the colored labels, trying to imagine where it had been in its travels, and what Mr. Sanders had been doing in each city: Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stavanger. Paris was red, white, and blue, and so was Stavanger.