The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I watched as he strolled across the lawn towards the avenue of chestnuts and out of sight.

eleven

I FOUND DAFFY IN THE LIBRARY, PERCHED AT THE very top of a wheeled ladder.

'Where's Father?' I asked.

She turned a page and went on reading as if I had never been born.

'Daffy?'

I felt my inner cauldron beginning to boil: that bubbling pot of occult brew that could so quickly transform Flavia the Invisible into Flavia the Holy Terror.

I seized one of its rungs and gave the ladder a good shake, and then a shove to start it rolling. Once in motion, it was easy enough to sustain, with Daffy clinging to the top like a paralyzed limpet as I pushed the thing down the long room.

'Stop it, Flavia! Stop it!'

As the doorway approached at an alarming rate, I braked, then ran round behind the ladder and raced off again in the opposite direction, and all the while, Daffy teetering away up top like the lookout on a whaler in a North Atlantic blow.

'Where's Father?' I shouted.

'He's still in his study with the Inspector. Stop this! Stop it!'

As she looked a little green about the gills, I stopped.

Daffy came shakily down the ladder and stepped gingerly off onto the floor. I thought for a moment she would lunge at me, but she seemed to be taking an unusually long while regaining her land legs.

'Sometimes you scare me,' she said.

I was about to retort that there were times I scared myself, but then I remembered that silence can sometimes do more damage than words. I bit my tongue.

The whites of her eyes were still showing, like those of a bolted cart-horse, and I decided to take advantage of the moment.

'Where does Miss Mountjoy live?'

Daffy looked blank.

'Miss Library Mountjoy,' I added.

'I have no idea,' Daffy said. 'I haven't used the library in the village since I was a child.'

Still wide-eyed, she peered at me over her glasses.

'I was thinking of asking her advice on becoming a librarian.'

It was the perfect lie. Daffy's look became almost one of respect.

'I don't know where she lives,' she said. 'Ask Miss Cool, at the confectionery. She knows what's under every bed in Bishop's Lacey.'

'Thanks, Daff,' I said as she dropped down into an upholstered wing back chair. 'You're a brick.'

ONE OF THE CHIEF CONVENIENCES of living near a village is that, if required, you can soon be in it. I flew along on Gladys, thinking that it might be a good idea to keep a logbook, as aeroplane pilots are made to do. By now, Gladys and I must have logged some hundreds of flying hours together, most of them in going to and from Bishop's Lacey. Now and then, with a picnic hamper strapped to her black back-skirts, we would venture even farther afield.

Once, we had ridden all morning to look at an inn where Richard Mead was said to have stayed a single night in 1747. Richard (or Dick, as I sometimes referred to him) was the author of A Mechanical Account of Poisons in Several Essays. Published in 1702, it was the first book on the subject in the English language, a first edition of which was the pride of my chemical library. In my bedroom portrait gallery, I kept his likeness stuck to the looking-glass alongside those of Henry Cavendish, Robert Bunsen, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, whereas Daffy and Feely had pinups of Charles Dickens and Mario Lanza respectively.

The confectioner's shop in the Bishop's Lacey High Street stood tightly wedged between the undertaker's premises on one side and a fish shop on the other. I leaned Gladys up against the plate-glass window and seized the doorknob.

I swore curses under my breath. The place was locked as tight as Old Stink.

Why did the universe conspire against me like this? First the closet, then the library, and now the confectioner's. My life was becoming a long corridor of locked doors.

I cupped my hands at the window and peered into the interior gloom.

Miss Cool must have stepped out or perhaps, like everyone else in Bishop's Lacey, was having a family emergency. I took the knob in both hands and rattled the door, knowing as I did so that it was useless.

I remembered that Miss Cool lived in a couple of rooms behind the shop. Perhaps she had forgotten to unlock the door. Older people often do things like that: they become senile and—

But what if she's died in her sleep? I thought. Or worse…

I looked both ways but the High Street was empty. But wait! I had forgotten about Bolt Alley, a dark, dank tunnel of cobblestones and brick that led to the yards behind the shops. Of course! I made for it at once.

Bolt Alley smelled of the past, which was said to have once included a notorious gin mill. I gave an involuntary