The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

shiver as the sound of my footsteps echoed from its mossy walls and dripping roof. I tried not to touch the reeking green-stained bricks on either side, or to inhale its sour air, until I had edged my way out into the sunlight at the far end of the passage.

Miss Cool's tiny backyard was hemmed in with a low wall of crumbling brick. Its wooden gate was latched on the inside.

I scrambled over the wall, marched straight to the door, and gave it a good banging with the flat of my hand.

I put my ear to the panel, but nothing seemed to be moving inside.

I stepped off the walk, waded into the unkempt grass, and pressed my nose to the bottom of the sooty window-pane. The back of a dresser was blocking my view.

In one corner of the yard was a decaying doghouse—all that was left of Miss Cool's collie, Geordie, who had been run over by a speeding motorcar in the High Street.

I tugged at the sagging frame until it pulled free of the mounded earth and dragged it across the yard until it was directly under the window. Then I climbed on top of it.

From the top of the doghouse it was only one more step up until I was able to get my toes on the windowsill, where I balanced precariously on the chipped paint, my arms and legs spread out like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, one hand hanging on tightly to a shutter and the other trying to polish a viewing port in the grimy glass.

It was dark inside the little bedroom, but there was light enough to see the form lying on the bed; to see the white face staring back at me, its mouth gaping open in a horrid “O.”

'Flavia!' Miss Cool said, scrambling to her feet, her words muffled by the window glass. 'What on earth—?'

She snatched her false teeth from a tumbler and rammed them into her mouth, then vanished for a moment, and as I leaped to the ground I heard the sound of the bolt being shot back. The door opened inwards to reveal her standing there—like a trapped badger—in a housedress, her hand clutching and opening in nervous spasms at her throat.

'What on earth.?' she repeated. 'What's the matter?'

'The front door's locked,' I said. 'I couldn't get in.'

'Of course it's locked,' she said. 'It's always locked on Sundays. I was having a nap.'

She rubbed at her little black eyes, which were still squinting at the light.

Slowly it dawned on me that she was right. It was Sunday. Although it seemed aeons ago, it was only this morning that I had been sitting in St. Tancred's with my family.

I must have looked crushed.

'What is it, dear?' Miss Cool said. 'That horrid business up at Buckshaw?'

So she knew about it.

'I hope you've had the good sense to keep away from the actual scene of the—'

'Yes, of course, Miss Cool,' I said with a regretful smile. 'But I've been asked not to talk about that. I'm sure you'll understand.'

This was a lie, but a first-rate one.

'What a good child you are,' she said, with a glance up at the curtained windows of an adjoining row of houses that overlooked her yard. 'This is no place to talk. You'd better come inside.'

She led me through a narrow hallway, on one side of it her tiny bedroom, and on the other, a miniature sitting room. And suddenly we were in the shop, behind the counter that served as the village post office. Besides being Bishop's Lacey's only confectioner, Miss Cool was also its postmistress and, as such, knew everything worth knowing—except chemistry, of course.

She watched me carefully as I looked round with interest at the tiers of shelves, each one lined with glass jars of horehound sticks, bull's-eyes, and hundreds-and-thousands.

'I'm sorry. I can't do business on a Sunday. They'd have me up before the magistrates. It's the law, you know.'

I shook my head sadly.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I forgot what day it was. I didn't mean to frighten you.'

'Well, no real harm done,' she said, suddenly recovering her usual garrulous powers as she bustled about the shop, aimlessly touching this and that.

'Tell your father there's a new set of stamps coming out soon, but nothing to go into raptures about, at least to my way of thinking, anyways. Same old picture of King George's head, God bless 'im, but tarted up in new colors.'

'Thank you, Miss Cool,' I said. 'I'll be sure to let him know.'

'I'm sure that lot at the General Post Office up in London could come up with something better than that,' she went on, 'but I've heard as how they're saving up their brains for next year to celebrate the Festival of Britain.'

'I wonder if you could tell me where Miss Mountjoy lives,' I blurted.

'Tilda Mountjoy?' Her eyes narrowed. 'Whatever could you want with her?'

'She was most helpful to me at the library, and I thought it might be nice to take her some sweets.'

I gave a sweet smile to match the sentiment.