The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The photos showed Harriet growing from a fat cherub with a mop of golden hair, through a tall, skinny, laughing girl (with no perceptible breasts) dressed in hockey gear, to a film star with blond bangs, standing, like Amelia Earhart, with one hand resting negligently on the rim of Blithe Spirit's cockpit. There were no photographs of Father. Nor were there any of us.

In every photograph, Harriet's features were those of a woman whose design has been arrived at by taking those of Feely, Daffy, and me and shaking them in a jar before reassembling them into this grinning, confident, yet endearingly shy adventuress.

As I stared at her face, trying to see through the photographic paper to Harriet's soul, there was a light tapping at the door.

A pause—and then another tapping. And the door began to open.

It was Dogger. He stuck his head slowly into the room.

'Colonel de Luce?' he said. 'Are you here?'

I froze, hardly daring even to breathe. Dogger didn't move a muscle, but gazed straight ahead in the expectant way of a well-trained servant who knows his place, relying on his ears to tell him if he was intruding.

But what was he playing at? Hadn't he just told me that the police had taken Father away? Why on earth, then, would he expect to find him here in Harriet's dressing room? Was Dogger so addled as that? Or could it be that he was shadowing me?

I parted my lips slightly and breathed in slowly through my mouth so that a wayward nose-whistle wouldn't give me away, at the same time offering up a silent prayer that I wouldn't sneeze.

Dogger stood there for the longest time, like a tableau vivant. I had seen etchings in the library of those ancient entertainments in which the actors were plastered with whitewash and powder before arranging themselves in motionless poses, often of a titillating nature, each supposedly representing a scene from the lives of the gods.

After a time, just as I was beginning to realize how a rabbit must feel when it “freezes,” Dogger slowly withdrew his head and the door closed without a sound.

Had he seen me? And if he had, was he pretending he hadn't?

I waited, listening, but there wasn't a sound from the room next door. I knew Dogger would not linger for long, and when I judged that time enough had passed, I opened the door and peeked out.

Father's room was as I had left it, the two clocks ticking away, but now, because of my fright, they seemed louder than they had before. Realizing this was an opportunity that would never come again, I began my search using the same method as I had in Father's study, but because his bedroom was as spartan as the campaign tent of Leonidas must have been, it did not take very long.

The only book in the room was a sale catalogue from Stanley Gibbons for a stamp auction to be held in three months' time. I turned it over and flipped eagerly through its pages, but nothing tumbled out.

There were shockingly few clothes in Father's closet: a couple of old tweed jackets with leather patches at their elbows (their pockets empty), two wool sweaters, and some shirts. I dug inside his shoes and an ancient pair of regimental half-Wellingtons but found nothing.

I realized with a twinge that Father's only other clothing was his Sunday suit, which he must still have been wearing when Inspector Hewitt took him away. (I would not allow myself to use the word arrested.)

Perhaps he had hidden the pierced Penny Black somewhere else—in the glove box of Harriet's Rolls-Royce, for instance. For all I knew, he might already have destroyed it. Now that I stopped to think about it, that would have made most sense. The stamp itself was damaged, and therefore of no value. Something about it, though, had upset Father, and it seemed logical that as soon as he had gone to his room on Friday, he would have put a match to it at once.

That, of course, would have left its traces: paper ash in the ashtray and a burnt-out match in the wastepaper basket. It was easy enough to check since both of these were right there in front of me—and both were empty.

Perhaps he had flushed away the evidence.

Now I knew that I was clutching at straws.

Give it up, I thought; leave it to the police. Go back to your cozy lab and get on with your life's work.

I thought—but only for a moment, and with a little thrill—what lethal drops could be distilled from the entries at the Spring Flower Show; what a jolly poison could be extracted from the jonquil and what deadly liquors from the daffodil. Even the common churchyard yew, so loved by poets and by courting couples, contained within its seeds and leaves enough taxine to put paid to half the population of England.

But these pleasures would have to wait. My duty was to Father, and it had fallen upon my shoulders to help him, particularly now that he couldn't help himself. I knew that I should go to him, wherever he was, and lay my sword at his feet in the way that a medieval squire vows service to his knight. Even if I couldn't help him, I could still sit beside him, and I realized with a sudden piercing pang that I missed him dreadfully.

I was seized with a sudden idea: How many miles was it to Hinley? Could I reach there before dark? And even if I did, would I be allowed to see him?

My heart began to pound as if someone had slipped me a cup of foxglove tea.

Time to go. I had been here long enough. I glanced at the bedside clock—3:40, it now said. The chimneypiece clock ticked solemnly on, its hands at 3:37.

Father must have been too distraught to notice, I supposed, since generally, when it came to the time of day, he was a martinet. I remembered his way of giving orders to Dogger (although not to us) in military fashion:

'Take the gladioli along to the Vicar at thirteen hundred hours, Dogger,' he'd say. 'He'll be expecting you. Be back by thirteen forty-five and we'll decide what to do with the duckweed.”

I stared at the two clocks, hoping that something would come to me. Father had told us once, in one of his rare expansive moods, that what made him fall in love with Harriet was her ability to cogitate. “Remarkable thing in a