The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

myself, hoping it would be mistaken for impatience.

'Of course in Norway,' I said condescendingly. 'Are there other Stavangers?'

For a moment I thought he was onto me. His eyes narrowed and I felt a chill as the thunderclouds of a Maximilian tantrum blew across the sun. But then he gave a tiny giggle, like springwater gurgling into a glass.

'Stavanger is the first stepping-stone on the Road to Hell. which is a railway station,' he said. 'I traveled over it to Trondheim, and then on to Hell, which, believe it or not, is a very small village in Norway, from which tourists often dispatch picture postcards to their friends with the message, 'Wish you were here!' and where I performed Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor. Grieg, incidentally, was as much a Scot as a Norwegian. Grandfather from Aberdeen, left in disgust after Culloden—must have had second thoughts, though, when he realized he'd done no more than trade the firths for the fjords.

'Trondheim was a great success, I must say. critics kind, public polite. But those people, they never understand their own music, you know. Played Scarlatti as well, to bring a glimpse of Italian sunshine to those snowy northern climes. Still, at the intermission I happened to hear a commercial traveler from Dublin whispering to a friend, ‘It's all Grieg to me, Thor.’”

I smiled dutifully, although I had heard this ancient jest about forty-five times before.

'That was in the old days, of course, before the war. Stavanger! Yes, of course I've been there. But why do you ask?'

'How did you get there? By ship?'

Horace Bonepenny had been alive in Stavanger and now he was dead in England and I wanted to know where he had been in between.

'Of course by ship. You're not thinking of running away from home, are you, Flavia?'

'We were having a discussion—actually a row—about it last night at supper.'

This was one of the ways to optimize a lie: shovel on the old frankness.

'Ophelia thought one would embark from London; Father insisted it was Hull; Daphne voted for Scarborough, but only because Anne Bronte is buried there.'

'Newcastle-upon-Tyne,' Maximilian said. 'Actually, it's Newcastle-upon-Tyne.'

There was a rumble in the distance as the Cottesmore bus approached, waddling along the lane between the hedgerows like a chicken walking a tightrope. It stopped in front of the bench, wheezing heavily as it subsided from the effort of its hard life among the hills. The door swung open with an iron groan.

'Ernie, mon vieux,” Maximilian said. “How fares the transportation industry?”

'Board,' Ernie said, looking straight ahead through the windscreen. If he caught the joke he chose to ignore it.

'No ride today, Ernie. Just using your bench to rest my kidneys.'

'Benches are for the sole use of travelers awaiting a coach. It's in the rule book, Max. You know that as well as I do.'

'Indeed I do, Ernie. Thank you for reminding me.'

Max slid off the bench and dropped to the ground.

'Cheerio, then,' he said, and tipping his hat, he set off along the road like Charlie Chaplin.

The door of the bus squealed shut as Ernie engaged the juddering gears and the coach whined into reluctant forward motion. And so we all went our separate ways: Ernie and his bus to Cottesmore, Max to his cottage, Gladys and I resuming our ride to Hinley.

THE POLICE STATION IN HINLEY was housed in a building that had once been a coaching inn. Uncomfortably hemmed in between a small park and a cinema, its half-timbered front jutted beetle-brow out over the street, the blue lamp suspended from its overhang. A cinder-block addition, painted a nondescript brown, adhered to the side of the building like cow muck to a passing railway carriage. This, I suspected, was where the cells were located.

Leaving Gladys to graze in a bicycle stand that was more than half full of official-looking black Raleighs, I went up the worn steps and in the front door.

A uniformed sergeant sat at a desk shuffling bits of paper and scratching his sparse hair with the sharpened end of a pencil. I smiled and walked on past.

''Old on, 'old on,' he rumbled. 'Where do you think you're goin', miss?' he asked.

It seems to be a trait of policemen to speak in questions. I smiled as if I hadn't understood and moved towards an open door, beyond which I could see a dark passageway. More quickly than I would have believed, the sergeant was on his feet and had seized me by the arm. I was nabbed. There was nothing else to do but burst into tears.

I hated to do it, but it was the only tool I had with me.

TEN MINUTES LATER, we were sipping cocoa in the station tearoom, P. C. Glossop and I. He had told me that he had a girl just like me at home (which, somehow, I doubted), name of Elizabeth.

'She's a great 'elp to her poor mother, our Lizzie is,' he said, 'seeing as 'ow Missus Glossop, the wife, that is, 'ad a fall from a ladder in the happle horchard and broke 'er leg two weeks ago come Saturday.'

My first thought was that he had read too many issues of The Beano or The Dandy; that he was laying it on a bit thick for entertainment purposes. But the earnest look on his face and the furrowed brow quickly told me otherwise: This was the real Constable Glossop and I would have to deal with him on his own terms.

Accordingly, I began to sob again and told him I had no mother and that she had died in far-off Tibet in a mountaineering accident and that I missed her dreadfully.