The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Flavia, silence is sometimes the most costly of commodities.

'After a very long time and a great deal of thought, I decided—against everything I believe in—to give in to his blackmail. I would sell my collections, everything I owned, to buy his silence, and I must tell you, Flavia, that I am more ashamed of that decision than anything I have ever done in my life. Anything.'

I wish I had known the right thing to say, but for once my tongue failed me, and I sat there like a mop, not able, even, to look my father in the face.

'Sometime in the small hours—it must have been four o'clock, perhaps, since it was already becoming light outside—I turned out the lamp, with the full intention of walking into the village, rousing Bonepenny from his room at the inn, and agreeing to his demands.

'But something stopped me. I can't explain it, but it's true. I stepped out onto the terrace, but rather than going round to the front of the house to the drive as I had determined to do, I found myself being drawn like a magnet to the coach house.'

So! I thought. It wasn't Father who had gone out through the kitchen door. He had walked from the terrace outside his study, along the outside of the garden wall to the coach house. He had not set foot in the garden. He had not walked past the dying Horace Bonepenny.

'I needed to think,' Father went on, 'but I couldn't seem to bring my mind into proper focus.'

'And you got into Harriet's Rolls,' I blurted. Some times I could shoot myself.

Father stared at me with the sad kind of look the worm must give the early bird the instant before its beak snaps shut.

'Yes,' he said softly. 'I was tired. The last thing I remember thinking was that once Bony and Bob Stanley found I was a bankrupt, they'd give up the game for someone more promising. Not that I would ever wish this predicament on another.

'And then I must have fallen asleep. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. I was still there when the police found me.'

'A bankrupt?' I said, astonished. I couldn't help myself. 'But, Father, you have Buckshaw.'

Father looked at me, his eyes moist: eyes that I had never before seen looking out of his face.

'Buckshaw belonged to Harriet, you see, and when she died, she died intestate. She didn't leave a will. The death duties—well, the death duties shall most likely consume us.'

'But Buckshaw is yours!' I said. 'It's been in the family for centuries.'

'No,' Father said sadly. 'It is not mine, not mine at all. You see, Harriet was a de Luce before I married her. She was my third cousin. Buckshaw was hers. I have nothing left to invest in the place, not a sou. I am, as I have said, a virtual bankrupt.”

There was a metallic tapping at the door and Inspector Hewitt stepped into the room.

'I'm sorry, Colonel de Luce,' he said. 'The Chief Constable, as you are undoubtedly aware, is most particular that the very shadow of the law be observed. I've allowed you as much time as I can and still escape with my skin.'

Father nodded sadly.

'Come along, Flavia,' the Inspector said to me. 'I'll take you home.'

'I can't go home yet,' I said. 'Someone's pinched my bicycle. I'd like to file a complaint.'

'Your bicycle is in the backseat of my car.'

'You've found it already?' I asked. Hallelujah! Gladys was safe and sound!

'It was never missing,' he said. 'I saw you park it out front and had Constable Glossop put it away for safe keeping.'

'So that I couldn't escape?'

Father lifted an eyebrow at this impertinence, but said nothing.

'In part, yes,' Inspector Hewitt said, 'but largely because it's still raining buckets outside and it's a long old pedal uphill to Buckshaw.'

I gave Father a silent hug to which, although he remained rigid as an oak, he did not seem to object.

'Try to be a good girl, Flavia,' he said.

Try to be a good girl? Was that all he could think of? It was evident that our submarine had surfaced, its occupants hauled up from the vasty deeps and all the magic left below.

'I'll do my best,' I said, turning away. 'I'll do my very best.'

'YOU MUSTN'T BE TOO HARD on your father, you know,” Inspector Hewitt said as he slowed to negotiate the turn at the fingerpost which pointed to Bishop's Lacey. I glanced at him, his face lit from below by the soft glow of the Vauxhall's instrument panel. The windscreen wipers, like black scythes, swashed back and forth across the glass in the strange light of the storm.

'Do you honestly believe he murdered Horace Bonepenny?' I asked.

His reply was ages in coming, and when it did, it was burdened with a heavy sadness.

'Who else was there, Flavia?” he said.

'Me,' I said, '. for instance.'

Inspector Hewitt flicked on the defroster to evaporate the condensation our words were forming on the windscreen.