The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

substantial landscaping changes. Another dizzying look down through the opening behind me made it obvious that they had not: the cobbles below and the linden trees that lined them were positively ancient. Mr. Twining had fallen through this hole. Without a doubt.

There was a sudden noise behind me and I spun round. In the center of the roof a corpse hung, dangling from a gibbet. I had to fight to keep from crying out.

Like the bound body of a highwayman I had seen in the pages of the Newgate Calendar, the thing was twisting and turning in the sudden breeze. Then, without warning, its belly seemed to explode, and its guts flew up into the air in a twisted and sickening rope of scarlet, white, and blue.

With a loud crack! the entrails unfurled themselves, and suddenly, high above my head, at the top of the pole, the Union Jack was flapping in the wind.

As I recovered from my fright, I saw that the flag was rigged so that it could be raised and lowered from below, perhaps from the porter's lodge, by an ingenious series of cables and pulleys that terminated in the weatherproof canvas casing. It was this I had mistaken for corpse and gibbet.

I grinned stupidly at my foolishness and edged cautiously closer to the mechanism for a better look. But aside from the mechanical ingenuity of the device, there was little else of interest about it.

I had just turned and was moving back towards the open gap when I tripped and fell flat on my face, my head sticking out over the edge of the abyss.

I might have broken every bone in my body but I was afraid to move. A million miles below, or so it seemed, a pair of ant-like figures emerged from Anson House and set out across the Quad.

My first thought was that I was still alive. But then as my terror subsided, anger rushed in to take its place: anger at my own stupidity and clumsiness, anger at whatever invisible witch was blighting my life with an endless chain of locked doors, barked shins, and skinned elbows.

I got slowly to my feet and dusted myself off. Not only was my dress filthy, but I had also managed somehow to rip the sole half off my left shoe. The cause of the damage was not hard to spot: I had tripped on the sharp edge of a jutting tile which, torn from its place, now lay loose on the roof looking like one of the tablets upon which Moses had been given the Ten Commandments.

I'd better replace the slate, I thought. Otherwise the inhabitants of Anson House will find rainwater showering down on their heads and it will be no one's fault but mine.

The tile was heavier than it looked, and I had to drop to my knees as I tried to shove it back into place. Per haps the thing had rotated, or maybe the adjoining tiles had sagged. Whatever the reason, it simply would not slide back into the dark socket from which my foot had yanked it.

I could easily slip my hand into the opening to see if there was any obstruction—but then I remembered the spiders and scorpions that are known to inhabit such grottoes.

I closed my eyes and shoved my fingers in. At the back of the cavity they encountered something—something soft.

I jerked back my hand and bent over to peer inside. There was nothing in the hole but darkness.

Carefully, I stuck my fingers in again and, with my thumb and forefinger, plucked at whatever was in there at the back of the hole.

In the end, it came out almost effortlessly, unfolding as it emerged, like the flag that fluttered above my head. It was a length of rusty black cloth—Russell cord, I think the stuff is called—sour with mold: a schoolmaster's gown. And rolled up tightly inside it, crushed beyond repair, was a black, square-topped mortarboard cap.

And in that instant I knew, as sure as a shilling, that these things had played a part in Mr. Twining's death. I didn't know what it was, but I would jolly well find out.

I ought to have left the things there, I know. I ought to have gone to the nearest telephone and rung up Inspector Hewitt. Instead, the first thought that popped into my mind was this: How was I going to get away from Greyminster without being noticed?

And, as it so often does when you're in a jam, the answer came at once.

I shoved my arms into the sleeves of the moldy gown, straightened the bent crown of the mortarboard and jammed it on my head, and like a large black bat, flapped my way slowly and precariously back down the cascades of trembling ladders to the locked door.

The pick I had fashioned from my braces had worked before, and now I needed it to work again. As I fidgeted the wire in the keyhole, I offered up a silent prayer to the god who governs such things.

After a great deal of scraping, a bent wire, and a couple of minor curses, my prayer was finally heard, and the bolt slid back with a sullen croak.

Before you could say “Scat!” I was down the stairs, listening at the bottom door, peering out through a crack at the long hall. The place was in empty silence.

I eased the door open, stepped quietly out into the corridor, and made my way swiftly down the gallery of lost boys, past the empty porter's lodge, and out into the sunshine.

There were schoolboys everywhere—or so it seemed—talking, lounging, strolling, laughing. Glorying in the outdoors with the end of term at hand.

My instinct was to hunch over in my cap and cape and skulk crabwise away across the Quad. Would I be noticed? Of course I would; to these wolfish boys I would stand out like the wounded reindeer at the back of the herd.

No! I would throw my shoulders back and, like a boy late for the hurdles, lope off, head held high, in the direction of the lane. I could only hope that no one would notice that underneath the gown I was wearing a dress.

And nobody did; no one gave me so much as a second glance.

The farther I got from the Quad, the safer I felt, but I knew that, alone in the open, I would be far more conspicuous.