The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Daffy glanced up disinterestedly, and then went on reading. As usual, it was up to me.

I stepped out onto the terrace, pulling the door closed behind me.

'Good morning, Flavia,' Pemberton said with a grin. 'Did you sleep well?'

Did I sleep well? What kind of question was that? Here I was on the terrace, sleep in my eyes, my hair a den of nesting rats, and my nose running like a trout stream. Be sides, wasn't a question about the quality of one's sleep reserved for those who had spent a night under the same roof? I wasn't sure; I'd have to look it up in Beeton's Complete Etiquette for Ladies. Feely had given me a copy for my last birthday, but it was still propping up the short leg of my bed.

'Not awfully,' I said. 'I've caught cold.'

'I'm sorry to hear that. I was hoping to be able to interview your father about Buckshaw. I don't like to be a pest, but my time here is limited. Since the war, the cost of accommodation away from home, even in the most humble hostelry, such as the Thirteen Drakes, is simply shocking. One doesn't like to plead poverty, but we poor scholars still dine mostly upon bread and cheese, you know.'

'Have you had breakfast, Mr. Pemberton?' I asked. 'I'm sure Mrs. Mullet could manage something.'

'That's very kind of you, Flavia,' he said, 'but Landlord Stoker laid on a veritable feast of two bangers and an egg and I live in fear for my waistcoat buttons.'

I wasn't quite sure how to take this, and my cold was making me too grumpy to ask.

'Perhaps I can answer your questions,' I said. 'Father has been detained—'

Yes, that was it! You sly little fox, Flavia!

'Father has been detained in town.'

'Oh, I don't think they're matters that would much interest you: a few knotty questions about drains and the Enclosure Acts—that sort of thing. I was hoping to put in an appendix about the architectural changes made by Antony and William de Luce in the nineteenth century. 'A House Divided' and all that.'

'I've heard of an appendix being taken out,' I blurted, 'but this is the first time I've heard of one being put in.'

Even with my nose running I could still thrust and parry with the best of them. A wet, explosive sneeze ruined the effect.

'P'raps I could just step in and have a quick look round. Make a few notes. I shan't disturb anyone.'

I was trying to think of synonyms for “no” when I heard the growl of an engine, and Dogger, at the wheel of our old tractor, appeared between the trees at the end of the avenue, hauling a load of compost to the garden. Mr. Pemberton, who noticed at once that I was staring over his shoulder, turned to see what I was looking at. When he spotted Dogger coming our way, he gave a friendly wave.

'That's old Dogger, isn't it? The faithful family retainer?'

Dogger had braked, looking round to see who Pemberton might be waving at. When he saw no one, he raised his hat as if in greeting, then gave his head a scratch. He climbed down from the wheel and shambled across the lawn towards us.

'I say, Flavia,' Pemberton said, glancing at his wrist-watch, 'I'd quite lost track of the time. I promised to meet my publisher at Nether Eaton to have a look over a shroud tomb, quite a rare one: both hands exposed and all that. Extraordinary railings. He's got a thing about tombs, has old Quarrington, so I'd better not stand him up. If I do, why, Pemberton's Tombs and Traceries might never be anything more than a twinkle in its author's eye.”

He hitched up his artist's knapsack and strolled down the steps, pausing at the corner of the house to close his eyes and draw in a deep, bracing lungful of the morning air.

'My regards to Colonel de Luce,' he said, and then he was gone.

Dogger shuffled up the steps as if he hadn't slept. “Visitors, Miss Flavia?” he asked, removing his hat and wiping his forehead on his sleeve.

'A Mr. Pemberton,' I said. 'He's writing a book about country houses or tombs or something. He wanted to interview Father about Buckshaw.'

'I don't believe I've heard his name,' Dogger said. 'But then I'm not much of a reader. Still and all, Miss Flavia.'

I knew that he was going to give me a homily, complete with parables and bloodcurdling instances, about talking to strangers, but he didn't. Instead he settled for touching the brim of his hat with his forefinger, and we both of us stood there gazing out across the lawn like a couple of cows. Message sent; message received. Dear old Dogger. Such was his way of teaching.

It had been Dogger, for instance, who had patiently taught me to pick locks when I had come upon him one day fiddling with the greenhouse door. He had lost the key during one of his “episodes,” and was busily at work with the bent tines of a retired kitchen fork he'd found in a flowerpot.

His hands were shaking badly. Whenever Dogger was like that, you always had the feeling that if you stuck out a finger and touched him, you'd be instantly electrocuted. But in spite of that, I had offered to help, and a few minutes later he was showing me how the thing was done.

'It's easy enough, Miss Flavia,' he'd said after my third try. 'Just keep in mind the three Ts: torque, tension, and tenacity. Imagine you live inside the lock. Listen to your fingertips.”

'Where did you learn to do this?' I asked, marveling as the thing clicked open. It was laughably easy once you'd got the hang of it.

'Long ago and far away,' Dogger had said as he stepped into the greenhouse and made himself too busy for further questioning.

ALTHOUGH SUNLIGHT WAS FLOODING in through the windows of my laboratory, I could not seem to think