The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

shoes than miss a chance to pitch coconuts at the Aunt Sally and gorge myself on rock cakes and strawberries- and-cream. No, I was well up on the dates of the fetes.

'And then what happened?' I asked. We would sort out the details later.

'I must have fallen asleep,' Dogger said. 'When I woke up I was lying in the grass. It was wet. I got up and went in to bed. I didn't feel well. I must have had one of my bad turns. I don't remember.'

'And you think that, during your bad turn, you might have killed Horace Bonepenny?'

Dogger nodded glumly. He touched the back of his head.

'Who else was there?” he asked.

Who else was there? Where had I heard that before? Of course! Hadn't Inspector Hewitt used those very words about Father?

'Bow your head, Dogger,' I said.

'I'm sorry, Miss Flavia. If I killed someone I didn't mean to.'

'Bend down your head.'

Dogger slumped down in the chair and leaned forward. As I lifted his collar he winced.

On his neck, below and behind his ear, was a filthy great purple bruise the size and shape of a shoe heel. He winced when I touched it.

I let out a low whistle.

'Fireworks, my eye!' I said. 'Those were no fireworks, Dogger. You've been well and truly nobbled. And you've been walking around with this mouse on your neck for two days? It must hurt like anything.'

'It does, Miss Flavia, but I've had worse.'

I must have looked at him in disbelief.

'I had a look at my eyes in the mirror,' he added. 'Pupils the same size. Bit of concussion—but not too bad. I'll soon be over it.'

I was about to ask him where he had picked up this bit of lore when he added quickly: “But that's just something I read somewhere.”

I suddenly thought of a more important question.

'Dogger, how could you have killed someone if you were knocked unconscious?'

He stood there, looking like a small boy hauled in for a caning. His mouth was opening and closing but nothing was coming out.

'You were attacked!' I said. 'Someone clubbed you with a shoe!'

'No, I think not, miss,' he said sadly. 'You see, aside from Horace Bonepenny, I was alone in the garden.'

twenty

I HAD SPENT THE PAST THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR trying to talk Dogger into letting me put an ice pack on the back of his neck, but he would not allow it. Rest, he assured me, was the only thing for it, and he had wandered off to his room.

From my window, I could see Feely stretched out on a blanket on the south lawn trying to reflect sunshine onto both sides of her face with a couple of issues of the Picture Post. I fetched a pair of Father's old army binoculars and took a close look at her complexion. When I'd had a good squint I opened my notebook and wrote:

But my heart wasn't in it. It was difficult to study Feely when Father and Dogger were so much on my mind. I needed to collect my thoughts.

I turned to a fresh page and wrote:

I read through this list three times, hoping nothing had escaped me. And then I saw it: something that set my mind to racing. Hadn't Horace Bonepenny been a diabetic? I had found his vials of insulin in the kit at the Thirteen Drakes with the syringe missing. Had he lost it? Had it been stolen?

He had traveled, most likely by ferry, from Stavanger in Norway to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and from there by rail to York, where he'd have changed trains for Doddingsley. From Doddingsley he'd have taken a bus or taxi to Bishop's Lacey.

And, as far as I knew, in all that time, he had not eaten! The pie shell in his room (as evidenced by the embedded feather) had been the one in which he secreted the dead jack snipe to smuggle it into England. Hadn't Tully Stoker told the Inspector that his guest had a drink in the saloon bar? Yes—but there had been no mention of food!

What if, after coming to Buckshaw and threatening Father, he had walked out of the house through the kitchen—which he almost certainly had—and had spied the custard pie on the windowsill? What if he had helped himself to a slice, wolfed it down, stepped outside, and gone into shock? Mrs. M's custard pies had that effect on all of us at Buckshaw, and none of us were even diabetics!

What if it had been Mrs. Mullet's pie after all? No more than a stupid accident? What if everyone on my list was innocent? What if Bonepenny had not been murdered?

But if that was true, Flavia, a sad and quiet little voice inside me said, why would Inspector Hewitt have arrested Father and laid charges against him?

Although my nose was still running and my eyes still watering, I thought perhaps my chicken draught was