The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

With my shoes and socks back on, I dusted myself off and began walking along the hedgerow, which seemed at first to be an impenetrable tangle of thorns and brambles. Then, just as I was about to turn and retrace my steps, I found it—a narrow cutting in the thicket, no more than a thinning, really. I pushed myself through and came out on the other side of the hedge.

A few yards back, in the direction of the church, something stuck up out of the grass. I approached it cautiously, the hair at the nape of my neck prickling in Neanderthal alarm.

It was a tombstone, and crudely carved upon it was the name Grenville Twining.

On the tilted base of the stone was a single word: Vale!

Vale!—the word Mr. Twining had shouted from the top of the tower! The word Horace Bonepenny had breathed into my face as he expired.

Realization swept over me like a wave: Bonepenny's dying mind had wanted only to confess to Mr. Twining's murder, and fate had granted him only one word with which to do so. In hearing his confession, I had become the only living person who could link the two deaths. Except, perhaps, for Bob Stanley. My Mr. Pemberton.

At the thought, a cold shiver ran down my spine.

There were no dates given on Mr. Twining's tombstone, almost as if whoever had buried him here had wanted to obliterate his history. Daffy had read us tales in which suicides were buried outside the churchyard or at a crossroads, but I had scarcely believed these to be any more than ecclesiastical old wives' tales. Still, I couldn't help wondering if, like Dracula, Mr. Twining was lying beneath my feet wrapped tightly in his Master's cape?

But the gown I had found hidden on the tower roof at Anson House—which was now reposing with the police —had not belonged to Mr. Twining. Father had made it clear that Mr. Twining was wearing his gown when he fell. So, too, had Toby Lonsdale, as he told The Hinley Chronicle.

Could they both be wrong? Father had admitted, after all, that the sun might have dazzled his eyes. What else had he told me?

I remembered his exact words as he described Mr. Twining standing on the parapet:

'His whole head seemed to be aglow,' Father had said. 'His hair like a disk of beaten copper in the rising sun; like a saint in an illuminated manuscript.'

And then the rest of the truth rushed in upon me like a wave of nausea: It had been Horace Bonepenny up there on the ramparts. Horace Bonepenny of the flaming red hair; Horace Bonepenny the mimic; Horace Bonepenny the magician.

The whole thing had been a skillfully planned illusion!

Miss Mountjoy had been right. He had killed her uncle.

He and his confederate, Bob Stanley, must have lured Mr. Twining to the roof of the tower, most likely under the pretense of returning the stolen postage stamp which they had hidden there.

Father had told me of Bonepenny's extravagant mathematical calculations; his architectural prowlings would have made him as familiar with the tiles of the tower as he was with his own study.

When Mr. Twining had threatened to expose them, they had killed him, probably by bashing his head in with a brick. The fatal blow would have been impossible to detect after such a terrible fall. And then they had staged the suicide—every instant of the thing planned in cold blood. Perhaps they had even rehearsed.

It had been Mr. Twining who fell to the cobbles, but Bonepenny who trod the ramparts in the morning sun and Bonepenny, in a borrowed cap and gown, who had shouted “Vale!' to the boys in the Quad. 'Vale!'—a word that could suggest only suicide.

Having done that, he had ducked down behind the parapet just as Stanley dropped the body through the drainage opening in the roof. To a sun-blinded observer on the ground, it would have appeared that the old man had fallen straight through. It was really nothing more than the Resurrection of Tchang Fu performed on a larger stage, dazzled eyes and all.

How utterly convincing it had been!

And for all these years Father had believed that it was his silence that had caused Mr. Twining to commit suicide, that it was he who was responsible for the old man's death! What a dreadful burden to bear, and how horrible!

Not for thirty years, not until I found the evidence among the tiles of Anson House, had anyone suspected it was murder. And they had almost got away with it.

I reached out and touched Mr. Twining's tombstone to steady myself.

'I see you've found him,' said someone behind me, and at the sound of his voice my blood ran cold.

I spun round and found myself face-to-face with Frank Pemberton.

twenty-three

WHENEVER ONE COMES FACE-TO-FACE WITH A KILLER in a novel or in the cinema, his opening words are always dripping with menace, and often from Shakespeare.

'Well, well,' he will generally hiss, ''Journeys end in lovers meeting,'' or ''So wise so young, they say, do never live long.''

But Frank Pemberton said nothing of the sort; in fact, quite the contrary:

'Hullo, Flavia,' he said with a lopsided grin. 'Fancy meeting you here.'

My arteries were throbbing like stink, and I could already feel the redness rising in my face, which, in spite of the chills, had instantly become as hot as a griddle.

A single thought went racing through my mind: I mustn't let on… I mustn't let on. Mustn't show that I know he's Bob Stanley.

'Hello,' I said, hoping my voice wasn't shaking. 'How was the shroud tomb?'