The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Page 11

  ONE OF THE CHIEF CONVENIENCES of living near a village is that, if required, you can soon be in it. I flew along on Gladys, thinking that it might be a good idea to keep a logbook, as aeroplane pilots are made to do. By now, Gladys and I must have logged some hundreds of flying hours together, most of them in going to and from Bishop's Lacey. Now and then, with a picnic hamper strapped to her black back-skirts, we would venture even farther afield.

  Once, we had ridden all morning to look at an inn where Richard Mead was said to have stayed a single night in 1747. Richard (or Dick, as I sometimes referred to him) was the author of A Mechanical Account of Poisons in Several Essays. Published in 1702, it was the first book on the subject in the English language, a first edition of which was the pride of my chemical library. In my bedroom portrait gallery, I kept his likeness stuck to the looking-glass alongside those of Henry Cavendish, Robert Bunsen, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, whereas Daffy and Feely had pinups of Charles Dickens and Mario Lanza respectively.

  The confectioner's shop in the Bishop's Lacey High Street stood tightly wedged between the undertaker's premises on one side and a fish shop on the other. I leaned Gladys up against the plate-glass window and seized the doorknob.

  I swore curses under my breath. The place was locked as tight as Old Stink.

  Why did the universe conspire against me like this? First the closet, then the library, and now the confectioner's. My life was becoming a long corridor of locked doors.

  I cupped my hands at the window and peered into the interior gloom.

  Miss Cool must have stepped out or perhaps, like everyone else in Bishop's Lacey, was having a family emergency. I took the knob in both hands and rattled the door, knowing as I did so that it was useless.

  I remembered that Miss Cool lived in a couple of rooms behind the shop. Perhaps she had forgotten to unlock the door. Older people often do things like that: they become senile and—

  But what if she's died in her sleep? I thought. Or worse…

  I looked both ways but the High Street was empty. But wait! I had forgotten about Bolt Alley, a dark, dank tunnel of cobblestones and brick that led to the yards behind the shops. Of course! I made for it at once.

  Bolt Alley smelled of the past, which was said to have once included a notorious gin mill. I gave an involuntary shiver as the sound of my footsteps echoed from its mossy walls and dripping roof. I tried not to touch the reeking green-stained bricks on either side, or to inhale its sour air, until I had edged my way out into the sunlight at the far end of the passage.

  Miss Cool's tiny backyard was hemmed in with a low wall of crumbling brick. Its wooden gate was latched on the inside.

  I scrambled over the wall, marched straight to the door, and gave it a good banging with the flat of my hand.

  I put my ear to the panel, but nothing seemed to be moving inside.

  I stepped off the walk, waded into the unkempt grass, and pressed my nose to the bottom of the sooty window-pane. The back of a dresser was blocking my view.

  In one corner of the yard was a decaying doghouse—all that was left of Miss Cool's collie, Geordie, who had been run over by a speeding motorcar in the High Street.

  I tugged at the sagging frame until it pulled free of the mounded earth and dragged it across the yard until it was directly under the window. Then I climbed on top of it.

  From the top of the doghouse it was only one more step up until I was able to get my toes on the windowsill, where I balanced precariously on the chipped paint, my arms and legs spread out like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, one hand hanging on tightly to a shutter and the other trying to polish a viewing port in the grimy glass.

  It was dark inside the little bedroom, but there was light enough to see the form lying on the bed; to see the white face staring back at me, its mouth gaping open in a horrid “O.”

  "Flavia!" Miss Cool said, scrambling to her feet, her words muffled by the window glass. "What on earth—?"

  She snatched her false teeth from a tumbler and rammed them into her mouth, then vanished for a moment, and as I leaped to the ground I heard the sound of the bolt being shot back. The door opened inwards to reveal her standing there—like a trapped badger—in a housedress, her hand clutching and opening in nervous spasms at her throat.

  "What on earth.?" she repeated. "What's the matter?"

  "The front door's locked," I said. "I couldn't get in."

  "Of course it's locked," she said. "It's always locked on Sundays. I was having a nap."

  She rubbed at her little black eyes, which were still squinting at the light.

  Slowly it dawned on me that she was right. It was Sunday. Although it seemed aeons ago, it was only this morning that I had been sitting in St. Tancred's with my family.

  I must have looked crushed.

  "What is it, dear?" Miss Cool said. "That horrid business up at Buckshaw?"

  So she knew about it.

  "I hope you've had the good sense to keep away from the actual scene of the—"

  "Yes, of course, Miss Cool," I said with a regretful smile. "But I've been asked not to talk about that. I'm sure you'll understand."

  This was a lie, but a first-rate one.

  "What a good child you are," she said, with a glance up at the curtained windows of an adjoining row of houses that overlooked her yard. "This is no place to talk. You'd better come inside."

  She led me through a narrow hallway, on one side of it her tiny bedroom, and on the other, a miniature sitting room. And suddenly we were in the shop, behind the counter that served as the village post office. Besides being Bishop's Lacey's only confectioner, Miss Cool was also its postmistress and, as such, knew everything worth knowing—except chemistry, of course.

  She watched me carefully as I looked round with interest at the tiers of shelves, each one lined with glass jars of horehound sticks, bull's-eyes, and hundreds-and-thousands.

  "I'm sorry. I can't do business on a Sunday. They'd have me up before the magistrates. It's the law, you know."

  I shook my head sadly.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I forgot what day it was. I didn't mean to frighten you."

  "Well, no real harm done," she said, suddenly recovering her usual garrulous powers as she bustled about the shop, aimlessly touching this and that.

  "Tell your father there's a new set of stamps coming out soon, but nothing to go into raptures about, at least to my way of thinking, anyways. Same old picture of King George's head, God bless 'im, but tarted up in new colors."

  "Thank you, Miss Cool," I said. "I'll be sure to let him know."

  "I'm sure that lot at the General Post Office up in London could come up with something better than that," she went on, "but I've heard as how they're saving up their brains for next year to celebrate the Festival of Britain."

  "I wonder if you could tell me where Miss Mountjoy lives," I blurted.

  "Tilda Mountjoy?" Her eyes narrowed. "Whatever could you want with her?"

  "She was most helpful to me at the library, and I thought it might be nice to take her some sweets."

  I gave a sweet smile to match the sentiment.

  This was a shameless lie. I hadn't given the matter a moment's thought until now, when I saw that I could kill two birds with one stone.

  "Ah, yes," Miss Cool said. "Margaret Pickery off to tend the sister in Nether-Wolsey: the Singer, the needle, the finger, the twins, the wayward husband, the bottle, the bills. a moment of unexpected and rewarding usefulness for Tilda Mountjoy.

  "Acid drops," she said suddenly. "Sunday or no, acid drops would be the perfect choice."

  "I'll have sixpence worth," I said.

  ". and a shilling's worth of the horehound sticks," I added. Horehound was my secret passion.

  Miss Cool tiptoed to the front of the shop and pulled down the blinds.

  "Just between you and me and the gatepost," she said in a conspiratorial voice.

  She scooped the acid drops into a purple paper bag of such a funereal colo
r that it simply cried out to be filled with a scoop or two of arsenic or mix vómica.

  "That will be one-and-six," she said, wrapping the hore hound sticks in paper. I handed her two shillings and while she was still digging in her pockets I said, "That's all right, Miss Cool, I don't require change."

  "What a sweet child you are." She beamed, slipping an extra horehound stick into the wrappings. "If I had children of my own, I couldn't hope to see them half so thoughtful or so generous."

  I gave her a partial smile and kept the rest of it for myself as she directed me to Miss Mountjoy's house.

  "Willow Villa," she said. "You can't miss it. It's orange."

  WILLOW VILLA WAS, as Miss Cool had said, orange; the kind of orange you see when the scarlet cap of a Death's Head mushroom has just begun to go off. The house was hidden in the shadows beneath the flowing green skirts of a monstrous weeping willow whose branches shifted uneasily in the breeze, sweeping bare the dirt beneath it like a score of witches' brooms. Their movement made me think of a piece of seventeenth-century music that Feely sometimes played and sang—very sweetly, I must admit—when she was thinking of Ned:

  The willow-tree will twist, and the willow-tree will

  twine,

  O I wish I was in the dear youth's arms that once had

  the heart of mine.

  The song was called “The Seeds of Love,” although love was not the first thing that came to mind whenever I saw a willow; on the contrary, they always reminded me of Ophelia (Shakespeare's, not mine) who drowned herself near one.

  Except for a handkerchief-sized scrap of grass at one side, Miss Mountjoy's willow filled the fenced-in yard. Even on the doorstep I could feel the dampness of the place: the tree's languid branches formed a green bell jar through which little light seemed to penetrate, giving me the odd sensation of being under water. Vivid green mosses made a stone sponge of the doorstep, and water stains stretched their sad black fingers across the face of the orange plaster.

  On the door was an oxidized brass knocker with the grinning face of the Lincoln Imp. I lifted it and gave a couple of gentle taps. As I waited, I gazed absently up into the air in case anyone should be peeking out from behind the curtains.

  But the dusty lace didn't stir. It was as if there was no breath of air inside the place.

  To the left, a walk cobbled with old, worn bricks led round the side of the house, and after waiting at the door for a minute or two, I followed it.

  The back door was almost completely hidden by long tendrils of willow leaves, all of them undulating with a slightly expectant swishing, like a garish green theater curtain about to rise.

  I cupped my hands to the glass at one of the tiny windows. If I stood on tiptoe—

  "What are you doing here?"

  I spun round.

  Miss Mountjoy was standing outside the circle of willow branches, looking in. Through the foliage, I could see only vertical stripes of her face, but what I saw made me edgy.

  "It's me, Miss Mountjoy. Flavia," I said. "I wanted to thank you for helping me at the library."

  The willow branches rustled as Miss Mountjoy stepped inside the cloak of greenery. She was holding a pair of garden shears in one hand and she said nothing. Her eyes, like two mad raisins in her wrinkled face, never left mine.

  I shrank back as she stepped onto the walk, blocking my escape.

  "I know well enough who you are," she said. "You're Flavia Sabina Dolores de Luce—Jacko's youngest daughter."

  "You know he's my father?!" I gasped.

  "Of course I know, girl. A person of my age knows a great deal."

  Somehow, before I could stop it, the truth popped out of me like a cork from a bottle.

  "The 'Dolores' was a lie," I said. "I sometimes fabricate things."

  She took a step towards me.

  "Why are you here?" she asked, her voice a harsh whisper.

  I quickly plunged my hand into my pocket and fished out the bag of sweets.

  "I brought you some acid drops," I said, "to apologize for my rudeness. I hope you'll accept them."

  A shrill wheezing sound, which I took to depict a laugh, came out of her.

  "Miss Cool's recommendation, no doubt?"

  Like the village idiot in a pantomime, I gave half a dozen quick, bobbing nods.

  "I was sorry to hear about the way your uncle—Mr. Twining—died," I said, and I meant it. "Honestly I was. It doesn't seem fair."

  "Fair? It certainly was not fair," she said. "And yet it was not unjust. It was not even wicked. Do you know what it was?"

  Of course I knew. I had heard this before, but I was not here to debate her.

  "No," I whispered.

  "It was murder," she said. "It was murder, pure and simple."

  "And who was the murderer?" I asked. Sometimes my own tongue took me by surprise.

  A rather vague look floated across Miss Mountjoy's face like a cloud across the moon, as if she had spent a lifetime preparing for the part and then, center stage in the spotlight, had forgotten her lines.

  "Those boys," she said at last. "Those loathsome, detestable boys. I shall never forget them; not for all their apple cheeks and schoolboy innocence."

  "One of those boys is my father," I said quietly.

  Her eyes were somewhere else in time. Only slowly did they return to the present to focus upon me.

  "Yes," she said. "Laurence de Luce. Jacko. Your father was called Jacko. A schoolboy sobriquet, and yet even the coroner called him that. Jacko. He said it ever so softly at the inquest, almost caressingly—as if all the court were in thrall with the name.”

  "My father gave evidence at the inquest?"

  "Of course he testified—as did the other boys. It was the sort of thing that was done in those days. He denied everything, of course, all responsibility. A valuable postage stamp had been stolen from the headmaster's collection, and it was all, 'Oh no, sir, it wasn't me, sir!' As if the stamp had magically sprouted grubby little fingers and filched itself!"

  I was about to tell her “My father is not a thief, nor is he a liar,” when suddenly I knew that nothing I could say would ever change this ancient mind. I decided to take the offensive.

  "Why did you walk out of church this morning?" I asked.

  Miss Mountjoy recoiled as if I had thrown a glass of water in her face. “You don't mince words, do you?”

  "No," I said. "It had something to do with the Vicar's praying for the stranger in our midst, didn't it? The man whose body I found in the garden at Buckshaw."

  She hissed through her teeth like a teakettle. “You found the body? You?”

  "Yes," I said.

  "Then tell me this—did it have red hair?" She closed her eyes, and kept them closed awaiting my reply.

  "Yes," I said. "It had red hair."

  "For what we have received may the Lord make us truly thankful," she breathed, before opening her eyes again. It seemed to me not only a peculiar response, but somehow an unchristian one.

  "I don't understand," I said. And I didn't.

  "I recognized him at once," she said. "Even after all these years, I knew who he was as soon as I saw that shock of red hair walking out of the Thirteen Drakes. If that hadn't been enough, his swagger, that overweening cockiness, those cold blue eyes—any one of those things—would have told me that Horace Bonepenny had come back to Bishop's Lacey."

  I had the feeling that we were slipping into deeper waters than I knew.

  "Perhaps now you can see why I could not take part in any prayer for the repose of that boy's—that man's—rancid soul."

  She reached out and took the bag of acid drops from my hand, popping one into her mouth and pocketing the rest.

  "On the contrary," she continued, "I pray that he is, at this very moment, being basted in hell."

  And with that, she walked into her dank Willow Villa and slammed the door.

  Who on earth was Horace Bonepenny? And what had brought him back to Bishop's Lacey?

 
I could think of only one person who might be made to tell me.

  AS I RODE UP THE AVENUE of chestnuts to Buckshaw, I could see that the blue Vauxhall was no longer at the door. Inspector Hewitt and his men had gone.

  I was wheeling Gladys round to the back of the house when I heard a metallic tapping coming from the greenhouse. I moved towards the door and looked inside. It was Dogger.

  He was sitting on an overturned pail, striking the thing with a trowel.

  Clang… clang… clang… clang. In the way the bell of St. Tancred's tolls for the funeral of some ancient in Bishop's Lacey, it went on and on, as if measuring the strokes of a life. Clang… clang… clang… clang…

  His back was to the door, and it was obvious that he did not see me.

  I crept away towards the kitchen door where I made a great and noisy ado by dropping Gladys with a loud clatter on the stone doorstep. (“Sorry, Gladys,” I whispered.)

  "Damn and blast!" I said, loudly enough to be heard in the greenhouse. I pretended to spot him there behind the glass.

  "Oh, hullo, Dogger," I said cheerily. "Just the person I was looking for."

  He did not turn immediately, and I pretended to be scraping a bit of clay from the sole of my shoe until he recovered himself.

  "Miss Flavia," he said slowly. "Everyone has been looking for you."

  "Well, here I am," I said. Best to take over the conversation until Dogger was fully back on the rails.

  "I was talking to someone in the village who told me about somebody I thought you might be able to tell me about."

  Dogger managed the ghost of a smile.

  "I know I'm not putting that in the best way, but—"

  "I know what you mean," he said.

  "Horace Bonepenny," I blurted out. "Who is Horace Bonepenny?"

  At my words, Dogger began to twitch like an experimental frog whose spinal cord has been hooked up to a galvanic battery. He licked his lips and wiped madly at his mouth with a pocket handkerchief. I could see that his eyes were beginning to dim, winking out much as the stars do just before sunrise. At the same time, he was making a great effort to pull himself together, though with little success.

  "Never mind, Dogger," I said. "It doesn't matter. For get it."