The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Page 4

  Then, too, I thought of the passage from Dickens that Daphne had read to us: the bruises blue and green. Had Father fought with the stranger and suffered wounds that could not be hidden at the table? Or had he suffered those injuries to the insides described by Fanny Squeers: injuries that left no external marks of violence. Perhaps that was what had happened to the man with the red hair. Which should explain why I had seen no blood. Could Father be a murderer? Again?

  My head was spinning. I could think of nothing better to calm it down than the Oxford English Dictionary. I fetched down the volume with the Vs. What was that word the stranger had breathed in my face? “Vale"! That was it.

  I flipped the pages: vagabondical… vagrant… vain… here it was: vale: Farewell; good-bye; adieu. It was pronounced val-eh, and was the second person singular imperative of the Latin verb valere, to be well.

  What a peculiar thing for a dying man to say to someone he didn't know.

  A sudden racket from the hall interrupted my thoughts. Someone was giving the dinner gong a great old bonging. This huge disk, which looked like a leftover from the opening of a film by J. Arthur Rank, had not been sounded for ages, which could explain why I was so startled by its shattering noise.

  I ran out of the laboratory and down the stairs to find an oversized man standing at the gong with the striker still in his hand.

  "Coroner," he said, and I took it he was referring to himself. Although he did not trouble to give his name, I recognized him at once as Dr. Darby, one of the two partners in Bishop's Lacey's only medical practice.

  Dr. Darby was the spitting image of John Bull: red face, multiple chins, and a stomach that bellied out like a sail full of wind. He was wearing a brown suit with a checked yellow waistcoat, and he carried the traditional doctor's black bag. If he remembered me as the girl whose hand he had stitched up the year before after the incident with a wayward bit of laboratory glassware, he gave no outward sign but stood there expectantly, like a hound on the scent.

  Father was still nowhere in sight, nor was Dogger. I knew that Feely and Daffy would never condescend to respond to a bell (“So utterly Pavlovian,” Feely said), and Mrs. Mullet always kept to her kitchen.

  "The police are in the garden," I told him. "I'll show you the way."

  As we stepped out into the sunshine, Inspector Hewitt looked up from examining the laces of a black shoe that protruded rather unpleasantly from the cucumbers.

  "Morning, Fred," he said. "Thought you'd best come have a look."

  "Um," Dr. Darby said. He opened his bag and rummaged inside for a moment before pulling out a white paper bag. He reached into it with two fingers and extracted a single crystal mint, which he popped into his mouth and sucked with noisy relish.

  A moment later he had waded into the greenery and was kneeling beside the corpse.

  "Anyone we know?" he asked, mumbling a bit round the mint.

  "Shouldn't seem so," Inspector Hewitt said. "Empty pockets. no identification. reason to believe, though, that he's recently come from Norway."

  Recently come from Norway? Surely this was a deduction worthy of the great Holmes himself—and I had heard it with my own ears! I was almost ready to forgive the Inspector his earlier rudeness. Almost… but not quite.

  "We've launched inquiries, ports of call and so forth."

  "Bloody Norwegians!" said Dr. Darby, rising and closing his bag. "Flock over here like birds to a lighthouse, where they expire and leave us to mop up. It isn't fair, is it?"

  "What shall I put down as the time of death?" Inspector Hewitt asked.

  "Hard to say. Always is. Well, not always, but often."

  "Give or take?"

  "Can't tell with cyanosis: takes a while to tell if it's coming or going, you know. Eight to twelve hours, I should say. I'll be able to tell you more after we've had our friend up on the table."

  "And that would make it.?"

  Dr. Darby pushed back his cuff and looked at his watch.

  "Well, let me see. it's eight twenty-two now, so that makes it no sooner than about that same hour last evening and no later than, say, midnight."

  Midnight! I must have audibly sucked in air, since both Inspector Hewitt and Dr. Darby turned to look at me. How could I tell them that, just a few hours ago, the stranger from Norway had breathed his last breath into my face?

  The solution was an easy one. I took to my heels. I found Dogger trimming the roses in the flower bed under the library window. The air was heavy with their scent: the delicious odor of tea chests from the Orient.

  "Father not down yet, Dogger?" I asked.

  "Lady Hillingdons are especially fine this year, Miss Flavia," he said, as if ice wouldn't melt in his mouth; as if our furtive encounter in the night had never taken place. Very well, I thought, I'll play his game.

  "Especially fine," I said. "And Father?"

  "I don't think he slept well. I expect he's having a bit of a lie-in."

  A lie-in? How could he be back in bed when the place was alive with the law?

  "How did he take it when you told him about the—you know—in the garden?"

  Dogger turned and looked me directly in the eye. “I didn't tell him, miss.”

  He reached out and with a sudden snip of his secateurs, pruned a less-than-perfect bloom. It fell with a plop to the ground, where it lay with its puckered yellow face gazing up at us from the shadows.

  We were both of us staring at the beheaded rose, thinking of our next move, when Inspector Hewitt came round the corner of the house.

  "Flavia," he said, "I'd like a word with you."

  "Inside," he added.

  four

  "AND THE PERSON OUTSIDE TO WHOM YOU WERE speaking?” Inspector Hewitt asked.

  "Dogger," I said.

  "First name?"

  "Flavia," I said. I couldn't help myself.

  We were sitting on one of the Regency sofas in the Rose Room. The Inspector slapped down his Biro and turned at the waist to face me.

  "If you are not already aware of it, Miss de Luce—and I suspect you are—this is a murder investigation. I shall brook no frivolity. A man is dead and it is my duty to discover the why, the when, the how, and the who. And when I have done that, it is my further duty to explain it to the Crown. That means King George the Sixth, and King George the Sixth is not a frivolous man. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes, sir," I said. "His given name is Arthur: Arthur Dogger."

  "And he's the gardener here at Buckshaw?"

  "He is now, yes."

  The Inspector had opened a black notebook and was taking notes in a microscopic hand.

  "Was he not always?"

  "He's a jack-of-all-trades," I said. "He was our chauffeur until his nerve gave out."

  Even though I looked away, I could still feel the intensity of his detective eye.

  "The war," I said. "He was a prisoner of war. Father felt that. he tried to—"

  "I understand," Inspector Hewitt said, his voice gone suddenly soft. "Dogger's happiest in the garden."

  "He's happiest in the garden."

  "You're a remarkable girl, you know," he said. "In most cases I should wait to talk to you until a parent was present, but with your father indisposed."

  Indisposed? Oh, of course! I'd nearly forgotten my little lie.

  In spite of my momentary look of puzzlement, the Inspector went on: “You mentioned Dogger's stint as chauffeur. Does your father still keep a motorcar?”

  He did, in fact: an old Rolls-Royce Phantom II, which now resided in the coach house. It had actually been Harriet's, and it had not been driven since the day the news of her death had come to Buckshaw. Furthermore, although Father was not a driver himself, he would permit no one else to touch it.

  Consequently, the coachwork of this magnificent old thoroughbred, with its long black bonnet and tall nickel-plated Palladian radiator with intertwined Rs, had long ago been breached by field mice that had found their way up through the wooden floorboards and nested in its mahogany glove box. Even in its decrepitude, it was sometimes still spoken of as “The Royce,” as people of quality often call these vehicles.

  "Only a ploughman would call it a Rolls," Feely had said once when I'd momentarily forgotten myself in her presence.

  Whenever I wanted to be alone in a place where I could count on being undisturbed, I would clamber up into the dim light of Harriet's dust-covered Roller, where I would sit for hours in the incubator-like heat, surrounded by drooping plush upholstery and cracked, nibbled leather.

  At the Inspector's unexpected question, my mind flew back to a dark, stormy day the previous autumn, a day of pelting rain and a mad torrent of wind. Because the risk of falling branches had made it too dangerous to hazard a walk in the woods above Buckshaw, I had slipped away from the house and fought my way through the gale to the coach house to have a good think. Inside, the Phantom stood glinting dully in the shadows as the storm howled and screamed and beat at the windows like a tribe of hungry banshees. My hand was already on the door handle of the car before I realized there was someone inside it. I nearly leaped out of my skin. But then I realized that it was Father. He was just sitting there with tears running down his face, oblivious to the storm.

  For several minutes I had stood perfectly still, afraid to move, scarce daring to breathe. But when Father reached slowly for the door handle, I had to drop silently to my hands like a gymnast and roll underneath the car. From the corner of my eye I saw one of his perfectly polished half-Wellingtons step down from the running board, and as he walked slowly away, I heard something like a shuddering sob escape him. For a long while I lay there staring up at the floorboards of Harriet's Rolls-Royce.

  "Yes," I said. "There's an old Phantom in the coach house."

  "And you
r father doesn't drive."

  "No."

  "I see."

  The Inspector laid down his Biro and notebook as carefully as if they were made of Venetian glass.

  "Flavia," he said (and I couldn't help noticing that I was no longer "Miss de Luce"), "I'm going to ask you a very important question. The way in which you answer it is crucial, do you understand?"

  I nodded.

  "I know that you were the one who reported this. incident. But who was it that first discovered the body?"

  My mind went into a tailspin. Would telling the truth incriminate Father? Did the police already know that I had summoned Dogger to the cucumber patch? Obviously not; the Inspector had only just learned Dogger's identity, so it seemed reasonable to assume they had not yet questioned him. But when they did, how much would he tell them? Which of us should he protect: Father or me? Was there some new test by which they would know that the victim was still alive when I discovered him?

  "I did," I blurted out. "I found the body." I felt like Cock Robin.

  "Just as I thought," Inspector Hewitt said.

  And here was one of those awkward silences. It was broken by the arrival of Sergeant Woolmer, who used his massive body to herd Father into the room.

  "We found him in the coach house, sir," he said. "Holed up in an old motorcar."

  "Who are you, sir?” Father demanded. He was furious, and for an instant I caught a glimpse of the man he must once have been. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?”

  "I'm Inspector Hewitt, sir," the Inspector said, getting to his feet. "Thank you, Sergeant Woolmer."

  The sergeant took two steps back until he was clear of the door frame, and then he was gone.

  "Well?" Father said. "Is there a problem, Inspector?"

  "I'm afraid there is, sir. A body has been found in your garden."

  "What do you mean, a body? A dead body?"

  Inspector Hewitt nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  "Whose is it? The body, I mean."

  It was at that moment I realized Father had no bruises, no scratches, no cuts, no abrasions… at least none that were visible. I also noticed that he had begun to turn white round the edges, except for his ears, which had begun to go the color of pink plasticine.

  And I noticed that the Inspector had spotted it too. He did not answer Father's question at once, but left it hanging in the air.

  Father turned and walked in a long arc to the liquor cabinet, touching with the tips of his fingers the horizontal surface of every piece of furniture he passed. He mixed himself a Votrix-and-gin and downed it, all with a swift, fluid efficiency that suggested more practice than I had imagined possible.

  "We haven't identified the person as yet, Colonel de Luce. Actually, we were hoping you could offer us assistance."

  At this, Father's face went whiter, if possible, than it had been before, and his ears burned redder.

  "I'm sorry, Inspector," he said, in a voice that was nearly inaudible. "Please don't ask me to. I'm not very good with death, you see."

  Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life. Even I knew that.

  I knew instantly, too, that Father had just told a lie, and suddenly, without warning, somewhere inside me, a little thread broke. It felt as if I had just aged a little and something old had snapped.

  "I understand, sir," Inspector Hewitt said, "but unless other avenues present themselves."

  Father pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead, then his neck.

  "Bit of a shock, you know," he said, "all this."

  He waved an unsteady hand at his surroundings, and as he did so, Inspector Hewitt took up his notebook, flipped back the cover, and began to write. Father walked slowly to the window where he pretended to be taking in the prospect, one which I could see perfectly in my mind's eye: the artificial lake; the island with its crumbling Folly; the fountains, now dry, that had been shut off since the outbreak of war; the hills beyond.

  "Have you been at home all morning?" the Inspector asked with no preliminaries.

  "What?" Father spun round.

  "Have you been out of the house since last evening?"

  It was a long time before Father spoke.

  "Yes," he said at last. "I was out this morning. In the coach house."

  I had to suppress a smile. Sherlock Holmes once remarked of his brother, Mycroft, that you were as unlikely to find him outside of the Diogenes Club as you were to meet a tramcar coming down a country lane. Like Mycroft, Father had his rails, and he ran on them. Except for church and the occasional short-tempered dash to the train to attend a stamp show, Father seldom, if ever, stuck his nose out-of-doors.

  "What time would that have been, Colonel?"

  "Four, perhaps. Perhaps a bit earlier."

  "You were in the coach house for—" Inspector Hewitt glanced at his wristwatch. "—five and a half hours? From four this morning until just now?"

  "Yes, until just now," Father said. He was not accustomed to being questioned, and even though the Inspector did not notice it, I could sense the rising irritation in his voice.

  "I see. Do you often go out at that time of day?"

  The Inspector's question sounded casual, almost chatty, but I knew that it wasn't.

  "No, not really, no, I don't," Father said. "What are you driving at?"

  Inspector Hewitt tapped the tip of his nose with his Biro, as if framing his next question for a parliamentary committee. “Did you see anyone else about?”

  "No," Father said. "Of course I didn't. Not a living soul."

  Inspector Hewitt stopped tapping long enough to make a note. “No one?”

  "No."

  As if he'd known it all along, the Inspector gave a sad and gentle nod. He seemed disappointed, and sighed as he tucked his notebook into an inner pocket.

  "Oh, one last question, Colonel, if you don't mind," he said suddenly, as if he had just thought of it. "What were you doing in the coach house?"

  Father's gaze drifted off out the window and his jaw muscles tightened. And then he turned and looked the Inspector straight in the eye.

  "I'm not prepared to tell you that, Inspector," he said.

  "Very well, then," Inspector Hewitt said. "I think—"

  It was at this very moment that Mrs. Mullet pushed open the door with her ample bottom, and waddled into the room with a loaded tray.

  "I've brought you some nice seed biscuits," she said. "Seed biscuits and tea and a nice glass of milk for Miss Flavia."

  Seed biscuits and milk! I hated Mrs. Mullet's seed biscuits the way Saint Paul hated sin. Perhaps even more so. I wanted to clamber up onto the table, and with a sausage on the end of a fork as my scepter, shout in my best Laurence Olivier voice, “Will no one rid us of this turbulent pastry cook?”

  But I didn't. I kept my peace.

  With a little curtsy, Mrs. Mullet set down her burden in front of Inspector Hewitt, then suddenly spotted Father, who was still standing at the window.

  "Oh! Colonel de Luce. I was hoping you'd turn up. I wanted to tell you I got rid of that dead bird what we found on yesterday's doorstep.”

  Mrs. Mullet had somewhere picked up the idea that such reversals of phrase were not only quaint, but poetic.

  Before Father could deflect the course of the conversation, Inspector Hewitt had taken up the reins.

  "A dead bird on the doorstep? Tell me about it, Mrs. Mullet."

  "Well, sir, me and the Colonel and Miss Flavia here was in the kitchen. I'd just took a nice custard pie out of the oven and set it to cool in the window. It was that time of day when my mind usually starts thinkin' about gettin' home to Alf. Alf is my husband, sir, and he doesn't like for me to be out gallivantin' when it's time for his tea. Says it makes him go all over fizzy-like if his digestion's thrown off its time. Once his digestion goes off, it's a sight to behold. All buckets and mops, and that."

  "The time, Mrs. Mullet?"

  "It was about eleven, or a quarter past. I come for four hours in the morning, from eight to twelve, and three in the afternoon, from one to four, though," she said, with a surprisingly black scowl at Father, who was too pointedly looking out the window to notice it, "I'm usually kept behind my time, what with this and that."