The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie Page 5

  "And the bird?"

  "The bird was on the doorstep, dead as Dorothy's donkey. A snipe, it was: one of them jack snipes. God knows I've cooked enough on 'em in my day to be certain of that. Gave me a fright, it did, lyin' there on its back with its feathers twitchin' in the wind, like, as if its skin was still alive when its heart was already dead. That's what I said to Alf. ‘Alf,’ I said, ‘that bird was lyin’ there as if its skin was still alive—'”

  "You have a very keen eye, Mrs. Mullet," Inspector Hewitt said, and she puffed up like a pouter pigeon in a glow of iridescent pink. "Was there anything else?"

  "Well, yes, sir, there was a stamp stuck on its little bill, almost like it was carryin' it in its mouth, like a stork carries a baby in a nappy, if you know what I mean, but in another way, not like that at all."

  "A stamp, Mrs. Mullet? What sort of stamp?"

  "A postage stamp, sir—but not like the ones you sees nowadays. Oh no—not like them at all. This here stamp had the Queen's head on it. Not Her Present Majesty, God bless her, but the old Queen. the Queen what was. Queen Victoria. Leastways she should have been on it if that bird's bill hadn't been stickin' through where her face ought to have been."

  "You're quite sure about the stamp?"

  "Cross my heart and hope to die, sir. Alf had a stamp collection when he was a lad, and he still keeps what's left of it in an old Huntley and Palmers biscuit tin under the bed in the upstairs hall. He doesn't take them out as much as he did when both of us were younger—makes him sad, he says. Still and all, I knows a Penny Black when I sees one, dead bird's bill shoved through it or no."

  "Thank you, Mrs. Mullet," said Inspector Hewitt, helping himself to a seed biscuit, "you've been most helpful."

  Mrs. Mullet dropped him another curtsy and went to the door.

  "'It's funny,' I said to Alf, I said, 'You don't generally see jack snipes in England till September.' Many's the jack snipe I've turned on the spit and served up roasted on a nice bit of toast. Miss Harriet, God bless her soul, used to fancy nothing better than a nice—”

  There was a groan behind me, and I turned just in time to see Father fold in the middle like a camp chair and slither to the floor.

  I MUST SAY THAT Inspector Hewitt was very good about it. In a flash he was at Father's side, clapping an ear to his chest, loosening his tie, checking with a long finger for airway obstruction. I could see that he had not slept through his St. John Ambulance classes. A moment later he flung open the window, put first and fourth fingers to his lower lip, and let out a whistle I should have given a guinea to learn.

  "Dr. Darby!" he shouted. "Up here, if you please. Quickly! Bring your bag."

  As for me, I was still standing with my hand to my mouth when Dr. Darby strode into the room and knelt beside Father. After a quick one-two-three examination, he pulled a small blue vial from his bag.

  "Syncope," he said to Inspector Hewitt; to Mrs. Mullet and me, "That means he's fainted. Nothing to worry about."

  Phew!

  He unstoppered the glass, and in the few moments before he applied it to Father's nostrils, I detected a familiar scent: It was my old friend Ammon. Carb., Ammonium Carbonate, or, as I called it when we were alone together in the laboratory, Sal Volatile, or sometimes just plain Sal. I knew that the “ammon” part of its name came from ammonia, which was named on account of its being first discovered not far from the shrine of the god Ammon in ancient Egypt, where it was found in camel's urine. And I knew that later, in London, a man after my own heart had patented a means by which smelling salts could be extracted from Patagonian guano.

  Chemistry! Chemistry! How I love it!

  As Dr. Darby held the vial to his nostrils, Father gave out a snort like a bull in a field, and his eyelids flew up like roller blinds. But he uttered not a word.

  "Ha! Back among the living, I see," the doctor said, as Father, in confusion, tried to prop himself up on his elbow and look round the room. In spite of his jovial tone, Dr. Darby was cradling Father like a newborn baby. "Wait a bit till you get your bearings. Just stay down on the old Axminster a minute."

  Inspector Hewitt stood gravely by until it was time to help Father to his feet.

  Leaning heavily on Dogger's arm—Dogger had been summoned—Father made his way carefully up the staircase to his room. Daphne and Feely put in a brief appearance: no more, really, than a couple of blanched faces behind the banisters.

  Mrs. Mullet, scurrying by on her way to the kitchen, stopped to put a solicitous hand on my arm.

  "Was the pie good, luv?" she asked.

  I'd forgotten the pie until that moment. I took a leaf from Dr. Darby's notebook.

  "Um," I said.

  Inspector Hewitt and Dr. Darby had returned to the garden when I climbed slowly up the stairs to my laboratory. I watched from the window with a little sadness and almost a touch of loss as two ambulance attendants came round the side of the house and began to shift the stranger's remains onto a canvas stretcher. In the distance, Dogger was working his way round the Balaclava fountain on the east lawn, busily decapitating more of the Lady Hillingdons.

  Everyone was occupied; with any luck, I could do what I needed to do and be back before anyone even realized I was gone.

  I slipped downstairs and out the front door, pulled Gladys, my ancient BSA, from where she was leaning against a stone urn, and minutes later was pedaling furiously into Bishop's Lacey.

  What was the name Father had mentioned?

  Twining. That was it. “Old Cuppa.” And I knew precisely where to find him.

  five

  BISHOP LACEY'S FREE LIBRARY WAS LOCATED IN COW Lane, a narrow, shady, tree-lined track that sloped from the High Street down to the river. The original building was a modest Georgian house of black brick, whose photograph had once appeared in color on the cover of Country Life. It had been given to the people of Bishop's Lacey by Lord Margate, a local boy who had made good (as plain old Adrian Chipping) and had gone on to fame and fortune as the sole purveyor of BeefChips, a tinned bully beef of his own invention, to Her Majesty's Government during the Boer War.

  The library had existed as an oasis of silence until 1939. Then, while closed for renovations, it had taken fire when a pile of painter's rags spontaneously combusted just as Mr. Chamberlain was delivering to the British people his famous “As long as war has not begun, there is always hope that it may be prevented” speech. Since the entire adult population of Bishop's Lacey had been huddled round one another's wireless sets, no one, including the six members of the volunteer fire department, had spotted the blaze until it was far too late. By the time they arrived with their hand-operated pumping engine, nothing remained of the place but a pile of hot ashes. Fortunately, all of the books had escaped, having been stored for protection in temporary quarters.

  But with the outbreak of war then, and the general fatigue since the Armistice, the original building had never been replaced. Its site was now nothing more than a weed-infested patch in Cater Street, just round the corner from the Thirteen Drakes. The property, having been given in perpetuity to the villagers of Bishop's Lacey, could not be sold, and the once-temporary premises that housed its holdings had now become the Free Library's permanent home in Cow Lane.

  As I turned off the High Street, I could see the library, a low box of glass-brick and tile, which had been erected in the 1920s to house a motorcar showroom. Several of the original enamel signs bearing the names of extinct motorcars, such as the Wolseley and the Sheffield-Simplex, were still attached to one of its walls below the roofline, too high up to have attracted the attention of thieves or vandals.

  Now, a quarter century after the last Lagonda had rolled out of its doors, the building had fallen, like old crockery in the servant's quarters, into a kind of chipped and broken decrepitude.

  Behind and beyond the library, a warren of decaying outbuildings, like tombstones clustered round a country church, subsided into the long grass between the old showroom and the abandoned towpath th
at followed the river. Several of these dirt-floored hovels housed the overflow of books from the library's long gone and much larger Georgian predecessor. Makeshift structures that had once been a cluster of motor repair shops now found their dim interiors home to row upon row of unwanted books, their subjects labeled above them: History, Geography, Philosophy, Science. Still reeking of antique motor oil, rust, and primitive water closets, these wooden garages were called the stacks—and I could see why! I often came here to read and, next to my chemical laboratory at Buckshaw, it was my favorite place on earth.

  I was thinking this as I arrived at the front door and turned the knob.

  "Oh, scissors!" I said. It was locked.

  As I stepped to one side to peer in the window, I noticed a handmade sign crudely drawn with black crayon and stuck to the glass: CLOSED.

  Closed? Today was Saturday. The library hours were ten o'clock to two-thirty, Thursday through Saturday; they were clearly posted in the black-framed notice beside the door. Had something happened to Miss Pickery?

  I gave the door a shake, and then a good pounding. I cupped my hands to the glass and peered inside, but except for a beam of sunlight falling through motes of dust before coming to rest upon shelves of novels there was nothing to be seen.

  "Miss Pickery!" I called, but there was no answer.

  "Oh, scissors!" I said again. I should have to put off my researches until another time. As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  No… eight days a week.

  I knew that Miss Pickery lived in Shoe Street. If I left my bicycle here and took a shortcut through the outbuildings at the back of the library, I'd pass behind the Thirteen Drakes, and come out beside her cottage.

  I picked my way through the long wet grass, watching carefully to avoid tripping on any of the rotting bits of rusty machinery that jutted out here and there like dinosaur bones in the Gobi Desert. Daphne had described to me the effects of tetanus: One scratch from an old auto wheel and I'd be foaming at the mouth, barking like a dog, and falling to the ground in convulsions at the sight of water. I had just managed to work up a gob of spit in my mouth for practice when I heard voices.

  "But how could you let him, Mary?" It was a young man's voice, coming from the inn yard.

  I flattened myself behind a tree, then peeked round it. The speaker was Ned Cropper, the odd-jobs boy at the Thirteen Drakes.

  Ned! The very thought of him had the same effect upon Ophelia as an injection of novocaine. She had taken it into her head that he was the spitting image of Dirk Bogarde, but the only similarity I could see was that both had arms and legs and stacks of brilliantined hair.

  Ned was sitting on a beer barrel outside the back door of the inn, and a girl I recognized as Mary Stoker was sitting on another. They did not look at one another. As Ned dug an elaborate maze in the ground with the heel of his boot, Mary kept her hands clasped tightly in her lap as she gazed at nothing in midair.

  Although he had spoken in an urgent undertone, I could hear every word perfectly. The plaster wall of the Thirteen Drakes functioned as a perfect sound reflector.

  "I told you, Ned Cropper, I couldn't help myself, could I? He come up behind me while I was changing his sheets."

  "Whyn't you let out a yell? I know you can wake the dead. when you feel like it."

  "You don't much know my pa, do you? If he knew what that bloke had done he'd have my hide for gumboots!"

  She spat into the dust.

  "Mary!" The voice came from somewhere inside the inn, but still it rolled out into the yard like thunder. It was Mary's father, Tully Stoker, the innkeeper, whose abnormally loud voice played a prominent part in some of the village's most scandalous old wives' tales.

  "Mary!"

  Mary leaped to her feet at the sound of his voice.

  "Coming!" she shouted. "I'm coming!"

  She hovered: torn, as if making a decision. Suddenly she darted like an asp across to Ned and planted a sharp kiss on his mouth, then, with a flick of her apron—like a conjurer flourishing his cape—she vanished into the dark recess of the open doorway.

  Ned sat for a moment longer, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before rolling the barrel to join the other empties along the far side of the inn yard.

  "Hullo, Ned!" I shouted, and he turned, half embarrassed. I knew he'd be wondering if I'd overheard him with Mary, or witnessed the kiss. I decided to be ambiguous.

  "Nice day," I said with a sappy grin.

  Ned inquired after my health, and then, in order of careful precedence, about the health of Father, and of Daphne.

  "They're fine," I told him.

  "And Miss Ophelia?" he asked, getting round to her at last.

  "Miss Ophelia? Well, to tell you the truth, Ned, we're all rather worried about her."

  Ned recoiled as if a wasp had gone up his nose.

  "Oh? What's the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope."

  "She's gone all green," I said. "I think it's chlorosis. Dr. Darby thinks so too."

  In his 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose called chlorosis “Love's Fever,” and “The Virgin's Disease.” I knew that Ned did not have the same ready access to Captain Grose's book as I did. I hugged myself inwardly.

  "Ned!"

  It was Tully Stoker again. Ned took a step towards the door.

  "Tell her I was asking after her," he said.

  I gave him a Winston Churchill V with my fingers. It was the least I could do.

  SHOE STREET, like Cow Lane, ran from the High Street to the river. Miss Pickery's Tudor cottage, halfway along, looked like something you'd see on the lid of a jigsaw puzzle box. With its thatched roof and whitewashed walls, its diamond-pane leaded-glass windows, and its red-painted Dutch door, it was an artist's delight, its half-timbered walls floating like a quaint old ship upon a sea of old-fashioned flowers such as anemones, hollyhocks, gillyflowers, Canterbury bells, and others whose names I didn't know.

  Roger, Miss Pickery's ginger tomcat, rolled on the front doorstep, exposing his belly for a scratching. I obliged.

  "Good boy, Roger," I said. "Where's Miss Pickery?"

  Roger strolled slowly off in search of something interesting to stare at, and I knocked at the door. There was no answer.

  I went round into the back garden. No one home.

  Back in the High Street, after stopping for a look at the same old flyblown apothecary jars in the chemist's window, I was just crossing Cow Lane when I happened to glance to my left and saw someone stepping into the library. Arms outstretched, I dipped my wings and banked ninety degrees. But by the time I reached the door, whoever it was had already let themselves in. I turned the doorknob, and this time, it swung open.

  The woman was putting her purse in the drawer and settling down behind the desk, and I realized I had never seen her before in my life. Her face was as wrinkled as one of those forgotten apples you sometimes find in the pocket of last year's winter jacket.

  "Yes?" she said, peering over her spectacles. They teach them to do that at the Royal Academy of Library Science. The spectacles, I noted, had a slightly grayish tint, as if they had been steeped overnight in vinegar.

  "I was expecting to see Miss Pickery," I said.

  "Miss Pickery has been called away on a private family matter."

  "Oh," I said.

  "Yes, very sad. Her sister, Hetty, who lives over in Nether-Wolsey, had a tragic accident with a sewing machine. It appeared for the first few days that all might be well, but then she took a sudden turn and it seems now as if there's a real possibility she might lose the finger. Such a shame—and she with the twins. Miss Pickery, of course…”

  "Of course," I said.

  "I'm Miss Mountjoy, and I'd be happy to assist you in her stead, as it were."

  Miss Mountjoy! The retired Miss Mountjoy! I had heard tales about “Miss Mountjoy and the Reign of Terror.” She had bee
n Librarian-in-Chief of the Bishop's Lacey Free Library when Noah was a sailor. All sweetness on the outside, but on the inside, “The Palace of Malice.” Or so I'd been told. (Mrs. Mullet again, who reads detective novels.) The villagers still held novenas to pray she wouldn't come out of retirement.

  "And how may I help you, dearie?"

  If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as “dearie.” When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poisons, and come to “Cyanide,” I am going to put under “Uses” the phrase “Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one ‘Dearie.’”

  Still, one of my Rules of Life is this: When you want something, bite your tongue.

  I smiled weakly and said, “I'd like to consult your newspaper files.”

  "Newspaper files!" she gurgled. "My, you do know a lot, don't you, dearie?"

  "Yes," I said, trying to look modest, "I do."

  "The newspapers are in chronological order on the shelves in the Drummond Room: That's the west rear, to the left, at the top of the stairs,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  "Thank you," I said, edging towards the staircase.

  "Unless, of course, you want something earlier than last year. In that case, they'll be in one of the outbuildings. What year are you looking for, in particular?"

  "I don't really know," I said. But, wait a minute—I did know! What was it the stranger had said in Father's study?

  "Twining—Old Cuppa's been dead these—" What?

  I could hear the stranger's oily voice in my head: “Old Cuppa's been dead these… thirty years!”

  "The year 1920," I said, as cool as a trout. "I'd like to peruse your newspaper archive for 1920."

  "Those are likely still in the Pit Shed—that is, if the rats haven't been at them." She said this with a bit of a leer over her spectacles as if, at the mention of rats, I might throw my hands in the air and run off screaming.

  "I'll find them," I said. "Is there a key?"

  Miss Mountjoy rummaged in the desk drawer and dredged up a ring of iron keys that looked as if they might once have belonged to the jailers of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo. I gave them a cheery jingle and walked out the door.