Flavia de Luce 1 - The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie (33 page)

There was a very slightly raised edge round the top of the chest, and I was able to hook my heels onto it. Then slowly… carefully… I began to extend my legs, sliding my back, inch by inch, up the wall.

We were a right-angled triangle. The wall and the top of the chest formed the adjacent and opposite sides and I was the shaky hypotenuse.

A sudden spasm shot through my calf muscles and I wanted to scream. If I let the pain overtake me, I would tumble off the box and likely break an arm or a leg. I steeled myself and waited for the pain to pass, biting the inside of my cheek with such ferocity that I tasted, almost instantly, my own warm, salty blood.

Steady on, Flave, I told myself: There are worse things. But for the life of me, I couldn't think of one.

I don't know how long I stood there trembling but it seemed like an eternity. I was soaked through with sweat, yet cool air was blowing in from somewhere; I could still feel its draughty breath on my bare legs.

After a long struggle, I found myself at last standing upright on the tea chest. I ran my fingers over as much of the wall as I could, but it was maddeningly smooth.

Awkwardly, like an elephant ballerina, I rotated one hundred and eighty degrees until I thought I was facing the wall. I leaned forward and felt—or thought I felt—the rim of the pit beneath my chin. But with my head swaddled in Pemberton's jacket, I could not be sure.

There was no way out; not, at least, in this direction. I was like a hamster that had climbed to the top of the ladder in its cage and found there was nowhere to go but down. But surely hamsters knew in their hamster hearts that escape was futile; it was only we humans who were incapable of accepting our own helplessness.

I dropped slowly to my knees on the tea chest. Climbing down, at least, was easier than climbing up, although the rough splintered wood, and what felt painfully like a tin rim running round the top of the box, made a hash of my bare knees. From there, I was able to twist sideways into a sitting position and swing my legs over the edge until I felt them touch the floor.

Unless I could find the opening through which the cold air was entering the pit, the only way out was up. If there was in fact a pipe or conduit leading to the river, would it be of sufficient diameter for me to crawl through? And even if it was, would it be free of blockage, or would I suddenly crawl face-first—like a mammoth blindworm—into some ghastly thing in total darkness and become jammed in the pipe, unable to go either forward or back?

Would my bones be found in some future England by a baffled archaeologist? Would I be put on display in a glass case at the British Museum, to be stared at by the masses? My mind raced through the pros and cons.

But wait! I'd forgotten about the stairs at the end of the pit! I would sit on the bottom step and go up backwards, one step at a time. When I reached the top, I would push up with my shoulders and lift the boards that covered the pit. Why hadn't I thought of this in the first place, before I'd worn myself down to this state of quivering exhaustion?

It was then that something came over me, smothering my consciousness like a pillow. Before I could recognize my total exhaustion for what it was, before I could muster a fight, I was vanquished. I felt myself sinking to the floor amid the rustling papers: papers which, in spite of the cold air from the conduit, now seemed surprisingly warm.

I shifted a little as if to burrow into their depths, and pulling my knees up towards my chin, I was instantly asleep.

I DREAMED THAT DAFFY WAS PUTTING on a Christmas pantomime. The great hallway at Buckshaw had been transformed into an exquisite jewel box of a Viennese theater, with a red velvet curtain and a vast crystal chandelier in which the flames of a hundred candles bobbed and flickered.

Dogger and Feely and Mrs. Mullet and I sat side by side on a single row of chairs, while nearby at a wood-carver's bench, Father puttered away at his stamps.

The play was Romeo and Juliet, and Daffy, in a remarkable display of quick-change artistry, was playing all the parts. One moment she was Juliet on the balcony (the landing at the top of the west staircase) and the next, having vanished for no more than a blink of a magpie's eye, she reappeared on the mezzanine as Romeo.

Up and down she flew, up and down, wringing our hearts with words of tender love.

From time to time, Dogger would put a forefinger to his lips and slip quietly out of the room, returning moments later with a painted wheelbarrow spilling over with postage stamps which he would dump at Father's feet. Father, who was busily snipping stamps in half with a pair of Harriet's nail scissors, would grunt without so much as looking up, and go on about his work.

Mrs. Mullet laughed and laughed at Juliet's old nurse, blushing and shooting glances at us one and all as if there were some message encoded in the words which only she could understand. She mopped her red face with a polka-dot handkerchief, twisting it round and round in her hands before rolling it into a ball and shoving it in her mouth to stop up her hysterical laughter.

Now Daffy (as Mercutio) was describing how Mab, the Fairy Queen, gallops:

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

I took a surreptitious peek at Feely who, in spite of the fact that her lips looked like something you might see on a fishmonger's barrow, had attracted the attentions of Ned who was sitting behind her, leaning forward over her shoulder, his own lips pursed, begging a kiss. But each time Daffy flitted down from the balcony to the mezzanine below in the role of Romeo (looking, with his pencil-thin mustache, more like David Niven in A Matter of Life and Death than a noble Montague), Ned would leap to his feet with a volley of applause punctuated by fierce two-fingered whistles as Feely, unmoved, popped Mint Imperial after Mint Imperial into her open mouth, gasping suddenly as Romeo burst into Juliet's marbled tomb:

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes

This vault a feasting presence full of light.

Death, lie thou there—

I woke up. Damnation! Something was running over my feet: something wet and furry.

“Dogger!” I tried to scream, but my mouth was full of a wet mess. My jaws were aching and my head felt as if I had just been dragged from the chopping block.

I kicked out with both feet and something scuttered through the loose papers with an angry chittering noise.

A water rat. The pit was likely swarming with the things. Had they been nibbling at me while I slept? The very thought of it made me cringe.

I pulled myself upright and leaned back against the wall, my knees beneath my chin. It was too much to expect that the rats would nibble at my bonds as they did in fairy tales. They'd more than likely gnaw my knuckles to the bone and I'd be powerless to stop them.

Stow it, Flave, I thought. Don't let your imagination run away with you.

There had been several times in the past, at work in my chemical laboratory or lying in bed at night, when I unexpectedly caught myself thinking, “You are all alone with Flavia de Luce,” which sometimes was a frightening thought and sometimes not. This was one of the scarier occasions.

The scurrying noises were real enough; something was rummaging about in the papers in the corner of the pit. If I moved my legs or my head, the sounds would cease for a moment, and then begin again.

How long had I been asleep? Had it been hours or minutes? Was it still daylight outside, or was it now dark?

I remembered that the library would be closed until Thursday morning, and today was only Tuesday. I could be here for a good long while.

Someone would report me missing, of course, and it would probably be Dogger. Was it too much to hope that he would catch Pemberton in the act of burgling Buckshaw? But even if he was caught, would Pemberton tell them where he had hidden me away?

Now my hands and feet were growing numb and I thought of old Ernie Forbes, whose grandchildren were made to pull him along the High Street on a little wheeled float. Ernie had lost a hand and both feet to gangrene in the war, and Feely once told me that he had to be—

Stop it, Flave! Stop being such a monstrous crybaby!

Think of something else. Think of anything.

Think, for instance, of revenge.

THERE ARE TIMES—ESPECIALLY WHEN I'M CONFINED—that my thoughts have a tendency, like the man in Stephen Leacock's story, to ride madly off in all directions.

I'm almost ashamed to admit to the things that crossed my mind at first. Most of them involved poisons, a few involved common household utensils, and all of them involved Frank Pemberton.

My mind flew back to our first encounter at the Thirteen Drakes. Although I had seen his taxi pull up at the front door, and had heard Tully Stover shout at Mary that Mr. Pemberton had arrived early, I had not actually laid eyes on the man himself. That did not take place until Sunday, at the Folly.

Although there had been several odd things about Pemberton's sudden appearance at Buckshaw, I really hadn't had time to think about them.

In the first place, he hadn't arrived in Bishop's Lacey until hours after Horace Bonepenny had expired in my face. Or had he?

When I looked up and saw Pemberton standing at the edge of the lake, I had been taken by surprise. But why? Buckshaw was my home: I had been born and lived there every minute of my life. What was so surprising about a man standing at the edge of an artificial lake?

I could feel an answer to that question nibbling at the hook I'd lowered into my subconscious. Don't look straight at it, I thought, think of something else—or at least pretend to.

It had been raining that day, or had just begun to rain. I had looked up from where I was sitting on the steps of the little ruined temple and there he was, across the water on the south side of the lake: the southeast side, to be precise. Why on earth had he made his appearance from that direction?

That was a question to which I had known the answer for quite some time.

Bishop's Lacey lay to the northeast of Buckshaw. From the Mulford Gates, at the entrance to our avenue of chestnut trees, the road ran in easy twists and turns, more or less directly into the village. And yet Pemberton had appeared from the southeast, from the direction of Doddingsley, which lay about four miles across the fields. Why then, in the name of Old Stink, I had wondered, would he choose to come that way? The choices had seemed limited, and I had quickly jotted them down in my mental notebook:

If (as I suspected) Pemberton was the murderer of Horace Bonepenny, could he have been, as all murderers are said to be, drawn back to the scene of the crime? Had he perhaps left something behind? Something like the murder weapon? Had he returned to Buckshaw to retrieve it?

Because he had already been to Buckshaw the night before, he knew the way across the fields and wanted to avoid being seen. (See 1 above)

What if on Friday, the night of the murder, Pemberton, believing that Bonepenny was carrying the Ulster Avengers, had followed him from Bishop's Lacey to Buckshaw and murdered him there?

But hold on, Flave, I thought. Hold your horses. Don't go galloping off like that.

Why wouldn't Pemberton simply waylay his victim in one of those quiet hedgerows that border nearly every lane in this part of England?

The answer had come to me as if it were sculpted in red neon tubing in Piccadilly Circus: because he wanted Father to be blamed for the crime!

Bonepenny had to be killed at Buckshaw!

Of course! With Father a virtual recluse, it was unlikely to expect that he would ever happen to be away from home. Murders—at least those in which the murderer expected to escape justice—had to be planned in advance, and often in very great detail. It was obvious that a philatelic crime needed to be pinned on a philatelist. If Father was unlikely to come to the scene of the crime, the scene of the crime would have to come to Father.

And so it had.

Although I had first formulated this chain of events—or, at least, certain of its links—hours ago, it was only now, when I was at last forced to be alone with Flavia de Luce, that I was able to fit together all the pieces.

Flavia, I'm proud of you! Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier would be proud of you too.

Now then: Pemberton, of course, had followed Bonepenny as far as Doddingsley; perhaps even all the way from Stavanger. Father had seen them both at the London exhibition just weeks ago—proof positive that neither one was living abroad permanently.

They had probably planned this together, this blackmailing of Father. Just as they had planned the murder of Mr. Twining. But Pemberton had a plan of his own.

Once satisfied that Bonepenny was on his way to Bishop's Lacey (where else, indeed, would he be going?), Pemberton had got off the train at Doddingsley and registered himself at the Jolly Coachman. I knew that for a fact. Then, on the night of the murder, all he had to do was walk across the fields to Bishop's Lacey.

Here, he had waited until he saw Bonepenny leave the inn and set out on foot for Buckshaw. With Bonepenny out of the way and not suspecting that he was being followed, Pemberton had searched the room at the Thirteen Drakes, and its contents—including Bonepenny's luggage—and had found nothing. He had, of course, never thought, as I had, to slit open the shipping labels.

By now, he must have been furious.

Slipping away from the inn unseen (most likely by way of that steep back staircase), he had tracked his quarry on foot to Buckshaw, where they must have quarreled in our garden. How was it, I wondered, that I hadn't heard them?

Within half an hour, he had left Bonepenny for dead, his pockets and wallet rifled. But the Ulster Avengers had not been there: Bonepenny had not had the stamps upon his person after all.

Pemberton had committed his crime and then simply walked off into the night, across the fields to the Jolly Coachman at Doddingsley. The next morning, he had rolled up with much ado in a taxicab at the front door of the Thirteen Drakes, pretending he had just come down by rail from London. He would have to search the room again. Risky, but necessary. Surely the stamps must still be hidden there.