Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"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."

"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.