Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"Not so far as I know."

"Then I need to have a look at the register. Please, Mary! Please! It's important! The police will soon be here, and then it will be too late."

"I'll try." she said, and, unlocking the door, slipped from the room.

As soon as she was gone, I pulled open the door of the wardrobe. Except for a pair of wooden coat hangers it was empty, and I turned my attention to the steamer trunk, which was covered over with stickers like barnacles clinging to the hull of a ship. These colorful crustaceans, however, had names: Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stavanger—and more.

I tried the hasp, and to my surprise, it popped open. It was unlocked! The two halves, hinged in the middle, swung easily apart, and I found myself face-to-face with Mr. Sanders's wardrobe: a blue serge suit, two shirts, a pair of brown Oxfords (with blue serge? Even I knew better than that!), and a floppy, theatrical hat that reminded me of photographs I'd seen of G. K. Chesterton in the Radio Times .

I pulled out the drawers of the trunk, taking care not to disturb their contents: a pair of hairbrushes (imitation tortoiseshell), a razor (Valet AutoStrop), a tube of shaving cream (Morning Pride Brushless), a toothbrush, toothpaste (thymol: “specially recommended to arrest the germs of dental decay”), nail clippers, a straight comb (xylonite), and a pair of square cuff links (Whitby jet, with a pair of initials inset in silver: HB ).

HB ? Wasn't this Mr. Sanders's room? What could HB stand for?

The door flew open and a voice hissed, “What are you doing?”

I nearly flew out of my skin. It was Mary.

"I couldn't get the register. Dad was—Flavia! You can't go through a guest's luggage like that! You'll get both of us in a pickle. Stop it."

"Right-ho," I said as I finished rifling the pockets of the suit. They were empty anyway. "When was the last time you saw Mr. Sanders?"

"Yesterday. Here. At noon."

"Here? In this room?"

She gulped, and nodded, looking away. “I was changing his sheets when he come up behind me and grabbed me. Put a hand over my mouth so's I shouldn't scream. Good job Dad called from the yard just then. Rattled him a bit, it did. Don't think I didn't get in a good kick or two. Him and his filthy paws! I'd have scratched his eyes out if I'd had half the chance.”

She looked at me as if she'd said too much; as if a great social gulf had suddenly opened up between us.

"I'd have scratched his eyes out and sucked the holes," I said.

Her eyes widened in horror.

"John Marston," I told her. " The Dutch Courtesan , 1604.”

There was a pause of approximately two hundred years. Then Mary began to giggle.

"Ooh, you are a one!" she said.

The gap had been bridged.

"Act Two," I added.

Seconds later the two of us were doubled over, hands covering our mouths, hopping about the room, snorting in unison like a pair of trained seals.

"Feely once read it to us under the blankets with a torch," I said, and for some reason, this struck both of us as being even more hilarious, and off we went again until we were nearly paralyzed from laughter.

Mary threw her arms round me and gave me a crushing hug. “You're a corker, Flavia,” she said. “Really you are. Come here—take a gander at this.”

She went to the table, picked up the black leather case, unfastened the strap, and lifted the lid. Nestled inside were two rows of six little glass vials, twelve in all. Eleven were filled with a liquid of a yellowish tinge; the twelfth was a quarter full. Between the rows of vials was a half-round indentation, as if some tubular object were missing.

"What do you make of it?" she whispered, as Tully's voice thundered vaguely in the distance. "Poisons, you think? A regular Dr. Crippen, our Mr. Sanders?"

I uncorked the partially filled bottle and held it to my nose. It smelled as if someone had dropped vinegar on the back of a sticking plaster: an acrid protein smell, like an alcoholic's hair burning in the next room.

"Insulin," I said. "He's a diabetic."

Mary gave me a blank look, and I suddenly knew how Archimedes felt when he said “Eureka!” in his bathtub. I grabbed Mary's arm.

"Does Mr. Sanders have red hair?" I demanded.

"Red as rhubarb. How did you know?"

She stared at me as if I were Madame Zolanda at the church fête, with a turban, a shawl, and a crystal ball.

"A wizard guess," I said.

"CRIKEY!" MARY SAID, FISHING UNDER THE TABLE and pulling out a round metal wastepaper basket. “I almost forgot this. Dad'd have my hide for a hammock if he found out I didn't empty this thing. He's always on about germs, Dad is, even though you wouldn't think it to look at him. Good job I remembered before—oh, gawd! Just look at this mess, will you.”

She pulled a wry face and held out the basket at arm's length. I peeked—tentatively—inside. You never know what you're getting into when you stick your nose in other people's rubbish.

The bottom of the wastebasket was covered with chunks and flakes of pastry: no container, just bits flung in, as if whoever had been eating it had had enough. It appeared to be the remains of a pie. As I reached in and extracted a piece of it, Mary made a gacking noise and turned her head away.

"Look at this," I said. "It's a piece of the crust, see? It's golden brown here, from the oven, with little crinkles of pastry, like decorations on one side. These other bits are from the bottom crust: They're whiter and thinner. Not very flaky, is it?

"Still," I added, "I'm famished. When you haven't eaten all day, anything looks good."

I raised the pie and opened my mouth, pretending I was about to gobble it down.

"Flavia!"

I paused with the crumbling cargo halfway to my gaping mouth.

"Huh?"

"Oh, you!" Mary said. "Give it over. I'll chuck it."

Something told me this was a Bad Idea. Something else told me that the gutted pie was evidence that should be left untouched for Inspector Hewitt and the two sergeants to discover. I actually considered this for a moment.

"Got any paper?" I asked.

Mary shook her head. I opened the wardrobe and, standing on tiptoe, felt along the top shelf with my hand. As I suspected, a sheet of newspaper had been put in place to serve as a makeshift shelf liner. God bless you, Tully Stoker!

Taking care not to break them, I tipped the larger remnants of the pie slowly out onto the Daily Mail and folded it up into a small neat package, which I shoved into my pocket. Mary stood watching me nervously, not saying a word.

"Lab test," I said, darkly. To tell the truth, I didn't have any idea yet what I was going to do with this revolting stuff. I'd think of something later, but right now I wanted to show Mary who was in charge.

As I set the wastepaper basket down on the floor, I was startled at a sudden slight movement in its depths, and I don't mind admitting that my stomach turned a primal hand spring. What was in there? Worms? A rat? Impossible: I couldn't have missed something that big.

I peered cautiously into the container and sure enough, something was moving at the bottom of the basket. A feather! And it was moving gently, almost imperceptibly, back and forth with the room's air currents; stirring like a dead leaf on a tree—in the same way the dead stranger's red hair had stirred in the morning breeze.

Could it have been only this morning that he died? It seemed an eternity since the unpleasantness in the garden. Unpleasantness? You liar, Flavia!

Mary looked on aghast as I reached into the basket and extracted the feather and the bit of pastry impaled upon its quill end.

"See this?" I said, holding it out towards her. She shrank back in the way Dracula is supposed to do when you threaten him with a cross. "If the feather had fallen on the pastry in the wastepaper basket, it wouldn't be attached.