Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"Bend down your head."

Dogger slumped down in the chair and leaned forward. As I lifted his collar he winced.

On his neck, below and behind his ear, was a filthy great purple bruise the size and shape of a shoe heel. He winced when I touched it.

I let out a low whistle.

"Fireworks, my eye!" I said. "Those were no fireworks, Dogger. You've been well and truly nobbled. And you've been walking around with this mouse on your neck for two days? It must hurt like anything."

"It does, Miss Flavia, but I've had worse."

I must have looked at him in disbelief.

"I had a look at my eyes in the mirror," he added. "Pupils the same size. Bit of concussion—but not too bad. I'll soon be over it."

I was about to ask him where he had picked up this bit of lore when he added quickly: “But that's just something I read somewhere.”

I suddenly thought of a more important question.

"Dogger, how could you have killed someone if you were knocked unconscious?"

He stood there, looking like a small boy hauled in for a caning. His mouth was opening and closing but nothing was coming out.

"You were attacked!" I said. "Someone clubbed you with a shoe!"

"No, I think not, miss," he said sadly. "You see, aside from Horace Bonepenny, I was alone in the garden."

I HAD SPENT THE PAST THREE QUARTERS OF AN HOUR trying to talk Dogger into letting me put an ice pack on the back of his neck, but he would not allow it. Rest, he assured me, was the only thing for it, and he had wandered off to his room.

From my window, I could see Feely stretched out on a blanket on the south lawn trying to reflect sunshine onto both sides of her face with a couple of issues of the Picture Post . I fetched a pair of Father's old army binoculars and took a close look at her complexion. When I'd had a good squint I opened my notebook and wrote:

Tuesday, 6th of June 1950, 9:15 A.M. Subject's appearance remains normal. 96 hours since administration. Solution too weak? Subject immune to poison ivy. Could this mean what I think it might?

But my heart wasn't in it. It was difficult to study Feely when Father and Dogger were so much on my mind. I needed to collect my thoughts.

I turned to a fresh page and wrote:

Possible Suspects

FATHER: Best motive of all. Has known dead man for most of life; has been threatened with exposure; was heard quarreling with victim shortly before murder. No one knows whereabouts at the time crime was committed. Insp. Hewitt has already arrested him and charged him with murder, so we know where the Inspector's suspicions lie!

DOGGER: Bit of a dark horse. Don't know much about his past, but do know he is fiercely loyal to Father. Overheard Father's quarrel with Bonepenny (but so did I) and mat have decided to eliminate threat of exposure. Dogger subject to "episodes" during and after which memory is affected. Might he have killed Bonepenny during one of these? Could it have been an accident? But if so, who bashed Dogger on the head?

MRS. MULLET: No motive, unless to wreak vengeance upon person who left dead snipe on her kitchen doorstep. Too old.

DAPHNE de LUCE and OPHELIA GERTRUDE de LUCE: (You secret is out, Gertie!) Don't make me laugh! These two so absorbed in book and looking-glass that they wouldn't kill cockroach on own dinner plate. Did not know deceased, had no motive, and were snoring with mouths open when Bonepenny met his end. Case closed, as far these two dimwits concerned.

MARY STOKER: Motive: Bonepenny made improper advances to her at Thirteen Drakes. Could she have followed him to Buckshaw and dispatched him in cucumbers? Seems unlikely.

TULY STOKER: Bonepenny was guest at Thirteen Drakes. Did Tully hear what happened with Mary? Decide to seek revenge? Or is a paying guest more important than daughter's honor?

NED CROPPER: Ned sweet on Mary (plus others). Knew what happened between Mary and Bonepenny. May have decided to do him in. Good motive, but no evidence he was at Buckshaw that night. Could have killed Bonepenny somewhere else and brought him here in wheelbarrow? But so could Tully. or Mary!

MISS MOUNTJOY: Perfect motive: Believes Bonepenny (and Father) killed her uncle, Mr. Twining. Problem is age: Can't see Mountjoy grappling with someone Bonepenny's height and strength. Unless she used some kind of poison. Query: What was the official cause of death? Would Insp. Hewitt tell me?

INSPECTOR HEWITT: Police officer. Must include only in order to be fair, complete, and objective. Was not at Buckshow at time of the crime, and has no known motive, (But did he attend Greyminster?)

DETECTIVE SERGEANTS WOOLMER & GRAVES: Ditto.

FRANK PEMBERTON: Didn't arrive in Bishop's Lacey until after the murder.

MAXIMILIAN BROCK: Gaga; too old; no motive.

I read through this list three times, hoping nothing had escaped me. And then I saw it: something that set my mind to racing. Hadn't Horace Bonepenny been a diabetic? I had found his vials of insulin in the kit at the Thirteen Drakes with the syringe missing. Had he lost it? Had it been stolen?

He had traveled, most likely by ferry, from Stavanger in Norway to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and from there by rail to York, where he'd have changed trains for Doddingsley. From Doddingsley he'd have taken a bus or taxi to Bishop's Lacey.

And, as far as I knew, in all that time, he had not eaten! The pie shell in his room (as evidenced by the embedded feather) had been the one in which he secreted the dead jack snipe to smuggle it into England. Hadn't Tully Stoker told the Inspector that his guest had a drink in the saloon bar? Yes—but there had been no mention of food!

What if, after coming to Buckshaw and threatening Father, he had walked out of the house through the kitchen—which he almost certainly had—and had spied the custard pie on the windowsill? What if he had helped himself to a slice, wolfed it down, stepped outside, and gone into shock? Mrs. M's custard pies had that effect on all of us at Buckshaw, and none of us were even diabetics!

What if it had been Mrs. Mullet's pie after all? No more than a stupid accident? What if everyone on my list was innocent? What if Bonepenny had not been murdered?

But if that was true, Flavia, a sad and quiet little voice inside me said, why would Inspector Hewitt have arrested Father and laid charges against him?

Although my nose was still running and my eyes still watering, I thought perhaps my chicken draught was beginning to have an effect. I read again through my list of suspects and thought until my head throbbed.

I was getting nowhere. I decided at last to go outside, sit in the grass, inhale some fresh air, and turn my mind to something entirely different: I would think about nitrous oxide, for example, N 2O, or laughing gas: something that Buckshaw and its inhabitants were sorely in need of.

Laughing gas and murder seemed strange bedfellows indeed, but were they really?

I thought of my heroine, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier, one of the giants of chemistry, whose portrait, with those other immortals, was stuck up on the mirror in my bedroom, her hair like a hot-air balloon, her husband looking on adoringly, not seeming to mind her silly coiffure. Marie was a woman who knew that sadness and silliness often go hand in hand. I remembered that it was during the French Revolution, in her husband Antoine's laboratory—just as they had sealed all of their assistant's bodily orifices with pitch and beeswax, rolled him up in a tube of varnished silk, and made him breathe through a straw into Lavoisier's measuring instruments—at that very moment, with Marie-Anne standing by making sketches of the proceedings, the authorities kicked down the door, burst into the room, and hauled her husband off to the guillotine.