Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"Then you'll not need another," I said.

And then I fled. You couldn't see my bottom for dust.

I PAUSED IN THE HALLWAY, STOOD PERFECTLY STILL, and listened. Because of its parquet floors and hardwood paneling, Buckshaw transmitted sound as perfectly as if it were the Royal Albert Hall. Even in complete silence, Buckshaw had its own unique silence; a silence I would recognize anywhere.

As quietly as I could, I picked up the telephone and gave the cradle a couple of clicks with my finger. “I'd like to place a trunk call to Doddingsley. I'm sorry, I don't have the number, but it's the inn there: the Red Fox or the Ring and Funnel. I've forgotten its name, but I think it has an R and an F in it.”

"One moment, please," said the bored but efficient voice at the other end of the crackling line.

This shouldn't be too difficult, I thought. Being located across the street from the railway platform, the “RF,” or whatever it was called, was the closest inn to the station and Doddingsley, after all, was no metropolis.

"The only listings I have are for the Grapes and the Jolly Coachman."

"That's it," I said. "The Jolly Coachman!"

The “RF” must have bubbled up from the sludge at the bottom of my mind.

"The number is Doddingsley two three," the voice said. "For future reference."

"Thank you," I mumbled, as the ringing at the other end began its little jig.

"Doddingsley two three. Jolly Coachman. Are you there? Cleaver, here." Cleaver, I assumed, was the proprietor.

"Yes, I'd like to speak with Mr. Pemberton, please. It's rather important."

Any barrier, I had learned—even a potential one—was best breached by pretending urgency.

"He's not here," said Cleaver.

"Oh dear," I said, laying it on a bit thick. "I'm sorry I missed him. Could you tell me when he left? Perhaps then I'll know what time to expect him."

Flave, I thought, you ought to be in Parliament.

"He left Saturday morning. Three days ago."

"Oh, thank you!" I breathed throatily, in a voice I hoped would fool the Pope. "You're awfully kind."

I rang off and returned the receiver to its cradle as gently as if it were a newly hatched chick.

"What do you think you're doing?" demanded a muffled voice.

I spun round and there was Feely, a winter scarf wrapped round the bottom part of her face.

"What are you doing?" she repeated. "You know perfectly well you're not to use the instrument."

"What are you doing?” I parried. “Going tobogganing?”

Feely made a grab for me and the scarf fell away to reveal a pair of red swollen lips which were the spitting image of a Cameroon mandrill's south pole.

I was too in awe to laugh. The poison ivy I had injected into her lipstick had left her mouth a blistered crater that might have done credit to Mount Popocatepetl. My experiment had succeeded after all. Loud fanfare of trumpets!

Unfortunately, I had no time to write it up; my notebook would have to wait.

MAXIMILIAN, IN MUSTARD CHECKS, was perched on the edge of the stone horse trough which lay in the shadow of the market cross, his tiny feet dangling in the air like Humpty Dumpty. He was so small I almost hadn't seen him.

" Haroo, mon vieux , Flavia!” he shouted, and I brought Gladys to a sliding stop at the very toes of his patent leather shoes. Trapped again! I'd better make the best of it.

"Hullo, Max," I said. "I have a question for you."

"Ho-ho!" he said. "Just like that! A question! No preliminaries? No talk of the sisters? No gossip from the great concert halls of the world?"

"Well," I said, a little embarrassed, "I did listen to The Mikado on the wireless.”

"And how was it? Dynamically speaking? They always have an alarming tendency to shout Gilbert and Sullivan, you know."

"Enlightening," I said.

"Aha! You must tell me in what fashion. Dear Arthur composed some of the most sublime music ever written in this sceptered isle: ‘The Lost Chord,’ for instance. G and S fascinate me to no end. Did you know that their immortal partnership was shattered by a disagreement about the cost of a carpet?”

I looked closely at him to see if he was pulling my leg, but he seemed in earnest.

"Of course I'm simply dying to pump you about the recent unpleasantness at Buckshaw, Flavia dear, but I know your lips are thrice sealed by modesty, loyalty, and legality—and not necessarily in that order, am I correct?"

I nodded my head.

"Your question of the oracle, then?"

"Were you at Greyminster?"

Max tittered like a little yellow bird. “Oh dear, no. No where quite so grand, I'm afraid. My schooling was on the Continent, Paris to be precise, and not necessarily indoors. My cousin Lombard, though, is an old Greyminsterian. He always speaks highly enough of the place—whenever he's not at the races or playing Oh Hell at Montfort's.”

"Has he ever mentioned the head, Dr. Kissing?"

"The stamp wallah? Why, dear girl, he seldom speaks of anything else. He idolized the old gentleman. Claims old Kissing made him what he is today—which isn't much, but still."

"I shouldn't think he's still alive? Dr. Kissing, I mean. He'd be very old, though, wouldn't he? I'm willing to bet everything I have that he's been dead for ages."

"Then you shall lose all your money!" said Max with a whoop. "Every blessed penny of it!"

ROOK'S END WAS TUCKED into the folds of a cozy bed formed by Squires Hill and the Jack O'Lantern, the latter a curious outcropping of the landscape which, from a distance, appeared to be an Iron Age tumulus but, upon approach, proved to be substantially larger and shaped like a skull.

I steered Gladys into Pooker's Lane, which ran along its jaw, or eastern edge. At the end of the lane, dense hedges bracketed the entrance to Rook's End.

Once past these ragged remnants of an earlier day, the lawns spread off to the east, west, and south, neglected and spiky. In spite of the sun, fingers of mist still floated in the shadows above the unkempt grass. Here and there the broad expanse of lawn was broken by one of those huge, sad beech trees whose massive boles and drooping branches always reminded me of a family of despondent elephants wandering lonely on the African veld.

Beneath the beeches, two antique ladies drifted in animated dialogue, as if competing for the role of Lady Macbeth. One was dressed in a diaphanous muslin nightgown, and a mobcap which seemed somehow to have escaped the eighteenth century, while her companion, enveloped in a cyanide blue tent dress, was wearing brass earrings the size of soup plates.

The house itself was what is often called romantically “a pile.” Once the ancestral home of the de Lacey family, from whom Bishop's Lacey took its name (and who were said to be very distantly related to the de Luces), the place had come down in the world in stages: from being the country house of an inventive and successful Huguenot linen merchant to what it was today, a private hospital to which Daffy would instantly have assigned the name Bleak House . I almost wished she were here.

Two dusty motorcars huddling together in the fore-court testified to the shortage of both staff and visitors. Dumping Gladys beside an ancient monkey puzzle tree, I picked my way up the mossy, pitted steps to the front door.

A hand-inked sign said Ring Plse ., and I gave the enameled handle a pull. Somewhere inside the place a hollow clanking, like a cowbell Angelus, announced my arrival to persons unknown.

When nothing happened I rang again. Across the lawn, the two old ladies had begun to feign a tea party, with elaborate mincing curtsies, crooked fingers, and invisible cups and saucers.

I pressed an ear to the massive door, but other than an undertone, which must have been the sound of the building's breathing, I could hear nothing. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.