Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I hadn't moved since we came in the door, which, if I was correct, must now be behind me with the pit in front. I'd have to estimate a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn blindfolded.

Either Pemberton had a finely tuned psychic ability or he detected some minute motion of my head. Before I could do anything, he was at my side, spinning me round half a dozen times as if we were beginning a game of blind-man's buff, and I was It. When he finally stopped, I was so dizzy I could barely stand up.

"Now then," he said, "we're going down. Watch your step."

I shook my head rapidly from side to side, thinking, even as I did so, how ridiculous it must look, swathed in his tweed jacket.

"Listen, Flavia, be a good girl. I'm not going to hurt you as long as you behave. As soon as I have the stamp from Buckshaw in my hands, I'll send someone to set you free. Otherwise."

Otherwise?

". I shall be forced to do something most unpleasant."

An image of Horace Bonepenny breathing his final breath into my face floated before my covered eyes, and I knew that Pemberton was more than capable of following through on his threat.

He dragged me by the elbow to a spot I assumed was the edge of the pit.

"Eight steps down," he said. "I'll count them. Don't worry, I'm holding on to you."

I stepped off into space.

"One," he said as my foot came down on something solid. I stood there teetering.

"Easy does it. two. three, you're almost halfway there."

I put out my right hand and felt the edge of the pit nearly level with my shoulder. As my bare knees detected the cold air in the pit, my arm began to tremble like a dead branch in the winter wind. I felt a tightness gripping at my throat.

"Good.four.five.just two more to go."

He was shuffling down the steps behind me, one at a time. I wondered if I could seize his arm and pull him sharply into the pit. With any luck he'd crack his head on the concrete and I'd scramble over his body to freedom.

Suddenly he froze, his fingers digging into the muscle of my upper arm. I let out a muted bellow and he relaxed his grip a little.

"Quiet!" he said in a snarl that wasn't to be trifled with.

Outside, in Cow Lane, a lorry was backing up, its gears whining in a rising and falling wail. Someone was coming!

Pemberton stood perfectly still, his quick breath rasping in the cold silence of the pit.

With my head muffled in his jacket, I could only faintly hear the voices outside, followed by the clanging of a steel tailgate.

Oddly enough, the thought that came to mind was of Feely. Why, she would demand, didn't I scream? Why didn't I rip the jacket from my head and sink my teeth into Pemberton's arm? She would want to know all the details, and no matter what I said, she would rebut every argument as if she were the Lord Chief Justice himself.

The truth was that I was having difficulty just managing to breathe. My handkerchief—a sturdy no-nonsense piece of cotton—was stuffed so tightly into my mouth that my jaws were in agony. I had to breathe through my stuffed-up nose, and even by taking the deepest breaths I was only just able to draw in enough oxygen to keep afloat.

I knew that if I began coughing I was a goner; the slightest exertion made my head spin. Besides that, I realized, a couple of men standing out there beside an idling lorry would hear nothing but the noise of its motor. Unless I could contrive something earsplitting, I'd never make myself heard. Meanwhile, it was best to keep still and to keep quiet. I would save my energy.

Someone closed the lorry's tailgate with a clang of steel; two doors slammed shut, and the thing lumbered off in first gear. We were alone again.

"Now then," Pemberton said, ". down you go. Two steps more."

He gave my arm a sharp pinch and I slid my foot forward.

"Seven," he said.

I paused, reluctant to take the last step that would put me in the bottom of the pit.

"One more. Careful."

As if he were helping an old lady across a busy street.

I took another step and was instantly ankle-deep in rubbish. I could hear Pemberton stirring around in the stuff with his foot. He still had a fierce grip on my arm, which he relaxed only for an instant as he bent to pick something up. Obviously the key. If he could see it, I thought, there must be a certain amount of daylight at the bottom of the pit.

The daylight at the bottom of the pit. For some unfathomable reason, the thought brought back to me Inspector Hewitt's words as he drove me home from the County Constabulary in Hinley: Unless some sweetness at the bottom lie, Who cares for all the crinkling of the pie?

What did it all mean? My mind was awhirl.

"I'm sorry, Flavia," Pemberton said suddenly, breaking into my thoughts, "but I'm going to have to tie you up."

Before his words had time to register, he had whipped my right hand round behind me and tied my wrists together. What had he used, I wondered. His necktie?

As he tightened it, I remembered to press my fingertips together to form an arch, just as I had done when Feely and Daffy had locked me in the closet. When had that been? Last Wednesday? It seemed a thousand years ago.

But Pemberton was no fool. He saw at once what I was up to, and without a word, he pinched the backs of my hands between his thumb and forefinger and my little arch of safety collapsed in pain. He pulled the bonds tight until my wrists were squeezed together, then double-and triple-knotted the thing, giving it a hard, tight tug at each step.

I ran a thumb over the knot and felt the slick smoothness of it. Woven silk. Yes, he had used his necktie. Precious little chance of picking my way out of these bonds!

My wrists were already perspiring, and I knew that the moisture would soon cause the silk to shrink. Well, not precisely: Silk, like hair, is a protein, and does not itself shrink, but the way in which it is woven can cause it to tighten mercilessly when it is wetted. After a while, the circulation in my hands would be cut off, and then…

"Sit," Pemberton commanded, pushing down on my shoulders—and I sat.

I heard the click of his belt buckle as he removed it, whipped it round my ankles, and pulled it tight.

He didn't say another word. His shoes grated on concrete as he climbed the steps of the pit, and then I heard the sound of the heavy boards being dragged back across its mouth.

A few moments later, all was silence. He was gone.

I was alone in the pit, and no one but Pemberton knew where I was.

I would die down here, and when eventually they found my body, they would lift me into a gleaming black hearse and transport me to some dank old morgue where they would lay me out on a stainless-steel table.

The first thing they would do would be to open my mouth and extract the soggy ball of my handkerchief, and as they spread it out flat on the table beside my white remains, an orange stamp—a stamp belonging to the King—would flutter to the floor: It was like something right out of an Agatha Christie. Someone—perhaps even Miss Christie herself—would write a detective novel about it.

I would be dead, but I'd be splashed across the front page of the News of the World . If I hadn't been so frightened, so exhausted, so short of breath, and in such pain, it might even have seemed amusing.

BEING KIDNAPPED IS NEVER QUITE THE WAY YOU imagine it will be. In the first place, I had not bitten and scratched my abductor. Nor had I screamed: I had gone quietly along like a lamb to the September slaughter.

The only excuse I can think of is that all my powers were being diverted to feed my racing mind, and that nothing was left over to drive my muscles. When something like this actually happens to you, the kind of rubbish that comes leaping immediately into your head can be astonishing.