Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

I would find the end of the pipe and kick it. If luck were on my side, the nails in the soles of my shoe would create a spark, the methane would explode, and that would be that.

The only drawback to this plan was that I would be standing at the end of the pipe when the thing went off. It would be like being strapped across the mouth of a cannon.

Well, cannon be damned! I wasn't going to die down here in this stinking pit without a struggle.

Gathering every last ounce of my remaining strength, I dug in my heels and pushed myself against the wall until I was in a standing position. It took rather longer than I expected but at last, although teetering, I was upright.

No more time for thinking. I would find the source of the methane gas or die in the attempt.

As I made a tentative hop towards where I thought the conduit might be, a chill voice whispered into my ear:

"And now for Flavia."

IT WAS PEMBERTON, AND AT THE SOUND OF HIS voice, my heart turned inside out. What had he meant? “And now for Flavia”? Had he already done some terrible thing to Daffy, or to Feely… or to Dogger?

Before I could even begin to imagine, he had seized my upper arm in a paralyzing grip, jabbing his thumb into the muscle as he had done before. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I thought I was going to vomit.

I shook my head violently from side to side, but only after what seemed like an eternity did he release me.

"But first, Frank and Flavia are going to have a little talk," he said, in as pleasant a conversational tone as if we were strolling in the park, and I realized at that instant I was alone with a madman in my own personal Calcutta.

"I'm going to take the covering off your head, do you understand?"

I stood perfectly still, petrified.

"Listen to me, Flavia, and listen carefully. If you don't do exactly as I say, I'll kill you. It's that simple. Do you understand?"

I nodded my head a little.

"Good. Now keep still."

I could feel him tugging roughly at the knots he had tied in his jacket, and almost at once its slick silk lining began to slide across my face, then dropped away entirely.

The beam of his torch hit me like a hammer blow, blinding me with light.

I recoiled in shock. Flashing stars and patches of black flew alternately across my field of vision. I had been so long in darkness that even the light of a single match would have been excruciating, but Pemberton was shining a powerful torch directly—and deliberately—into my eyes.

Unable to throw up my hands to shield myself, I could only wrench my head away to one side, squeeze my eyes shut, and wait for the nausea to subside.

"Painful, isn't it?" he said. "But not half so painful as what I'm going to do if you lie to me again."

I opened my stinging eyes and tried to focus them on a dark corner of the pit.

"Look at me!" he demanded.

I turned my head and squinted at him with what must have been a truly horrible grimace. I could see nothing of the man behind the round lens of his torch, whose fierce beam was still burning into my brain like a gigantic white desert sun.

Slowly, taking his time about it, he swung the glaring beam away and pointed it at the floor. Somewhere behind the light he was no more than a voice in the darkness.

"You lied to me."

I gave something like a shrug.

"You lied to me," Pemberton repeated more loudly, and this time I could hear the strain in his voice. "There was nothing hidden in that clock but the Penny Black."

So he had been to Buckshaw! My heart was fluttering like a caged bird.

"Mngg," I said.

Pemberton thought this over for a moment but could make nothing of it.

"I'm going to take the handkerchief out of your mouth, but first let me show you something."

He picked up his tweed jacket from the floor of the pit and reached into the pocket. When his hand came out, it was holding a shiny object of glass and metal. It was Bonepenny's syringe! He held it out for my inspection.

"You were looking for this, weren't you? At the inn and in your garden? And here it was all the while!”

He laughed through his nose like a pig and sat down on the steps. Holding the torch between his knees, he held the syringe upright as he rummaged once more in the jacket and pulled out a small brown bottle. I barely had time to read the label before he removed the stopper and swiftly filled the syringe.

"I expect you know what this stuff is, don't you, Miss Smart-Pants?"

I met his eye but gave no other sign I'd heard him.

"And don't think I don't know precisely how and where to inject it. I didn't spend all those hours in the dissecting room at the London Hospital for nothing. Once I'd knocked out old Bony, the actual injection was almost ridiculously simple: angle in a bit to the side, through the splenius capitus and semispinalis capitis , puncture the atlantoaxial ligament, and slide the needle over the arch of the axis. And whap! It's lights out. The carbon tet evaporates in no time, with hardly a trace. The perfect crime, if I may say so myself.”

Just as I had deduced! But now I knew precisely how he'd done it! The man was stark, staring mad.

"Now listen," he said. "I'm going to take that hand kerchief out of your mouth and you are going to tell me what you've done with the Ulster Avengers. One wrong word. one wrong move and."

Holding the syringe upright, almost touching my nose, he squeezed the plunger slightly. A few drops of the carbon tetrachloride appeared for an instant, like dew, at the point of the needle, then dripped onto the floor. My nose caught the familiar reek of the stuff.

Pemberton put the torch on the steps and adjusted its position to illuminate my face. He placed the syringe beside it.

"Open," he said.

This is what rushed through my mind: He would stick a thumb and forefinger into my mouth to remove the handkerchief. I would bite down with all my might—bite them clean off!

But then what? I was still bound hand and foot, and even badly bitten, Pemberton could easily kill me.

I opened my aching jaws a little.

"Wider," he said, holding back. Then quick as a wink he darted in and fished the sodden handkerchief from my mouth. For a single instant the light of the torch was blocked by the shadow of his hand, so that he did not see, as I saw, the slightest flash of orange as the wet ball dropped in darkness to the floor.

"Thank you," I whispered hoarsely, making my first move in the second part of the game.

Pemberton seemed taken aback.

"Someone must have found them," I croaked. "The stamps, I mean. I put them in the clock—I swear it."

I knew instantly that I had gone too far. If I were telling the truth, Pemberton no longer had any reason to keep me alive. I was the only one who knew that he was a killer.

"Unless." I added hastily.

"Unless? Unless what?"

He fell on my words like a jackal on a downed antelope.

"My feet," I whimpered. "The pain. I can't think. I can't. Please, at least loosen them—just a bit."

"All right," he said, with surprisingly little thought. "But I'm leaving your hands tied. That way you won't be going anywhere."

I nodded eagerly.

Pemberton knelt down and loosened the buckle of his belt. As the leather dropped from my ankles I gathered my strength and kicked him in the teeth.

As he reeled back, his head cracked against the concrete, and I heard the sound of a glass object hitting the floor and skipping away into the corner. Pemberton slid heavily down the wall to a sitting position as I limped towards the steps.

Up I went… one… two … my clumsy feet kicked the torch, which went tumbling end over end down onto the floor of the pit where it came to rest with its beam illuminating the sole of one of Pemberton's shoes.