Alan Bradley - The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

"All right," he said at last, "let's have a dekko."

"At what?" I said, putting on my mask of injured innocence.

"Whatever you've done. Let's have a look at it."

"But I haven't done anything," I said. "I—"

"Don't play me for a fool, Flavia. No one who has had the pleasure of your acquaintance would ever believe for an instant that you haven't done your homework.”

I grinned sheepishly. “It's over here,” I said, moving towards a corner table upon which stood a glass tank shrouded with a damp tea towel.

I whisked the cloth away.

"Good Lord!" the Inspector said. "What in the name of—?"

He fairly gaped at the pinkish gray object that floated serenely in the tank.

"It's a nice bit of brain," I said. "I pinched it from the larder. Mrs. Mullet bought it at Carnforth's yesterday for supper tonight. She's going to be furious."

"And you've.?" he said, flapping his hand.

"Yes, that's right. I've injected it with two and a half cubic centimeters of carbon tetrachloride. That's how much Bonepenny's syringe held.

"The average human brain weighs three pounds," I went on, "and that of the male perhaps a little more. I've cut an extra five ounces to allow for it."

"How did you find that out?” the Inspector asked.

"It's in one of the volumes of Arthur Mee's books. The Children's Encyclopaedia again, I think.”

"And you've tested this. brain, for the presence of carbon tetrachloride?"

"Yes," I said, "but not until fifteen hours after I injected it. I judged that's how much time elapsed between the stuff being shot into Bonepenny's brain and the autopsy."

"And?"

"Still easily detectable," I said. "Child's play. Of course I used p-Aminodimethylaniline . That's rather a new test, but an elegant one. It was written up in The Analyst about five years ago. Pull up a stool and I'll show you.”

"This isn't going to work, you know." Inspector Hewitt chuckled.

"Not work?" I said. "Of course it will work. I've already done it once."

"I mean you're not going to dazzle me with lab work and skate conveniently round the stamp. After all, that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it?"

He had me cornered. I had planned on saying nothing about the Ulster Avenger and then quietly handing it over to Father. Who would ever be the wiser?

"Look, I know you have it," he said. "We paid a visit to Dr. Kissing at Rook's End."

I tried to look unconvinced.

"And Bob Stanley, your Mr. Pemberton, has told us that you stole it from him."

Stole it from him? The idea! What cheek!

"It belongs to the King," I protested. "Bonepenny nicked it from an exhibition in London."

"Well, whomever it belongs to, it's stolen property, and my duty is to see that it's returned. All I need to know is how it came into your possession."

Drat the man! I could dodge it no longer. I was going to have to confess my trespasses at the Thirteen Drakes.

"Let's make a deal," I said.

Inspector Hewitt burst out laughing. “There are times, Miss de Luce,” he said, “when you deserve a brass medal. And there are other times you deserve to be sent to your room with bread and water.”

"And which one of those times is this?" I asked.

Hooo! Better watch your step, Flave.

He waggled his fingers at me. “I'm listening,” he said.

"Well, I've been thinking," I told him. "Father's life hasn't been exactly pleasant lately. In the first place, you arrive at Buckshaw and before we know it you've charged him with murder."

"Hang on. hang on," the Inspector said. "We've already been through this. He was charged with murder because he confessed to it."

He did? This was something new.

"And no sooner had he done so, than along came Flavia. I had more confessions walking in the door than Our Lady of Lourdes on a Saturday night."

"I was just trying to protect him," I said. "At that point, I thought he might have done it."

"And whom was he trying to protect?” Inspector Hewitt asked, watching me carefully.

The answer, of course, was Dogger. That was what Father meant when he said “I feared as much” after I told him that Dogger, too, had overheard the scene in his study with Horace Bonepenny.

Father thought Dogger had killed the man; that much was clear. But why? Would Dogger have done it out of loyalty—or during one of his peculiar turns?

No—best to leave Dogger out of this. It was the least I could do.

"Probably me," I lied. "Father thought I had killed Bonepenny. After all, wasn't I the one who was found, so to speak, at the scene of the crime? He was trying to protect me. "

"Do you really believe that?" the Inspector asked.

"It would be lovely to think so," I said.

"I'm sure he was," the Inspector said. "I'm quite sure he was. Now then, back to the stamp. I haven't forgotten about it, you know.”

"Well, as I was saying, I'd like to do something for Father; something that will make him happy, even for a few hours. I'd like to give him the Ulster Avenger, even if it's only for a day or two. Let me do that, and I'll tell you everything I know. I promise."

The Inspector strolled over to the bookcase, fetched down a bound volume of the Proceedings of the Chemical Society for 1907, and blew a cloud of dust from the top of the spine. He leafed idly through its pages, as if looking for what to say next.

"You know," he said, "there is nothing my wife, Antigone, detests more than shopping. She told me once that she'd rather have a tooth filled than spend half an hour shopping for a leg of mutton. But shop she must, like it or not. It's her fate, she says. To dull the experience, she sometimes buys a little yellow booklet called You and Your Stars .

"I have to admit that up until now I've scoffed at some of the things she's read out to me at breakfast, but this morning my horoscope said, and I quote, 'Your patience will be tried to the utmost.' Do you suppose I could have been misjudging these things, Flavia?"

"Please!" I said, giving the word a gimlet twist.

"Twenty-four hours," he said, "and not a minute more."

And suddenly it all came gushing out, and I found myself babbling on about the dead jack snipe, Mrs. Mullet's really quite innocent (although inedible) custard pie, my rifling of Bonepenny's room at the inn, my finding of the stamps, my visits to Miss Mountjoy and Dr. Kissing, my encounters with Pemberton at the Folly and in the churchyard, and my captivity in the Pit Shed.

The only part I left out was the bit about my poisoning Feely's lipstick with an extract of poison ivy. Why confuse the Inspector with unnecessary details?

As I spoke, he made an occasional scribble in a little black notebook, whose pages, I noticed, were filled with arrows and cryptic signs that might have been inspired by an alchemical formulary of the Middle Ages.

"Am I in that?" I asked, pointing.

"You are," he said.

"May I have a look? Just a peek?"

Inspector Hewitt flipped the notebook shut. “No,” he said. “It's a confidential police document.”

"Do you actually spell out my name, or am I represented by one of those symbols?"

"You have your very own symbol," he said, shoving the book into his pocket. "Well, it's time I was getting along."

He stuck out a hand and gave me a firm handshake. “Good-bye, Flavia,” he said. “It's been… something of an experience.”

He went to the door and opened it.

"Inspector."

He stopped and turned.

"What is it? My symbol, I mean."

"It's a P ,” he said. “Capital P .”

"A P ?” I asked, surprised. “What does P stand for?”

"Ah," he said, "that's best left to the imagination."