The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The key? I had returned the Pit Shed's key to Miss Mountjoy: I remembered it perfectly. But was there by chance a duplicate? A spare key hidden under a windowsill to be used in the event some forgetful character wandered off on holiday to Blackpool with the original in her pocket? Since Bishop's Lacey was not (at least not until a few days ago) a notable hotbed of crime, a concealed key seemed a distinct possibility.

I ran my fingers along the lintel above the door, looked under the potted geraniums that lined the walkway, even lifted a couple of suspicious-looking stones.

Nothing.

I poked in the crevices of the stone wall that ran from the lane up to the door.

Still nothing. Not a sausage.

I cupped my hands to a window, and peered in at the stacks of crumbling newspapers sleeping in their cradles. So near and yet so far.

I was so exasperated I could spit, and I did.

What would Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier have done? I wondered. Would she have stood here fuming and foaming like one of those miniature volcanoes which results when a heap of ammonium dichromate is ignited? Some how I doubted it. Marie-Anne would forget the chemistry and tackle the door.

I gave the doorknob a vicious twist and fell forward into the room. Some fool had been here and left the stupid thing unlocked! I hoped no one had been watching. Good thing I thought of that, though, since I realized at once that it would be wise to wheel Gladys inside where she wouldn't be spotted by passing busybodies.

Skirting the mouth of the boarded-over pit in the middle of the room, I eased my way gingerly round to the racks of yellowed newspapers.

I had no trouble finding the relevant issues of The Hinley Chronicle. Yes, here it was. As I thought it might, Mr. Twining's obituary had appeared on the Friday after the account of his death:

Twining, Grenville, M.A. (Oxon.) Passed away suddenly on Monday last at Greyminster School, near Hinley, at the age of seventy-two. He was predeceased by his parents, Marius and Dorothea Twining, of Winchester, Hants. He is survived by a niece, Matilda Mountjoy, of Bishop's Lacey. Mr. Twining was buried from the chapel at Greyminster, where Rev. Canon Blake-Soames, Rector of St. Tancred's, Bishop's Lacey, and Chaplain of Greyminster, led the prayers. Floral tributes were numerous.

BUT WHERE HAD THEY BURIED HIM? Had his body been returned to Winchester and laid to rest beside his parents? Had he been buried at Greyminster? Somehow I doubted it. It seemed much more likely that I would find his grave in the churchyard of St. Tancred's, no more than a two-minute walk from where I was standing.

I would leave Gladys behind in the Pit Shed; no point in attracting unnecessary attention. If I crouched down and kept behind the hedgerow that bordered the towpath, I could easily pass from here to the churchyard without being seen.

As I opened the door, a dog barked. Mrs. Fairweather, the Chairman of the Ladies' Altar Guild, was at the end of the lane with her corgi. I eased the door shut before she or the dog could spot me. I peeked out the corner of the window and watched the dog snuffling at the trunk of an oak as Mrs. Fairweather stared off into the distance, pretending she didn't know what was going on at the other end of the lead.

Blast! I'd have to wait until the dog had done its business. I looked round the room.

On either side of the door were makeshift bookcases whose rough-cut, sagging boards looked as if they'd been hammered together by a well-meaning but inept amateur carpenter.

On the right, generations of outdated reference books—year upon year of Crockford's Clerical Directory, Hazell's Annual, Whitaker's Almanack, Kelly's Directories, Brassey's Naval Annual—all jammed uncomfortably cheek-by-jowl on shelves of unpainted boards, their once regal bindings of red and blue and black now bleached brown by time and seeping daylight, and all of them smelling of mice.

The shelves on the left were filled with rows of identical gray volumes, each with the same gold-leaf title embossed on its spine in elaborate Gothic letters: The Greyminsterian; I remembered that these were the yearbooks from Father's old school. We even had a few of them at Buckshaw. I pulled one from the shelf before noticing that it was marked 1942.

I returned it to its place and ran my index finger to the left along the spines of the remaining volumes: 1930… 1925…

Here it was—1920! My hands shook as I took down the book and flipped quickly through it from back to front. Its pages overflowed with articles on cricket, rowing, athletics, scholarships, rugger, photography, and nature study. As far as I could see, there was not a word about the Magic Circle or the Stamp Society. Scattered throughout were photographs in which row upon row of boys grinned, and sometimes grimaced, at the eye of the camera.