The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

The play was Romeo and Juliet, and Daffy, in a remarkable display of quick-change artistry, was playing all the parts. One moment she was Juliet on the balcony (the landing at the top of the west staircase) and the next, having vanished for no more than a blink of a magpie's eye, she reappeared on the mezzanine as Romeo.

Up and down she flew, up and down, wringing our hearts with words of tender love.

From time to time, Dogger would put a forefinger to his lips and slip quietly out of the room, returning moments later with a painted wheelbarrow spilling over with postage stamps which he would dump at Father's feet. Father, who was busily snipping stamps in half with a pair of Harriet's nail scissors, would grunt without so much as looking up, and go on about his work.

Mrs. Mullet laughed and laughed at Juliet's old nurse, blushing and shooting glances at us one and all as if there were some message encoded in the words which only she could understand. She mopped her red face with a polka-dot handkerchief, twisting it round and round in her hands before rolling it into a ball and shoving it in her mouth to stop up her hysterical laughter.

Now Daffy (as Mercutio) was describing how Mab, the Fairy Queen, gallops:

O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream,

Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues

Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.

I took a surreptitious peek at Feely who, in spite of the fact that her lips looked like something you might see on a fishmonger's barrow, had attracted the attentions of Ned who was sitting behind her, leaning forward over her shoulder, his own lips pursed, begging a kiss. But each time Daffy flitted down from the balcony to the mezzanine below in the role of Romeo (looking, with his pencil-thin mustache, more like David Niven in A Matter of Life and Death than a noble Montague), Ned would leap to his feet with a volley of applause punctuated by fierce two-fingered whistles as Feely, unmoved, popped Mint Imperial after Mint Imperial into her open mouth, gasping suddenly as Romeo burst into Juliet's marbled tomb:

For here lies Juliet, and her beauty makes

This vault a feasting presence full of light.

Death, lie thou there—

I woke up. Damnation! Something was running over my feet: something wet and furry.

"Dogger!" I tried to scream, but my mouth was full of a wet mess. My jaws were aching and my head felt as if I had just been dragged from the chopping block.

I kicked out with both feet and something scuttered through the loose papers with an angry chittering noise.

A water rat. The pit was likely swarming with the things. Had they been nibbling at me while I slept? The very thought of it made me cringe.

I pulled myself upright and leaned back against the wall, my knees beneath my chin. It was too much to expect that the rats would nibble at my bonds as they did in fairy tales. They'd more than likely gnaw my knuckles to the bone and I'd be powerless to stop them.

Stow it, Flave, I thought. Don't let your imagination run away with you.

There had been several times in the past, at work in my chemical laboratory or lying in bed at night, when I unexpectedly caught myself thinking, “You are all alone with Flavia de Luce,” which sometimes was a frightening thought and sometimes not. This was one of the scarier occasions.

The scurrying noises were real enough; something was rummaging about in the papers in the corner of the pit. If I moved my legs or my head, the sounds would cease for a moment, and then begin again.

How long had I been asleep? Had it been hours or minutes? Was it still daylight outside, or was it now dark?

I remembered that the library would be closed until Thursday morning, and today was only Tuesday. I could be here for a good long while.

Someone would report me missing, of course, and it would probably be Dogger. Was it too much to hope that he would catch Pemberton in the act of burgling Buckshaw? But even if he was caught, would Pemberton tell them where he had hidden me away?

Now my hands and feet were growing numb and I thought of old Ernie Forbes, whose grandchildren were made to pull him along the High Street on a little wheeled float. Ernie had lost a hand and both feet to gangrene in the war, and Feely once told me that he had to be—

Stop it, Flave! Stop being such a monstrous crybaby!

Think of something else. Think of anything.

Think, for instance, of revenge.

twenty-five

THERE ARE TIMES—ESPECIALLY WHEN I'M CONFINED—that my thoughts have a tendency, like the man in Stephen Leacock's story, to ride madly off in all directions.

I'm almost ashamed to admit to the things that crossed my mind at first. Most of them involved poisons, a few involved common household utensils, and all of them involved Frank Pemberton.