The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Harriet's Phantom, its beautiful radiator punctured by having been used as a battering ram, now stood steaming quietly in front of the Pit Shed and leaking water softly into the dust. Several of the more muscular villagers—one of them Tully Stoker, I noticed—had pushed the heavy vehicle backwards to allow Feely to lead me up out of the pit and into the fierce intensity and the glare of its great round headlamps.

Feely had got to her feet but was still clinging to me like a limpet to a battleship, babbling on excitedly.

"We followed him, you see. Dogger knew that you hadn't come home, and when he spotted someone prowling round the house."

These were more consecutive words than she had ever spoken to me in my entire lifetime, and I stood there savoring them a bit.

"He called the police, of course; then he said that if we followed the man. if we kept the headlamps off and kept well back.Oh, God! You should have seen us flying through the lanes!"

Good old silent Roller, I thought. Father was going to be furious, though, when he saw the damage.

Miss Mountjoy stood off to one side, pulling a woolen shawl tightly about her shoulders and glaring balefully at the splintered cavern where the door of the Pit Shed had been, as if such wholesale desecration of library property were beyond the last straw. I tried to catch her eye, but she looked nervously away in the direction of her cottage as if she'd had too much excitement for one evening and ought to be getting home.

Mrs. Mullet was there, too, with a short, roly-poly dumpling of a man visibly restraining her. This must be her husband, Alf, I thought: not at all the Jack Spratt I had imagined. Had she been by herself, Mrs. M would have dashed in and thrown her arms round me and cried, but Alf seemed to be more aware that public displays of familiarity were not quite right. When I gave her a vague smile, she dabbed at one of her eyes with a fingertip.

At that moment, Dr. Darby arrived upon the scene as casually as if he had been out for an evening stroll. In spite of his relaxed manner, I couldn't help noticing that he had brought his black medical bag. His surgery-cum-residence was just round the corner in the High Street, and he must have heard the crash of breaking wood and glass. He looked me over keenly from head to toe.

"Keeping well, Flavia?" he asked as he leaned in for a close look at my eyes.

"Perfectly well, thank you, Dr. Darby," I said pleasantly. "And you?"

He reached for his crystal mints. Before the paper sack was halfway out of his pocket, I was salivating like a dog; hours of captivity and the gag had made the inside of my mouth taste like a Victorian ball-float.

Dr. Darby rummaged for a moment among the mints, carefully selected the one that seemed most desirable, and popped it into his mouth. A moment later he was on his way home.

The little crowd made way as a motorcar turned off into Cow Lane from the High Street. As it bumped to a stop beside the stone wall, its headlamps illuminated two figures standing together beneath an oak: Mary and Ned. They did not come forward, but stood grinning at me shyly from the shadows.

Had Feely seen them there together? I don't believe she had because she was still prattling on tearfully to me about the rescue. If she had spotted them, I might quickly have found myself referee at a rustic bare-knuckles contest: up to my knees in torn-out hair. Daffy once told me that when it comes to a good dust up, it's generally the squire's daughter who gets in the first punch, and no one knows better than I that Feely has it in her. Still, I'm proud to say that I had the presence of mind—and the guts—to give Ned a furtive congratulatory thumbs-up.

The rear door of the Vauxhall opened and Inspector Hewitt climbed out. At the same time, Detective Sergeants Graves and Woolmer unfolded themselves from the front seats and stepped with surprising delicacy out into Cow Lane.

Sergeant Woolmer strode quickly to where Dogger was holding Pemberton in some kind of contorted and painful-looking grip, which caused him to be bent over like a statue of Atlas with the world on his shoulders.

"I'll take him now, sir," Sergeant Woolmer said, and a moment later I thought I heard the snick of nickel-plated handcuffs.

Dogger watched as Pemberton slouched off towards the police car, then turned and came slowly towards me. As he approached, Feely whispered excitedly into my ear, “It was Dogger who thought of using the tractor battery to get the Royce started up. Be sure to compliment him.”

And she dropped my hand and stepped away.

Dogger stood in front of me, his hands hanging down at his sides. If he'd had a hat, he would have been twisting it. We stood there looking at one another.

I wasn't about to begin my thanks by chatting about batteries. I wanted rather to say just the right thing: brave words that would be talked about in Bishop's Lacey for years to come.