The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Gladys's tires had been flat, her gears bone dry and crying out for oil, but with her own onboard tire pump and black leather tool bag behind her seat, she was entirely self-sufficient. With Dogger's help, I soon had her in tiptop running order. In the tool kit, I had found a booklet called Cycling for Women of All Ages, by Prunella Stack, the leader of the Women's League of Health and Beauty. On its cover was written with black ink, in beautiful, flowing script: Harriet de Luce, Buckshaw.

There were times when Harriet was not gone; she was everywhere.

As I raced home, past the leaning moss-covered headstones in the heaped-up churchyard of St. Tancred's, through the narrow leafy lanes, across the chalky High Road, and into the open country, I let Gladys have her head, swooping down the slopes past the rushing hedges, imagining all the while I was the pilot of one of the Spitfires which, just five years ago, had skimmed these very hedgerows like swallows as they came in to land at Leathcote.

I had learned from the booklet that if I bicycled with a poker back like Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz at the cinema, chose varied terrain, and breathed deeply, I would glow with health like the Eddystone Light, and never suffer from pimples: a useful bit of information which I wasted no time in passing along to Ophelia.

Was there ever a companion booklet, Cycling for Men of All Ages? I wondered. And if so, had it been written by the leader of the Men's League of Health and Handsomeness?

I pretended I was the boy Father must always have wanted: a son he could take to Scotland for salmon fishing and grouse shooting on the moors; a son he could send out to Canada to take up ice hockey. Not that Father did any of these things, but if he'd had a son, I liked to think he might have done.

My middle name should have been Laurence, like his, and when we were alone together he'd have called me Larry. How keenly disappointed he must have been when all of us had come out girls.

Had I been too cruel to that horror, Miss Mountjoy? Too vindictive? Wasn't she, after all, just a harmless and lonely old spinster? Would a Larry de Luce have been more understanding?

"Hell, no!" I shouted into the wind, and I chanted as we flew along:

Oomba-chukka! Oomba-chukka
Oomba-chukka-Boom!

But I felt no more like one of Lord Baden-Powell's blasted Boy Scouts than I did Prince Knick-Knack of Ali Kazaam.

I was me. I was Flavia. And I loved myself, even if no one else did.

"All hail Flavia! Flavia forever!" I shouted, as Gladys and I sped through the Mulford Gates, at top speed, into the avenue of chestnuts that lined the drive at Buckshaw.

These magnificent gates, with their griffins rampant and filigreed black wrought iron, had once graced the neighboring estate of Batchley, the ancestral home of “The Dirty Mulfords.” The gates were acquired for Buckshaw in the 1760s by one Brandwyn de Luce, who—after one of the Mulfords absconded with his wife—dismantled them and took them home.

The exchange of a wife for a pair of gates (“The finest this side Paradise,” Brandwyn had written in his diary) seemed to have settled the matter, since the Mulfords and the de Luces remained best of friends and neighbors until the last Mulford, Tobias, sold off the estate at the time of the American Civil War and went abroad to assist his Confederate cousins.

"A WORD, FLAVIA,” Inspector Hewitt said, stepping out of the front door.

Had he been waiting for me?

"Of course," I said graciously.

"Where have you been just now?"

"Am I under arrest, Inspector?" It was a joke—I hoped he'd catch on.

"I was merely curious."

He pulled a pipe from his jacket pocket, filled it, and struck a match. I watched as it burned steadily down towards his square fingertips.

"I went to the library," I said.

He lit his pipe, then pointed its stem at Gladys.

"I don't see any books."

"It was closed."

"Ah," he said.

There was a maddening calmness about the man. Even in the midst of murder he was as placid as if he were strolling in the park.

"I've spoken to Dogger," he said, and I noticed that he kept his eyes on me to gauge my reaction.

"Oh, yes?" I said, but my mind was sounding the kind of "Oogah!" warning they have on a submarine preparing to dive.

Careful! I thought. Watch your step. How much did Dogger tell him? About the strange man in the study? About the quarrel with Father? The threats?

That was the trouble with someone like Dogger: He was likely to break down for no reason whatsoever. Had he blabbed to the Inspector about the stranger in the study? Damn the man! Damn him!

"He says that you awakened him at about four A.M. and told him that there was a dead body in the garden. Is that correct?”