The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Flavia tries to think of what her personal heroes might do in this situation: “I was surprised by how quickly the answer came to mind: They would take stock” (316). Flavia takes stock of her predicament, notably that she is having trouble breathing and must limit her oxygen use. She determines that Pemberton seated her on a tea chest. The rank smells of old oil and sewer gas are overpowering.

Flavia is counting on Dogger to confront Pemberton when he breaks into Buckshaw. Flavia thinks of Dogger’s years of loyalty and vows to ask him to tell her all about his life. Flavia realizes it is possible that Pemberton will enter Buckshaw undetected and find that there is no stamp in the clock. She knows that he will then return to the Pit Shed and hurt her, so she has no time to waste in escaping.

Flavia slowly moves along the perimeter of the room, touching the wall with her fingertips. She cannot find any protrusion to use to cut her bonds. She thinks she might find something to help her if she could get her head above the level of the pit, so she makes her way back to the tea chest.

All this movement exhausts Flavia, as she can barely breathe and is lightheaded from her cold and the lack of oxygen. She finally finds the tea chest and discovers it is against a wall. She hopes that if she can climb on top, she can throw herself over the rim and find something to rip the jacket off her head. Her leg cramps as she tries to climb onto the chest, but eventually she stands on top. There is no way to climb out of the pit, so Flavia lowers herself down again.

Flavia suddenly realizes that she should have inched her way back to the stairs, rather than exhausting herself with this other movement. It is too late and she is too tired now. Instead she sinks to the floor.

Flavia falls asleep and dreams of her family presenting a performance of Romeo and Juliet. She wakes to the sensation of a rat running over her feet. She sits up and wonders how long she slept. Flavia is afraid and feeling hopeless but forces herself to be brave. She tells herself, “Think of something else. Think of anything. Think, for instance, of revenge” (326).

Flavia distracts herself by thinking of ways to kill Pemberton. She then ponders why his appearance seemed so strange to her the first time they met.

Flavia realizes that Pemberton had been standing on the southeast side of the lake, on the opposite side from the direction of Bishop’s Lacey. Flavia pieces it all together in her mind. Pemberton had believed that Bonepenny would come to Buckshaw carrying the Ulster Avengers. Perhaps the two had traveled together, intending to blackmail her father, though Pemberton had planned an additional step of killing Bonepenny to take the stamps for himself. He had to murder Bonepenny at Buckshaw to frame Laurence.

Pemberton searched Bonepenny’s room at the Thirteen Drakes but had not found the stamps, so he believed Bonepenny must be carrying them. Pemberton found lodging in Doddingsley, then walked to Buckshaw on the night of the murder. He killed Bonepenny, who did not have the stamps in his possession. The next morning, Pemberton made sure he was seen arriving at the Thirteen Drakes so that he would not be suspected of the murder. He searched Bonepenny’s room again, but Flavia had already found the stamps.

Flavia further examines the details of Bonepenny’s murder. She thinks about the smell emanating from his mouth as he spoke his last word to her; she has “no doubt whatsoever that it was carbon tetrachloride, one of the most fascinating of chemical compounds” (332). Carbon tetrachloride is an insecticide, but it is also used by philatelists to bring out a stamp’s watermark.

Flavia realizes that when she was in Bonepenny’s room, she found insulin but no syringe. Pemberton must have taken his syringe, loaded it with carbon tetrachloride, then thrust the needle into the base of Bonepenny’s skull. Then the “unmistakable fumes of the carbon tetrachloride would have been quickly transmitted to his mouth and nasal cavities as I had detected,” but the smell “had evaporated without a trace” (333-34) by the time Inspector Hewitt arrived.

Flavia tries to free her bonds again, but they are as tight as ever. She fears that she will die down in the pit. Horrified to find herself in tears, Flavia thinks that no one would miss her if she died. No one in her family loves her enough to miss her, though Dogger would be sad. Flavia struggles to compose herself and takes a deep breath to calm down. She smells methane.

Flavia thinks that if she can find the pipe that leads from the pit to the riverbank, she might be able cause a spark that would ignite the gas and bring help. As she searches for the conduit, a cold voice whispers in her ear, “And now for Flavia” (336).

Pemberton grabs Flavia’s upper arm and jams his thumb into the muscle. She tries to scream but no sound comes out. Pemberton says, in a pleasant conversational tone, that they are going to have a little talk. He will remove the covering from her head, and she must keep still. He says, “Listen to me, Flavia, and listen carefully. If you don’t do exactly as I say, I’ll kill you. It’s that simple. Do you understand?” (338). Flavia nods.

Pemberton takes the jacket off Flavia’s head and shines a bright light in her eyes, saying that if she lies to him again, what comes next will be much more painful. Pemberton loudly says that Flavia lied to him, that the only stamp in the clock was the Penny Black. Flavia fears what happened at Buckshaw, but she cannot speak. Pemberton takes the handkerchief out of her mouth, showing her a filled syringe. Flavia sees a flash of orange as the sodden handkerchief falls to the floor.

Flavia hoarsely says that she put the stamps in the clock and tries to think of some way of distracting Pemberton. When Pemberton tells her to continue, Flavia says that her feet are so painful she cannot think, so Pemberton bends down to loosen the belt.

Flavia kicks Pemberton hard in the teeth. His head is flung back into the concrete, and the syringe rolls away. Flavia hobbles to the stairs and painfully starts climbing. It is now night and too dark to see. As Flavia moves toward the door, Pemberton runs up the stairs and throws his arms around her, squeezing the breath from her. They struggle around the room, and Pemberton falls back into the pit, Flavia landing on top of him. Flavia tries to flee but Pemberton grips her arm again and drags her toward the stairs, where the syringe fell intact.

Flavia feels a prick at the back of her neck, and Pemberton details how he injected the carbon tetrachloride into Bonepenny. Desperately she tries to stall for time, saying, “You killed Professor Twining, didn’t you? […] You and Bonepenny” (343). Pemberton pauses, and Flavia continues, saying that he and Bonepenny faked Mr. Twining’s suicide. Pemberton asks if Bonepenny told her this, but Flavia says she figured it out herself and also found the cap and gown under the tiles. She taunts, “And now you’ve killed Bonepenny the stamps are yours. At least, they would be if you knew where they were” (343).

Pemberton viciously digs his thumb into Flavia’s arm, and she screams. He demands to know where the stamps are, but Flavia is in a haze of pain. Pemberton jabs the needle into the back of her neck, and Flavia points to her handkerchief, wadded up in the shadows.

Flavia hears a whirring noise and then a huge crash of broken glass. Then the “room above us, beyond the mouth of the pit, erupted into brilliant yellow light, and through it clouds of steam drifted like little puffing souls of the departed” (344). Flavia looks up, thinking she has gone insane, because she sees the undercarriage of Harriet’s Rolls Royce.

Pemberton tries to scramble up the stairs, but he is blocked by the car’s front bumper. An arm seizes him, and Flavia hears Dogger’s voice. In a daze, Flavia sees a figure slip down from the car and throw its arms around her. It is Ophelia, calling Flavia a silly little fool while planting kisses on her neck.

The people of Bishop’s Lacey slowly come forth. A few men help push the demolished Rolls Royce out of the pit so that Flavia and Ophelia can climb out. Ophelia excitedly tells the dazed Flavia that she and Dogger had followed Pemberton after Dogger saw him prowling around Buckshaw. Dogger called the police, started the car with a tractor battery, and raced after Pemberton.

Miss Mountjoy is there, glaring at the destruction of her library. Mrs. Mullet is also there, being held back by her husband Alf. Flavia sees Ned and Mary standing together. Dr. Darby arrives and casually looks Flavia over.

Inspector Hewitt arrives, and Detective Sergeant Woolmer takes Pemberton from Dogger. Dogger comes up to Flavia, and she tries to find the perfect words to say to him. A figure moving in front of the police car distracts Flavia; it is her father. He moves toward her, then turns to speak to Inspector Hewitt.

Flavia asks Ophelia to go back into the pit and retrieve her handkerchief. Flavia turns to Dogger, and he speaks before she does: “‘My, Miss Flavia,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s turning out to be a lovely evening, isn’t it?’” (350).

Inspector Hewitt is in Flavia’s laboratory, where she offers him tea. He admires the china cup, and Flavia tells him that both Albert Einstein and George Bernard Shaw drank tea from it.

Inspector Hewitt and Flavia discuss the case. Flavia remarks that the police must have known Bonepenny came from Norway because of the jack snipe in the pie, but Inspector Hewitt tells her that Bonepenny wore new shoes from a shoemaker in Stavanger.

Inspector Hewitt says that they are still investigating Robert Stanley’s connection to Mr. Twining’s death. He confirms that Flavia believes Bonepenny and Stanley were confederates, and she explains her findings. She also says Bonepenny died from the carbon tetrachloride that Stanley injected into his brain stem. She mentions that Stanley stole the syringe from Bonepenny’s room in the Thirteen Drakes. Inspector Hewitt asks her sharply how she knows what was in Bonepenny’s room.

Flavia replies that she will get to that part later, but the main thing is that she knows that carbon tetrachloride killed Bonepenny because he breathed its smell on her. Inspector Hewitt goes white and asks if Flavia is sure, which she assures him she is: “I’m quite competent with the chlorinated hydrocarbons, thank you” (356).

Flavia shows Inspector Hewitt where Stanley injected the poison, using her articulated skeleton. She repeats what Stanley told her in the Pit Shed. Flavia says that Dr. Darby should find a pinprick on Bonepenny’s neck and that the poison’s effect was intensified by the drink Bonepenny had at the Thirteen Drakes.

Flavia says the police can test for the level of the poison in Bonepenny’s brain. Inspector Hewitt asks to have a look at what she has done. Flavia feigns innocence, but Inspector Hewitt insists: “No one who has had the pleasure of your acquaintance would ever believe for an instant that you haven’t done your homework” (358-59). Flavia shows him a piece of cow brain that she stole from Mrs. Mullet’s larder, which she injected with carbon tetrachloride and later tested for levels of the poison.

Inspector Hewitt says Flavia must give him the king’s stamp, since it is stolen property. He also needs to know how she came to possess it. Flavia would like to do something nice for her father, since he has gone through a rough time, having been arrested for murder. She says, “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” (362).

After commenting that Flavia is trying his patience, Inspector Hewitt agrees to 24 hours. Flavia shares her entire story, from the dead jack snipe to her captivity in the Pit Shed. Inspector Hewitt takes notes then solemnly shakes her hand goodbye.

Flavia finds Daphne in the drawing room and asks where Ophelia is. Daphne replies that Ophelia went to the doctor about an allergic reaction. Flavia is thrilled that her experiment was successful. Daphne then quietly tells her that she did not get away with her trick: “Have a peek at yourself in the looking-glass […] Watch you don’t break it” (364). Flavia sees that she has an angry red splotch where Ophelia kissed her in the Pit Shed.

Flavia thinks of how her family has so much trouble expressing emotion to each other as she goes to her father’s study. Inside, her father is at his desk with his stamps and his magnifying glass. Flavia reaches into her pocket and hands him the AA stamp. Her father examines the stamp and asks where she got it.

Flavia says she found the stamp and it is for him; “[f]ather studied my face the way an astronomer studies a supernova. ‘This is very decent of you, Flavia,’ he said at last, with some great effort’” (366). He insists that it be returned to the king. Flavia says Inspector Hewitt wants it turned over to him, but her father says that she must return it herself.

Flavia asks Dogger how to address a letter to the king. Together they look in Mrs. Mullet’s copy of Inquire Within Upon Everything, and Flavia copies the format listed in the book.

A week later, Flavia receives a return letter from King George, thanking her for returning the “splendid item” that is important not only to the history of his own family, but to that of England. Flavia notes, “And it was signed simply ‘George’” (370).