Read Flavia de Luce 1 - The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie for Free Online Page B

was present, but with your father indisposed.”
    Indisposed? Oh, of course! I'd nearly forgotten my little lie.
    In spite of my momentary look of puzzlement, the Inspector went on: “You mentioned Dogger's stint as chauffeur. Does your father still keep a motorcar?”
    He did, in fact: an old Rolls-Royce Phantom II, which now resided in the coach house. It had actually been Harriet's, and it had not been driven since the day the news of her death had come to Buckshaw. Furthermore, although Father was not a driver himself, he would permit no one else to touch it.
    Consequently, the coachwork of this magnificent old thoroughbred, with its long black bonnet and tall nickel-plated Palladian radiator with intertwined Rs, had long ago been breached by field mice that had found their way up through the wooden floorboards and nested in its mahogany glove box. Even in its decrepitude, it was sometimes still spoken of as “The Royce,” as people of quality often call these vehicles.
    “Only a ploughman would call it a Rolls,” Feely had said once when I'd momentarily forgotten myself in her presence.
    Whenever I wanted to be alone in a place where I could count on being undisturbed, I would clamber up into the dim light of Harriet's dust-covered Roller, where I would sit for hours in the incubator-like heat, surrounded by drooping plush upholstery and cracked, nibbled leather.
    At the Inspector's unexpected question, my mind flew back to a dark, stormy day the previous autumn, a day of pelting rain and a mad torrent of wind. Because the risk of falling branches had made it too dangerous to hazard a walk in the woods above Buckshaw, I had slipped away from the house and fought my way through the gale to the coach house to have a good think. Inside, the Phantom stood glinting dully in the shadows as the storm howled and screamed and beat at the windows like a tribe of hungry banshees. My hand was already on the door handle of the car before I realized there was someone inside it. I nearly leaped out of my skin. But then I realized that it was Father. He was just sitting there with tears running down his face, oblivious to the storm.
    For several minutes I had stood perfectly still, afraid to move, scarce daring to breathe. But when Father reached slowly for the door handle, I had to drop silently to my hands like a gymnast and roll underneath the car. From the corner of my eye I saw one of his perfectly polished half-Wellingtons step down from the running board, and as he walked slowly away, I heard something like a shuddering sob escape him. For a long while I lay there staring up at the floorboards of Harriet's Rolls-Royce.
    “Yes,” I said. “There's an old Phantom in the coach house.”
    “And your father doesn't drive.”
    “No.”
    “I see.”
    The Inspector laid down his Biro and notebook as carefully as if they were made of Venetian glass.
    “Flavia,” he said (and I couldn't help noticing that I was no longer “Miss de Luce”), “I'm going to ask you a very important question. The way in which you answer it is crucial, do you understand?”
    I nodded.
    “I know that you were the one who reported this. incident. But who was it that first discovered the body?”
    My mind went into a tailspin. Would telling the truth incriminate Father? Did the police already know that I had summoned Dogger to the cucumber patch? Obviously not; the Inspector had only just learned Dogger's identity, so it seemed reasonable to assume they had not yet questioned him. But when they did, how much would he tell them? Which of us should he protect: Father or me? Was there some new test by which they would know that the victim was still alive when I discovered him?
    “I did,” I blurted out. “I found the body.” I felt like Cock Robin.
    “Just as I thought,” Inspector Hewitt said.
    And here was one of those awkward silences. It was broken by the arrival of Sergeant Woolmer, who used his massive body to herd Father into the