The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Flavia rides Gladys to Greyminster. It is as magnificent and stately as she imagined. She walks toward the clock tower and peers up through the sun’s glare, seeing where Mr. Twining plummeted to his death.

Sneaking past the porter’s lodge, Flavia slips inside Anson House, where her father lived. As she looks at photographs of former students on the hallway walls, Flavia realizes that her father had not truly been sharing his story with her at the police station: “It had not been me, but Harriet to whom he was speaking” (228).

Flavia finds the entrance to the clock tower and climbs up the stairs. The door at the top is locked. A voice calls up to her, demanding to know who is there. Flavia pulls out a piece of her braces, twists the wire, and uses it to open the lock. The voice is closer now, saying the tower is off-limits.

Flavia hides in the dark room. A man opens the door and shines a flashlight, then closes and locks the door behind him. Flavia feels her way in darkness up a ladder, past two shaky platforms. She hits her head on a trapdoor and pushes it open.