Read Online Flavia de Luce 1 - The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie by Alan Bradley - Free Book Online

wouldn't come out of retirement.
    “And how may I help you, dearie?”
    If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as “dearie.” When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poisons, and come to “Cyanide,” I am going to put under “Uses” the phrase “Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one ‘Dearie.’”
    Still, one of my Rules of Life is this: When you want something, bite your tongue.
    I smiled weakly and said, “I'd like to consult your newspaper files.”
    “Newspaper files!” she gurgled. “My, you do know a lot, don't you, dearie?”
    “Yes,” I said, trying to look modest, “I do.”
    "The newspapers are in chronological order on the shelves in the Drummond Room: That's the west rear, to the left, at the top of the stairs,” she said with a wave of her hand.
    “Thank you,” I said, edging towards the staircase.
    “Unless, of course, you want something earlier than last year. In that case, they'll be in one of the outbuildings. What year are you looking for, in particular?”
    “I don't really know,” I said. But, wait a minute—I did know! What was it the stranger had said in Father's study?
    “Twining—Old Cuppa's been dead these—” What?
    I could hear the stranger's oily voice in my head: “Old Cuppa's been dead these… thirty years!”
    “The year 1920,” I said, as cool as a trout. “I'd like to peruse your newspaper archive for 1920.”
    “Those are likely still in the Pit Shed—that is, if the rats haven't been at them.” She said this with a bit of a leer over her spectacles as if, at the mention of rats, I might throw my hands in the air and run off screaming.
    “I'll find them,” I said. “Is there a key?”
    Miss Mountjoy rummaged in the desk drawer and dredged up a ring of iron keys that looked as if they might once have belonged to the jailers of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo. I gave them a cheery jingle and walked out the door.
    The Pit Shed was the outbuilding farthest from the library's main building. Tottering precipitously on the river's bank, it was a conglomeration of weathered boards and rusty corrugated tin, all overgrown with moss and climbing vines. In the heyday of the motor showroom, it had been the garage where autos had their oil and tires changed, their axles lubricated, and other intimate underside adjustments seen to.
    Since then, neglect and erosion had reduced the place to something resembling a hermit's hovel in the woods.
    I gave the key a twist and the door sprang open with a rusty groan. I stepped into the gloom, being careful to edge round the sheer sides of the deep mechanic's pit which, though it was boarded over with heavy planks, still occupied much of the room.
    The place had a sharp and musky smell with more than a hint of ammonia, as if there were little animals living beneath its floorboards.
    Half of the wall closest to Cow Lane was taken up with a folding door, now barred, which had once rolled back to allow motorcars to enter and park astride the pit. The glass of its four windows had been painted over, for some unfathomable reason, with a ghastly red through which the sunlight leaked, giving the room a bloody and unsettling tint.
    Round the remaining three walls, rising like the frames of bunk beds, were ranged wooden shelves, each one piled high with yellowed newspapers: The Hinley Chronicle, The West Counties Advertiser, The Morning Post-Horn, all arranged by year and identified with faded handwritten labels.
    I had no trouble finding 1920. I lifted down the top pile, choking with the cloud of dust that flew up into my face like an explosion in a flour mill as tiny shards of nibbled newsprint fell to the floor like paper snow.
    Tub and loofah tonight, I thought, like it or not.
    A small deal table stood near a grimy window: just enough light and enough room to spread the papers open, one at a time.
    The Morning Post-Horn caught my eye: a tabloid whose front page, like the