The next morning, Frodo paid a series of calls on his neighbors' kitchens, bringing Peony's list in his pocket and bearing a basket laden with pie pans. Eight had been taken home by their owners last night, leaving twelve unclaimed at the end of the party. Ostensibly, Frodo's errand was to return these remaining pans to their proper owners, but he had marked the one that the pearls had been found in. The pans were otherwise identical sturdy, oven-proof disks of a dark brown color. The Bywater pottery must sell dozen like them every year.
Frodo immediately eliminated five when he called at his cousins' homes in Overhill. He went there first with the idea that Ponto's and Porto's wives, Golda and Gilliflora respectively, were frequent callers at Prisca's smial and had some natural interest in the pearls. As Bagginses-by-marriage, neither lady was likely to receive such a valuable piece of jewelry from their husbands' aunt, but Golda's daughter Angelica very probably would. Either lady might reason that since all they both possessed would go to Angelica one day anyway, they might take the pearls now and keep them for awhile before passing them on to the rightful heir.
"My goodness!" cried Golda when Frodo arrived, half-dragging the heavy basket. "I forgot about our own pies in all the excitement yesterday. Gilly and I meant to bring those home with us last night. Take them into the kitchen, please, right away."
"It's kind of you to bring them, Frodo," added Gilliflora, who was also in her sister-in-laws' sitting room with her husband; their two smials sat next to each other within the same hill and had twin, round red front doors. The foursome were in and out of each other's houses all day. "Imagine Dora sending you all around Overhill on such an errand. Everyone knows you haven't been well in ages."
"I imagine poor Aunt Dora's more worried about pies baked in her own kitchen than in anybody else's," said Ponto.
"You're still convinced Aunt Dora is behind this?" Frodo asked, and set the heavy basket down on the sitting-room floor.
"Well, if she isn't, then it was Prisca's doing," Ponto answered. "Now, I'm as fond of both my aunts as you are, young Frodo, but you know how old ladies can be. One or the other is sure to have done something extraordinarily silly to get those pearls baked into a pie. If you're looking into this, that's just what you'll discover in the end. Some silliness."
Ponto remained convinced of this conclusion even when Frodo told him that the pie hadn't been baked at Dora's house nor Prisca's. He had formed his theory on the spot yesterday, and meant to stick to it. The idea of deliberate theft seemed unimiaginable. Gilliflora and Golda wondered where the pie could have come from. They were all aware that Frodo was investigating this strange incident--they had been there when Prisca had engaged him, and assumed that he was naturally interested in protecting Dora--but they didn't seem to perceive that he was actively seeking the source of the pie in their own kitchen.
When Frodo left them to take his basket into the kitchen, the cook that both households shared identified her five pie-pans, thus removing her employers from a suspicion none of them were aware they'd been under. The cook had made a small mark of her own on all her pans before she'd sent the pies to the Old Place yesterday morning, "to be sure I got 'em back." None was the one Frodo had marked.
The cook was also kind enough to show Frodo where she kept her store of sugar, although she seemed bewildered as to why he wanted to see it, and answered his questions about how she'd made the pie filling. She had pitted and cut up the cherries herself the day before the party, then left them to stew for most of the afternoon in a huge pot over the kitchen fire. She'd made all five pies at once by ladling the cooled filling into the pie-shells.
As she demonstrated this procedure, Frodo realized that the pearls had all been found in one pie. If they'd been hidden in a sugar bin and gone into a pot with the cherries, the string had most probably broken while the contents of the pot were cooking and being slowly stirred over a fire. If the filling had then been ladled out, the loose pearls would have been distributed through more than one pie-shell if more than one was available; therefore, the pie containing the pearls was the only one cooked in that particular kitchen.
After he left his cousins' homes with his burden lightened, Frodo consulted his list to see who had brought only one pie to the birthday party. There were three singles, from Danilora Chubb, Gretna Grubb, and a Mrs. Lumbly. This left him with a mathematical puzzle, since he still had seven pie-pans in his basket when there should be eight. He took them out of the basket to count them, and looked over the list again. According to Peony's account, there should have been one-and-twenty cherry pies served yesterday, not twenty. Someone else had brought only one pie when they were meant to bring two. This might be the key to it all, or else a mistake in Peony's addition and nothing to do with the pearls. When he saw that another Chubb relation in Hobbiton was meant to bring three pies, and Prunella Proudfoot and Lila Muscote two each, Frodo decided to that his best course was to begin with the three who had contributed one pie alone, since all were nearer. He would then hunt out the others in turn until he'd solved this puzzle. Prunella Proudfoot, on the far side of the Hill, he would visit last.
Mrs. Lumbly, who was nearest to the twin Baggins smials, was an elderly widow and friend of Dora's whom Frodo had seen occasionally in his aunt's parlor. He had not, however, seen her at the party.
"I meant to go, of course," Mrs. Lumbly explained as she welcomed Frodo into her home, "but I had a terrible headache yesterday morning that wouldn't go away. I sent Dora a note of regret along with the pie I promised to bring for her. I'm sorry I missed her birthday. I heard there was some excitement over Prisca Baggins's pearls." The old lady chuckled. "Now, I wish I'd been able to see that! Was your aunt Prisca there?"
Frodo confirmed that she was, and asked Mrs. Lumbly if she and Prisca were friends.
"No, I never could abide her," she answered. "She may be your aunt, Frodo, but I have to tell you that Prisca Baggins was an awful bully even as a girl, and she's only grown worse with age. I've avoided her since she's became an invalid. You can't argue with a bedridden woman, even if she deserves taking down a peg or two!"
"Did you bake the pie yourself?" Frodo asked.
"Oh, no. Mrs. Crump, my cook, did. She took it over to Dora's when she delivered my note "
Frodo then took the pie-pans into the kitchen and, while Mrs. Crump picked out one from the basket, asked her a few questions. She'd only gone to Miss Dora's to leave off Mrs. Lumbly's note, her cherry pie and some scones. She hadn't stayed for the party and was long gone by the time the "rumpus" had started. She didn't know a thing about it. She'd been to Miss Dora's once or twice before, since she was on friendly terms with Miss Dora's cook and personal maid, but she couldn't recollect that she'd ever been to Miss Prisca Baggins' smial.
Frodo called at other houses, leaving a pie-pan or two at each and questioning the ladies and their cooks as discreetly as he could. Had any them called on Prisca or her servants lately? Had anyone from Prisca's household visited them? He then went to see his Aunt Prisca to confirm what he'd been told and to find out who besides Dora, Angelica, Peony, Golda, and Gilliflora had called upon her in the last few weeks.
"It's good of you to remove all shadow of suspicion from our closest relatives first, Frodo," Prisca said when she received him in her sitting room and heard this request. "You aren't a fool, my boy. Not as much of as some of your cousins! I'm pleased you have a sense of family loyalty, but I hope you don't allow sentiment to mislead your common sense."
"I don't, Auntie," Frodo responded. "I never have during one of my previous investigations, and I wouldn't now even if I learned that your thief was my Aunt Dora or one of my cousins--although I'd try to settle things within the family rather than create a public scandal. But I have cleared them. The pie where your pearls were hidden wasn't baked in any of their kitchens. That's certain. Confess now, you did think it was Aunt Dora, didn't you?"
"It seemed only reasonable," Prisca admitted. "I've known Dora so much longer than you have, Frodo. From the cradle, you might say. You see her as she is now, a sweet and somewhat fussy old lady, without the benefit of my longer acquaintance. We've always been rivals over one thing or another. Jealous of whatever the other has. Oh, I'm no better than her in that respect! Dora's never forgotten how those pearls came into my possession, or who gave them me. Do you know that old story, Frodo?" Frodo nodded. "Then I won't repeat it."
"How strong is your sense of family loyalty, Aunt?" he asked her. "People were talking quite a lot about Aunt Dora yesterday, and I'm sure we'd both like to see that stopped as soon as possible." Even if she hadn't openly accused Dora, many people at the party had taken their cue from Prisca and her behavior toward Dora. Frodo wanted her help now in taking the lead again. It wasn't enough that he declare Dora innocent; Prisca must also demonstrate to these same people that she no longer suspected her cousin, even though the true thief hadn't yet been caught. He wouldn't see Dora harmed by ugly and unfounded gossip.
Prisca laughed. "Very well, Frodo! I'll do what I can to put a stop to the talk. But if it wasn't Dora, who was it?"
Frodo gave her the names of the women he'd visited that morning, and Prisca considered them each in turn. All the ladies on his list had called on Prisca at least once recently, with one exception.
"Glovina Lumbly?" Prisca shook her head. "No, I haven't seen her, not since her husband's funeral--and that was years ago. I was still able to go about on my own two legs then. I don't know her cook, of course, but all the cooks and servants hereabouts have their own social circles. Lina!" she yelped so sharply and suddenly that Frodo nearly jumped from his seat, startled.
The nurse was not far away; she appeared almost immediately at the sitting-room door in response to Prisca's abrupt summons. "Yes, Miss Prisca?"
"Lina, you don't know a- What was that name again, Frodo?"
"Crump," Frodo supplied.
"Crump," the elderly lady repeated.
"No, Miss Prisca."
"Then take Frodo here into the kitchen, so he can ask them the same question."
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