Alan Bradley - The Weed That Strings the Hangmans Bag

I looked round the glade, which, even to my heightened sense of hearing, seemed perfectly silent. When I looked back, my notebook and pencil lay at my feet, and Meg had vanished among the trees. I knew there was little point in calling her back.

I stood there motionless for a few moments, listening, waiting for something, although I'm not sure what it was.

The woodland, I remembered, is an ever-changing world. From minute to minute, the shadows shift, and from hour to hour the vegetation moves with the sun. Insects tunnel in the soil, heaving it up, at first in little hummocks, and then in larger ones. From month to month, leaves grow and fall, and from year to year, the trees. Daffy once said that you can't step into the same river twice, and it's the same with forests. Five winters had come and gone since Robin Ingleby died here, and now there was nothing left to see.

I walked slowly back past the crumbling gallows and plunged into the woods. Within minutes, I was out into the open at the top of Jubilee Field.

Not twenty yards away, almost invisible in the fog, a gray Ferguson tractor was stopped in the field, and someone in a green overall and rubber boots was bending over the engine. That must have been what Meg had heard.

"Hullo!" I shouted. It's always best to announce one's self heartily when trespassing. (Even though I had invented it on the spot, this seemed to be a good general rule.)

As the figure straightened up and turned round, I realized that it was Sally Straw, the Land Army girl.

"Hello," she said, wiping her oily hands on a rag. "You're Flavia de Luce, aren't you?"

"Yes." I stuck out my hand. "And you're Sally. I've seen you at the market. I've always admired your freckles and your ginger hair."

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

She gave me a broad, honest grin and a handshake that nearly crushed my fingers.

"It's all right to call me Sal," she said. "All my best friends do."

She reminded me somewhat of Joyce Grenfell, the actress: a bit mannish in the way she moved, but otherwise decidedly female.

"My Fergie's gone bust," she said, pointing to the tractor. "Might be the ignition coil. They do that sometimes, you know: get overheated and go open circuit. Then there's nothing for it but to wait for the ruddy thing to cool."

Since motors were not my forte, I nodded wisely and kept my mouth shut.

"What are you doing away out here?"

"Just rambling," I said. "I like to get away, sometimes. Go for a walk--that sort of thing."

"Lucky you," she said. "I never get away. Well, hardly ever. Dieter's taken me for a pint of half-and-half at the Thirteen Drakes a couple of times, but then there was a most god-awful flap about it. The POWs are not allowed to do that, you know. At least they weren't during the war."

"Dieter told me your sister Ophelia had him to tea yesterday," she added, somewhat cagily. I realized at once that she was fishing.

"Yes," I said, kicking carelessly at a clod of dirt, gazing off into the distance, and pretending I wasn't remotely interested. Friend or not, if she wanted gossip from me, it would have to be tit for tat.

"I saw you at the puppet show," I said. "At the church, on Saturday night. Wasn't that a corker? About Mr. Porson, I mean?"

"It was horrid," she said.

"Did you know him?"

It probably wasn't a fair question, and I fired it at her without warning: straight out of the blue.

Sally's expression became instantly guarded, and she hesitated a bit too long before answering.

"I--I've seen him around." Her lie was obvious.

"On the telly, perhaps?" I asked, perhaps too innocently. "The Magic Kingdom? Snoddy the Squirrel?"

I knew as soon as I said it that I'd pushed things too far.

"All right," she said, "what are you up to? Come on--out with it."

She planted her hands on her hips and fixed me with an unwavering stare.

"I don't know what you mean," I said.

"Oh, come off it. Don't give me that. Everyone for fifty miles around knows that Flavia de Luce doesn't go walking in the woods just to put roses in her cheeks."

Could that be true? Fifty miles? Her answer rather surprised me: I should have thought a hundred.

"Gordon'd have your hide if he caught you in that wood," she said, pointing to the sign.

I put on my best sheepish look, but kept quiet.

"How much do you know about all this?" Sally demanded, sweeping her hand round in a large half-circle to take in the farm. Her meaning was clear.

I took a deep breath. I had to trust her.

"I know that Rupert has been coming here to get cannabis for quite a long time. I know that Gordon grows it in a patch in Gibbet Wood--not far from where Robin was found hanging."

"And you think that Dieter and I are somehow mixed up in all this?"

"I don't know," I replied. "I hope not."

"So do I," Sally said. "So do I."

* NINETEEN *

"RUPERT WAS--A LADIES' man," Sally said slowly, as if reluctant to put her thoughts into words, "but then, you've probably found that out by now."

I nodded, careful not to interrupt. I had learned by observing Inspector Hewitt that silence is the best primer for a conversational pump.

"He's been coming to Culverhouse Farm off and on, for years--since well before the war. And Rupert's not the only one, you know. Gordon has a regular little army of others just like him. He supplies them with something to help manage the pain."

"Bhang," I said. I couldn't help myself. "Gunjah ... Indian hemp, cannabis."

She looked at me with narrowed eyes, and then went on. "Some, like Rupert, come because they once had infantile paralysis--polio, they call it now--others, well, God only knows.

"You see, Gordon considers himself a kind of herbalist: someone who helps to blot out the sufferings that the doctors can't, or won't. He's very discreet about it, but then he has to be, doesn't he? Other than you, I really don't think anyone in Bishop's Lacey has ever guessed that the occasional travelers who stop by Culverhouse Farm are anything other than lost--or perhaps selling agricultural supplies.

"I've been here for eight years," Sally went on. "And don't even bother asking me: The answer is no--I'm not one of Gordon's smokers."

"I didn't expect you were," I said, fawning a little. It worked.

"I grew up in a good home," she went on, a little more eagerly. "My parents were what they used to call, in the old double-decker novels, 'poor but honest.' My mam was sick all the time, but she never would tell us what was wrong with her. Even my father didn't know. Meanwhile, I plodded on at school, got myself a bit of an education, and then the war came.

"Of course, I wanted to help out a bit with the medical bills, so I joined the WLA. Sounds simple, doesn't it? And so it was--there was no more to it than that. I was just a girl from Kent who wanted to fight Adolf Hitler, and see her mother well again.

"I was billeted, along with about forty other girls, at a Land Army hostel between here and Hinley, and that was where I first laid eyes on Rupert. Like a bee to honey that man was, make no mistake about it. He was rambling hither and yon about the countryside every summer with his little puppet show--getting back to his roots, he called it--and whenever I saw him, he seemed to have a new assistant. And she was always a bit of a knockout, if you get my meaning."

"Not long after I came to work at Culverhouse Farm, Rupert showed up for a fresh supply of smoking material. I recognized him at once as the little lame chap who was always chatting us up at the hostel, or the pub, of a weekend.

"I swore from the outset that I wouldn't get involved with him myself; I'd leave it to the other girls to take him down a notch or two. But then--"

Her gaze drifted off into another time.

So Nialla had been right! Rupert had gone off in search of Sally on the day they arrived. The pieces were beginning to fall into place.

Although the fog had now thinned a little, it was still quite dense, wrapping Sally and me in a misty cocoon of oddly reassuring silence. Unless they had come across us by accident, no one would know we were up here at the top of Jubilee Field. No one could have overheard us unless they had come up the length of the field from the bottom, or crept stealthily down from the wood above.

"Oh, Rupert was a charmer, make no mistake about that," Sally went on. "He could charm the--no, I mustn't say that in polite company, must I? He could charm the chickens out of the trees--and especially the hens.

"He'd start with Shakespeare, and then move on to things he'd heard in music halls. If Romeo and Juliet didn't do the job, he'd try his naughty recitations.

"And he got away with it, too--at least, mostly he did. Until he tried it on with Gordon's wife."

Grace Ingleby? I let out an involuntary whistle.

"That must have been quite a long time ago," I said. I knew that it sounded callous, although I didn't mean it that way.

"Years ago," Sally said. "Before Robin died. Before she went all strange. Although you wouldn't think it to look at her now, she used to be quite a stunner."

"She seems very sad," I said.

"Sad? Sad's not the word for it, Flavia. Broken is more like it. That little boy was her whole world, and the day he died, the sun went out."

"You were here then?" I asked gently. "It must have been very difficult for you."

She went on as if she hadn't heard me. "Gordon and Grace had told Robin more than once about their idyllic honeymoon by the sea, and it was something he'd always wanted to do: the sand, the seashells, the pail, the shovel, the sandcastles, the ices, the bathing machines.

"He used to dream about it. 'I dreamed the tide was coming in, Sally!' he told me once, 'and I was bobbing on the sea like a pink balloon!' Poor little tyke."

She wiped away a tear with the rough sleeve of her overall. "God! Why am I telling you all this? I must be daft."

"It's all right," I said. "I promise I won't breathe a word. I'm very good at keeping things to myself."

As a token of goodwill, I went through the motions of cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, but without actually saying the words.

After a quick and oddly shy glance at me, Sally went on with her story:

"Somehow they'd managed to put a bit aside for Robin's birthday. Because the harvest was so near, Gordon couldn't get away, but they agreed that Grace would take Robin to the seaside for a few days. It was the first time the two of them, mother and son, had ever been anywhere together without Gordon, and the first time Grace had taken a holiday since she was a girl.

"The weather was hot, even for late August. Grace hired a beach chair and bought a magazine. She watched Robin with his little pail, mudlarking along the water's edge. He was quite safe, she knew. She had warned him about the danger of the tides, and Robin was a most obedient little boy.

"She drifted off to sleep and slept for ages. She hadn't realized how utterly exhausted she was until she awoke and saw how far the sun had moved. The tide had gone out, and Robin was nowhere in sight. Had he disobeyed her warnings and been swept out to sea? Surely someone would have seen him. Surely someone would have wakened her."

"Did Grace tell you this?" I asked.

"Good God, no! It all came out at the inquest. They had to pry it out of her in tiny, broken pieces. Her nerves were something shocking.

"She'd wasted too much time, she said, running up and down the beach, calling out Robin's name. She ran along the edge of the water, hoping for a glimpse of his little red bathing suit; hoping to see his face among the children who were dabbling near the shore.

"Then up and down the beach again, begging the bathers to tell her if they'd seen a little boy with blond hair. It was hopeless, of course. There might have been dozens of children on the beach who answered to that description.

"And then, through sun-dazzled eyes, she saw it: a crowd gathered in the shade beneath the promenade. She burst into tears and began walking towards them, knowing what she would find: Robin had drowned, and the knot of people had gathered round to gawk. She had already begun to hate them.

"But as she drew closer, a wave of laughter went up, and she shoved her way through to the center of the crowd, not caring what they thought.

"It was a Punch and Judy show. And there, seated on the sand, tears of laughter running down his face, was her Robin. She grabbed him up and hugged him, not trusting herself to say a word. After all, it had been her fault: She had fallen asleep, and Robin had been attracted to the Punch and Judy pitch as any child would be.

"She carried him along the beach and bought him an ice, and another. Then she ran back with him to the little booth, to watch the next performance, and she joined in when he roared with laughter, and she shouted out with him 'No! No!' when Punch grabbed the policeman's stick to beat Judy on the head.

"They laughed with the rest of the crowd when Punch tricked Jack Ketch, the hangman, into sticking his own head into the noose, and--"

I had seen the traditional Punch and Judy shows nearly every year at the church fete, and I was all too familiar with the plot.

"' I don't know how to be hanged,'" I said, quoting Punch's famous words. "'You'll have to show me, then I shall do it directly.'"

"'I don't know how to be hanged,'" Sally echoed, "'You'll have to show me.' That's what Grace told the jury later, when an inquest was called into Robin's death, and those were likely her last sane words.

"Worse than that was the fact that, at the inquest, she spoke those words in that awful, strangled, quacking voice that the puppet show men use for Punch: 'I don't know how to be hanged. You'll have to show me.'

"It was ghastly. The coroner called for a glass of water, and someone on the jury lost their nerve and laughed. Grace broke down completely. The doctor insisted that she be excused from further questioning.

"The rest of what happened that awful day at the beach, and later at the farm, had to be pieced together; each of us knew a little. I had seen Robin dragging about a length of rope he'd found in the machine shed. Later, Gordon had seen him playing cowboy at the edge of Jubilee Field. It was Dieter who found him hanging in Gibbet Wood."

"Dieter? I thought it was Mad Meg." It slipped out before I could stop myself.

Sally looked instantly away, and I realized that it was one of those times when I needed to keep my mouth shut and wait things out.

Suddenly she seemed to come to a decision. "You must remember," she said, "that we were only just out of the war. If it was known in Bishop's Lacey that Robin's body had been found hanging in the wood by a German prisoner of war, well ... just think."

"It might have been like that scene from Frankenstein: furious villagers with torches, and so forth."

"Exactly," she said. "Besides, the police believed that Meg actually had been there before Dieter, but that she hadn't told anyone."

"How do you know that?" I asked. "What the police believed, I mean?"

Without realizing what she was doing, Sally was suddenly fluffing up her hair.