Alan Bradley - The Weed That Strings the Hangmans Bag

"There was a certain young police constable," she said, "whose name I am not at liberty to mention, who used to take me, of an evening, to watch the moon rise over Goodger Hill."

"I see," I said, and I did. "They didn't want Meg to be called up at the inquest."

"Funny, isn't it," she said, "how the law can have a soft spot like that? No, someone had seen her in the village at the time Robin went missing, so she wasn't really a suspect. It was decided that because of her ... because she was ... well, not to put too fine a point on it, that Meg was best left out of things entirely, and that's how it was done."

"So it was Dieter who found the body then."

"Yes. He told me about it that same evening. He was still in shock--hardly making sense: all about how he had come racing down from Gibbet Wood, yelling himself hoarse ... leaping fences, sliding in the mud ... running into the yard, looking up at the empty windows. Like dead eyes, they were, he kept saying, like the windows of the Brontes' parsonage. But as I said, poor Dieter was in shock. He didn't know what he was saying."

I felt a vague stirring in my stomach, but I put it down to Mrs. Mullet's Jenny Lind cake. "And where was Rupert all this time?"

"Strange you should ask. Nobody seems to remember. Rupert came and went, often at night. As time passed, he seemed to become more and more addicted to the stuff Gordon was providing him, and his visits became more frequent. If he wasn't here when Robin died, he wasn't far away."

"I'll bet the police were all over the place."

"Of course they were! At the outset, they didn't know if it was an accident, or if Robin had been murdered."

"Murdered?" The thought had never crossed my mind. "Who on earth would murder a little boy?"

"It's been done before," Sally answered sadly. "Children have always been murdered for no good reason."

"And Robin?"

"In the end, they decided there was no evidence to support that idea. Aside from Gordon and Dieter and me--and Mad Meg, of course--no one else had been in Gibbet Wood. Robin's footprints leading up Jubilee Field and round the old scaffold made it quite clear that he had gone there alone."

"And acted out the scaffold scene from Punch and Judy," I said. "Pretending he was first Punch--and then the hangman."

"Yes. That's what they thought."

"Still," I said, "the police must have had a jolly good look round the wood."

"Almost uprooted it," she said. "Measuring tapes, plaster casts, photographs, little bags of this and that."

"Isn't it odd," I said, "that they didn't spot the patch of cannabis? It's hard to believe Inspector Hewitt would have missed it."

"This must have been before his time," Sally said. "If my memory serves me rightly, it was an Inspector Gully who was in charge of the investigation."

Aha! So that was who decided to keep mum about Meg. In spite of his lack of vigilance, the man must have had at least a rudimentary heart.

"And what was the outcome?" I asked. "Of the inquest, I mean."

I knew that I could look it up later, in the newspaper archive at the library, but for now I wanted to hear it in Sally's own words. She had, after all, been on the spot.

"The coroner told the jury it must reach one of three verdicts: death by unlawful killing, death by misadventure, or an open verdict."

"And?"

"They settled on 'death by misadventure,' although they had the very dickens of a time reaching an agreement."

Suddenly, I realized that the fog was lifting, and so did Sally. Although a light mist still capped the trees in the wood above us, the river and the full sloping length of Jubilee Field, looking like a hand-tinted aerial photograph, were now laid out below us in weak sunlight.

We would be clearly visible from the farmhouse.

Without another word, Sally clambered up onto the tractor's seat and engaged the starter. The engine caught at once, roared briefly, then settled into a steady ticking hum.

"I've said too much," she told me. "I don't know what I was thinking. Mind you keep your promise, Flavia. I'm going to hold you to it."

Her eyes met mine, and I saw in them a kind of pleading.

"I could get into a lot of trouble, you know," she said.

I bobbed my head but didn't actually say yes. With any luck, I could wedge in one last question.

"What do you think happened to Robin and to Rupert?"

With a toss of her head, Sally clenched her jaw, let in the clutch, and lurched away across the field, clods of black mud flying up from the tractor's tires before falling back to the ground like shot birds.

* TWENTY *

I RETRIEVED GLADYS FROM behind the hedge where I had left her, removed the cucumber sandwiches from her carrier, and sat on a grassy bank to eat and think about the dead.

I pulled the notebook from my pocket and flipped it open to Meg's drawing: There was Robin, hanging by the neck from the gnarled timbers of the old scaffold. The expression on his face was that of a child sleeping peacefully, a slight smile at the corner of his lips.

Something in my mind went click! and I knew that I could put it off no longer: I would have to pay a visit to the village library--or at least the Pit Shed, the outbuilding where the back issues of newspapers were stored.

The Pit Shed was a long-defunct motorcar repair shop, which stood, surrounded by weeds, in Cow Lane, a short and rather neglected pathway that ran from Bishop Lacey's high street down to the river. The sudden recollection of my recent captivity in that moldering mausoleum gave me goose bumps.

Part of me (my quieter voice) was saying, Give it up. Don't meddle. Go home and be with your family. But another part was more insistent: The library isn't open until Thursday, it seemed to whisper. No one will see you.

"But the lock," I said aloud. "The place is locked."

Since when did a locked door ever stop you? replied the voice.

The Pit Shed, as I have said, was easily reached from the riverbank. I re-crossed the water on the stepping-stones behind the church (still no sign of police cars) and followed the old towpath, which took me quickly, and with little risk of being seen, to Cow Lane.

There was no one in sight as I tried to walk nonchalantly up the path to the entrance.

I gave the door a shake, but as I had expected, it was locked. A new lock, in fact--one of the Yale design--had recently been fitted, and a hand-lettered sign placed in the window. Positively no admittance unless accompanied by the Librarian it said. Both the sign and the lock, I thought, had likely been put in place because of my recent escapades.

Although Dogger had given me several tutorials on the art of lock picking, the intricacies of the Yale required special tools that I did not have with me.

The door's hinges were on the inside, so there wasn't a chance of removing the pins. Even if that had been possible, it would have been foolhardy to attempt such a thing in full view of anyone passing in the high street at the end of the lane.

Round the back I went. In the long grass, directly beneath a window, lay a monster piece of rusty scrap metal, which looked as if it might have seen better days as a motor in a Daimler. I climbed on top of the things and peered in through the dirt-fogged glass.

The newspapers lay stacked in their wooden bunks as they had done for eons, and the interior had been cleared of the wreckage caused by my last visit.

As I stood on tiptoe, my foot slipped, and I nearly pitched headfirst through the windowpane. As I clutched at the sill to steady myself, something crumbled beneath my fingertips and a river of tiny grains trickled to the ground.

Wood rot, I thought. But wait! Hang on a minute--wood rot isn't gray. This is rotten putty!

I jumped down and within seconds was back at the window with an open-end wrench from Gladys's tool kit in my hand. As I picked away at the edges of the glass, hard wedges of putty broke off with surprisingly little effort. It was almost too easy.

When I had chipped my way round the pane, I pressed my mouth hard against the glass, and sucked for all I was worth to create a vacuum. Then I pulled my head slowly back.

Success! As the pane came free of its frame and leaned out towards me, I grasped the glass by its rough edges and lifted it carefully to the ground. In less time than it takes to tell, I had wiggled through the frame and dropped to the floor inside.

Although the broken glass from my earlier rescue had been cleared away, the place still gave me the shivers. I wasted no time in finding the issues of The Hinley Chronicle for the latter part of 1945.

Although Robin's exact dates hadn't been carved on his headstone, Sally's story indicated that he had died sometime after the harvest in that year. The Hinley Chronicle had been--and still was--published weekly, on Fridays. Consequently, there were only a couple of dozen issues covering the time between the end of June and the end of the year. I knew, though, that I would most likely find the story in an earlier issue than a later one. And so it was: Friday, 7 September, 1945.An inquest will be held today at Almoner's Hall in Bishop's Lacey into the death of Robin Ingleby, five years of age, whose body was found on Monday in Gibbet Wood, near that village. Inspector Josiah Gully of the Hinley constabulary has declined comment at this time, but strongly urges any member of the public who may have information about the child's death to contact police authorities immediately at Hinley 5272.

Directly below this was printed the notice:

Patrons are informed that the post office and confectionery located in the high street, Bishop's Lacey, will close today (Friday, 7th inst.) at noon. Both will be open as usual on Saturday morning. Your patronage is appreciated. Letitia Cool, Proprietress.

Miss Cool was the postmistress and purveyor of sweets to the village, and there was only one reason I could think of that she would have closed her shop on a Friday.

I turned eagerly to the following week: the issue of 14 September.An inquest convened to inquire into the death of Robin Ingleby, aged five years, of Culverhouse Farm, near Bishop's Lacey was adjourned Friday last at 3:15 P.M. after forty minutes of deliberation. The coroner recorded a verdict of Death by Misadventure, and expressed his sympathy to the bereaved parents.

And that was all. It seemed obvious that the village wanted to spare Robin's parents the grief of seeing the horrid details in print.

A quick look through the remaining papers turned up nothing more than a brief notice of the funeral, at which the pallbearers had been Gordon Ingleby, Bartram Tennyson (Robin's grandfather, who had come down from London), Dieter Schrantz, and Clarence Mundy, the taxicab proprietor. Rupert's name was not mentioned.

I replaced the newspapers in their cradle and, with no more damage to myself than a scuffed knee, shoehorned myself back out of the window.

Curses! It was beginning to rain. A black-bottomed cloud had drifted across the sun, bringing a sudden chill to the air.

I ran across the weeded lot to the river, where fat raindrops were already pocking the water with perfectly formed little craters. I scrambled down the slope and, with my bare hands, scooped out a gob of the sticky clay that formed the bank.

Then back to the Pit Shed again, where I dumped the muck in a mound on the windowsill. Taking care not to get any of it on my clothing, I rolled handfuls of the stuff between my palms, making a family of long stringy gray snakes. Then, clambering up onto the rusty motor once again, I seized the edges of the windowpane, and hoisted it gingerly back into position. With my forefinger as a makeshift putty knife, I pressed the stuff all round the edges of the glass into what looked, at least, like a tight and sturdy seal.

How long it would last was anybody's guess. If the rain didn't wash it away, it might well last forever. Not that it would need to: At the first opportunity, I thought, I would replace it by pinching some bona fide putty and the proper knife from Buckshaw, where Dogger was forever using the stuff to shore up loose panes in the decaying greenhouse.

"The Mad Putty-Knifer has struck again!" the villagers would whisper.

After a quick dash to the river to scrub the caked clay from my hands, I was, aside from being soaked through, almost presentable.

I picked up Gladys from the grass and strolled in a carefree manner up Cow Lane to the high street, as if butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.

Miss Cool's confectionery, which incorporated the village post office, was a narrow Georgian relic, hemmed in by a tearoom and an undertaker's establishment to the east and a fish shop to the west. Its flyblown display windows were sparsely strewn with faded chocolate boxes, their lids picturing plump ladies in striped stockings and feathers who grinned brazenly as they sat half astride cumbersome three-wheeled tricycles.

This was where Ned had bought the chocolates he had left on our doorstep. I was sure of it, for there on the right was the dark rectangular mark where the box had reposed since horse-drawn charabancs had rumbled past it in the high street.

For a fleeting instant I wondered if Feely had sampled my handiwork yet, but I banished the thought at once. Such pleasures would have to wait.

The bell over the door tinkled to announce my entrance, and Miss Cool looked up from behind the post office counter.

"Flavia, dear!" she said. "What a pleasant surprise. Why, you're all wet! I was just thinking about you not ten minutes ago, and here you are. Actually, it was your father I was thinking of, but it's all the same, isn't it? I've a strip of stamps here that might interest him: four Georges with an extra perforation clean through his face. Hardly seems right, does it? Quite disrespectful. Miss Reynolds over at Glebe House bought them last Friday and returned them on Saturday.

"'Too many holes in them!' she said. 'I won't have my letters to Hannah--' (that's her niece in Shropshire, dear)--'being seized for infringement of the Postal Act.'"

She handed me a glassine envelope.

"Thank you, Miss Cool," I said. "I'm sure Father will appreciate having these in his collection, and I know he'd want me to thank you for your thoughtfulness."

"You're such a good girl, Flavia," she said, blushing. "He must be very proud of you."

"Yes," I said, "he is. Very."

Actually, it was a thought that had never crossed my mind.

"You really mustn't stand around like that in wet clothing, dear. Go into my little room in the back and take off your things. I'll hang them in the kitchen to dry. You'll find a quilt at the bottom of my bed--wrap yourself up in it and we shall have a nice cozy chat."

Five minutes later, we were back in the shop, me like a blanketed Blackfoot and Miss Cool, with her tiny spectacles looking for all the world like the Factor at a Hudson's Bay trading post.

She was already moving across the shop towards the tall jar of horehound sticks.