The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

by Alan Bradley

  In a flash I was standing before them, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot as I realized I was probably intruding.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” the Inspector said. It was not a particularly original comment, but it neatly covered what might have been an awkward moment.

  “Antigone,” he told the dark-haired woman, “I’d like you to meet Flavia de Luce.”

  I knew for a fact that she was going to say, “Oh, yes, my husband has mentioned you,” and she would say it with that little smirk that tells so much about the amused conversation that had followed.

  “I’m so pleased to meet you, Flavia,” she said, putting out the most beautiful hand in the world and giving me a good solid shake, “and to find that you share my love of marionettes.”

  If she’d told me to “fetch” I would have done it.

  “I love your name,” I managed.

  “Do you? My father was Greek and my mother Italian. She was a ballet teacher and he was a fishmonger, so I grew up dancing in the streets of Billingsgate.”

  With her dark hair and sea green eyes, she was the image of Botticelli’s Flora, whose features adorned the back of a hand mirror at Buckshaw that Father had once given to Harriet.

  I wanted to ask “In what far isle is your shrine? that I might worship there,” but I settled for shuffling my feet and a mumbled, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Hewitt. I hope you and Inspector Hewitt enjoy the show.”

  As I slipped into my seat, the vicar strode purposefully to the front of the hall and took up a position in front of the stage. He smiled indulgently, waiting, as Daffy, Mrs. Mullet, and Dogger slid into their seats.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, parishioners of St. Tancred’s and otherwise, thank you for coming. We are honored, this evening, to welcome to our midst, the renowned puppet-showman—if he will allow me to make use of that illustrious nomenclature—Rupert Porson.”

  (Applause)

  “Although Mr. Porson, or Rupert, if I may, is best known nowadays for his performances on the BBC Television of The Magic Kingdom which, as I’m sure all of you know, is the realm of Snoddy the Squirrel …”

  (Applause)

  “… I am told on good authority that he has traveled widely, presenting his puppet artistry in all of its many forms, and has, on at least one occasion, performed before one of the crowned heads of Europe.”

  (Applause)

  “But before Jack sells his mother’s cow for a handful of beans—”

  “Hssst! Don’t give away the plot, Vicar!”

  (Tully Stoker, the proprietor and landlord of the Thirteen Drakes, greeted with hoots of laughter, including his own.)

  “… and while the maestro prepares his enchanted strings, the Ladies’ Auxiliary of St. Tancred’s is pleased to present, for your musical entertainment, the Misses Puddock, Lavinia and Aurelia.”

  Oh, Lord! Spare us! Please spare us!

  We had been saved from having to listen to them during the matinee performance only because their St. Nicholas Tea Room kept them too busy to attend.

  The Misses Puddock had a death grip on public events at St. Tancred’s parish hall. No matter if it was a tea put on by the Ladies’ League, a whist drive by the Altar Guild, a white elephant sale by the Ladies’ Auxiliary, or a spring flower show by the Vestry Guild, the Misses Puddock would perform, winter or summer, rain or shine.

  Miss Lavinia would seat herself at the upright piano, rummage in her string bag, and fish out at last a tattered piece of sheet music: “Napoleon’s Last Charge.”

  After an interminable wait—during which she would thrust her face forward until her nose was touching the music—she would sit back, her spine stiff as a poker, raise her hands above the keyboard, drop them, take a second squint at the music, and then tear into it like a grizzly bear clawing at a salmon in the Pathé newsreels.

  When she was finished, her sister, Miss Aurelia, would take up her position, her white-gloved fingertips idly brushing the dusty piano top, and warble (there’s no other word for what she did) “Bendemeer’s Stream.”

  Afterwards, the chairman would announce that the Vestry Guild had voted unanimously to present the Misses Puddock with an honorarium: “a purse of appreciation,” as he always put it.

  And they’re off!

  Miss Lavinia, her eyes riveted to the music, was into “Napoleon’s Last Charge,” and I noticed for the first time that, as she read the music, her lips were moving. I couldn’t help wondering what she was saying. There were no lyrics to the piece—could she be naming the chords? Or praying?

  Mercifully, she took it at a somewhat faster gallop than usual, and the thing was soon over—at least, relatively speaking. I noticed that Feely’s jaw muscles were twitching, and that Max looked as if he were biting down on a stainless-steel humbug.

  Now it was Miss Aurelia’s turn. Miss Lavinia pounded out the first few bars as an introduction before her sister joined in:

  “There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s Stream

  And the nightingale sings round it all the day long.

  At the time of my childhood ’twas like a sweet dream.”

  (Miss Aurelia’s childhood, to look at her, must have been during George the Third.)

  “To sit in the roses and hear the bird’s song.”

  When she finished, there was a smattering of polite applause, and Miss Aurelia stood with her head cocked for a few moments, checking the piano with her fingers for dust, waiting to be coaxed into an encore. But the audience, knowing better than to encourage her, settled quickly back into their seats, and some of us crossed our arms.

  As the house lights went down, I turned round for one last look at the audience. A couple of latecomers were just taking their seats on the aisle. To my horror, I saw that they were Gordon and Grace Ingleby, she in her usual dreadful black outfit, he with a bowler hat, for God’s sake! And both of them looking less than happy to be there.

  At first, I felt anger rushing up and fluttering within my chest. Why had no one warned them? Why had no one cared enough to keep them away?

  Why hadn’t I?

  Crazily, the thing that popped into my mind was something Daffy once told me: It is the duty of a constitutional monarch to warn and advise.

  If His Royal Majesty, King George the Sixth, had been among us this evening, he would be bound to take them aside and say something about the puppet with their dead child’s face. But he was not.

  Besides, it was already too late …. The hall was in total darkness. No one but me seemed to have noticed the Inglebys.

  And then the show began. Because of the interminable Misses Puddock, I suppose, Rupert had decided to cut out the Mozart sketch and go straight for the main feature.

  The red velvet curtains opened, just as they had in the afternoon, revealing the widow’s cottage. The spotlight came up to illuminate Nialla in her Mother Goose costume. Grieg’s “Morning” floated in the air, painting haunting images in the mind of dark forests and icy fjords.

  “Once upon a time, in a village not far away,” Nialla began, “there lived a widow with a son, whose name was Jack.”

  And in came Jack: the Jack with Robin Ingleby’s face.

  Again, the audible sucking-in of breath as some of the audience recognized the dead boy’s features. I scarcely dared turn and look, but by pretending my skirt had become pinched in the folding mechanism of the chair, I was able to twist round in my seat just far enough to sneak a look at the Inglebys. Grace’s eyes were wide and staring, but she did not cry out; she seemed frozen to the spot. Gordon was clutching at her hand, but she took no notice.

  On the stage, the puppet Jack shouted: “Mother, are you at home? I want my supper.”

  “Jack was a very lazy boy,” said Mother Goose. “And because he refused to work, it was not long before his mother’s small savings were completely gone. There was nothing to eat in the house, and not so much as a farthing left for food.”

  As the gasps and the murmurs died down, the sho
w went on. Rupert was in fine form, the puppets so convincing in their movements and so perfectly voiced that the audience soon fell under his enchantment—as the vicar had suggested they would.

  Lighted by the colored lamps of the stage, the faces of the people around me were the faces in a painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, red, overheated, and fiercely intent upon the little wooden actors. As Aunt Felicity crunched excitedly on a digestive mint, I noticed that even Father had a half-amused look on his face, though whether it was caused by the puppets or his sister, I could not decide.

  The business of the cow and the beans and the kick in the pants was greeted with even more raucous laughter than it had been at the afternoon performance.

  Mouths (including even Daffy’s) fell open as the beanstalk grew while Jack slept, and the audience began nudging one another with delight. By the time Jack climbed the beanstalk into the giant’s kingdom, Rupert had all of Bishop’s Lacey eating out of his hand.

  How was Mutt Wilmott reacting to this success? I wondered. Here was Rupert, obviously at his best in a live (so to speak) performance, with no television apparatus—wonderful as it was—standing between him and his audience. When I turned to look, I saw that Mutt was gone, and the vicar had taken his chair.

  More oddly, Gordon Ingleby, too, was no longer present. His chair stood empty, but Grace still sat motionless, her vacant eyes fixed on the stage, where the giant’s wife had just hidden Jack in her great stone oven.

  “Fee! Fie! Fo! Fum!” the giant roared as he came into the kitchen. “I smell the blood of an Englishman!”

  “Jack leapt out of the oven …,” said Mother Goose.

  “Master! Master!” cried the charming puppet harp, plucking at its own strings in agitation. This was the part I liked best.

  “… grabbed the golden harp, and took to his heels, with the giant close behind!”

  Down the beanstalk came Jack, the green leaves billowing round him. When the vegetation thinned out at last, the scene had changed to his mother’s cottage. It was a marvelous effect, and I couldn’t for the life of me see how Rupert had done it. I would have to ask him.

  “Mother! Mother! Fetch the axe!” Jack shrieked, and the old lady came hobbling round from the garden—oh, so slowly!—with the hatchet in her hand.

  Jack threw himself at the beanstalk with all his might, the axe flying fast and furious, the beanstalk shrinking back again and again as if in agony from the wickedly glinting blade.

  And then, as it had done before, the beanstalk sagged, and crumpled to the ground.

  Jack seemed to be looking up as, with a sound like thunder, the giant came crashing down from the sky.

  For a few moments, the monster lay twitching horribly, a trickle of ruby blood oozing from the corner of its mouth, its ghastly head and shoulders filling the stage with flying sparks, as smoke and little flames rose in acrid tendrils from its burning hair and goatee. But the blank eyes that stared out unseeing into mine were not those of the hinged giant, Galligantus—they were the glazed and dying eyes of Rupert Porson.

  And then the lights went out.

  thirteen

  PLUNGED SUDDENLY INTO DARKNESS, THE AUDIENCE sucked in a collective breath and released a collective gasp.

  In the kitchen, someone had the presence of mind to switch on a flashlight, and after a moment brought it out, like a darting will-o’-the-wisp, into the main part of the parish hall.

  How quick-witted it was of the vicar to think of closing the curtains! At least, that was what he was trying to do when he was stopped in his tracks by a loud, commanding voice: “No! No! Stand back. Don’t touch anything.”

  It was Dogger. He had risen to his feet and was blocking the vicar’s way, his arms fully extended, and seeming to be as surprised as the rest of us at his own boldness. Nialla, who had jumped up and taken a single step towards the proscenium, froze abruptly in her tracks.

  All of this took place in the moving beam of the flashlight, making the scene seem like some ghastly drama played out during an air raid, illuminated by a raking searchlight.

  A second voice came out of the darkness at the back of the hall: the voice of Inspector Hewitt.

  “Stand still, everyone—please stay where you are. Don’t move until I tell you to move.”

  He walked quickly to the front of the auditorium and vanished backstage as someone near the door vainly flicked a few switches, but the incandescent bulbs in their frosted glass wall sconces remained dark.

  There were a few grumbles of protest until Constable Linnet—out of uniform for the evening—came to the front row of chairs, holding a hand high in the air for attention. He had brought a second flashlight, which he shone upwards upon his own face, giving him an appalling and cadaverous look.

  “Please do as the Inspector says,” he told the audience. “He’s in charge here now.”

  Dr. Darby, I noticed, was already shoving his way up the crowded side aisle towards the stage.

  Nialla, when I caught a glimpse of her, seemed rooted to the spot; she had not moved a muscle. Her tall Mother Goose hat was askew and, had the situation not been what it was, I might have laughed out loud at the sight of her.

  My first reaction, of course, was to go to her, but I found I was being restrained by one of Father’s hands, heavy on my arm.

  As Rupert’s body crashed to the stage, both Daffy and Feely had leapt to their feet. Father was still motioning them to sit down, but they were too excited to pay him any attention.

  The Inspector reappeared in the doorway at the left of the stage. There were two of these hallways—one on either side—each leading to an exit and a short set of steps up to the stage. It was in these pens that choirs of giggling angels were usually marshaled for St. Tancred’s annual Christmas Pageant.

  “Constable Linnet, may I have your flashlight, please?”

  PC Linnet handed over his five-cell Ever Ready, which looked like one of the sort that you see being used to search the foggy moors in the cinema. He had probably brought it along to illuminate his way home through the lanes after the show, never thinking it would come in so handy.

  “May I have your attention, please,” Inspector Hewitt said. “We are making every attempt to restore the lights, but it may be some time before we’re able to turn them back on permanently. It may be necessary, for safety’s sake, to switch the current on and off several times. I would ask you to resume your seats, and to remain there until such time as I am able to give you further instructions. There is absolutely no cause for alarm, so please remain calm.”

  I heard him say quietly to Constable Linnet, “Cover the stage. That banner on the balcony will do.” He pointed to a wide swath of canvas that stretched across the front of the balcony, above the main door: St. Tancred’s Women’s Institute, it said, with a red and white Cross of St. George, One Hundred Years of Service 1850–1950.

  “And when you’ve done that,” the Inspector added, “ring up Graves and Woolmer. Give them my compliments, and ask them to come as quickly as possible.”

  “It’s their evening for cricket, sir,” said PC Linnet.

  “So it is. In that case, give them my compliments and my regrets. I’m sure the vicar will permit you the use of the telephone?”

  “Dear me!” said the vicar, looking round the hall in puzzlement. “We do have one, of course … for the use of the Ladies’ Auxiliary and the Women’s Institute, you know … but I fear we’ve been forced to keep it in a locked cupboard in the kitchen … so many people making long-distance calls to their friends in Devon—or even Scotland, in one instance.”

  “And the key?” asked Inspector Hewitt.

  “I handed it to a gentleman from London, just before the performance—from the BBC, he said he was—needed to make an urgent call … said he’d reimburse me from his own pocket as soon as the central operator rang back with the charges. How odd, I don’t see him here now.

  “Still, there’s always the vicarage telephone,” he added.

  M
y first impulse was to offer to pick the lock, but before I could say a word, Inspector Hewitt shook his head.

  “I’m sure we can have the hinges off with no damage.”

  He crooked a finger at George Carew, the village carpenter, who was out of his chair like a shot.

  Aside from the occasional dull glow from the backstage flashlight, we sat in darkness for what seemed like an eternity.

  And then suddenly, the lights came back on, causing us all to blink and rub our eyes, and to look round at one another rather foolishly.

  And there was Rupert, his dead face, frozen in a look of surprise, still occupying center stage. They would soon be covering his body with the banner, and I realized that if I were to remember the scene for future reference, I needed to make a series of indelible mental snapshots. I wouldn’t have long to work.

  Click!

  The eyes: The pupils were hugely dilated, so much so that if I had been able to get a bit closer, I was quite sure I should have been able to see myself reflected in their convex surfaces as clearly as Jan van Eyck was reflected in the bedroom mirror in his painting of the Arnolfinis’ wedding day.

  Not for long, though: Rupert’s corneas had already begun to film over and the whites to lose their luster.

  Click!

  The body was no longer twitching. The skin had taken on a milky bluish tinge. The corner of the mouth seemed to have stopped bleeding, and what little blood was still visible now appeared very slightly darker and thicker, although the red, green, and amber bulbs of the footlights might be influencing my color perception.

  Click!

  On the forehead, just below the scalp, was a dark discoloration the size and shape of a sixpence. Although the hair was still smoldering, filling the hall with the acrid odor one would expect whenever the sulfur-rich amino acid keratin is burnt, it was not enough to account for the smoke that was still gathering—still hanging heavily—about the lights. I could see that the curtains and the scenery were quite intact, so it must be something else that was still combusting backstage. Judging by the smell of burning grass, I guessed that it was linen—probably seersucker.