The Weed That Strings the Hangmans Bag - Alan Bradley

"Keeping a scrapbook is the perfect pastime for a young lady," Nialla was saying. "Genteel ... and yet educational."

My thoughts precisely.

"My mum tossed mine in the dustbin when I ran away from home," she said with something that had it lived might have become a chuckle.

"You ran away from home?" I asked.

This fact intrigued me almost as much as her foxgloves, from which, I recalled, the vegetable alkaloid digitalin (better known to those of us who are chemists as C36H56O14) could be extracted. I thought with pleasure for a moment of the several times in my laboratory I had exhausted with alcohol the leaves of foxglove plucked from the kitchen garden, watching the slender, shining needles as they crystallized, and the lovely emerald green solution that was formed when I dissolved them in hydrochloric acid and added water. The precipitated resin could, of course, be restored to its original green hue with sulfuric acid, turned light red by bromine vapor, and back to emerald green again with the addition of water. It was magical! It was also, of course, a deadly poison, and as such, was certainly far more gripping than stupid buttons and The Girl's Own Annual.

"Mmmm," she said. "Got tired of washing up, drying up, sweeping up, and dusting up, and listening to the people next door throwing up; tired of lying in bed at night, listening for the clatter of the prince's horse on the cobblestones."

I grinned.

"Rupert changed all that, of course," she said. "'Come with me to the Doorway of Diarbekir,' he told me. 'Come to the Orient and I will make you a princess in liquid silks and diamonds the size of market cabbages.'"

"He did?"

"No. What he actually said was, 'My bloody assistant's run out on me. Come with me to Lyme Regis at the weekend and I'll give you a guinea, six square meals, and a bag to sleep in. I'll teach you the art of manipulation,' he said, and I was bloody fool enough to think he was talking about puppets."

Before I had time to ask for details, she had jumped to her feet and dusted off her skirt.

"Speaking of Rupert," she said, "we'd better go in and see how he and the vicar are getting on. It's ominously quiet in the parish hall. Do you suppose they might already have murdered one another?"

Her flowered dress swished gracefully off among the tombstones, and I was left to trot doggedly along in her wake.

Inside, we found the vicar standing in the middle of the hall. Rupert was up on the platform, center stage, hands on hips. Had he been taking a curtain call at the Old Vic, the lighting could not have been more dramatic. As if dispatched by Fate, an unexpected ray of sunlight shone in through a stained-glass window at the rear of the hall, fixing Rupert's upturned face dead center in its round golden beam. He struck a pose, and began spouting Shakespeare:"When my love swears that she is made of truth,

I do believe her though I know she lies,

That she might think me some untutored youth,

Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.

Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,

Although she knows my days are past the best,

Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:

On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed."

As the vicar had mentioned, the acoustics of the hall were quite remarkable. The Victorian builders had made its interior a conch shell of curved, polished wood paneling that served as a sounding board for the faintest noise: It was like being inside a Stradivarius violin. Rupert's warm, honey-sweet voice was everywhere, wrapping us all in its rich resonance:"But wherefore says she not she is unjust?

And wherefore say not I that I am old?

O love's best habit is in seeming trust,

And age in love, loves not to have years told.

Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

"Can you hear me now, vicar?"

The spell was instantly broken. It was as if Laurence Olivier had tossed "Woof! Woof! Testing ... one ... two ... three," into the middle of "To be, or not to be."

"Brilliant!" the vicar exclaimed.

What surprised me most about Rupert's speech was that I knew what he was saying. Because of the nearly imperceptible pause at the end of each line, and the singular way in which he illustrated the shades of meaning with his long white fingers, I understood the words. Every single one of them.

As if they had been sucked in through my pores by osmosis, I knew even as they swept over me that I was hearing the bitter words of an old man to a love far younger than himself.

I glanced at Nialla. Her hand was at her throat.

In the echoing wooden silence that followed, the vicar stood stock-still, as if he were carved from black and white marble.

I was witnessing something that not all of us understood.

"Bravo! Bravo!"

The vicar's cupped hands came suddenly clapping together in a series of echoing thunderbolts. "Bravo! Sonnet one hundred and thirty-eight, unless I'm badly mistaken. And, if I may offer up my own humble opinion, perhaps never more beautifully spoken."

Rupert positively preened.

Outside, the sun went behind a cloud. Its golden beam faded in an instant, and when it had gone, we were once again just four ordinary people in a dim and dusty room.

"Splendid," Rupert said. "The hall will do splendidly."

He stumped across the stage and began clambering awkwardly down the narrow steps, the fingers of one hand splayed out against the wall for support.

"Careful!" Nialla said, taking a quick step towards him.

"Get back!" he snapped, with a look of utter ferocity. "I can manage."

She stopped short in her tracks--as if he had slapped her in the face.

"Nialla thinks I'm her child." He laughed, trying to make a joke of it.

By her murderous look, I could see that Nialla didn't think any such thing.

* THREE *

"WELL, THEN!" THE VICAR said brightly, rubbing his hands together, as if the moment hadn't happened. "That's settled. Where shall we begin?" He looked eagerly from one of them to the other.

"By unloading the van, I suppose," Rupert said. "I assume we can leave things here until the show?"

"Oh, of course ... of course," said the vicar. "The parish hall's as safe as houses. Perhaps even a little safer."

"Then someone will need to have a look at the van ... and we'll want a place to put up for a few days."

"Leave that department to me," the vicar said. "I'm sure I can manage something. Now then, up sleeves, and to work we go. Come along, Flavia, dear. I'm sure we'll find something suited to your special talents."

Something suited to my special talents? Somehow I doubted it--unless the subject was criminal poisoning, which was my chief delight.

But still, because I didn't feel up to going home to Buckshaw just yet, I pasted on my best Girl Guide (retired) smile for the vicar, and followed him, along with Rupert and Nialla, outside into the churchyard.

As Rupert swung open the rear doors of the van, I had my first glimpse into the life of a traveling showman. The Austin's dim interior was beautifully fitted out with row upon row of varnished drawers, each one nestled snugly above, beside, and below its neighbors: very like the boxes of shoes in a well-run boot maker's shop, with each drawer capable of sliding in and out on its own track. Piled on the floor of the van were the larger boxes--shipping crates, really--with rope handles at the ends to facilitate their being pulled out and lugged to wherever they were going.

"Rupert made it all himself," Nialla said, proudly. "The drawers, the folding stage, the lighting equipment ... made the spotlights out of old paint tins, didn't you, Rupert?"

Rupert nodded absently as he hauled away at a bundle of iron tubing.

"And that's not all. He cut the cables, made the props, painted the scenery, carved the puppets ... everything--except that, of course."

She was pointing to a bulky black case with a leather handle and perforations in the side.

"What's in there? Is it an animal?"

Nialla laughed.

"Better than that. It's Rupert's pride and joy: a magnetic recorder. Had it sent him from America. Cost him a pretty penny, I can tell you. Still, it's cheaper than hiring the BBC orchestra to play the incidental music!"

Rupert had already begun to tug boxes out of the Austin, grunting as he worked. His arms were like dockyard cranes, lifting and turning ... lifting and turning, until at last, nearly everything was piled in the grass.

"Allow me to lend a hand," the vicar said, seizing a rope handle at the end of a black coffin-shaped trunk with the word "Galligantus" stenciled upon it in white letters, as Rupert took the other end.

Nialla and I went back and forth, back and forth, with the lighter bits and pieces, and within half an hour, everything was piled up inside the parish hall in front of the stage.

"Well done!" the vicar said, dusting off the sleeves of his jacket. "Well done, indeed. Now then, would Saturday be suitable? For the show, I mean? Let me see ... today is Thursday ... that would give you an extra day to make ready, as well as time to have your van repaired."

"Sounds all right to me," Rupert said. Nialla nodded, even though she hadn't been asked.

"Saturday it is, then. I'll have Cynthia run off handbills on the hectograph. She can take them round the shops tomorrow ... slap a few up in strategic places. Cynthia's such a good sport about these things."

Of the many phrases that came to mind to describe Cynthia Richardson, "good sport" was not among them; "ogress," however, was.

It was after all Cynthia, with her rodent features, who had once caught me teetering tiptoe on the altar of St. Tancred's, using one of Father's straight razors to scrape a sample of blue zafre from a medieval stained-glass window. Zafre was an impure basic arsenate of cobalt, prepared by roasting, which the craftsmen of the Middle Ages had used for painting on glass, and I was simply dying to analyze the stuff in my laboratory to determine how successful its makers had been in the essential step of freeing it of iron.

Cynthia had seized me, upended me, and spanked me on the spot, making what I thought to be unfair use of a nearby copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern (Standard Edition).

"What you have done, Flavia, is not worthy of congratulation," Father said when I reported this outrage to him. "You have ruined a perfectly good Thiers-Issard hollow-ground blade."

I have to admit, though, that Cynthia was a great organizer, but then, so were the men with whips who got the pyramids built. Certainly, if anyone could manage to paper Bishop's Lacey from end to end in three days with handbills, it was Cynthia Richardson.

"Hold on!" the vicar exclaimed. "I've just had the most splendid idea! Tell me what you think. Why not present two shows rather than one? I don't claim to be an expert in the art of the puppet theater, by any means--knowing what is possible and what is not, and so forth--but why not put on a show Saturday afternoon for the children, and another Saturday evening, when more of the grownups would be free to attend?"

Rupert did not reply at once, but stood rubbing his chin. Even I could see instantly that two performances would double the take at the box office.

"Well ..." he said at last. "I suppose. It would have to be the same show both times, though ..."

"Splendid!" said the vicar. "What's it to be, then ... the program, that is?"

"Open with a short musical piece," Rupert said. "It's a new one I've been working up. No one's seen it yet, so this would be a good chance to try it out. Then Jack and the Beanstalk. They always clamor for Jack and the Beanstalk, young and old alike. Classic fare. Very popular."

"Smashing!" the vicar said. He pulled a folded sheet of paper and the nub of a pencil from an inner pocket and scribbled a few notes.

"How's this?" he asked, with a final flourish, then, with a pleased look on his face, read aloud what he had written:"Direct from London!

"I hope you'll forgive the small fib and the exclamation point," he whispered to Nialla."Porson's Puppets

"(Operated by the acclaimed Rupert Porson. As seen on the BBC Television)"Program"I. A Musical Interlude

"II. Jack and the Beanstalk(The former being presented for the first time on any stage; the latter declared to be universally popular with old and young alike.)

Saturday, July 22nd, 1950, at St. Tancred's Parish Hall, Bishop's Lacey.

Performances at 2:00 P.M. and 7:00 P.M. sharp!

"... Otherwise they'll just dawdle in," he added. "I'll have Cynthia dash off a sketch of a little jointed figure with strings to put at the top. She's an exceedingly talented artist, you know--not that she's had as many opportunities as she'd like to express herself--oh, dear, I fear I'm rambling. I'd best away to my telephonic duties."

And with that he was gone.

"Peculiar old duck," Rupert remarked.

"He's all right," I told him. "He leads rather a sad life."

"Ah," Rupert said, "I know what you mean. Funerals, and all that."

"Yes," I said. "Funerals and all that."

But I was thinking more of Cynthia.

"Which way to the mains?" Rupert asked suddenly.

For a moment I was dumbfounded. I must have looked particularly unintelligent.

"The mains," he repeated. "The current. The electrical controls. But then I don't suppose you'd know where they are, would you?"

As it happened, I did. Only weeks before I had been press-ganged into standing backstage with Mrs. Witty, helping to throw the massive levers of the antique lighting control panel, as her first-year ballet students tripped across the boards in their recital of The Golden Apples of the Sun, in which Pomona (Deirdre Skidmore, in insect netting) wooed the reluctant Hyas (a red-faced Gerald Plunkett in improvised tights cut from a pair of winter-weight long johns), by presenting him with an ever-growing assortment of papier-mache fruit.

"Stage right," I said. "Behind the black tormentor curtains."

Rupert blinked once or twice, shot me a barbed look, and clattered back up the narrow steps to the stage. For a few moments we could hear him muttering away to himself up there, punctuated by the metallic sounds of panels being opened and slammed, and switches clicked on and off.

"Don't mind him," Nialla whispered. "He's always nervous as a cat from the minute a show's booked until the final curtain falls. After that, he's generally as right as rain."

As Rupert tinkered with the electricity, Nialla began unfastening several bundles of smooth wooden posts, which were bound tightly together with leather straps.