Alan Bradley - The Weed That Strings the Hangmans Bag Страница 22

A leathery hand seized my wrist like a band of hot iron.

"What you up to, then? What you doin' snoopin' round this place?"

It was Mad Meg.

She shoved her sooty face so close to mine I could see the sandy bristles on the end of her chin. The witch in the wood, I thought, for one panicky moment, before I regained my senses.

"Oh, hullo, Meg," I said, as calmly as I could, trying to tame my pounding heart. "I'm glad I found you. You gave me quite a fright."

My voice was shakier than I had hoped.

"Frights as lives in Gibbet Wood," Meg said darkly. "Frights as lives here an' not elsewhere."

"Exactly," I agreed, not having the faintest idea what she was on about. "I'm glad you're here with me. Now I shan't be afraid."

"No Devil now," Meg said, rubbing her hands together. "Devil's dead and jolly good."

I remembered how frightened she had been at Rupert's performance of Jack and the Beanstalk. To Meg, Rupert was the Devil, who had killed Robin Ingleby, shrunk him to a wooden doll, and put him on the stage. Better to approach this indirectly.

"Did you have a nice rest at the vicarage, Meg?" I asked.

She spat on the trunk of an oak as if she were spitting in a rival witch's eye.

"Her turned me out," she said. "Took old Meg's bracelet and turned her out, so she did. 'Dirty, dirty.'"

"Mrs. Richardson?" I asked. "The vicar's wife? She turned you out?"

Meg grinned a horrid grin and set off through the trees at a near-gallop. I followed at her heels, through underbrush and ferns, deadfall, and the snags of thorns. Five minutes later and breathless, we were back where we had begun, at the foot of the rotted gallows.

"See there," she said, pointing. "That's where 'e took 'im."

"Took who, Meg?"

Robin Ingleby, she meant. I was sure of it.

"The Devil took Robin right here?" I asked.

"Turned 'im into wood, 'e did," she confided, looking over her shoulder. "Wood to wood."

"Did you actually see him? The Devil, I mean."

This was something that hadn't occurred to me before.

Was there a chance that Meg had seen someone in the wood with Robin? She lived, after all, in a shack among the trees, and it seemed unlikely that much happened within the bounds of Gibbet Wood that escaped her scrutiny.

"Meg saw," she said knowingly.

"What did he look like?"

"Meg saw. Old Meg sees plenty."

"Can you draw?" I asked, with sudden inspiration. I pulled my notebook from my pocket and handed her a stubby pencil.

"Here," I said, flipping to a blank page, "draw me the Devil. Draw him in Gibbet Wood. Draw the Devil taking Robin."

Meg gave something that I can describe only as a wet snicker. And then she squatted down, flattened the open notebook against her knee, and began to draw.

I think I was expecting something childish — nothing more than scrawled stick figures — but in Meg's sooty fingers, the pencil sprang to life. On the page, the glade in Gibbet Wood slowly appeared: a tree here, a tree there; now the rotted wood of the gallows, instantly recognizable. She had started at the margins and was working in towards the center of the page.

From time to time she clucked over her work, turning the pencil over and erasing a line. She was quite good, I have to give her that. Her sketch was probably better than I might have done myself.

And then she drew Robin.

I scarcely dared breathe as I looked on over her shoulder. Little by little, the dead boy took shape before my eyes.

He was hanging quite peacefully in midair, his neck canted to one side, a look of slightly surprised contentment on his face, as if he had suddenly and unexpectedly walked into a room full of angels. In spite of the subdued light of the wood, his neatly parted hair gave off a healthy, and therefore rather unnerving, shine. He wore a striped sweater and dark britches, their legs tucked carelessly into a pair of rubber boots. He must have died quickly, I thought.

Only then did she draw the noose that cramped his neck: a dark braided thing that dangled from the gallows into the space beneath. She shaded the rope with angry slashes of the pencil.

I breathed in deeply. Meg looked up at me triumphantly, seeking approval.

"And now the Devil," I whispered. "Draw the Devil, Meg."

She looked me straight in the eye, relishing the attention. A canny smile appeared at the corner of her mouth.

"Please, Meg — draw the Devil."

Without taking her eyes from mine, she licked a finger and thumb and turned elaborately to a fresh page. She began again, and as she drew, Gibbet Wood appeared once more at her fingertips. This second sketch grew darker than the first as Meg scrubbed at the pencil marks, smearing them to suggest the half-light of the glade. Then came the gallows, viewed this time from a slightly different angle.

How odd, I thought, that she didn't begin with the Devil, as most people would be tempted to do. But only when she had set the stage to her own satisfaction with trees and bushes did she begin to rough in the figure that was to be the focus of her creation.

In an approximate oval that she had left blank upon the page until now, a sketchy figure began to emerge: arms and shoulders first, followed by knees, legs, arms, hands, and feet.

It wore a black jacket, and stood on one leg in the clearing, as if captured in the midst of a frenzied dance.

Its trousers were hung by their suspenders from a low-hanging branch.

Meg shielded the paper with her left hand as she penciled in the features. When she was finished, she thrust it at me roughly, as if the paper were contaminated.

It took me a moment to recognize the face: to recognize that the figure in the glade — the Devil — was the vicar, Denwyn Richardson.

The vicar? It was too ridiculous for words. Or was it?

Just minutes earlier Meg had told me the Devil was dead, and now she was sketching him as the vicar.

What was going on in her poor addled mind?

"Are you quite sure, Meg?" I asked, tapping the notebook. "Is that the Devil?"

"Hsssst!" she said, cocking her head and putting her fingers to my lips. "Someone's comin'!"

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.