2 The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag: A Flavia De Luce Mystery (12 page)

Which described perfectly what Nialla looked like. Her hair hung in long, unwashed strings, and the black circles under her red eyes reminded me of something I’d rather not think about. Either she’d ridden with witches all night from steeple to steeple, or she and Rupert had had a filthy great row.

Her silence told me it was Rupert.

“Fresh bacon … fresh eggs,” Rupert went on, giving his chest a hearty pounding, like Tarzan, with his fists. “Sets a man up for the day.”

Without so much as a glance at me, Nialla darted past and ducked into the parish hall—to the ladies’ W.C., I expected.

Naturally, I followed.

Nialla was on her knees, shouting “Rope!” into the porcelain, crying and vomiting at the same time. I bolted the door.

“You’re having a baby, aren’t you?” I asked.

She looked up at me, her mouth gaping open, her face white. “How did you know?” she gasped.

I wanted to say “Elementary,” but I knew this was no time for cheek.

“I did a lysozome test on the handkerchief you used.”

Nialla scrambled to her feet and seized me by the shoulders. “Flavia, you mustn’t breathe a word of this! Not a word! Nobody knows but you.”

“Not even Rupert?” I asked. I could hardly believe it.

“Especially Rupert,” she said. “He’d kill me if he knew. Promise me. Please, Flavia … promise me!”

“On my honor,” I said, holding up three fingers in the Girl Guide salute. Although I had been chucked from that organization for insubordination (among other things), I felt it was hardly necessary to share the gruesome details with Nialla.

“Bloody good job we’re camped in the country. They must have heard us for miles around, the way the two of us went at one another’s throats. It was about a woman, of course. It’s always about a woman, isn’t it?”

This was beyond my field of expertise, but still, I tried to look attentive.

“It never takes long for Rupert to zero in on the skirt. You saw it; we weren’t in Jubilee Field for half a tick when he was off up the wood with that Land Girl, Sarah, or whatever her name is.”

“Sally,” I said.

Although it was an interesting idea, I knew that Rupert had, in actual fact, been smoking Indian hemp in Gibbet Wood with Gordon Ingleby. But I could hardly tell Nialla that. Sally Straw had been nowhere in sight.

“I thought you said he went to see about the van.”

“Oh, Flavia, you’re such a—” She bit off the word in the nick of time. “Of course I said that. I didn’t want to air our dirty laundry in front of a stranger.”

Did she mean me—or was she referring to Dieter?

“Rupert always smudges himself with smoke, trying to cover up the scent of his tarts. I smell it on him.

“But I went a bit too far,” she added ruefully. “I opened up the van and threw the first thing at him that came to hand. I shouldn’t have. It was his new Jack puppet: He’s been working on it for weeks. The old one’s getting tatty, you see, and it tends to come apart at the worst possible moment.

“Like me,” she wailed, and threw up again.

I wished that I could make myself useful, but this was one of those situations in which a bystander can do nothing to help.

“Up all the night he was, trying to fix the thing.”

By the fresh marks on her neck, I could see that Rupert had done more in the night than patch up a puppet.

“Oh, I wish I were dead,” she moaned.

There was a banging at the door: a sharp, rapid volley of rat-a-tat-tat knocks.

“Who’s in there?” a woman’s voice demanded, and my heart cringed. It was Cynthia Richardson.

“There may be others wishing to use the facilities,” she called. “Please try to be more considerate of other people’s needs.”

“Just coming, Mrs. Richardson,” I called out. “It’s me, Flavia.”

Damn the woman! How could I quickly feign illness?

I grabbed the cotton hand towel from the ring beside the sink, and gave my face a rough scrubbing. I could feel the blood rising even as I worked. I messed up my hair, ran a bit of water from the tap and mopped it across my reddening brow, and let loose a thread of spit to dangle horribly from the corner of my mouth.

Then I flushed the toilet and unbolted the door.

As I waited for Cynthia to open it, as I knew she would, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: I was the very image of a malaria victim whose doctor had just stepped out to ring the undertaker.

As the knob turned and the door swung inwards, I took a couple of unsteady steps out into the hallway, puffing out my cheeks as if I were about to vomit. Cynthia shrank back against the wall.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Richardson,” I said shakily. “I’ve just sicked up. It must have been something I ate. Nialla’s been very kind … but I think, with a bit of fresh air, I’ll be all right.”

And I tottered past her with Nialla in my wake; Cynthia didn’t give her so much as a glance.

“You are terrifying,” Nialla said. “You really are. Do you know that?”

We were sitting on a slab tomb in the churchyard as I waited for the sun to dry my feverish face. Nialla put away her lipstick and rummaged in her bag for a comb.

“Yes,” I said, matter-of-factly. It was true—and there was no use denying it.

“Aha!” said a voice. “Here you are, then!”

A dapper little man in slacks and jacket with a yellow silk shirt was coming rapidly towards us. His neck was swathed in a mauve ascot, and an unlit pipe protruded from between his teeth. He stepped gingerly from side to side, trying not to tread directly on some of the more sunken graves.

“Oh, God!” Nialla groaned without moving her mouth, and then to him: “Hello, Mutt. Half-holiday at the monkey house, is it?”

“Where’s Rupert?” he demanded. “Inside?”

“How lovely to see you, Nialla,” Nialla said. “How perfectly lovely you’re looking today, Nialla. Forgotten your manners, Mutt?”

Mutt—or whoever he was—turned on his heel in the grass and trod off towards the parish hall, still minding where he stepped.

“Mutt Wilmott,” Nialla told me. “Rupert’s producer at the BBC. They had a flaming row last week and Rupert walked out right in the middle of it. Left Mutt holding the bag with Auntie—the Corporation, I mean. But how on earth did he find us? Rupert thought we’d be quite safe here. ‘Rusticating in the outback,’ he called it.”

“He got off the train at Doddingsley yesterday morning,” I said, making a leap of deduction, but knowing I was right.

Nialla sighed. “I’d better go in. There’s bound to be fireworks.”

Even before we reached the door, I could hear Rupert’s voice rising furiously inside the echoing hall.

“I don’t care what Tony said. Tony can go sit on a paintbrush, and so can you, Mutt, come to think of it. You’ve shat on Rupert Porson for the last time—the lot of you.”

As we entered, Rupert was halfway up the little staircase that led to the stage. Mutt stood in the middle of the hall with his hands on his hips. Neither seemed to notice we were there.

“Oh, come off it, Rupert. Tony has every right to tell you when you’ve overstepped the mark. And hearken unto me, Rupert, this time you have overstepped the mark, and by quite a long chalk at that. It’s all very well for you to stir up a hornet’s nest and then dodge the flak by taking your little show on the road. That’s what you always do, don’t you? But this time you at least owe him the courtesy of a hearing.”

“I don’t owe Tony a parson’s whistle.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, old boy. How many binds has he extracted you from?”

Rupert said nothing as Mutt ticked them off on his fingers.

“Well, let’s see: There was the little incident with Marco. Then there was the one with Sandra Paisley—a nasty business, that. Then the thing with Sparkman and Blondel—cost the BBC a bundle, that one did. To say nothing of—”

“Shut your gob, Mutt!”

Mutt went on counting. “To say nothing of that girl in Beckenham … what was her name … Lulu? Lulu, for God’s sake!”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

Rupert was into a full-fledged tantrum. He came storming stiff-legged down the steps, his brace clattering dreadfully. I glanced over at Nialla, who had suddenly become as pale and as still as a painted Madonna. Her hand was at her mouth.

“Go get in your bloody Jaguar, little man, and drive it straight to hell!” Rupert snarled. “Leave me alone!”

Mutt was not intimidated. Even though they were now nose to nose, he didn’t give an inch. Rather, he plucked an imaginary bit of lint from the sleeve of his jacket and pretended to watch it float to the floor.

“Didn’t drive down, old boy. Came by British Rail. You know as well as I that the BBC’s cutting back on expenses, what with the Festival of Britain next year, and all that.”

Rupert’s eyes widened as he spotted Nialla.

“Who told you we were here?” he shouted, pointing. “Her?”

“Hold on, hold on,” Mutt said, his voice rising for the first time. “Don’t go blaming Nialla. As a matter of fact it was a Mrs. Something right here in Bishop’s Lacey. Her boy saw your van by the church and scooted off home to tell Mummy he’d hold his breath and pop if he couldn’t have Porson’s Puppets for his birthday party, but by the time he dragged her back, you were gone. She made a long-distance call to the BBC, and the switchboard put her through to Tony’s secretary. Tony told me to come and fetch you straightaway. And here I am. End of story. So don’t go blaming Nialla.”

“All snug with Nialla, are you?” Rupert fumed. “Sneaking round on—”

Mutt placed the palm of his hand on Rupert’s chest. “And while we’re at it, Rupert, I might as well tell you that if you lay so much as a fingerprint on her again, I’ll—”

Rupert shoved Mutt’s hand away roughly. “Don’t threaten me, you vile little snail. Not if you value living!”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen! What on earth? You must stop this at once.”

It was the vicar. He stood in the open doorway, a dark figure against the daylight.

Nialla ducked past him and fled. I quickly followed.

“Dear lady,” the vicar said, holding out an engraved brass collection plate. “Try a cucumber and lettuce sandwich. They’re said to be remarkably soothing. I made them myself.” Made them himself? Had domestic warfare been declared at the vicarage?

We were outside in the churchyard again, quite near the spot where I had first seen Nialla weeping facedown on the gravestone. Had it been only two days ago? It seemed an eternity.

“No, thank you, Vicar,” Nialla said. “I’m quite myself again, and I have things to do.”

Lunch was a trial. Because the windows of the hall had been covered with heavy blackout curtains for the performance, we sat in near darkness as the vicar fussed with sandwiches and a jug of lemonade he must have conjured from thin air. Nialla and I sat at one end of the front row of chairs, with Mutt at the other. Rupert had vanished backstage some time before.

“We shall soon have to open the doors,” said the vicar, drawing back the edge of a curtain for a peek outside. “Our public has already begun to queue up, their pockets heavy with coins of the realm.”

He consulted his watch. “Ninety minutes to curtain time,” he called through cupped hands. “Ninety minutes.”

“Flavia,” Nialla said, “be a dear—run backstage and tell Rupert to fade the music down when I begin speaking. He botched it in Fringford, and I don’t want it to happen again.”

I looked at her questioningly.

“Please—as a favor. I’ve my costume to get ready, and I don’t much want to see him right now.”

Actually, I didn’t much want to see Rupert either. As I plodded up the steps to the stage, I thought of Sydney Carton ascending the scaffold to meet Madame Guillotine. I found the opening in the black tormentor drapes that hung on either side of the puppet stage, and stepped through into another world.

Little pools of light were everywhere, illuminating rows of electrical switches and controls, their wires and cables snaking off in all directions. Behind the stage, everything fell away into darkness, and the glow of the little lamps, gentle as it was, made it impossible to see beyond the shadows.

“Come up,” said a voice from the darkness above me. It was Rupert.

“There’s a ladder on the other side. Watch your step.”

I felt my way round the back of the stage and found the rungs with my hands. A few steps up and I found myself standing on a raised wooden platform that ran across and above the back of the puppet stage.

A sturdy rail of black metal piping provided support for Rupert’s waist as he leaned forward to operate his puppets. Although they were turned away so that I could not see their faces, several of these jointed characters were hanging from a rod behind me: an old woman, a man, and a boy, judging from their peasant clothing.

To one side, and within easy reach, the magnetic tape recorder was mounted, its two spools loaded with a shiny brown ribbon which, judging by its color, I thought must be coated with an emulsion of iron oxide.

“Nialla said to remember to lower the music volume when she starts speaking,” I whispered, as if telling him a secret.

“All right,” he said. “No need to whisper. The curtains absorb the sound. No one can hear us up here.”

This was not a particularly comforting thought. If he were so inclined, Rupert could put his powerful hands around my neck and strangle me in luxurious silence. No one out front would be any the wiser until there was nothing left of me but a limp corpse.

“Well, I’d better be getting back,” I said. “I’m helping with the tickets.”

“Right,” Rupert said, “but have a look at this before you go. Not many kids get a chance to come backstage.”

As he spoke, he reached out and rotated a large knob, and the lights faded up on the stage below us. I nearly lost my balance as the little world seemed to materialize from nothingness beneath my feet. I found myself suddenly gazing down, like God, into a dreamy countryside of blue sky and green painted hills. Nestled in a valley was a thatched cottage with a bench in the yard, and a ramshackle cowshed.

It took my breath away.

“You made all this?”

Rupert smiled and reached for another control. As he moved it, the daylight faded away to darkness and the lights came on in the windows of the cottage.