Alan Bradley - The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

It was a magnificent job of acting, and I had to give her top marks for the way in which she disguised her fear with an open and cheery manner.

I had to shift a bit so that she could fish in her pocket for the lipstick. As she held it out, Meg's filthy fingers snapped the golden tube from her hand. Without taking her eyes from Nialla's face, Meg painted a broad swathe of the stuff across her chapped and dirty lips, pressing them together as if she were drinking from a straw.

"Lovely!" Nialla said. "Gorgeous!"

Again she reached into her pocket and extracted an enamel powder compact, an exquisite thing of flame orange cloisonne, shaped like a butterfly. She flipped it open to reveal the little round mirror in the lid, and after a quick glance at herself, handed it over to Meg.

"Here, have a look."

In a flash, Meg had seized the compact and was scrutinizing herself in the glass, turning her head animatedly from side to side. Satisfied with what she saw, she rewarded us with a broad grin that revealed the black gaps left by several missing teeth.

"Lovely!" she muttered. "Smashing!" And she shoved the orange butterfly into her pocket.

"Here! — " Rupert made a grab for it, and Meg drew back, startled, as if noticing him for the first time. Her smile vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

"I know you," she said darkly, her eyes fixed on his goatee. "You're the Devil, you are. Aye, that's what's gone and happened — the Devil's come back to Gibbet Wood."

And with that, she stepped backwards into the hedgerow and was gone.

Rupert climbed awkwardly out of the van and slammed the door.

"Rupert — " Nialla called out. But rather than going into the bushes after Meg, as I thought he would, Rupert walked a short distance up the road, looked round a bit, and then came slowly back, his feet stirring up the dust.

"It's only a gentle slope, and we're no more than a stone's throw from the top," he reported. "If we can push her up as far as that old chestnut, we can coast down the far side. Might even start her up again. Like to steer, Flavia?"

Although I had spent hours sitting in Harriet's old Phantom II in our coach house, it had been always for purposes of reflection or escape. I had never actually been in control of a moving motorcar. Although the idea was not unattractive at first, I quickly realized that I had no real desire to find myself hurtling out of control down the east side of Gibbet Hill, and coming to grief among the scenery.

"No," I said. "Perhaps Nialla — "

"Nialla doesn't like to drive," he snapped.

I knew at once that I had put my foot in it, so to speak. By suggesting that Nialla steer, I was at the same time suggesting that Rupert get off his backside and push — withered leg and all.

"What I meant," I said, "was that you're probably the only one of us who can get the motor started again."

It was the oldest trick in the book: Appeal to his manly vanity, and I was proud to have thought of it.

"Right," he said, clambering back into the driving seat.

Nialla scrambled out, and I behind her. Any thoughts I might have had about the wisdom of someone in her condition pushing a van uphill on a hot day were instantly put aside. And besides, I could hardly bring up the subject.

Like a flash, Nialla had darted round behind the van, pressing her back flat against the rear doors and using her powerful legs to push.

"Take off the bloody hand brake, Rupert!" she shouted.

I took up a position beside her and, with every last ounce of strength that was in me, dug in my feet and pushed.

Wonder of wonders, the stupid thing began to move. Perhaps because the puppet paraphernalia had been unloaded at the parish hall, the greatly lightened van was soon creeping, snail-like but inexorably, up towards the peak of the hill. Once we had it in motion, we turned round and shoved with our hands.

The van came to a full stop only once, and that was when Rupert threw in the clutch and turned on the ignition. A tremendous black backfire came shooting out of the tailpipe, and even without looking down, I knew that I would have to explain to Father the destruction of yet another pair of white socks.

"Don't let the clutch in now — wait until we get to the top!" Nialla shouted.

"Men!" she muttered to me. "Men and their bleeding exhaust noises."

Ten minutes later we were at the crest of Gibbet Hill. In the distance, Jubilee Field sloped away towards the river, a gently rolling blanket of flax of such electric-blue intensity that it might have caused van Gogh to weep.

"One more good heave," Nialla said, "and we're on our way."

We groaned and we grunted, pushing and shoving against the hot metal, and then suddenly, as if it had become weightless, the van began moving on its own. We were on the downside of the hill.

"Quick! Jump in!" Nialla said, and we ran alongside as the van picked up speed, bucketing and bumping down the rutted road.

We jumped onto the running board, and Nialla threw open the door. A moment later we had collapsed, hugging one another, into the seat as Rupert manipulated the engine controls. Halfway down, as the motor started at last, the van gave off an alarming backfire before settling down to an unhealthy coughing. At the bottom of the hill, Rupert touched the brakes, and we turned neatly into the lane that leads to Culverhouse Farm.

Overheated from its exertions, the Austin stood sputtering and steaming like a leaky teakettle in the farmyard, which, to all intents and purposes, seemed to be abandoned. In my experience, whenever you arrived at a farm, someone always came out of the barn to greet you, wiping his oily hands on a rag and calling to a woman with a basket of eggs to bake some scones and put the tea on. At the very least, there should have been a barking dog.

Although there were no pigs in evidence, a weathered sty at the end of a row of tumbledown sheds was full of tall nettles. Beyond that was a turreted dovecote. Assorted milk pails, all of them rusty, lay scattered about the yard, and a lone hen picked halfheartedly among the weeds, watching us with its wary yellow eye.

Rupert climbed out of the van and slammed the door loudly.

"Hello?" he called. "Anyone here?"

There was no reply. He walked past a battered chopping block to the back door of the house and gave it a thunderous knocking with his fist.

"Hello? Anyone at home?"

He cupped his hands, peering in through the grimy window of what must once have been the buttery, then motioned us out of the van.

"Odd," he whispered. "There's someone standing in the middle of the room. I can see his outline against the far window." He gave the door a couple more loud bangs.

"Mr. Ingleby," I called out, "Mrs. Ingleby, it's me, Flavia de Luce. I've brought the people from the church."

There was a long silence, and then we heard the sound of heavy boots on a wooden floor. The door creaked open upon a dark interior, and a tall blond man in overalls stood blinking in the light.

I had never seen him before in my life.

"I'm Flavia de Luce," I said, "from Buckshaw." I waved my hand vaguely in its direction to the southeast. "The vicar asked me to show these people the way to Culverhouse Farm."

The blond man stepped outside, bending substantially in order to get through the low doorway without banging his head. He was what Feely would have described as "indecently gorgeous": a towering Nordic god. As this fair-haired Siegfried turned to close the door carefully behind him, I saw that there was a large, faded red circle painted on the back of his boiler suit.

It meant he was a prisoner of war.

My mind flew instantly back to the wooden block and the missing axe. Had he chopped up the Inglebys and stacked their limbs like firewood behind the kitchen stove?