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

But before I could put my mind to work, the door was flung open.

"What are you doing in here?"

Needless to say, it was Cynthia. She closed the door craftily behind her.

"Oh, hello, Mrs. Richardson," I said. "I just looked in to see if Meg was still here. Not that she would be, of course, but I worry about her, you see, and ..."

When you're stumped for words, use your hands. This was a dodge that had never failed me in the past, and I hoped that it would not now.

I snatched at the wadded afghan and began to fold it. As I did so, something dropped with a barely audible plop to the carpet.

"I just thought I'd help tidy up, then see if they can put me to work in the kitchen.

"Drat!" I said, as I let a corner of the afghan escape my fingers. "Oh, sorry, Mrs. Richardson, I'm afraid I'm quite clumsy. We're so spoiled at Buckshaw, you know."

Awkwardly, I spread out the afghan on the floor, crouched in front of it, and began folding again. Under cover of its colorful woolen squares — and using my body to block Cynthia's view — I ran my fingers across the carpet.

I felt it at once: a cold, flat, metallic object. Using my thumb as a clamp, I pressed it firmly into my palm. As long as I kept my hands moving, all would be well. That was the way the sleight-of-hand magicians worked. I could always pocket the thing later.

"Here, give me that," Cynthia said.

I panicked! She had caught me out after all.

As she stepped into the room, I began a frantic jitterbug, kicking up my legs and throwing my elbows out like pikestaffs.

"Oh!" I said. "That afghan's making me itchy all over. I have a nasty allergy to wool."

I began scratching myself furiously: my arms, the back of my hands, my calves ... anywhere, just as long as I didn't let my hands come to rest.

When I got to my neck, I shoved my hand into the top of my dress and let go the object from my palm. I felt it fall inside — and stop at my waist.

"Give me that," she repeated, snatching the afghan from my hands.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized that she hadn't seen whatever it was I'd retrieved. It was the afghan she wanted, and I held it out cheerily, giving myself several more houndlike scratches for insurance purposes.

"I'll go help in the kitchen," I said, moving towards the door.

"Flavia — " Cynthia said, stepping in front of the door and seizing my wrist in one rapid motion.

I looked into her pale blue watery eyes and they did not waver.

But at that instant, there was laughter outside in the hallway as the first parishioners arrived from the church.

"One thing we de Luce girls are good at" — I grinned into her face as I slipped round her and out the door — "is making tea!"

I had no more intention of making tea than of signing on as a coal pit donkey.

Still, I made a beeline down the hall and into the kitchen.

"Good morning, Mrs. Roberts! Good morning, Miss Roper! Just checking to see if you have enough cups and saucers?"

"Plenty, thank you, Flavia, dear," Mrs. Roberts said. She had been doing this since the dawn of time.

"But you can put the eggs in the bottom of the fridge on your way out," Miss Roper told me. "The egg lady must have left them on the kitchen counter yesterday. Nothing keeps in this weather, not the way it used to, at any rate. And while you're at it, dear, you can fill that pitcher with lemonade. Mr. Spirling likes a nice glass of lemonade after church, and as he's always so generous when the collection plate goes round, we wouldn't want to get into his bad books, would we?"

Before they could devise another task, I flew busily out the kitchen door. Later, when they had a moment — when they were washing up, perhaps — Mrs. Roberts and Miss Roper would remark to one another what a nice girl I was — and how unlike my sisters.

Outside in the churchyard, Father still stood on the cobbled walk, listening patiently to Bunny Spirling, who was telling him, word for word, what he had just said to the vicar. Father nodded from time to time, probably to keep his neck from going to sleep.

I stepped off the path and into the grass, pretending to inspect the inscription on a weathered gravestone that jutted up like a yellowed tooth from a green gum (Hezekiah Huff 1672-1746, At Peece In Paradice) . Turning my back on the gossiping stragglers, I extracted the metal object I had dropped down the front of my dress: It was, as I knew it would be, Nialla's orange cloisonne butterfly compact. It lay cradled in the flat of my hand, gleaming softly in the warm sunlight. Meg must have dropped it while sleeping on the couch in the vicar's study.

I'd return it to Nialla later, I thought, shoving it into my pocket. She'd be happy to have it back.

As I rejoined the family, I saw that Daffy was perched on the stone wall at the front of the churchyard with her nose stuck in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy , her latest grand enthusiasm. How she had managed to slip such a fat volume in and out of church I could not even begin to imagine, until I came close enough to spot the neatly made tinfoil cross she had glued to its black cover. Oh, what a fraud she was! Well done, Daff!

Feely stood laughing under an oak, letting her hair fall forward to cover her face, the way she does when she wants to look like Veronica Lake. Basking in her attention, and dressed in a rough wool suit, was a tall, blond Nordic god. It took me a moment to recognize him as Dieter Schrantz, and I realized, not without a sinking feeling, that he was already completely in Feely's thrall, hanging on her every word like a ball on a rubber string, nodding like a demented woodpecker, and grinning like a fool.

They did not even notice my look of disgust.

Aunt Felicity was talking to an elderly person with a hearing trumpet. It seemed, from their conversation, that they were old friends.

"But one mustn't arch one's back and spit!" the old lady was saying, curling her red-nailed fingers into a claw, at which they both cackled obscenely.

Dogger, meanwhile, sat patiently on a bench beneath a yew tree, his eyes closed, a slight smile on his lips, and his face upturned towards the summer sun, looking for all the world like one of those modern brass sculptures called Sunday .

No one paid me the slightest attention. I was on my own.

The double doors in the porch of the parish hall were draped with a rope, from which hung a notice: Police Line — Do Not Cross .

I didn't: I walked round the back of the building and went in by one of the exits.

It was pitch dark inside. At the far end of the corridor, I knew, was the door that opened into the auditorium. To my right were the several steps that led up to the stage.

I could hear the rumble of men's voices, and although I strained my ears to the utmost, I could not make out what they were saying. The black velvet curtains that lined the stage must be absorbing their words.

Unable to make any sense of the murmur, and because I didn't want to risk being caught eavesdropping, I clattered noisily up the stairs.

"Hullo!" I shouted. "Anyone for tea?"

Inspector Hewitt was standing in a pool of light talking to sergeants Woolmer and Graves. At the sight of me, he broke off at once and came striding across the stage behind the puppet theater.

"You oughtn't to be in here. Didn't you see the signs?"

"Sorry," I said, without answering his question. "I came in the back way."

"No signs in the rear, Sergeant?" the Inspector asked Graves.

"Sorry, sir," the sergeant said with a sheepish grin. "I'll see to it right away."

"Too late now," the Inspector said. "The damage is done."

Sergeant Graves lost the grin and his brow furrowed. "Sorry, sir," he said. "Entirely my fault."