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

I read the books that she had owned, rode her bicycle, sat in her Rolls-Royce; Father had once, in a distracted moment, called me by her name. Even Aunt Felicity had put aside her gorgon manner long enough to tell me how much like Harriet I was.

But had she meant it as a compliment? Or a warning?

Most of the time I felt like an imposter; a changeling; a sackcloth-and-ashes stand-in for that golden girl who had been snatched up by Fate and dashed down a mountainside in an impossibly distant land. Everyone, it seemed, would be so much happier if Harriet were brought back to life and I were done away with.

These thoughts, and others, tumbled in my mind like autumn leaves in a millstream as I walked along the dusty lane towards the village. Without even noticing them, I had passed the carved griffins of the Mulford Gates, which marked the entrance to Buckshaw, and I was now within sight of Bishop's Lacey.

As I slouched along, a bit dejectedly (all right, I admit it — I was furious at Aunt Felicity for making such a chump of Dogger!) I shoved my hand into my pocket and my fingers came in contact with a round, metallic object: something that hadn't been there before — a coin.

"Hullo!" I said. "What's this?"

I pulled it out and looked at it. As soon as I saw the thing, I knew what it was and how it had made its way into my pocket. I turned it over and had a jolly good squint at the reverse.

Yes, there could be no doubt about it — no doubt whatsoever.

AS I LOOKED AT it from across the high street, the St. Nicholas Tea Room was like a picture postcard of Ye Olde England. Its upstairs rooms, with their tiny-paned bow windows, had been the residence of the present Mr. Sowbell's grandparents, in the days when they had lived above their coffin and furniture manufactory.

The Sowbell tables, sideboards, and commodes, once known far and wide for the ferocity of their black shine and the gleam of their ornate silver knobs and drawer pulls, had now fallen out of favor, and were often to be found at estate sales, standing sullen and alone in the driveway until being knocked down at the end of the day for little more than a pound or two.

"By unscrupulous sharpers who use the wood to turn Woolworth's dressers into antiques," Daffy had once told me.

The undertaker's shop, I noticed, now had a cardboard clock stuck in its window, suspended from an inverted V of black cord. The minute hand pointed to twelve, and the hour hand was missing. Mr. Sowbell had obviously gone to the Thirteen Drakes for his afternoon pint.

I crossed the street and, opening the tearoom door, stepped inside. To my right was a steep wooden staircase, with a painted blue hand pointing upwards: Tea Room Upstairs . Beside the stairs, a dim, narrow passageway vanished into the gloom at the rear of the building. On the wall, another helpful painted hand — this one in red, and marked Gentlemen's and Ladies' Water Closets — pointed the way discreetly.

I knew that the tea shop and the undertaker's shared the W.C. Feely had insisted on dragging us here for tea one autumn afternoon, and I had been gobsmacked at the sight of three women in black dresses and black veils, chattering happily away at the door to the toilet like a congress of toothy crows, before resuming their grim demeanors and slipping back into Mr. Sowbell's premises. The door through which they had vanished opened directly into the undertaker's rooms.

I was right! A discreet Sowbell & Sons , lettered in gold upon the dark varnish, must have been meant to remind mourners not to go blundering off into the tea shop's corridor after they had "soaped their 'ands," as Mrs. Mullet put it.

The black paneled door swung open on silent hinges.

I found myself in a dark Victorian parlor, with flocked wallpaper of black and yellow-cream. On three sides of the room were spindly wooden chairs and a small round table with a spray of artificial baby's breath. The place smelled of dust, with an underlying chemical base.

The wall at the far end of the room was bare, save for a dark framed print of Millet's Angelus , in which a man and a woman, obviously Flemish peasants, stand alone in a field at sunset. The woman's huge hands, which are those of a laborer, are clasped at her breast in prayer. The man has removed his hat, which he holds clutched uncomfortably in front of him. He has set aside his fork and stuck it half into the loose earth. As crows congregate above them like vultures, the couple stands with downcast eyes. Between them, half-empty on the ground, lies a wicker basket.

Max Wight had once told me that when the original of Millet's painting was exhibited in America, the sale of prints had been sluggish at best until someone thought of changing the name from Angelus to Burying the Baby .

It was beneath this print, I guessed, that the coffins were customarily parked. Since the spot was empty, it was obvious that Rupert's body, if it were still on the premises, must be in another room.

To my right was an L-shaped partition. There had to be another door behind it.

I peered round behind the half-wall and found myself looking into a room that was nearly the twin of the first. The only difference that I could see was that the flocked wallpaper was black and pink-cream, and the print on the far wall was Holman Hunt's Light of the World , in which Jesus stands at the door like Diogenes seeking an honest man, with a tin lantern in His hand.

Beneath its dark frame, on trestles, was a coffin.

I crept towards it on tiptoe, my ears tuned for the slightest sound.

I ran my fingers along the highly polished woodwork, the way one might caress a piano lid before lifting it to reveal the keys. I put my thumbs under the join and felt it lift slightly.

I was in luck! The lid was not screwed down. I lifted it and looked inside.

There, like a doll in a box, lay Rupert. In life, his personality had made him seem so much larger, I had forgotten how small he really was.

Was I frightened out of my wits? I'm afraid not. Since the day I had found a body in the kitchen garden at Buckshaw, I had developed a fascination with death, with a particular emphasis on the chemistry of putrefaction.

In fact, I had already begun making notes for a definitive work which I would call De Luce on Decomposition , in which I would outline, step by step, the process of human cadaveric decay.

How exciting it was to reflect upon the fact that, within minutes of death, the organs of the body, lacking oxygen, begin to digest themselves! Ammonia levels start to rise and, with the assistance of bacterial action, methane (better known as marsh gas) is produced, along with hydrogen sulfide, carbon dioxide, and mercaptan, a captivating sulfur-alcohol in whose structure sulfur takes the place of oxygen — which accounts for its putrid smell.

How curious it was, I thought, that we humans had taken millions of years to crawl up out of the swamps and yet, within minutes of death, we were already tobogganing back down the slope.

My keen sense of smell told me that Mr. Sowbell had used a formalin-based embalming fluid on Rupert (a two-percent solution of formaldehyde seemed most likely, with a slight bouquet of something else: chloroform, by the smell of it) and by the slight green tint at the end of Rupert's nose, I could tell that the undertaker had skimped on the ingredients. One could only hope that the lying-in-state at the BBC would be a closed-coffin affair.

Better hurry up, though , I thought. Mr. Sowbell might walk in at any moment.

Rupert's pale hands were folded across his abdomen, with the right hand uppermost. I took hold of his fingers (it was like lifting linked sausages from the icebox) and pulled upwards.