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

To my amazement, his left hand came with it, and I saw at once that they had been cunningly sewn together. By twisting the cold hands and bending down for a better look beneath them, I saw what I was looking for: a blackened channel that ran from the base of his left thumb to the tips of his first and second fingers.

In spite of Mr. Sowbell's embalming efforts, Rupert was still giving off rather a scorched smell. And there could be no doubt about it: The burn on the palm of his left hand was the precise width of the lever that operated Galligantus.

A floorboard creaked.

As I closed the coffin lid, the door opened and Mr. Sowbell walked into the room. I hadn't heard him coming.

Because I was still in a half-crouch from inspecting Rupert's burned fingers, I was able to come slowly to a standing position.

"Amen," I said, crossing myself extravagantly.

"What on earth — ?" said Mr. Sowbell.

"Oh, hello, Mr. Sowbell," I said in an appropriately hushed tone. "I just dropped in to pay my respects. There was no one here, but I thought a quiet prayer would be in order.

"Mr. Porson had no friends in Bishop's Lacey, you know," I added, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket and wiping away an imaginary tear. "It seemed such a shame, and I thought it would do no harm if I — I'm sorry if — "

"There, there," he said. "Death comes to us all, you know, old and young alike...."

Was he threatening me, or was my imagination overheated?

"And even though we expect it," he went on, "it always comes as a shock in the end."

It certainly had for Rupert — but was the man being facetious?

Evidently not, for his long face maintained its professional polish.

"And now if you will excuse me," he said. "I must prepare him for his final journey."

Final journey? Where did they get this claptrap? Was there a phrasebook published for the undertaking trade?

I gave him my ten-years-old-going-on-eleven smile, and faked a flustered exit.

The bell above the door of the St. Nicholas Tea Room jangled merrily as I stepped inside. The establishment, a bit of a climb at the top of the stairs, was owned by none other than Miss Lavinia and Miss Aurelia, the Puddock sisters: those same two relics who had provided the musical prelude to Rupert's spectacular demise.

Miss Lavinia, in a nook at the far side of the room, seemed to be locked in mortal combat with a large silver samovar. In spite of the simplicity of its task, which was the boiling of water, this Heath Robinson contraption was a bulbous squid of tubes, valves, and gauges, which spat hot water as it gurgled and hissed away like a cornered dragon.

"No tea, I'm afraid," she said over her shoulder. She could not yet see who had entered the shop.

"Anything I can do to help, Miss Puddock?" I offered cheerily.

She let out a little shriek as her hand strayed accidentally into a jet of hot steam, and the china cup she was holding crashed to the floor, where it flew into a hundred pale pieces.

"Oh, it's the little de Luce girl," she said, spinning round. "My goodness! You gave me quite a fright. I wasn't expecting to hear your voice."

Because I could see that she'd scalded her hand, I fought back my baser urges.

"Anything I can do to help?" I repeated.

"Oh, dear," she said, flustered beyond reason. "Peter always chooses to act up when Aurelia's not here. She's so much better with him than I am."

"Peter?" I asked.

"The samovar," she said, wiping her wet red hands on a tea towel. "Peter the Great."

"Here," I said, "let me — "

Without another word I took up a bowl of lemon wedges from one of the round tables and squeezed each of them into a jug of iced water. Then I grabbed a clean white table napkin, immersed it until it was soaked, wrung it out, and wrapped it around Miss Puddock's hand. She flinched as I touched her, and then relaxed.

"May I?" I asked, removing an opal brooch from her lapel and using it to pin the ends of the makeshift bandage.

"Oh! It feels better already," she said with a pained smile. "Wherever did you learn that trick?"

"Girl Guides," I lied.

Experience has taught me that an expected answer is often better than the truth. I had, in fact, quite painfully looked up the remedy in one of Mrs. Mullet's household reference books after a superheated test tube seared most of the flesh from a couple of my fingers.

"Miss Cool has always spoken so highly of you," she said. "I shall tell her she was 'bang-on,' as those nice bomber boys from the RAF used to say."

I gave her my most modest smile. "It's nothing, Miss Puddock — just jolly good luck I got here when I did. I was next door, at Mr. Sowbell's, you see, saying a prayer or two at Mr. Porson's coffin. You don't suppose it will do any harm, do you?"

I realized that I was gilding the lily with a string mop for a paintbrush, but business was business.

"Why no, dear," she said. "I think Mr. Porson would be touched."

She didn't know the half of it!

"It was so sad." I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper and touched her good arm. "But I must tell you, Miss Puddock, that in spite of the tragedy on Saturday evening, my family and I enjoyed 'Napoleon's Last Charge' and 'Bendemeer's Stream.' Father said that you don't often hear music like that nowadays."

"Why, thank you, dear," she murmured damply. "It's kind of you to say so. Of course, mercifully, we didn't actually see what happened to poor Mr. Porson, being busy in the kitchen, as it were. As proprietresses of Bishop Lacey's sole tearoom, certain expectations attach, I'm afraid. Not that we resent — "

"No, of course not," I said. "But surely you must have tons of people offering to help out."

She gave a little bark. "Help? Most people don't know the meaning of the word. No, Aurelia and I were left alone in the kitchen from start to finish. Two hundred and sixty-three cups of tea we poured, but of course that's counting the ones we served after the police took charge."

"And no one offered to help?" I asked, giving her an incredulous look.

"No one. As I said, Aurelia and I were alone in the kitchen the whole while. And I was left completely on my own when Aurelia took a cup of tea to the puppeteer."

My ears went up like a flag on a pole. "She took Rupert a cup of tea?"

"Well, she tried to, dear, but the door was locked."

"The door to the stage? Across from the kitchen?"

"No, no ... she didn't want to use that one. She'd have had to brush right past that Mother Goose, that woman who was in the spotlight, telling the story. No, Aurelia took the tea all the way round the back of the hall and down to the other door."

"The one in the opposite passage?"

"Well, yes. It's the only other one, isn't it, dear? But as I've already told you, it was locked."

"During the puppet show?"

"Why, yes. Odd, isn't it? Mr. Porson had asked us before he began if we could bring him a nice cup of tea during the show. 'Just leave it on the little table behind the stage,' he said. 'I'll find it. Puppetry's dry work, you know,' and he gave us a little wink. So why on earth would he lock the door?"

As she went on, I could already feel the facts beginning to marshal themselves in my mind.

"Those were Aurelia's exact words when she'd come all the way back with his cup of tea still in her hand. 'Whatever would possess him to lock the door?'"

"Perhaps he didn't," I said, with sudden inspiration. "Perhaps someone else did. Who has the key, do you know?"

"There are two keys to the stage door, dear. They each open the ones on either side of the stage. The vicar keeps one on his keychain, and the duplicate on a nail in his study at the vicarage. It's all because of that time he went off to Brighton for the C and S — that's the Churchwardens' and Sidesmen's — cricket match, and took Tom Stoddart with him. Tom's the locksmith, you know, and with the two of them gone, no one could get on or off the stage without a stepladder. It played havoc with the Little Theater Group's production of King Lear , let me tell you!"