2 The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag: A Flavia De Luce Mystery (13 page)

Even though I was looking at it upside down, as it were, from above, I felt a pang—a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before.

It was homesickness.

Now, even more than I had earlier when I’d first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.

Rupert had been transformed, too. I could see it in his face. Lit from below, his features completely at peace, his broad features relaxed in a gentle and benevolent smile.

Leaning against the piping of the rail, he reached forward and pulled a black cotton hood from a bulky object at the side of the stage.

“Meet Galligantus the giant,” he said. “Last chance before he gets his comeuppance.”

It was the face of a monster, its features twisted into a look of perpetual anger and spotted with boils, its chin covered with grizzled black whiskers like carpet tacks.

I let out a squeak and took a step backwards.

“He’s only papier-mâché,” Rupert said. “Don’t be alarmed—he’s not as horrid as he looks. Poor old Galligantus—I’m quite fond of him, actually. We spend a lot of time together up here, waiting for the end of the show.”

“He’s … marvelous,” I said, swallowing. “But he has no strings.”

“No, he’s not actually a marionette—no more than a head and shoulders, really. He has no legs. He’s hinged where his waist should be, held upright out of sight just offstage, and—promise you won’t repeat this: It’s a trade secret.”

“I promise,” I said.

“At the end of the play, as Jack is chopping down the beanstalk, I only have to lift this bar—he’s spring-loaded, you see, and—”

As he touched one end of it, a little metal bar flew up like a railway signal, and Galligantus tumbled forward, crashing down in front of the cottage, nearly filling the opening of the stage.

“Never fails to get a gasp from out front,” Rupert said. “Always makes me laugh to hear it. I have to take care, though, that Jack and his poor old mother don’t get in his way. Can’t have them being smashed by a falling giant.”

Reaching down and seizing Galligantus by the hair, Rupert pulled him upright and locked him back into position.

What bubbled up inexplicably from the bottom of my memory at that moment was a sermon the vicar had preached at the beginning of the year. Part of his text, taken from Genesis, was the phrase “There were giants in the earth in those days.” In the original Hebrew, the vicar told us, the word for giants was nephilim, which, he said, meant cruel bullies or fierce tyrants: not physically large, but sinister. Not monsters, but human beings filled with malevolence.

“I’d better be getting back,” I said. “Thank you for showing me Galligantus.”

Nialla was nowhere in sight, and I had no time to look for her.

“Dear, dear,” the vicar had said. “I don’t know what to tell you to do. Just make yourself generally useful, I expect.”

And so I did. For the next hour, I looked at tickets and ushered people (mostly children) to their seats. I glared at Bobby Broxton and motioned for him to take his feet off the rungs of the chair in front of him.

“It’s reserved for me,” I hissed menacingly.

I clambered up onto the kitchen counter and found the second teapot, which had somehow been shoved to the very back of the top shelf, and helped Mrs. Delaney place empty cups and saucers on a tea tray. I even ran up the high street to the post office to swap a ten-pound note for loose change.

“If the vicar needs coins,” said Miss Cool, the postmistress, “why doesn’t he break into those paper collection boxes from the Sunday school? I know the money’s for missions, but he could always stuff in banknotes to replace what he’s taken. Save him from imposing on His Majesty for pennies, wouldn’t it? But then, vicars are not always as practical as you might think, are they, dear?”

By two o’clock, I was completely fagged out.

As I took my seat at last—front row, center—the eager buzz of the audience rose to a climax. We had a full house.

Somewhere backstage, the vicar switched off the house lights, and for a few moments we were left sitting in utter darkness.

I settled back in my chair—and the music began.

• ELEVEN •

IT WAS A LITTLE thing by Mozart: one of those melodies that make you think you’ve heard it before, even if you haven’t.

I could imagine the reels of Rupert’s tape machine winding away backstage, the strains of music being summoned up, by magnetism, from the subatomic world of iron oxide. As it had likely been nearly two hundred years since Mozart first heard them in his head, it seemed somehow appropriate that the sounds of the symphony orchestra should be stored in nothing more than particles of rust.

As the curtains opened, I was taken by surprise: Rather than the cottage and the idyllic hills I had been expecting, the stage was now totally black. Rupert had obviously masked the country setting with a dark throw-cloth.

A spotlight faded up, and in the very center of the stage there stood a miniature harpsichord, the ivories of its two keyboards starkly white against the surrounding blackness.

The music faded down, and an expectant hush fell upon the audience. We were all of us leaning forward, anticipating….

A stir at one side of the stage caught our attention, and then a figure strode confidently out towards the harpsichord—it was Mozart!

Dressed in a suit of green silk, with lace at his throat, white knee-stockings, and buckled shoes, he looked as if he had stepped straight through a window from the eighteenth century and into our own. His perfectly powdered white wig framed a pink and insolent face, and he put a hand up to shade his eyes, peering out into the darkness to see who it was that had the audacity to be giggling.

Shaking his head, he went to his instrument, pulled a match from his pocket, and lit the candles: one at each end of the harpsichord’s keyboards.

It was an astonishing performance! The audience erupted in applause. Every one of us knew, I think, that we were witnessing the work of a master showman.

The little Mozart seated himself on the spindled chair that stood before the keyboard, raised his hands, as if to begin—then loudly cracked his knuckles.

A great gust of laughter went up from the audience. Rupert must have recorded the close-up sound of a wooden nutcracker cracking walnuts, I thought: It sounded as if the little puppet had crushed every bone in his hands.

And then he began to play, his hands flitting easily over the keys like the shuttles in a loom. The music was the Turkish March: a lilting, driving, lively tune that made me grin.

There’s no need to describe it all: From the collapsing chair to the twin keyboards that snapped at the puppet’s fingers like shark’s teeth, the whole thing, from beginning to end, had all of us rocking with laughter.

When at last the little figure had managed, in spite of it all, to fight his way to the final, triumphant chord, the harpsichord reared up, took a bow, and folded itself neatly up into a suitcase, which the puppet picked up. Then he strode off the stage to a storm of applause. A few of us even leapt to our feet.

The lights went down again.

There was a pause—a silence.

When the audience had settled, a strain of music—different music—came floating to our ears.

I recognized the melody at once. It was “Morning,” from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt suite, and it seemed to me the perfect choice.

“Welcome to the Land of Fairy Tales,” said a woman’s voice as the music faded down, and a spotlight came up to reveal the most strange and remarkable character!

Seated to the right of the stage—she must have taken her place during the moments of darkness, I thought—she wore a ruff of Elizabethan lace, a black Pilgrim dress with a laced bodice, black shoes with square silver buckles, and a tiny pair of spectacles that perched precariously on the end of her nose. Her hair was a mass of gray curls, spilling out from under a tall pointed hat.

“My name is Mother Goose.”

It was Nialla!

There were oohs and aahs from the audience, and she sat, smiling patiently, until the excitement died down.

“Would you like me to tell you a story?” she asked, in a voice that was not Nialla’s, yet at the same time, not anyone else’s.

“Yes!” everyone shouted, including the vicar.

“Very well, then,” said Mother Goose. “I shall begin at the beginning, and go on till I come to the end. And then I shall stop.”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“Once upon a time,” she said, “in a village not far away …”

And as she spoke those words, the red velvet curtains with their gold tassels opened slowly to reveal the cozy cottage I had glimpsed from behind the scenes, but now I could see it in far greater detail: the diamond-paned windows, the painted hollyhocks, the three-legged milking stool …

“… there lived a poor widow with a son whose name was Jack.”

At that, a boy in short leather pants and an em broidered jacket and jerkin came strolling into the scene, whistling off-key to the music.

“Mother,” he shouted, “are you at home? I want my supper.”

As he turned to look around, his hand shielding his eyes from the light of the painted sun, the audience let out a collective gasp.

Jack’s carved wooden face was a face we all recognized: It was as if Rupert had deliberately modeled the puppet’s head from a photograph of Robin, the Inglebys’ dead son. The likeness was uncanny.

Like a wind in the cold November woods, a wave of uneasy whispers swept through the hall.

“Shhh!” someone said at last. I think it was the vicar.

I wondered how he must feel at being confronted with the face of a child he had buried in the churchyard.

“Jack was a very lazy boy,” Mother Goose went on. “And because he refused to work, it was not long before his mother’s small savings were completely gone. There was nothing to eat in the house, and not so much as a farthing left for food.”

Now the poor widow appeared, coming round the side of the cottage with a rope in her hand, and at the other end of the rope, a cow. Both of them were little more than skin and bones, but the cow had the advantage of a gorgeous pair of huge brown eyes.

“We shall have to sell the cow to the butcher,” the widow said.

At this, the cow’s enormous eyes turned sadly towards the widow, then towards Jack, and finally towards the audience. “Help me!” they seemed to say.

“Ahhhh,” everyone said at once, on a rising note of sympathy.

The widow turned her back on the poor creature and walked away, leaving Jack to do the dirty work. No sooner was she gone than a peddler appeared at the gate.

“Marnin’, Squire,” he said to Jack. “You looks like a sharpish lad—the kind o’ lad what might be needin’ some beans.”

“I might,” said Jack.

“Jack thought of himself as a shrewd trader,” Mother Goose said, “and before you could say ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch’—which is the name of a place in Wales—he had traded the cow for a handful of beans.”

The cow went all stiff-legged and dug in its heels as the peddler dragged it off, and Jack was left standing, looking at the little pile of beans in his palm.

Then suddenly his mother was back.

“Where’s the cow?” she demanded. Jack pointed to the road, and held out his hand.

“You dunderhead!” the widow shrieked. “You stupid dunderhead!”

And she kicked him in the pants.

At this, a great laugh went up from the children in the audience, and I have to admit I chuckled a little myself. I’m at that age where I watch such things with two minds, one that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

At the kick, Jack actually flew right up into the air, scattering beans everywhere.

Now, the whole audience was rocking with laughter.

“You shall sleep in the chicken coop,” the widow said. “If you’re hungry, you can peck for corn.”

And with that, she was gone.

“Poor old I,” Jack said, and stretched himself out on the bench at the cottage door.

The sunlight faded rather quickly, and suddenly it was night. A full moon shone above the folded hills. The lights in the cottage were on, their warm orange light spilling out into the yard. Jack twitched in his sleep—shifted position—and began to snore.

“But look!” said Mother Goose. “Something is stirring in the garden!”

Now the music had become mystical—the sound of a flute in an oriental bazaar.

Something was stirring in the garden! As if by magic, a thing that looked at first like a green string, and then like a green rope, began to snake up from the soil, twisting and twining like a cobra in a fakir’s basket, until the top was out of sight.

As it rose into the sky, and night changed quickly to day, the stalk grew thicker and thicker, until at last it stood like a tree of emerald green, dwarfing the cottage.

Again, the music was “Morning.”

Jack stretched and yawned and rolled clumsily off the bench. With hands on hips, he bent back impossibly far at the waist, trying to loosen his stiff joints. And then he spotted the beanstalk.

He reeled back as if he had been punched, fighting to keep his balance, his feet stumbling, his arms going like windmills.

“Mother!” he shouted. “Mother! Mother! Mother! Mother!”

The old lady appeared directly, broom in hand, and Jack danced crazily round her in circles, pointing.

“The beans, you see,” said Mother Goose, “were magic beans, and in the night they had grown into a beanstalk that reached higher than the clouds.”

Well, everyone knows the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, so there’s no need for me to repeat it here. For the next hour, the tale unrolled as it has done for hundreds of years: Jack’s climb, the castle in the clouds, the giant’s wife and how she hid Jack in the oven, the magic harp, the bags of silver and gold—all of it was there, brought to brilliant life by Rupert’s genius.

He held us captive in the palm of his hand from beginning to end, as if he were the giant, and all of us were Jack. He made us laugh and he made us cry, and sometimes both at the same time. I had never seen anything like it.