The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

But the idea died almost before it was born. The instant I put my foot on it, the top step gave out a ghastly groan.

There was a flapping near the bottom of the stairs, as if a large bird were trapped in the house. I went slowly, but steadily, down the rest of the staircase. At the bottom, I stuck my head round the corner and my blood ran cold.

A beam of bright sunlight illuminated the end of the hallway. In it, a little boy in rubber boots and a sailor suit was vanishing through the open door.

* TWENTY-SEVEN *

I WAS SURE OF IT.

He had been in the cupboard beneath the stairs all along. I stood there, stock-still at the open door, faced with a dilemma. What should I do? I knew for certain that once I stepped outside this farmhouse, I would not be likely to enter it ever again. Best to have a quick look behind the angled door now, before setting off in pursuit of the sailor-suited apparition.

Inside the dim cupboard, a length of string dangled from a naked bulb. I gave it a tug and the space sprang to feeble light. It was empty.

Empty, that is, except for a pair of child's rubber boots, very much like the ones I had just seen on the feet of the figure in the doorway.

The chief difference was that this pair of Dunlops was clodded with clay, still wet from the morning's rain.

Or the grave.

As I dashed through the open front door, I caught a glimpse of the navy blue sailor suit, just disappearing behind the machine shed. Beyond those rusty galvanized walls, I knew, was a bewildering warren of outbuildings: a maze of sagging sheds, any one of which could easily provide a dozen hiding places.

Off I loped in pursuit, like a hound on the scent. It never occurred to me to be afraid.

But then I slid to a sudden stop. Behind the machine shed, a narrow alley led off to the right. Had the fugitive darted down it to throw me off the track? I edged along the narrow passage, taking great care not to touch the neglected walls on either side. A single scratch from any one of the razor-sharp flaps of ripped tin would almost certainly end in tetanus, and I would end up hog-tied in a hospital ward, foaming at the mouth and wracked by bone-breaking spasms.

How happy Daffy and Feely would be!

"I told you she would come to no good end," Daffy would tell Father. "She should never have been allowed to run loose."

Accordingly, I inched slowly, crab-wise, along the narrow passage. When I finally reached the end, I found my way blocked on the left by a stack of battered petrol drums; on my right by a nettle-ridden pigpen.

As I edged back along the Passage of Death, which seemed, if anything, even more narrow on the return journey, I stopped to listen, but other than the distant sound of clucking hens, I could hear nothing but my own breathing.

I tiptoed softly along between the tumbledown sheds, paying close attention to my peripheral vision, aware that, at any moment, something could pounce upon me from a darkened doorway.

It wasn't until then that I noticed the tracks on the ground: tiny footprints that could only have been made by the waffle-patterned soles of a child's Dunlop rubber boot.

With all of my senses on high alert, I followed their trail.

On past the machine shed they led me; past the rusting hulk of an ancient tractor that leaned crazily to one side, missing a back wheel, looking for all the world like something half sunk in the sands, some ancient engine cast up by the sea.

Another jog to the left and I found myself at the foot of the dovecote, which towered above me like a fairy-tale castle, its piebald bricks stained almost golden by the late light of day.

Although I had been here before, it had been by a different route, and I slowly crept round it to the decrepit wooden door, the sharp pong of pigeon droppings already beginning to fill my nostrils.

Perhaps I had been wrong, I thought for a moment: Perhaps the boy in the sailor suit had run straight on past the tower, and was, by now, well away across the fields. But the footprints in the soil proved otherwise: They led straight to the dovecote door.

Something brushed against my leg and my heart nearly stopped.

"Yow!" said a voice.

It was Tock, the more vocal of the Inglebys' cats.

I put a finger to my lips to shush her, before I remembered that cats don't read sign language. But perhaps they do, for without another sound, she crouched low to the ground and slunk off into the shadows of the dovecote's interior.

Hesitantly, I followed her.

Inside, the place was as I remembered it: the myriad lights beaming in through chinks in the ancient brickwork; the claustrophobic, dust-choked air. This time, though, there was no banshee keening spilling out from the room above. The place was as silent as the crypt that lies beneath Death's own castle.

I put one foot onto the scaffolding and peered up to where it disappeared into the gloom above my head. The old wood let out a baleful croak, and I paused. Whoever--or whatever--was above me in the near-darkness, knew now that I had them cornered.