The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

First I would need a small quantity of chloroform. Since I had used the last available bottle for a failed fireworks display on Buckshaw's south lawn to celebrate Joseph Priestley's birthday in March, I would first have to manufacture a fresh supply.

A quick raid below-stairs produced (from Mrs. Mullet's cleaning cupboard) a tin of chlorine bleaching powder, and from her pantry, a bottle of pure vanilla extract.

Safely back upstairs in the laboratory, I locked the door and rolled up my sleeves.

The tin of Bleachitol was, in reality, no more than calcium hypochlorite. Would calcium hypochlorite, I wondered, by any other name smell as sweet? Heated with acetone to a temperature of somewhere between 400 and 500 degrees Fahrenheit — or until the haloform reaction occurs — a quite decent chloroform may afterwards be extracted from the resulting acetate salts by simple distillation. This part of it was, as they say, a piece of cake.

"Yarooh!" I shouted, as I poured the results into a brown bottle and shoved home the cork.

Next, I stirred a half teaspoon of vanilla extract into a few drops of acetaldehyde (which, because the stuff is volatile and boils at room temperature, Uncle Tar had thoughtfully stored beneath a layer of argon in a sealed bottle), then tipped the mixture into a clean beaker into which I had already measured six and a half tablespoons of ethanol — plain old C₂H₅OH. This I had pinched from Father's sideboard, where it had lain unopened for ages after being brought him as a gift from a fellow philatelist who had been posted to Russia by the Foreign Office.

And now the stage was set.

Placing a fresh sample of one of the leaves into a clean test tube, I added a few drops of my alcoholic vanillin preparation (which I thought of calling the Duquenois-Levine-de-Luce reagent), and after waiting for a minute, just a nibbins of concentrated hydrochloric acid.

Again, as in my previous test, small bubbles arose in the tube as the carbon dioxide was formed, but this time, the liquid in the test tube turned quickly to a shade of blueish purple.

Excitedly, I added to the mixture a couple of drops of my homemade chloroform, which, since chloroform is not miscible in water, sank promptly to the bottom.

When the stuff had stratified into two distinct layers (the clear chloroform on the bottom and the blueish purple of the Duquenois reagent floating on top of it), I gave it a jolly good mixing up with a glass stirring rod and, holding my breath, waited for it to settle one last time.

It didn't take long: Now the chloroform layer had taken on the color of its upper blanket, the mauve of a hidden bruise.

Because I had already suspected the outcome, I didn't bother to cry "Eureka."

It wasn't parsnips Gordon Ingleby was growing in his secret glade: It was Indian hemp!

I had read about the stuff in an offprint of O'Shaughnessy's On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah; Their Effects on the Animal System in Health, and Their Utility in the Treatment of Tetanus and Other Convulsive Diseases, a copy of which I had found tucked away in one of Uncle Tar's desk drawers.

Had Uncle Tar been using Indian hemp? Would that further explain his sudden and spectacular departure from Oxford as a young man?

Gunjah, or bhang, had long been known as an opium substitute, and Dr. O'Shaughnessy himself had reported great success in using it to treat a case of infantile convulsions.

And what more was Rupert's infantile paralysis, I thought, than muscular convulsions that would drag on cruelly, all day every day, until the last day of his life?

Testing the ends of the cigarettes that Gordon and Rupert had smoked was almost an anticlimax. The results were as I knew they would be. When I had washed up and put away the glassware (ughh! — how I loathe washing up!), I wrote in my notebook:Friday, 21st of July 1950, 9:50 PM.

Duquenois-Levine test of leaves and cigarette remnants from Gibbet Wood indicates presence of Indian hemp (Cannabis sativa). Gordon Ingleby growing — and smoking — the stuff. Overheard his remark that it was "the end of the line" for him. What did he mean? Who are the "rest of us" Rupert spoke of? Who is "the dead woman"? Could it be Mrs. Ingleby? Whatever is going on at Culverhouse Farm, Rupert Porson is part of it.

"And so ..." as that man Pepys would have written: "to bed."