The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

But I could not sleep. For a long while I lay staring at the ceiling, listening to the curtains as they whispered quietly to one another in the night breeze.

At Buckshaw, time does not pass as it does in other places. At Buckshaw, time seems to be controlled not by those frantic, scurrying little cogs in the hall clock that spin like hamsters in their shuttered cages, but rather by the solemn great gears that manage to creep through just one complete turn each year.

How could I be so contented, I suddenly wondered, when someone I knew personally was hiding out in the dark tower of a dovecote?

Which made me think at once, of course, of King Lear. Father had taken us to see John Gielgud in the title role at Stratford-upon-Avon, and although Gielgud was marvelous, it was the words of Poor Tom, the Bedlam beggar on the stormy heath (actually Edgar, in disguise), that still rang in my ears:

Child Rowland to the dark tower came;
His word was still, Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man.

"Did Shakespeare steal that from Jack and the Beanstalk?" I had whispered in Daffy's ear. Or had the fairy tale borrowed the words from Shakespeare? "Neither," she whispered back: Both had cribbed from Thomas Nashe's Have With You to Saffron-Walden, which, having been staged in 1596, predated them.

Good old Daffy. There were times when I could almost forgive her for hating me.

Well, Rupert would be presenting his own version of Jack and the Beanstalk in just a few hours' time. I might even learn something from it.

After a while I got up, dressed, and crept outside.

I found Dogger sitting on a bench that overlooked the ornamental lake and the folly.

He was dressed as he had been the previous evening: dark suit, polished shoes, and a tie that probably spoke volumes to those in the know.

The full moon was rolling up the sky like a great silver cheese, and Dogger sat bolt upright, his face upturned, as if he were basking in its rays, holding a black umbrella open above his head.

I slid quietly onto the bench beside him. He did not look at me, nor I at him, and we sat, for a time, like a couple of grave ancient astronomers studying the moon.

After a while, I said, "It's not raining, Dogger."

Somewhere, during the war, Dogger had been exposed to torrential rains: rains without mercy; rains from which there could be no shelter and no escape. Or so Mrs. Mullet had told me.

"'E takes great comfort in 'is brolly, dear," she had said. "Even when the dogs is pantin' in the dust."

Slowly, like a clockwork figure, Dogger reached up and released the lock on the umbrella's handle, allowing the ribs and the waterproof cloth to fold down like bats' wings, until his upper hand was enveloped in black.

"Do you know anything about polio?" I asked at last.

Without removing his eyes from the moon, Dogger said: "Infantile paralysis. Heine-Medin disease. Morning paralysis. Complete bed rest.

"Or so I've been told," he added, looking at me for the first time.

"Anything else?"

"Agony," he said. "Absolute agony."

"Thank you, Dogger," I said. "The roses are beautiful this year. You've put a great deal of work into them."

"Thank you for saying so, miss," he said. "The roses are beautiful every year, Dogger or no Dogger."

"Good night," I said, as I got up from the bench.

"Good night, Miss Flavia."

Halfway across the lawn, I stoppeda and looked back. Dogger had raised the umbrella again, and was sitting beneath it, straight-backed as Mary Poppins, smiling at the summer moon.

* TEN *

"PLEASE DON'T GO WANDERING off today, Flavia," Father said after breakfast. I had encountered him rather unexpectedly on the stairs.

"Your aunt Felicity wants to go through some family papers, and she's particularly asked that you be with her to help lift down the boxes."

"Why can't Daffy do it?" I asked. "She's the expert on libraries and so forth."

This was not entirely true, since I had charge of a magnificent Victorian chemistry library, to say nothing of Uncle Tar's papers by the ton.

I was simply hoping I wouldn't have to mention the puppet show, which was now just hours away. But Duty trumped Entertainment.

"Daphne and Ophelia have gone to the village to post some letters. They're lunching there, and going on to Foster's to look at Sheila's pony."

The dogs! Those scheming wretches!

"But I've promised the vicar," I said. "He's counting on me. They're trying to raise money for something or other — oh, I don't know. If I'm not at the church by nine, Cynthia — Mrs. Richardson, I mean — will have to come for me in her Oxford."

As I expected it would, this rather low blow gave Father real pause.

I could see his eyebrows pucker as he weighed his options, which were few: Either concede gracefully or risk coming face-to-face with the Wreck of the Hesperus.

"You are unreliable, Flavia," he said. "Utterly unreliable."