The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.

Eleven-year-olds are supposed to be unreliable. We're past the age of being poppets: the age where people bend over and poke us in the tum with their fingers and make idiotic noises that sound like "boof-boof" — just the thought of which is enough to make me bring up my Bovril. And yet we're still not at the age where anyone ever mistakes us for a grown-up. The fact is, we're invisible — except when we choose not to be.

At the moment, I was not. I was fixed in the beam of Father's fierce-eyed tiger stare. I batted my eyelids twice: just enough not to be disrespectful.

I knew the instant he relented. I could see it in his eyes.

"Oh, very well," he said, gracious even in his defeat. "Run along. And give my compliments to the vicar."

Paint me with polka dots! I was free! Just like that!

Gladys's tires hummed their loud song of contentment as we sped along the tarmac.

"Summer is icumen in," I warbled to the world. "Lhude sing cuccu!"

A Jersey cow looked up from her grazing, and I stood on the pedals and gave her a shaky curtsy in passing.

I pulled up outside the parish hall just as Nialla and Rupert were coming through the long grass at the back of the churchyard.

"Did you sleep well?" I called out to them, waving.

"Like the dead," Rupert replied.

Which described perfectly what Nialla looked like. Her hair hung in long, unwashed strings, and the black circles under her red eyes reminded me of something I'd rather not think about. Either she'd ridden with witches all night from steeple to steeple, or she and Rupert had had a filthy great row.

Her silence told me it was Rupert.

"Fresh bacon ... fresh eggs," Rupert went on, giving his chest a hearty pounding, like Tarzan, with his fists. "Sets a man up for the day."

Without so much as a glance at me, Nialla darted past and ducked into the parish hall — to the ladies' W.C., I expected.

Naturally, I followed.

Nialla was on her knees, shouting "Rope!" into the porcelain, crying and vomiting at the same time. I bolted the door.

"You're having a baby, aren't you?" I asked.

She looked up at me, her mouth gaping open, her face white. "How did you know?" she gasped.

I wanted to say "Elementary," but I knew this was no time for cheek.

"I did a lysozome test on the handkerchief you used."

Nialla scrambled to her feet and seized me by the shoulders. "Flavia, you mustn't breathe a word of this! Not a word! Nobody knows but you."

"Not even Rupert?" I asked. I could hardly believe it.

"Especially Rupert," she said. "He'd kill me if he knew. Promise me. Please, Flavia ... promise me!"

"On my honor," I said, holding up three fingers in the Girl Guide salute. Although I had been chucked from that organization for insubordination (among other things), I felt it was hardly necessary to share the gruesome details with Nialla.

"Bloody good job we're camped in the country. They must have heard us for miles around, the way the two of us went at one another's throats. It was about a woman, of course. It's always about a woman, isn't it?"

This was beyond my field of expertise, but still, I tried to look attentive.

"It never takes long for Rupert to zero in on the skirt. You saw it; we weren't in Jubilee Field for half a tick when he was off up the wood with that Land Girl, Sarah, or whatever her name is."

"Sally," I said.

Although it was an interesting idea, I knew that Rupert had, in actual fact, been smoking Indian hemp in Gibbet Wood with Gordon Ingleby. But I could hardly tell Nialla that. Sally Straw had been nowhere in sight.

"I thought you said he went to see about the van."

"Oh, Flavia, you're such a — " She bit off the word in the nick of time. "Of course I said that. I didn't want to air our dirty laundry in front of a stranger."

Did she mean me — or was she referring to Dieter?

"Rupert always smudges himself with smoke, trying to cover up the scent of his tarts. I smell it on him.

"But I went a bit too far," she added ruefully. "I opened up the van and threw the first thing at him that came to hand. I shouldn't have. It was his new Jack puppet: He's been working on it for weeks. The old one's getting tatty, you see, and it tends to come apart at the worst possible moment.

"Like me," she wailed, and threw up again.

I wished that I could make myself useful, but this was one of those situations in which a bystander can do nothing to help.

"Up all the night he was, trying to fix the thing."

By the fresh marks on her neck, I could see that Rupert had done more in the night than patch up a puppet.

"Oh, I wish I were dead," she moaned.

There was a banging at the door: a sharp, rapid volley of rat-a-tat-tat knocks.

"Who's in there?" a woman's voice demanded, and my heart cringed. It was Cynthia Richardson.

"There may be others wishing to use the facilities," she called. "Please try to be more considerate of other people's needs."

"Just coming, Mrs. Richardson," I called out. "It's me, Flavia."