The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

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.

"Hallo!" I called out, as much to cheer myself as anything. "Hallo! It's me — Flavia! Anyone up there?"

The only sound from above was the buzzing of bees round the upper windows of the dovecote, grotesquely amplified by the tower's hollow structure.

"Don't be frightened," I called. "I'm coming up."

Little by little, one small step at a time, I began my precarious ascent. Again, I felt like Jack, this time climbing the beanstalk; dragging myself up, inch by inch, to face some unknown horror. The old wood creaked horribly, and I knew that it could crumble at any moment, dashing me down to certain death on the flagstones below, in much the same way that the giant — and Rupert — had come crashing down upon the puppet stage.

The climb seemed to go on forever. I stopped to listen: There was still no sound but that of the bees.

Up and up I went again, shifting my feet carefully from one wooden rung to the next, clutching at the crosspieces with fingers that were already beginning to grow numb.

As my eyes at last came level with the arched opening, the interior of the upper chamber came into view. A figure was hunched over the shrine to Robin Ingleby: the same figure that had fled the farmhouse.

On its knees, its back turned to me, the small apparition was dressed in a white and navy sailor suit with a middy collar and short trousers; the waffle soles of its Dunlop rubber boots were almost in my face. I could have reached out and touched them.

My knees began to tremble violently — threatening to buckle and send me plummeting down into the stony abyss.

"Help me," I said, the words brought up suddenly, inexplicably, and surprisingly, from some ancient and reptilian part of my brain.

A hand reached out, white fingers seized mine, and with surprising strength, hauled me up to safety. A moment later I found myself crouched, safe but trembling, face-to-face with the specter.

While the white sailor suit, with its crown-and-anchored jacket, and the Dunlop boots undoubtedly belonged to the dead Robin Ingleby, the strained and haggard face that stared back at me from beneath the beribboned HMS Hood hat was that of his tiny mother, Grace.

"You," I said, unable to restrain myself. "It was you."

Her face was sad, and suddenly very, very old. It was hard to believe that there remained in this woman a single atom of Grace Tennyson, that happy, outgoing girl who had once so cheerfully conquered the wired innards of Peter the Great, the silver samovar at the St. Nicholas Tea Room.

"Robin's gone," she said with a cough. "The Devil took him."

The Devil took him! Almost the same words Mad Meg had used in Gibbet Wood.

"And who was the Devil, Mrs. Ingleby? I thought for a while it was Rupert, but it wasn't. It was you, wasn't it?"

"Rupert's dead now," she said, touching her fingers to her temples as if she were dazed.

"Yes," I said. "Rupert's dead. He was the Punch and Judy man at the seaside, wasn't he? You had arranged to meet him there, and Robin saw you together. You were afraid he would tell Gordon."

She gave me a half-canny smile.

"At the seaside?" she said with a chuckling cough. "No, no — not at the seaside. Here ... in the dovecote."

I had suspected for some time that the single set of footprints — the ones that had been found five years ago, leading up Jubilee Field to Gibbet Wood — had been those of Grace Ingleby, carrying the dead Robin in her arms. In order to leave only his footprints, she had put on her child's rubber boots. They were, after all, the same size as her own. As if to prove it, she was wearing them now.

Five years after his death, she was still dressing up in Robin's clothing, trying desperately to conjure her son back from the dead. Or to atone for what she had done.

"You carried him to the wood and hung him from a tree. But Robin died here, didn't he? That's why you've made this his shrine, and not his bedroom."

How matter-of-fact it sounded, this nightmare conversation with a madwoman! I knew that if ever I made it safely home to Buckshaw, I was going to be in need of a long, hot, steaming bath.

"I told him to stay down," she said rather petulantly. "'Go back to the house, Robin,' I called out. 'You mustn't come up here.' But he wouldn't listen. Little boys are like that sometimes. Disobedient."

She coughed again, and shook her head ruefully. "'I can do a trick with the rope!' he shouted back. He'd been playing cowboy all day with a rope he'd found in a shed."

Just as Sally had said. Grace must be telling me the truth.

"He climbed up here before we could stop him. Rupert was furious. He grabbed at Robin to give him a shake, but his iron brace slipped on the bricks. Robin — "

Now, silent tears were coursing down her face.

"Fell," I said. There was no need to elaborate.