The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

If he was waiting for me to contradict him, he'd be waiting until the cows came home in purple pajamas.

"Your observations on the death of Rupert Porson have been most illuminating. But try as I may, I have failed utterly to follow your reasoning in the death of Robin Ingleby.

"The boots, yes ... perhaps. It's a possibility, I admit, but far from a certainty. Slender evidence when it comes to court. If the case is reopened, that is. But we shall require far more than a pair of child's boots if we are to prevail again upon their Lordships."

His tone was almost pleading. I had already decided that there were certain observations that would remain forever locked away in my brain: choice nuggets of deduction that I would keep for my own private delectation. After all, the Inspector had far more resources at his disposal than I did.

But then I thought of his beautiful wife, Antigone. Whatever would she think of me if she found that I had thwarted him? One thing was certain: It would scotch any idea I might have had of sipping tea in the garden of their tastefully decorated maisonette.

"Very well," I said reluctantly. "There are a few more points. The first is this: When Dieter went running back to the farmyard, having just discovered Robin's dead body hanging in Gibbet Wood, the windows of the house were empty. No one was awaiting his arrival, as might have been expected. Surely the mother of a missing child would be frantic, waiting for the slightest scrap of news? But Grace Ingleby wasn't keeping watch at the windows. And why not? The reason is a simple one: She already knew that Robin was dead."

Somewhere behind me, the vicar gasped.

"I see." Inspector Hewitt nodded. "An ingenious theory ... most ingenious. But still hardly enough to build a case upon."

"Granted," I agreed, "but there's more."

I looked from one of them to another: the vicar, Inspector Hewitt, and Sergeant Graves, their eager faces thrust forward, hanging upon my every word. Even the hulking Sergeant Woolmer slowed his polishing of the intricate lens.

"Robin Ingleby's hair was always a haystack," I told them. "'Tousled' is perhaps the proper word. You can see it in his photos. And yet when he was found hanging from the timbers of the old gallows, his hair was as neatly combed as if he'd just climbed down from the barber's chair. Meg captured it perfectly in her drawing. See?"

There was an intake of breath as everyone huddled over the page from my notebook.

"It was something that only a mother would do," I said. "She couldn't resist. Grace Ingleby wanted her son to be presentable when he was found, hanging by the neck, dead in Gibbet Wood."

"Good Lord!" Inspector Hewitt said.

* TWENTY-NINE *

"GOOD LORD," FATHER EXCLAIMED. "There's Broadcasting House. They've set up cameras in Portland Place."

He got up from his chair for the umpteenth time and hurried across the drawing room to twiddle with the knobs on the television receiving set.

"Please be quiet, Haviland," Aunt Felicity said. "If they were interested in your commentary, the BBC would have sent for you."

Aunt Felicity, who had barely got home to Hampstead, had hurried back again to Buckshaw as soon as the idea came into her head. She had hired the television for the occasion ("at ruinous expense," she hastened to point out), and because of it, was now enjoying vastly increased dictatorial powers.

Early in the morning of the previous day, the workmen had begun erecting a receiving aerial on the ramparts of Buckshaw.

"It needs to be high enough to pick up the signal from the new transmitting tower at Sutton Coldfield," Aunt Felicity had said, in a voice that suggested television was her own invention. "I had wanted all of us to go up to London to attend the Porson obsequies," she went on, "but when Lady Burwash let slip that the Sitwells were having in the telly ...

"No, no, don't protest, Haviland. It's educational. I'm only doing it for the good of the girls."

Several muscular workers, dressed in overalls, had lugged the set from the back of a pantechnicon and into the drawing room. There it now crouched, its single gray eye staring, like a flickering Cyclops, at those of us gathered in its baleful glow.

Daffy and Feely were huddled together on a chesterfield, feigning boredom. Father had invited the vicar and told them to watch their language.

Mrs. Mullet was enthroned in a comfortable wing-backed chair, and Dogger, who preferred not to sit in Father's presence, stood silently behind her.

"I wonder if they have televisions in Portland Place," Feely said, idly, "or whether they might, rather, be looking out their windows?"

I recognized this at once as an attempt to twit Father, whose contempt for television was legendary.

"Television is a bauble," he would reply, whenever we pleaded with him to have a receiver installed. "If God meant for pictures to be sent through the air, He'd have never given us the cinema.

"Or the National Gallery," he'd add sourly.

But in this case, he had been overruled.