The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Father was most eloquent when he was angry. I had nicked the bottle of Roger & Gallet to fill an atomizer with which I needed to spray the house after an experiment involving hydrogen sulfide had gone spectacularly wrong.

I shook my head.

'I'm sorry,' I said, assuming a hangdog look and dabbing at my eye with a napkin. 'I'd buy you a new bottle-- but I have no money.'

As if I were a tin duck in a shooting gallery, Feely glared down the long table at me in silent contempt. Daffy's nose was stuck firmly in Virginia Woolf.

'But I could make you some,' I said brightly. 'It's really not much more than ethanol, citrus oils, and garden herbs. I'll ask Dogger to pick me some rosemary and lavender, and I'll get some oranges and lemons and limes from Mrs. Mullet--'

'You'll do no such thing, Miss Flavia,' said Mrs. Mullet, bustling--literally--into the room as she knocked open the door with one of her ample hips and dumped a large tray onto the table.

'Oh, no!' I heard Daffy whisper to Feely. 'It's 'the Whiffler' again.'

'The Whiffler,' as we called it, was a dessert of Mrs. Mullet's own devising, which, so far as we could make out, consisted of a sort of clotted green jelly in sausage casings, topped with double Devon cream, and garnished with sprigs of mint and other assorted vegetable refuse. It sat there, quivering obscenely now and then, like some great beastly garden slug. I couldn't help shivering.

'Yummy,' Father said. 'How very yummy.'

He meant it ironically, but Mrs. Mullet's antennae were not attuned to sarcasm.

'I knew you'd like it,' she said. 'It was no more than this morning I was sayin' to my Alf, 'It's been a while since the Colonel and those girls 'ave 'ad one of my lovely jells. They always remarks over my jells' (this was no more than the truth), 'and I loves makin' 'em for the dears.''

She made it sound as if her employers had antlers.

Feely made a noise like a distressed passenger at the rail of the Queen Mary on a November crossing of the North Atlantic.

'Eat it up, dear,' said Mrs. Mullet, unfazed. 'It's good for you.' And with that she was gone.

Father fixed me with that gaze of his. Although he had brought the latest issue of The London Philatelist to the table, as he always did, he had not so much as opened it. Father was a keen, not to say rabid, collector of postage stamps, his life wholly given over to gazing through a magnifying lens at a seemingly endless supply of little colored heads and scenic views. But he was not looking at stamps now--he was looking at me. The omens did not bode well.

'Where were you all afternoon?' he asked.

'At church,' I answered promptly and primly and, I hoped, a little devoutly. I was a master at this kind of deflected chitchat.

'Church?' he asked. He seemed rather surprised. 'Why?'

'I was helping a woman,' I said. 'Her van broke down.'

'Ah,' he said, allowing himself a half-millimeter smile. 'And there you were on the spot to offer your skills as a motor mechanic.'

Daffy grinned at her book, and I knew that she was listening with pleasure to my humiliation. To give her credit, Feely remained totally absorbed in polishing her fingernails on her white silk blouse.

'She's with a traveling puppet show,' I said. 'The vicar asked them--Rupert Porson, I mean, and Nialla--that's her name--to put on a performance in the parish hall on Saturday, and he wants me to help.'

Father deflated slightly. The vicar was one of his few friends in Bishop's Lacey, and it was unlikely he would deny my services.

'Rupert is on the television,' I volunteered. 'He's quite famous, actually.'

'Not in my circles,' Father said, looking at his wristwatch and pushing his chair back from the table.

'Eight o'clock,' he said. 'Thursday.'

He did not have to explain himself. Without a word, Daffy and Feely and I got up and made dutifully for the drawing room, all in a scattered line like a convoy.

Thursday evenings were Wireless Night at Buckshaw. Father had recently decreed that we needed to spend more time together as a family, and so it was that Wireless Night had been laid on as a supplement to his regular compulsory lecture series on Wednesdays. This week it was to be the fabulous Fifth Symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, or 'Larry' as I called him whenever I wanted to aggravate Feely. I remembered that Feely had once told us that, on the original printed score, Beethoven's given name had appeared as 'Louis.'

'Louis Beethoven' sounded to me like the name of one of the supporting gangsters in an Edward G. Robinson film, someone with a sallow, pockmarked face, an alarming twitch, and a Thompson submachine gun in a violin case.

'Play dat Moonlight Snotta thing by Louie B.,' I'd snarl in my raspy mobster's voice, wandering into the room when she was practicing at the keyboard. A moment later I'd be in full flight, with Feely in hot pursuit and sheet music floating to the carpet.

Now, Feely was busily arranging herself in an artistic full-length pose on the chesterfield, like a film star. Daffy dropped down sideways into an overstuffed armchair with her legs hanging out over the side.

Father switched on the wireless, and sat down in a plain wooden chair, his back ramrod straight. As the valves were warming up, I did a handspring across the carpet, walked back across the room on my hands, and dropped into a cross-legged Buddha position with what I hoped was an inscrutable look on my face.

Father shot me a withering look, but with the program already beginning, he decided to say nothing.