The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Next, I stirred a half teaspoon of vanilla extract into a few drops of acetaldehyde (which, because the stuff is volatile and boils at room temperature, Uncle Tar had thoughtfully stored beneath a layer of argon in a sealed bottle), then tipped the mixture into a clean beaker into which I had already measured six and a half tablespoons of ethanol--plain old C₂H₅OH. This I had pinched from Father's sideboard, where it had lain unopened for ages after being brought him as a gift from a fellow philatelist who had been posted to Russia by the Foreign Office.

And now the stage was set.

Placing a fresh sample of one of the leaves into a clean test tube, I added a few drops of my alcoholic vanillin preparation (which I thought of calling the Duquenois-Levine-de-Luce reagent), and after waiting for a minute, just a nibbins of concentrated hydrochloric acid.

Again, as in my previous test, small bubbles arose in the tube as the carbon dioxide was formed, but this time, the liquid in the test tube turned quickly to a shade of blueish purple.

Excitedly, I added to the mixture a couple of drops of my homemade chloroform, which, since chloroform is not miscible in water, sank promptly to the bottom.

When the stuff had stratified into two distinct layers (the clear chloroform on the bottom and the blueish purple of the Duquenois reagent floating on top of it), I gave it a jolly good mixing up with a glass stirring rod and, holding my breath, waited for it to settle one last time.

It didn't take long: Now the chloroform layer had taken on the color of its upper blanket, the mauve of a hidden bruise.

Because I had already suspected the outcome, I didn't bother to cry 'Eureka.'

It wasn't parsnips Gordon Ingleby was growing in his secret glade: It was Indian hemp!

I had read about the stuff in an offprint of O'Shaughnessy's On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp, or Gunjah; Their Effects on the Animal System in Health, and Their Utility in the Treatment of Tetanus and Other Convulsive Diseases, a copy of which I had found tucked away in one of Uncle Tar's desk drawers.

Had Uncle Tar been using Indian hemp? Would that further explain his sudden and spectacular departure from Oxford as a young man?

Gunjah, or bhang, had long been known as an opium substitute, and Dr. O'Shaughnessy himself had reported great success in using it to treat a case of infantile convulsions.

And what more was Rupert's infantile paralysis, I thought, than muscular convulsions that would drag on cruelly, all day every day, until the last day of his life?

Testing the ends of the cigarettes that Gordon and Rupert had smoked was almost an anticlimax. The results were as I knew they would be. When I had washed up and put away the glassware (ughh!--how I loathe washing up!), I wrote in my notebook:Friday, 21st of July 1950, 9:50 PM.

Duquenois-Levine test of leaves and cigarette remnants from Gibbet Wood indicates presence of Indian hemp (Cannabis sativa). Gordon Ingleby growing--and smoking--the stuff. Overheard his remark that it was 'the end of the line' for him. What did he mean? Who are the 'rest of us' Rupert spoke of? Who is 'the dead woman'? Could it be Mrs. Ingleby? Whatever is going on at Culverhouse Farm, Rupert Porson is part of it.

'And so ...' as that man Pepys would have written: 'to bed.'

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.'