The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

Daffy rolled her eyes and edged slowly away from her mad old aunt, fearing, I think, that she was going to be put to work as well. I relented enough to ask her one question. There were times when curiosity trumped even pride.

'What's he doing here?' I whispered into her ear, giving a slight tip of my head towards Dieter.

Of course I already knew, but it was a rare opportunity to talk sister-to-sister without rancor.

'Aunt Felicity insisted. Said he should walk us home and stay to tea.

'I think she's got her eye on him,' she added with a coarse snicker.

Although I'm quite accustomed to Daffy's excesses, I must admit that I was shocked.

'For Feely,' she explained.

Of course! No wonder Father was exercising his rusty charm! One daughter fewer would mean a one-third reduction in the number of surplus mouths he had to feed. Not that Feely ate that much--she didn't--but coupled with a similar reduction in the dose of daily insolence he would need to put up with, palming her off on Dieter was well worth the effort.

Then, too, I thought, there would be an end to the vast outlays of cash for the constant re-silvering of Buckshaw's looking glasses. Feely was hell on mirrors.

'And your father ...' Father was saying to Dieter.

I knew it! He was already greasing the skids!

'... I believe you said something about books?'

'He's a publisher, sir,' Dieter said. 'He's the 'Schrantz' of Schrantz and Markel. You may not have heard of them but they publish in German, editions of--'

'Of course! The Luxus Ausgaben Schrantz und Markel. Their Pliny--the one with the Durer plates--is quite remarkable.'

'Come along, Flavia,' Aunt Felicity said. 'You know how tiresome it is to paint brickwork once it's in shadow.'

From a distance, I must have looked like a sinking galleon as, with Aunt Felicity's easel over my shoulder, a stretched canvas under each arm, and a wooden box of paints and brushes in each hand, I waded barefoot through the shallow waters of the ornamental lake, towards the island upon which the folly was situated. Aunt Felicity brought up the rear, carrying a three-legged stool. In her tweed suit, floppy hat, and smock, she reminded me of photos I had seen in Country Life of Winston Churchill dabbling with his paints at Chartwell. The only thing missing was the cigar.

'I've wanted for ages to render the south front as it was in the days of dear Uncle Tar,' she shouted, as if I were on the far side of the world.

'Now, then, dear,' she said, when I had finally set up the painting gear to her satisfaction, 'it's time for a quiet talk. Out here, at least, we shall not be overheard--save by the bees and the water rats.'

I looked at her in astonishment.

'I expect you think I know nothing about the kind of life you lead.'

This was the sort of statement of which I had learned to be exceptionally wary: Its implications were immense and, until I saw which way the conversational wind was blowing, I knew that it was best to keep quiet.

'On the contrary,' she went on, 'I know a great deal about what you must feel: your loneliness, your isolation, your older sisters, your preoccupied father ...'

I was about to say that she must be mistaken, when I suddenly saw that the coming chat could be turned to my advantage.

'Yes,' I said, staring off over the water and blinking, as if to stop a tear, 'it can be difficult at times....'

'That's precisely what your mother used to say about living at Buckshaw. I remember her coming here summers, as a girl, as had I before her.'

Picturing Aunt Felicity as a girl was not an easy task.

'Oh, don't look so shocked, Flavia. In my youth, I used to run wild here on the island like a Pawnee princess. 'Moo-noo-tonowa,' I called myself. Pinched nice bits of beef from the larder and pretended I was cooking dog over a campfire lighted with rubbing sticks and snuff.

'Later, even in spite of the great difference in our ages, Harriet and I were always the greatest of chums. 'The Wretched Outcasts' we used to call ourselves. We would come out here to the island to talk. Once, when we hadn't seen one another for a very long time, we sat out all night in the folly, wrapped in blankets, jabbering away until the sun came up. Uncle Tar sent Pierrepoint, the old butler, to bring us Plasmon biscuits and calf's-foot jelly. He had spotted us from the windows of his laboratory, you see, and--'

'What was she like,' I interrupted. 'Harriet, I mean.'

Aunt Felicity made a dark slash of color on her canvas, which I guessed was supposed to represent the trunk of one of the chestnuts in the drive.

'She was exactly like you,' she answered. 'As you very well know.'

I gulped. 'She was?'

'Of course she was! How could you not be aware of it?'

I could have filled her ears with the horrid tales that Feely and Daffy had told me, but I chose not to.

'Zipped lips save ships.'

Dogger had said that to me once when I asked him a rather personal question about Father. 'Zipped lips save ships,' he had answered, turning back to his deadheading, and I hadn't the nerve to ask which of the three of us were the mutes and which the vessels.