The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

'What are you doing away out here?'

'Just rambling,' I said. 'I like to get away, sometimes. Go for a walk--that sort of thing.'

'Lucky you,' she said. 'I never get away. Well, hardly ever. Dieter's taken me for a pint of half-and-half at the Thirteen Drakes a couple of times, but then there was a most god-awful flap about it. The POWs are not allowed to do that, you know. At least they weren't during the war.'

'Dieter told me your sister Ophelia had him to tea yesterday,' she added, somewhat cagily. I realized at once that she was fishing.

'Yes,' I said, kicking carelessly at a clod of dirt, gazing off into the distance, and pretending I wasn't remotely interested. Friend or not, if she wanted gossip from me, it would have to be tit for tat.

'I saw you at the puppet show,' I said. 'At the church, on Saturday night. Wasn't that a corker? About Mr. Porson, I mean?'

'It was horrid,' she said.

'Did you know him?'

It probably wasn't a fair question, and I fired it at her without warning: straight out of the blue.

Sally's expression became instantly guarded, and she hesitated a bit too long before answering.

'I--I've seen him around.' Her lie was obvious.

'On the telly, perhaps?' I asked, perhaps too innocently. 'The Magic Kingdom? Snoddy the Squirrel?'

I knew as soon as I said it that I'd pushed things too far.

'All right,' she said, 'what are you up to? Come on--out with it.'

She planted her hands on her hips and fixed me with an unwavering stare.

'I don't know what you mean,' I said.

'Oh, come off it. Don't give me that. Everyone for fifty miles around knows that Flavia de Luce doesn't go walking in the woods just to put roses in her cheeks.'

Could that be true? Fifty miles? Her answer rather surprised me: I should have thought a hundred.

'Gordon'd have your hide if he caught you in that wood,' she said, pointing to the sign.

I put on my best sheepish look, but kept quiet.

'How much do you know about all this?' Sally demanded, sweeping her hand round in a large half-circle to take in the farm. Her meaning was clear.

I took a deep breath. I had to trust her.

'I know that Rupert has been coming here to get cannabis for quite a long time. I know that Gordon grows it in a patch in Gibbet Wood--not far from where Robin was found hanging.'

'And you think that Dieter and I are somehow mixed up in all this?'

'I don't know,' I replied. 'I hope not.'

'So do I,' Sally said. 'So do I.'

* NINETEEN *

'RUPERT WAS--A LADIES' man,' Sally said slowly, as if reluctant to put her thoughts into words, 'but then, you've probably found that out by now.'

I nodded, careful not to interrupt. I had learned by observing Inspector Hewitt that silence is the best primer for a conversational pump.

'He's been coming to Culverhouse Farm off and on, for years--since well before the war. And Rupert's not the only one, you know. Gordon has a regular little army of others just like him. He supplies them with something to help manage the pain.'

'Bhang,' I said. I couldn't help myself. 'Gunjah ... Indian hemp, cannabis.'

She looked at me with narrowed eyes, and then went on. 'Some, like Rupert, come because they once had infantile paralysis--polio, they call it now--others, well, God only knows.

'You see, Gordon considers himself a kind of herbalist: someone who helps to blot out the sufferings that the doctors can't, or won't. He's very discreet about it, but then he has to be, doesn't he? Other than you, I really don't think anyone in Bishop's Lacey has ever guessed that the occasional travelers who stop by Culverhouse Farm are anything other than lost--or perhaps selling agricultural supplies.

'I've been here for eight years,' Sally went on. 'And don't even bother asking me: The answer is no--I'm not one of Gordon's smokers.'

'I didn't expect you were,' I said, fawning a little. It worked.

'I grew up in a good home,' she went on, a little more eagerly. 'My parents were what they used to call, in the old double-decker novels, 'poor but honest.' My mam was sick all the time, but she never would tell us what was wrong with her. Even my father didn't know. Meanwhile, I plodded on at school, got myself a bit of an education, and then the war came.

'Of course, I wanted to help out a bit with the medical bills, so I joined the WLA. Sounds simple, doesn't it? And so it was--there was no more to it than that. I was just a girl from Kent who wanted to fight Adolf Hitler, and see her mother well again.