The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag

'The samovar,' she said, wiping her wet red hands on a tea towel. 'Peter the Great.'

'Here,' I said, 'let me--'

Without another word I took up a bowl of lemon wedges from one of the round tables and squeezed each of them into a jug of iced water. Then I grabbed a clean white table napkin, immersed it until it was soaked, wrung it out, and wrapped it around Miss Puddock's hand. She flinched as I touched her, and then relaxed.

'May I?' I asked, removing an opal brooch from her lapel and using it to pin the ends of the makeshift bandage.

'Oh! It feels better already,' she said with a pained smile. 'Wherever did you learn that trick?'

'Girl Guides,' I lied.

Experience has taught me that an expected answer is often better than the truth. I had, in fact, quite painfully looked up the remedy in one of Mrs. Mullet's household reference books after a superheated test tube seared most of the flesh from a couple of my fingers.

'Miss Cool has always spoken so highly of you,' she said. 'I shall tell her she was 'bang-on,' as those nice bomber boys from the RAF used to say.'

I gave her my most modest smile. 'It's nothing, Miss Puddock--just jolly good luck I got here when I did. I was next door, at Mr. Sowbell's, you see, saying a prayer or two at Mr. Porson's coffin. You don't suppose it will do any harm, do you?'

I realized that I was gilding the lily with a string mop for a paintbrush, but business was business.

'Why no, dear,' she said. 'I think Mr. Porson would be touched.'

She didn't know the half of it!

'It was so sad.' I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper and touched her good arm. 'But I must tell you, Miss Puddock, that in spite of the tragedy on Saturday evening, my family and I enjoyed 'Napoleon's Last Charge' and 'Bendemeer's Stream.' Father said that you don't often hear music like that nowadays.'

'Why, thank you, dear,' she murmured damply. 'It's kind of you to say so. Of course, mercifully, we didn't actually see what happened to poor Mr. Porson, being busy in the kitchen, as it were. As proprietresses of Bishop Lacey's sole tearoom, certain expectations attach, I'm afraid. Not that we resent--'

'No, of course not,' I said. 'But surely you must have tons of people offering to help out.'

She gave a little bark. 'Help? Most people don't know the meaning of the word. No, Aurelia and I were left alone in the kitchen from start to finish. Two hundred and sixty-three cups of tea we poured, but of course that's counting the ones we served after the police took charge.'

'And no one offered to help?' I asked, giving her an incredulous look.

'No one. As I said, Aurelia and I were alone in the kitchen the whole while. And I was left completely on my own when Aurelia took a cup of tea to the puppeteer.'

My ears went up like a flag on a pole. 'She took Rupert a cup of tea?'

'Well, she tried to, dear, but the door was locked.'

'The door to the stage? Across from the kitchen?'

'No, no ... she didn't want to use that one. She'd have had to brush right past that Mother Goose, that woman who was in the spotlight, telling the story. No, Aurelia took the tea all the way round the back of the hall and down to the other door.'

'The one in the opposite passage?'

'Well, yes. It's the only other one, isn't it, dear? But as I've already told you, it was locked.'

'During the puppet show?'

'Why, yes. Odd, isn't it? Mr. Porson had asked us before he began if we could bring him a nice cup of tea during the show. 'Just leave it on the little table behind the stage,' he said. 'I'll find it. Puppetry's dry work, you know,' and he gave us a little wink. So why on earth would he lock the door?'

As she went on, I could already feel the facts beginning to marshal themselves in my mind.

'Those were Aurelia's exact words when she'd come all the way back with his cup of tea still in her hand. 'Whatever would possess him to lock the door?''

'Perhaps he didn't,' I said, with sudden inspiration. 'Perhaps someone else did. Who has the key, do you know?'

'There are two keys to the stage door, dear. They each open the ones on either side of the stage. The vicar keeps one on his keychain, and the duplicate on a nail in his study at the vicarage. It's all because of that time he went off to Brighton for the C and S--that's the Churchwardens' and Sidesmen's--cricket match, and took Tom Stoddart with him. Tom's the locksmith, you know, and with the two of them gone, no one could get on or off the stage without a stepladder. It played havoc with the Little Theater Group's production of King Lear, let me tell you!'

'And there was no one else about?'

'No one, dear. Aurelia and I were in the kitchen the whole time. We had the door half closed so the light from the kitchen wouldn't spoil the darkness in the hall.'

'There was no one in the passageway?'

'No, of course not. They should have had to walk through the beam of light from the kitchen door, right under our noses so to speak. Once we had the water on to boil, Aurelia and I stood right there at the crack of the door so that we could at least hear the puppet show. 'Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum.' Oh! It gives me the goose bumps just to think about it now!'

I stood perfectly still and held my breath, not moving a muscle. I kept my mouth shut and let the silence