by Alan Bradley
This seemed to set her off, and she was racked by a siege of coughing. I waited until she had finished.
“The vicar,” she said, gasping for breath, “is the only one who has made these past five years bearable.”
“He knew about Robin?” I could hardly believe it!
“A clergyman’s lips are sealed,” she said. “He’s never breathed a word. He tried to come to Culverhouse Farm once a week, just to let me talk. The man’s a saint. His wife thought he was—”
“In love with you.”
She nodded, squeezing her eyes tight shut, as if she were in excruciating pain.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Wait a few minutes,” she said, “and I shall be fine.”
Her body was crumbling before my eyes, tipping towards the opening into the shaft.
I grabbed at her arm, and as I did so, a glass bottle that she had been clutching in her fist fell to the brick floor and bounced away, clinking, into the corner, sending a pigeon clattering up towards the opening. I dragged Grace into the center of the chamber and sprang after the bottle, which had come to rest in a mound of ancient guano.
The label told me all I needed to know: Calcium Cyanide, it said. Poison.
Rat poison! The stuff was in common farm use, particularly on those farms whose henhouses attracted vermin. There was still one of the white tablets in the bottom. I removed the stopper and smelled it. Nothing.
Grace was now flat on the floor, twitching, her limbs flailing.
I dropped to my knees and sniffed her lips. The scent of bitter almonds.
The tablets of calcium cyanide, I knew, as soon as they met the moisture of her mouth, throat, and stomach, would produce hydrogen cyanide, a toxic gas that could kill in five minutes.
There was no time to waste. Her life was in my hands. I almost panicked at the thought—but I didn’t.
I took a careful look round, registering every detail. Aside from the candle, the shrine, the photograph of Robin, and his toy sailboat, there was nothing in the chamber but rubble.
Well, not quite nothing. On one wall was an ancient watering device for the birds: an inverted glass bulb and tube whose gravity feed kept a dish full for the pigeons to dip their beaks into. From the clarity of the water, it seemed as if Grace had recently filled it.
A glass cock allowed the gravity feed to be turned off. I gave it a twist and pulled the full dish carefully out of its spring clips.
Grace moaned horribly on the floor, apparently no longer aware of my presence.
Treading carefully, I moved to the spot from which the pigeon had flown. Feeling gingerly in the straw with my fingertips, I was quickly rewarded. An egg. No, two little eggs!
Putting them down gently beside the dish, I picked up the sailboat. At the bottom of its tin keel was a lead weight. Damn!
I wedged the thing into the crack between two bricks in the windowsill and pulled for all I was worth—then pulled again. The third time, the weight snapped off.
Using the sharp bottom edge of the keel as a makeshift putty knife, I leaned out the opening to the wide shelf that had served for centuries as a perch.
Below me, the farmyard was empty. No sense wasting time by yelling for help.
I ground the thin keel along the ledge until I had gathered what I needed, then scraped it off, with a reluctant finger, into the water dish.
One step left.
Although their small size made it a tricky bit of work, I cracked the eggs, one at a time, the way Mrs. Mullet had taught me: a sharp rap in the middle, then using the two halves of the shell like twin egg cups, tipping the yolk back and forth from one to the other until the last of the whites had oozed away into the waiting water dish.
Taking up the glass pill bottle, I used it as a pestle: twisting, grinding, and stirring until I had perhaps half a teacup of grayish curded mud, with the slightest tinge of yellow.
So that neither of us would knock it over—Grace was now kicking feebly and pink in the face from lack of oxygen—I sat down beside her, cross-legged on the floor, and pulled her head into my lap, face upwards. She was too weak to resist.
Then seizing her nose between my thumb and forefinger, I pulled open her mouth, hoping that, in her spasms, she wouldn’t bite me.
She snapped it shut at once. This was not going to be as easy as I had thought.
I pinched her nose a little tighter. Now, if she wanted to breathe at all, it was going to have to be through her mouth. I hated myself for what I was doing to her.
She struggled, her eyes bulging—and then her mouth flew open and she sucked in a breath of air—then snapped it shut again.
As slowly and as gently as I could, I leaned over and picked up the brimming dish, awaiting the proper moment.
It came sooner than I expected. With a gasp, Grace’s mouth flew open, and as she sucked in air again, I dumped the contents of the dish into her mouth and slammed it shut with the heel of my hand under her chin. The empty dish fell to the floor with a crash.
But Grace was fighting me; I could see that. Some part of her was so dead set on dying that she was keeping the stuff in her mouth, refusing to swallow.
With the little finger of my right hand, I began prodding at her gullet, like a seabird digging in the sand.
We must have looked like Greek wrestlers: she with her head locked tightly in the crook of my arm, me bending over her, trembling with the sheer physical effort of trying to keep her from spitting out the nauseating mixture.
And then, just before she went limp, I heard her swallow. She was no longer resisting. I carefully pried open her mouth. Aside from a faint and distasteful glistening of foreign matter, it was empty.
I raced to the window, leaning out as far as I could into the sunshine.
My heart sank. The farmyard was still empty.
Then suddenly there was a noise of machinery in the lane, and a moment later, the gray Fergie came clattering into view, Sally bouncing at the wheel and Dieter dangling his long legs over the gate of the trailer.
“Sally! Dieter!” I shouted.
At first they didn’t know where my voice was coming from. They were looking everywhere round the yard, perplexed.
“Up here—in the dovecote!”
I dug in my pocket, fished out Alf’s willow whistle, and blew into it like a demented bobby.
At last they spotted me. Sally gave a wave.
“It’s Grace!” I hollered. “She’s taken poison! Telephone Dr. Darby and tell him to come at once.”
Dieter was already dashing for the farmhouse, running full tilt, the way he must once have done when scrambling for his Messerschmitt.
“And tell him to make sure he’s got amyl nitrite and sodium thiosulfate in his bag!” I shouted, in spite of a couple of wayward tears. “He’s going to need them!”
• TWENTY-EIGHT •
“PIGEON DROPPINGS?” INSPECTOR HEWITT said, for perhaps the third time. “You’re telling me that you concocted an antidote from pigeon droppings?”
We were sitting in the vicar’s study, sizing one another up.
“Yes,” I said. “I had no other choice. Pigeon guano, when it’s left outdoors in the sunlight, is remarkably high in NaNO3—sodium nitrate—which is why I had to scrape it from the outside perch, rather than using the older stuff that was in the chamber. Sodium nitrate is an antidote to cyanide poisoning. I used the whites of pigeons’ eggs to produce the suspension. I hope she’s all right.”
“She’s fine,” the Inspector said, “although we’re seeking an opinion about whether to charge you with practicing medicine without a license.”
I studied his face to see if he was teasing, but he didn’t seem to be.
“But,” I protested, “Dr. Darby said he couldn’t have done better himself.”
“Which isn’t saying much,” the Inspector said, looking away from me and out the window.
I saw that I had him beaten.
Inspector Hewitt had flagged me dow
n on my way back to Buckshaw, and asked me to account for my presence at Culverhouse Farm.
A hastily fabricated story about fetching eggs for Mrs. Mullet, who wanted to make an angel food cake, seemed to have got me off the hook. At least for now.
The Inspector had assured me that Grace Ingleby was still alive; that she had been taken to the hospital at Hinley.
He did not say that my antidote had saved her life. I supposed only time would tell.
The vicar, having given up his desk and chair to Inspector Hewitt, stood like a black stork in the corner, rubbing at his eyeglasses with a linen handkerchief.
As Detective Sergeant Woolmer stood at one of the windows, pretending to polish an anastigmat lens from his precious camera, Detective Sergeant Graves glanced up from his notes just long enough to give me a beaming smile. I’d like to think that the almost imperceptible shake of his head that came with it was a sign of admiration.
And even though they’re not yet aware of one another, I also like to think that Sergeant Graves will one day marry my rotten sister Ophelia and carry her off to a vine-covered cottage just far enough from Buckshaw that I can drop in whenever I feel like it for a good old gab about murder.
But now there was Dieter to take into account. Life was becoming so complicated.
“Just begin at the beginning,” Inspector Hewitt said, suddenly back from his reverie. “I want to make sure we haven’t missed anything.”
Was I detecting a note of sarcasm? I hoped not, since I really liked the man, although he could be somewhat slow.
“Mrs. Ingleby—Grace—was having an affair with Rupert Porson. Rupert had been coming to Culverhouse Farm for years because … Gordon supplied him with marijuana. It eased the pain of his polio, you see.”
He must have sensed my hesitation.
“No need to worry about betraying him,” he said, “Mr. Ingleby has been most frank with us. It’s your version I want to hear.”
“Rupert and Grace arranged to meet at the seaside, years ago,” I said. “Robin saw them there together. He stumbled upon them again, later, in the dovecote. Rupert made a grab for him, or something like that, and Robin tumbled down the central shaft and broke his neck. It was an accident, but still, Robin was dead. Rupert cooked up the idea of having Grace take his body, after dark, to Gibbet Wood, and hang it from a tree. Robin had been seen by several people playing with a rope.
“It was Rupert, too, who invented the story that Robin had been playing out the scene between Punch and Jack Ketch—that he had seen it at the seaside puppet show. Punch and the hangman’s tale is one that’s known to every child in England. No one would question the story that Robin had accidentally hanged himself. It was just bizarre enough to be true. As a well-known puppeteer, Rupert couldn’t afford to have his name linked in any way with the death of a child. He needed to erase himself from the scene of Robin’s death. No one but Grace knew he had been at the farm that day.
“That’s why he threatened her. He told her that if she didn’t do as he wanted, he would spill the beans to Gordon—sorry, I mean that he would inform Gordon that he’d been carrying on an affair with his wife. Grace would lose both her son and her husband. She was already half mad with grief and fear, so it was probably quite easy to manipulate her.
“Because she’s so small, she was able to put on Robin’s rubber boots to carry his body up to Gibbet Wood. She’s remarkably strong for her size. I found that out when she hauled me up into the dovecote chamber. After she’d hung Robin’s body from the tree, she put the boots on his feet, and went home the long way round, barefoot.”
Inspector Hewitt nodded and scribbled a note in his microscopic handwriting.
“Mad Meg came upon the body hanging there, and thought it was the Devil’s work. I’ve already given you the page from my notebook, so you’ve seen the drawing she made. She’s quite good, actually, don’t you think?”
“Um,” the Inspector said. It was a bad habit he was picking up by associating too much with Dr. Darby.
“That’s why she was afraid to touch him, or even tell anyone. Robin’s body hung there in Gibbet Wood until Dieter found it.
“Last Saturday at the church hall, when Meg saw Robin’s face on Jack, the puppet, she thought the Devil had brought the dead boy back to life, shrunk him, and put him to work on the stage. Meg has her times very badly mixed up. You can tell that from the drawing: The Robin hanging from the tree is a sight she saw five years ago. The vicar taking his clothes off in the wood is something she saw last Thursday.”
The vicar went beet red, and ran a finger round the inside of his clerical collar. “Yes, well … you see—”
“Oh, I knew you had come a cropper, Vicar,” I said. “I knew it the instant I saw you in the graveyard—the day you met Rupert and Nialla, remember? Your trouser leg was ripped, you were covered with chalky smudges from the road at Culverhouse Farm, and you’d lost your bicycle clip.”
“So I had,” the vicar said. “My trousers got caught up in the ruddy chain and I was catapulted into the ditch.”
“Which explains why you went in among the trees of Gibbet Wood—to take off your clothes—to try to clean them up. You were afraid of what Cynthia would say—sorry, Mrs. Richardson, I mean. You said as much in the churchyard. Something about Cynthia having you on the carpet.”
The vicar remained silent, and I don’t think I ever admired him more than I did in that moment.
“Because you’ve been going to Culverhouse Farm at least once a week since Robin died five years ago, Cynthia—Mrs. Richardson, I mean—had somehow got the idea that there was more in your meetings with Grace Ingleby than met the eye. That’s why you’ve recently been keeping your visits secret.”
“I’m not really at liberty to discuss that,” the vicar said. “The wearing of the dog collar puts paid to any tendency one has to be a chatterbox. But I must put in, in her defense, that Cynthia is very loyal. Her life is not always an easy one.”
“Nor is Grace Ingleby’s,” I pointed out.
“No, nor is Grace’s.”
“At any rate,” I went on, “Meg lives in an old shack, somewhere in the depths of Gibbet Wood. She doesn’t miss much that goes on there.”
Or anywhere else, I wanted to add. It had only just occurred to me that it was almost certainly Meg that Rupert and Nialla had heard prowling round near their tent in the churchyard.
“She saw you taking your trousers off beside the old gallows at the very spot where she had seen Robin hanging. That’s why she drew you into her picture.”
“I see,” said the vicar. “At least, I think I see.”
“Meg picked up your trouser clip in the road, meaning to use it for one of those dangling sculpture things of hers, but she recognized it as yours, and—”
“It has my initials on it,” the vicar said. “Cynthia scratched them on.”
“Meg can’t read,” I said, “but she’s very observant. Look at the detail in her drawing. She even remembered the little Church of England pin in your lapel.”
“Good heavens,” the vicar said, coming round to peer over Inspector Hewitt’s shoulder. “So she did.”
“She came here on Saturday afternoon to return the trouser clip, and while she was looking for you, she happened to wander into the parish hall during Rupert’s performance. When she saw the shrunken Robin on the stage, she went into a right old squiff. You and Nialla carried her off to the vicarage and tucked her in on your couch in the study. That’s when the clip—and Nialla’s compact—fell out of her pocket. I found the compact on the floor behind the couch the next day. I didn’t find the bicycle clip because Grace Ingleby had already picked it up the day before.”
“Hold on,” the Inspector said. “No one’s claiming to have seen Mrs. Ingleby anywhere near the vicarage—or the parish hall—on Saturday afternoon.”
“Nor did they,” I said. “What they did say was that the egg lady had been there.”
Had Inspector Hewitt been the sort
of man whose mouth was prone to falling open when astonished, he’d have been gaping like a gargoyle.
“Good Lord,” he said flatly. “Who told you that?”
“Mrs. Roberts and Miss Roper,” I said. “They were in the vicarage kitchen after church yesterday. I assumed you had questioned them.”
“I believe we did,” Inspector Hewitt said, cocking an eyebrow at Sergeant Graves, who flipped back through the pages of his notebook.
“Yes, sir,” said Sergeant Graves. “They both gave in statements, but there was nothing said about egg ladies.”
“The egg lady was Grace Ingleby, of course,” I said helpfully. “She came down from Culverhouse Farm late on Saturday afternoon with eggs for the vicarage. There was no one else around. Something made her go into the vicar’s study. Perhaps she heard Meg snoring, I don’t know. But she found the bicycle clip on the floor, picked it up, and pocketed it.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Inspector Hewitt.
“I can’t be sure,” I said. “What I can be sure of, because he told me so, is that the vicar lost his bicycle clip last Thursday …”
The vicar nodded in agreement.
“… on the road at Gibbet Hill … and that you and I, Inspector, found it on Sunday morning clamped to the rail of the puppet theater. The rest is mere guesswork.”
The Inspector scratched at his nose, made another note, and looked up at me as if he had been shortchanged.
“Which brings us neatly back to Rupert Porson,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied. “Which brings us neatly back to Rupert Porson.”
“About whom you are about to enlighten us.”
I ignored his twitting and went on. “Grace had known Rupert for years. Perhaps since even before she met Gordon. For all I know, she might even have traveled with him at one time as his assistant.”
I knew by the sudden closed look on Inspector Hewitt’s face that I had hit the nail on the head. Bravo, Flavia! I thought. Go to the head of the class!
There were times when I surprised even myself.
“And even if she hadn’t,” I added, “she’d certainly attended some of the shows he put on round the countryside. She’d have paid particular attention to the electrical rigging. Since Rupert manufactured all of his own lighting equipment, I can hardly believe that he wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to show off the details to a fellow electrician. He was rather vain about his skills, you know.
