The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag: A Flavia De Luce Novel by Alan Bradley

Author:Alan Bradley [Bradley, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Young Adult, Adult, Historical
ISBN: 0553840894
Amazon: B0030DHPH0
Publisher: Dell
Published: 2010-03-09T06:00:00+00:00

Seen from the Mulford Gates, Buckshaw always had about it a rather sad and abandoned air, as if some vital essence were missing. But now, as I walked along beneath the chestnuts, something was different. I spotted it at once. Several people were standing on the gravel sweep in the forecourt, and one of them was Father, who was pointing at the roof. I broke into a run, dashing across the lawn like a sprinter, chest out, fists going like pistons at my side.

I needn’t have bothered. As I drew closer, I saw that it was only Aunt Felicity and Daffy, both standing on one side of Father, with Feely at the other.

At her right hand stood Dieter. I couldn’t believe my eyes!

Feely’s eyes were sparkling, her hair was shining in the summer sun, and her smile was dazzlingly perfect. In her gray skirt and canary yellow sweater set, with a single strand of Harriet’s cultured pearls draped round her neck, she was more than vibrant … she was beautiful—I could have throttled her.

“Ruskin found square drip moldings abominable,” Father was saying, “but he was being facetious, of course. Even the best of our British sandstone is but a pale mockery of the fine-grained marble one finds in Greece.”

“Quite true, sir,” Dieter agreed. “Although, was it not your Charles Dickens who thought that the Greeks used marble only because of the way it took paint and color? Still, the style and the material mean nothing when the molding is placed under a portico. It is the architect’s joke, isn’t it?”

Father considered for a moment, rubbing his hands together behind his back as he stood staring at the front of the house.

“By Jove!” he said at last. “You may have hit on something.”

“Ah, Flavia!” Aunt Felicity said as she spotted me. “Think of the Devil and she shall appear. I should like to paint presently and you shall be my assistant. I relish the brushwork but I simply can’t bear the sticky tubes and the dirty rags.”

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.

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