The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag

I've been thinking about The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag, the second of Alan Bradley's Flavia de Luce novels for a while now, and I think it's well past time I wrote something up.

The book begins a few months after the events of The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie with Flavia de Luce moping about in the graveyard of St Tancred's, where she encounters a weeping Pre-Raphaelite beauty stranded in Bishop's Lacey by a malfunctioning van. When the Reverend Denwyn Richardson learns that the woman's companion, whom he naively assumes to be her husband, is famous TV puppeteer Rupert Porson, he begs a performance in aid of the church roof fund. Porson agrees and his matinee performance of Jack and the Beanstalk passes off brilliantly, the only flaw being the resemblance between his Jack puppet and a local boy, Robin Ingleby, who died under mysterious circumstances five years ago.

The opening scenes serve a double purpose, introducing many of the period details that fix the date of the setting and establishing some of the new cast members. The Richardsons, Denwyn and Cynthia, clearly have a complicated relationship — Flavia dislikes Mrs Richardson, having once been beaten with a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern for attempting sample the stained glass, and her perspective implies that the vicar is somewhat henpecked. Other key locals include the Inglebys, Gordon and Grace, the latter of whom is clearly suffering from chronic depression following the death of her son, who share their farm with a couple of hold-overs from the war: ex-Land Girl called Sally Straw and former prisoner of war Dieter Schrantz, an anglophile recon pilot shot down whilst trying to drop a wreath over Haworth. We also get to meet the proprietresses of the local tea room, a woodswoman who probably isn't called Mad Meg, and Flavia's formidable Aunt Felicity.

With everything in readiness, the villagers — including Inspector Hewitt and his wife Antigone — gather in the church hall ready for the evening repeat of Jack and the Beanstalk. The play adheres to the script right up until the last when instead of the giant puppet crashing down on to the stage, Rupert Porson falls murdered from the flies. With no shortage of suspects — Porson was abrasive, womanising, and seems to have been in Bishop's Lacey before — it is up to Flavia to help the Inspector locate the killer.

Against the backdrop of the investigation, whose church hall setting and exotically public method of death reminds me somewhat of Marsh's Overture to Death, Bradley uses the arrival of Felicity to broaden Flavia's — and hence the reader's — understanding of the mechanics of de Luce family life. Where in Sweetness, it is not entirely clear where Colonel de Luce's money comes from, here we learn that he is actually heavily in debt and that the family are only being sustained by the careful disposal of their various treasures, including the Colonel's beloved stamp albums.

Knowing that the de Luce's circumstances are far more precarious than they seem in the first book also throws light on Flavia's sisters' behaviours. Ophelia is clearly keen to escape via a good marriage, while Daphne is preparing to support herself through writing. The sisters' spiteful treatment of Flavia also suddenly came into focus for me when I realised that they might well be exercising a form of tough love: aware that they are likely to have to leave Buckshaw in the not to distant future, they've embarked on a campaign of trying to prepare Flavia for the tribulations of boarding school by forcing her to confront and deal with the very worst things her potential schoolmates are likely to throw at her; hence their attempts to imprison her or to tell her that she is a changeling who is responsible for their mother's death.

A worthy successor to Sweetness.