The Weed That Strings the Hangmans Bag - Alan Bradley

And there we sat, the three of us, our mouths hanging open like dogs.

My mind was reeling as Dieter went on: "But too soon we grow up," he said with a sigh. "Too soon we take on the joys of the grown-up world, but also its troubles.

"Always, there is an age when boys discover flying, and it came early to me. My parents enrolled me in the NSFK--the National Socialist Flying Corps--and when I was fourteen, I found myself suddenly alone at the controls of a Schulgleiter, soaring like a hawk high above the Wasserkuppe, in the hills of the Hessian Rhon.

"From the air, these mountains, even though they are of quite a different geology, bear in some places a startling resemblance to the moors of North Yorkshire."

"How do you know that?" Daffy interrupted.

"Daphne!" Father said. His pointed look added the word manners.

"Is it because you've bombed Sheffield?"

There was a shocked silence at her question. How bold she was! Even I would not have asked Dieter about his aerial activities over England, although I will admit that, just minutes before, that very point had crossed my mind.

"Because," Daffy added, "if you have, you must say so."

"I was coming to that," Dieter said quietly.

He continued without batting an eye.

"When the war came, and I was transferred to the Luftwaffe, I always kept the small English 'Everyman' editions of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights wrapped carefully in a white silk flying scarf at the bottom of my rucksack, cheek to cheek with Lord Byron and Shelley.

"I decided that when the war was over, I would enroll at a university--perhaps even Oxford, since I already had the language--where I would read English Literature. I would take a double first, and accept a teaching post at one of the great public schools, and would end my days as an honored and respected schoolmaster, somewhat like your Mr. Chips.

"'Goodbye, Herr Schrantz,' I used to say. But Fate had not yet finished with me. An order was received that I was to proceed at once to France.

"My father, it seemed, had run into an old acquaintance in Berlin: someone who was high up in the Ministry and could arrange almost anything one might desire. Father wanted to have a son who flew a fighter: one whose name was in all the headlines, not one who mooned about with his nose in a book--and an English book at that!

"Before I could protest, I found myself posted to a reconnaissance group, Luftflotte III, based in France, near Lille.

"Our aircraft were the Messerschmitt Bf 110, a twin-engine machine nicknamed the Zerstorer."

"The Destroyer," said Daffy sourly. There were times when she could be quite snappish.

"Yes," Dieter replied. "The Destroyer. These ones, though, were specially modified for reconnaissance duties. We carried no bombs."

"Spying," Daffy said. Her cheeks were a little flushed, though whether from anger or excitement, I could not tell.

"Yes, spying, if you like," Dieter agreed. "In the war, there was reconnaissance on both sides."

"He's right, you know, Daphne," Father said.

"As I was saying," Dieter went on, with a glance at Daffy, "the Zerstorer was a twin-engine machine with a crew of two: a pilot and a second member, who could be a wireless operator, a navigator, or a rear gunner, depending upon the mission.

"My first day on the line, as I walked towards the briefing hut, an Oberfeldwebel--a flight sergeant--in flying boots, clicked his heels and called out 'Herr Hauptmann! Heathcliff!' Of course it was my old chum, Wolfgang Zander.

"I looked round quickly to see if anyone had heard him, since such familiarity between ranks would not be tolerated. But no one else was within earshot.

"We shook hands happily. 'I'm your navigator,' Wolfgang said, laughing. 'Did they tell you that? Of all the navigators in the land, my name alone was chosen to be carried aloft to the wars in your tin dragon!'

"Although it was wonderful to see him again, we had to be discreet. It was a complicated situation. We developed a whole set of stratagems--rather like lovers in a Regency romance.

"We would walk to the aircraft, pointing here and there with our fingers and ducking under the fuselage, as if we were discussing the tension of cables, but our talk, of course, was of little but English novels. If anyone came close, we would switch quickly from Hardy to Hitler.

"It was during one of these inspections that the great scheme was born. I don't remember now if it was Wolfgang or I who first came up with the idea.

"We were walking around Kathi's tail--Kathi was the thinly disguised name painted on the nose of our aircraft--when suddenly one of us, I think it might have been Wolfgang ... or it might have been me ... said, 'Do you suppose the heather is in bloom today on Haworth Moor?'

"It was that simple. In just those few moments, the die, as Julius Caesar remarked, was cast.

"And then, as if she had been listening at the door, Fate again stepped in. Two days later we were given an objective in South Yorkshire: a railway yard and a bicycle factory thought to be producing Rolls-Royce engines. Photographs only. 'A piece of cake,' as the RAF blokes used to say. A perfect opportunity to deliver, in person, our little gift.

"The flight across the Channel was uneventful, and for once, we were not bounced by Spitfires. The weather was beautiful, and Kathi's engines were purring away like a pair of huge, contented cats.

"We arrived over the target on time--'on the dot,' as you say--and took our photographs. Snap! Snap! Snap! and we were finished. Mission accomplished! The next quarter of an hour belonged to us.

"The parsonage at Haworth now lay less than ten miles to the northwest, and at our speed, which was three hundred miles an hour, it was no more than two minutes away.

"The problem was that we were too high. Although we had descended to seventeen thousand feet for the photographs, for our personal mission, we needed to lose more altitude quickly. A Messerschmitt with black crosses on its wings swooping down like a hawk upon a quiet English village would hardly go unnoticed.

"I shoved the control column forward, and down and down we circled in a giant spiral, our ears popping like champagne corks. Beneath us, the heather on the moor was a sea of purple billows.

"At a thousand feet I began to pull out and dropped nearly to hedge level.

"'Get ready!' I shouted to Wolfgang.

"We came in from the east, and suddenly there it was atop its hill: the village of Haworth! We roared along, skimming the fields, barely clearing the farmhouse chimney pots.

"As we came in over the Haworth road, I caught my first glimpse of the church at the top of the steep high street: then, a hundred yards behind it, beyond the churchyard, the familiar shape of the Brontes' parsonage. It was exactly as I had always imagined it: the dark stained stones and the empty windows.

"'Now!' I shouted, and Wolfgang shoved our gift out the open port in the canopy and into the slipstream. Although I couldn't see it, I could picture our wreath arcing down through the air, tumbling over and over, its purple ribbon streaming out behind it as it fell. Later, someone would retrieve it from among the old tombstones near the parsonage door, and read the message: gold letters the color of gorse on heather-colored silk, saying All the World Loves You----Rest in Peace.

"It was too risky to climb back to cruising altitude. We should have to go home by hedgehopping from point to point, keeping to the open countryside. Of course, we would burn more fuel that way, but both of us were young and foolish, and we had done what we had come to do. As soon as we were spotted, we knew, all the hounds of Hell, the Hurricanes and Spitfires, would be on our tail.

"But it was a perfect August day. With a bit of luck and a tailwind, I was telling Wolfgang, we might even manage to overfly Thomas Hardy's house on the way home at no additional cost to the Reich.

"It was at that precise moment that the canopy in front of my face shattered in a rain of exploding bullets. We were hit!

"'Spitfire!' Wolfgang shouted. But it was too late. A dark shadow shot past us, then banked and turned, its red, white, and blue roundels flashing like mad eyes in the summer sun.

"'Watch out,' I yelled. 'He's coming round for another pass!'

"It was then that I noticed that our port engine temperature gauge was pinned to the top. It was overheating. I glanced to the side and, to my horror, saw the black smoke and orange flames that were billowing out from beneath the cowling. I feathered the prop and switched off the engine.

"By now the Spitfire was behind us again. In what was left of my rearview mirror, I could see his fragmented image rocking gently from side to side, riding our slipstream. He had us in his sights.

"But he held his fire. It was most unnerving.

"Come on, I thought. Get it over with. He was playing with us like a terrier with a rat.

"I don't know how long it went on. You cannot judge time when you are about to die.

"'Why doesn't he shoot?' I called out to Wolfgang, but there was no answer. With my shoulder harness locked, I could not twist round far enough in my seat to see him.

"But even on one engine, Kathi was easily able to stay aloft, and for what seemed like an eternity, that British hound chased the German hare across the green countryside.

"The shattered windscreen had reduced forward visibility to zero, and I had to tack sharply from side to side in order to see what lay ahead. It was a dicey situation.

"And then the other engine died. Phut! Just like that! I had only seconds to make a decision. The trees on a wooded hill were rushing by beneath the wings. At the edge of the wood was a sloping field. It was there that I would put her down. No wheels, I thought. Better to make a belly landing and come to a stop more quickly.

"The sound of the crash was louder than I ever could have imagined. The aircraft slewed from side to side as the earth tore at her belly, battering and banging along, lurching, bucking--it was like being thrown alive into a millrace.

"And then the unearthly silence. It took a moment to realize that we were no longer moving. I unbuckled my harness, threw back the front canopy, and jumped out onto the wing, then ran back and peered in at Wolfgang.

"'Get out!' I shouted. 'Quickly! Get out!'

"But there was no reply.

"Inside the glass canopy, in a sea of blood, Wolfgang sat with a happy smile on his face. His dead eyes were staring out almost feverishly at the green English countryside.

"I jumped down from the wing and vomited into the long grass.

"We had come to rest at the far side of the field. Now, from higher up the hillside, two men, one tall, the other short, had emerged from the trees and were clumping slowly, warily, down towards me. One of them was carrying a shotgun, the other a pitchfork.

"I stood there, not moving. As they drew near, I put one hand in the air, slowly pulled my pistol from its holster and threw it away, making sure they saw what I was doing. Then I put up the other hand.

"'You're a German,' the tall man called out as they approached.

"'Yes,' I shouted back. 'But I speak English.'

"He seemed a little taken aback.

"'Perhaps you should call the police,' I suggested, jerking my head towards the battered Messerschmitt. 'My friend is dead in there.'

"The tall man edged cautiously over to the aircraft and peered inside. The other stood his ground, staring at me as if I had landed from another planet. He drew the pitchfork back, as if he were about to jab me in the stomach.

"'Let him be, Rupert,' the man with the shotgun said. 'He's just had a bad crash.'

"Before the other man could respond, there was a high-pitched screaming in the sky, and the Spitfire shot past, lifting at the end of the field into a victory roll.

"I watched it climb straight up into the blue air, and then I said:

"'He rises and begins to round,

"'He drops the silver chain of sound.'

"The two men looked at me as if I had suddenly fallen into shock--and perhaps I had. Not until later would it come crashing home to me that poor Wolfgang was dead.

"George Meredith," I told them. "'The Lark Ascending.'"

"Later, at the police station in the village, the Spitfire pilot paid me a visit. He was with a squadron based at Catterick, and had taken his machine up to check the controls after the mechanics had made a few adjustments. He had not the slightest intention of getting into a scrap that day, he told me, but there we were, Wolfgang and I, suddenly in his gunsights over Haworth. What else could he do?

"'Hell of a prang. Bad luck, old chap,' he said. 'Damned sorry about your friend.'

"All of that was six years ago," Dieter said with a sigh. "The tall man in the field with the shotgun, as I was to find out later, was Gordon Ingleby. The other one, the man with the pitchfork, as perhaps you have already guessed, was Rupert Porson."

* EIGHTEEN *

RUPERT PORSON? BUT HOW could the man with the pitchfork have been Rupert?

My mind was spinning like a painted tin top.

The last place on earth I had ever expected Dieter's tale to end was in Jubilee Field at the Ingleby farm. But one thing now became perfectly clear: If Rupert had been at Culverhouse Farm six years ago, during the war, it would explain, at least in part, how the wooden face of his puppet Jack had come to be carved in the image of Robin Ingleby.

Father let out a sigh.

"I remember it well," he said. "Your machine was brought down in Jubilee Field, just below Gibbet Wood."

Dieter nodded. "I was sent for a short time to a prisoner-of-war camp with thirty or forty other Luftwaffe officers and men, where our days were spent ditching and hedging. It was backbreaking work, but at least I was still in England. Most German pilots who were captured were sent abroad to camps in Canada, where there was little hope of escape.

"When I was offered a chance to live and work on a farm, I jumped at it; although it was not compulsory, many of us did. Those who did not called us traitors, among other things.

"But the war was moving towards its end, and a lot of us knew it. Better to begin paving my own personal road to Oxford, I thought, than to leave my future to chance.

"No one was more surprised than I was to find I had been assigned to the Inglebys' farm. It amused me to think that Gordon, who only a short time before had had me at the end of a shotgun, was now helping Grace fry my kippers in the farmhouse kitchen."

"That was six years ago, you say--in 1944?" I asked.

"It was." Dieter nodded. "In September."

I couldn't help it. Before I could stifle the words, I found myself blurting, "Then you must have been at Culverhouse Farm when Robin was found hanging in Gibbet Wood."

"Flavia!" Father said, putting his cup and saucer down with a clatter. "We will have no gossiping about the grief of others."