The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 (40 page)
Read The Flavia De Luce Series 1-4 Online
Authors: Alan Bradley
Tags: #Thrillers, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Historical, #General
AB:
It’s like being in the glow of a fire. You hope you won’t get burned. I’m not sure how much I’ve realized it yet. I guess I can say I’m “almost overwhelmed”—I’m not quite overwhelmed, but I’m getting there. Every day has something new happening, and communications pouring in from people all over. The book has been receiving wonderful reviews and touching people. But Flavia has been touching something in people that generates a response from the heart, and the most often mentioned word in the reviews is
love
—how much people love Flavia and have taken her in as if she’s a long-lost member of their family, which is certainly very, very gratifying.
Questions and Topics
for Discussion
1. With her high level of knowledge, her erudition, and her self-reliance, Flavia hardly seems your typical eleven-year-old girl. Or does she? Discuss Flavia and her personality, and how her character drives this novel. Can you think of other books that have used a similar protagonist?
2.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
falls within the tradition of English country-house mysteries, but with the devilishly intelligent Flavia racing around Bishop’s Lacey on her bike, instead of the expected older woman ferreting out the truth by chatting with her fellow villagers. Discuss how Bradley uses the traditions of the genre, and how he plays with them.
3. What is your favorite scene from
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
?
4. With her excessive interest in poisons and revenge, it’s no surprise that Flavia is fascinated, not scared, as she watches the stranger die in her garden. In your view, is her dark matter-of-factness more refreshing or disturbing?
5. Flavia reminds us often about Harriet, the mother she never knew, and has many keepsakes that help her imagine what Harriet was like. Do you think the real Harriet would have fit into Flavia’s mold?
6. Flavia’s distance from her father, the Colonel, is obvious, yet she loves him all the same. Does their relationship change over the course of the novel in a lasting way? Would Flavia want it to?
7. Through Flavia’s eyes, what sort of picture does Alan Bradley paint of the British aristocracy? Think as well about how appearances aren’t always reality, as with the borderline bankruptcies of Flavia’s father and Dr. Kissing.
8. Discuss the meaning (or meanings) of the title
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
.
9. What twists in the plot surprised you the most?
10. Buckshaw, the estate, is almost a character in its own right here, with its overlarge wings, hidden laboratory, and pinched front gates. Talk about how Bradley brings the setting to life in this novel—not only Buckshaw itself, but Bishop’s Lacey and the surrounding area.
11. What does Flavia care about most in life? How do the people around her compare to her chemistry lab and books?
12. Like any scientist, Flavia expects her world to obey certain rules, and seems to be thrown off kilter when surprises occur. How much does she rely on the predictability of those around her, like her father and her sisters, in order to pursue her own interests (like solving the murder)?
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2010 by Alan Bradley
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DELACORTE PRESS is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Map by Simon Sullivan
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bradley, C. Alan
The weed that strings the hangman’s bag: a Flavia de Luce mystery/
Alan Bradley.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-440-33917-5
1. Detectives—England—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.
3. England—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.4.B7324W44 2010
813′.6—dc22 2009043002
Cover design: Joe Montgomery.
v3.1
Contents
Questions and Topics for Discussion
Sir Walter Raleigh to His Son
Three things there be that prosper up apace,
And flourish while they grow asunder far;
But on a day, they meet all in a place
,
And when they meet, they one another mar
.
And they be these; the Wood, the Weed, the Wag:
The Wood is that that makes the gallows tree;
The Weed is that that strings the hangman’s bag;
The Wag, my pretty knave, betokens thee
.
Now mark, dear boy—while these assemble not,
Green springs the tree, hemp grows, the wag is wild;
But when they meet, it makes the timber rot,
It frets the halter, and it chokes the child
.
• ONE •
I was lying dead in the churchyard. An hour had crept by since the mourners had said their last sad farewells.
At twelve o’clock, just at the time we should otherwise have been sitting down to lunch, there had been the departure from Buckshaw: my polished rosewood coffin being brought out of the drawing room, carried slowly down the broad stone steps to the driveway, and slid with heartbreaking ease into the open door of the waiting hearse, crushing beneath it a little bouquet of wildflowers that had been laid gently inside by one of the grieving villagers.
Then there had been the long drive down the avenue of chestnuts to the Mulford Gates, whose rampant griffins looked away as we passed, though whether in sadness or in apathy I would never know.
Dogger, Father’s devoted jack-of-all-trades, had paced in measured step alongside the slow hearse, his head bowed, his hand resting lightly on its roof, as if to shield my remains from something that only he could see. At the gates, one of the undertaker’s mutes had finally coaxed him, by using hand signals, into a hired motorcar.
And so they had brought me to the village of Bishop’s Lacey, passing somberly through the same green lanes and dusty hedgerows I had bicycled every day when I was alive.
At the heaped-up churchyard of St. Tancred’s, they had taken me gently from the hearse and borne me at a snail’s pace up the path beneath the limes. Here, they had put me down for a moment in the new-mown grass.
Then had come the service at the gaping grave, and there had been a note of genuine grief in the voice of the vicar as he pronounced the traditional words.
It was the first time I’d heard the Order for the Burial of the Dead from this vantage point. We had attended last year, with Father, the funeral of old Mr. Dean, the village greengrocer. His grave, in fact, was just a few yards from where I was presently lying. It had already caved in, leaving not much more than a rectangular depression in the grass that was, more often than not, filled with stagnant rainwater.
My oldest sister, Ophelia, said it collapsed because Mr. Dean had been resurrected and was no longer bodily present, while Daphne, my other sister, said it was because he had plummeted through into an older grave whose occupant had disintegrated.
I thought of the soup of bones below: the soup of which I was about to become just another ingredient.
Flavia Sabina de Luce, 1939–1950
, they would cause to be carved on my gravestone, a modest and tasteful gray marble thing with no room for false sentiments.
Pity. If I’d lived long enough, I’d have left written instructions calling for a touch of Wordsworth:
A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love
.
And if they’d balked at that, I’d have left this as my second choice:
Truest hearts by deeds unkind
To despair are most inclined
.
Only Feely, who had played and sung them at the piano, would recognize the lines from Thomas Campion’s
Third Book of Airs
, and she would be too consumed by guilty grief to tell anyone.
My thoughts were interrupted by the vicar’s voice.
“… earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change our vile body …”
And suddenly they had gone, leaving me there alone—alone to listen for the worms.
This was it: the end of the road for poor Flavia.
By now the family would already be back at Buckshaw, gathered round the long refectory table: Father seated in his usual stony silence, Daffy and Feely hugging one another with slack, tearstained faces as Mrs. Mullet, our cook, brought in a platter of baked meats.
I remembered something that Daffy had once told me when she was devouring
The Odyssey:
that baked meats, in ancient Greece, were traditional funeral fare, and I had replied that, in view of Mrs. Mullet’s cooking, not much had changed in two and a half thousand years.
But now that I was dead, I thought, perhaps I ought to practice being somewhat more charitable.
Dogger, of course, would be inconsolable. Dear Dogger: butler-cum-chauffeur-cum-valet-cum-gardener-cum-estate-manager: a poor shell-shocked soul whose capabilities ebbed and flowed like the Severn tides; Dogger, who had recently saved my life and forgotten it by the next morning. I should miss him terribly.