Andwise Gamgee rose before daybreak as usual. His nephew Hamson, hearing the commonplace sounds of the elderly hobbit preparing breakfast in the kitchen of the cottage they shared at the edge of their rope-walking yard, rose from his own bed. They ate their breakfast without unnecessary conversation, and together went out to the ropeyard. Yesterday's work hung stretched out on long trestles, where they'd been left to dry overnight. Fibers of moist jute had been wound together to form three long "yarns," which were then twisted together by means of a large, hooked iron spin-wheel at far the end of the ropeyard that was cranked by hand. This was the only piece of complicated machinery Uncle Andy kept in his yard, but after long years of use it had become an old friend and he trusted it implicitly.
As he walked past the trestles, Ham put out his hand to touch each rope and see that they had dried properly without warping. Then he stopped to count them more carefully. They had wound six ropes yesterday, but this morning there were only five. "Here, Uncle Andy!" he called out. "One of the ropes is gone!"
Ham turned, and saw that his uncle had stopped too a few yards beyond him. Uncle Andy was staring open-mouthed at something that shouldn't have been in the ropeyard at all, something that looked like an oddly-shaped sack dangling at the end of the missing rope from a sturdy bough of one of the trees that bordered the northern edge of their property. This object moved slightly, swinging in the gentle dawn breeze, and Ham saw that it wasn't a sack at all, but something more horrible. "Uncle Andy-!"
Uncle Andy was already heading toward the tree. Ham ran to follow him.
"We thought as it must be a suicide, `til we was about to cut 'm down," Ham explained to his brother Sam and to Frodo Baggins four days later; he'd written to Sam that same morning after he and Uncle Andy had discovered the hanged hobbit, and the pair had come immediately from Hobbiton at his urgent summons. "Then I said as we'd best leave the rope as it was. They was no use in trying to get 'm down quick, you see. He was cold dead and there wasn't nothing we could do to help him. He must've been hanging there the better part o' the night. Uncle Andy sent me to fetch our local shirriff, Dondo Punbry, over in Gamwich. It was him who helped me pull that trestle over so we could loosen the loop 'round his neck and lower 'm down as gentle as we could. Dondo and some o' the lads he brought with 'm took the body away to lay it out proper." They'd reached the tree where the hobbit had been found hanging. "You see what I mean--Uncle Andy 'n' me noticed it right away."
Frodo did as well. The rope had been left as Ham and Andy had found it, wrapped around the trunk of the tree three or four times, and the end that hadn't been formed into a noose was tied around the stump of another more slender tree several feet away. The empty noose hung high over their heads, but there was no bough lower than the one the rope had been thrown over. The trestle that Ham and the sherriff had used to take the body down was still beneath the tree, but there was no other chair nor ladder nor sign of anything the dead hobbit might have used to climb up after he'd tied the rope.
"He couldn't have done this by himself," said Frodo, and he crouched to examine the trunk of the tree more closely. "Look here, Sam." The bark beneath the rope was scraped and had even peeled off in some places, suggesting that the rope had been used to haul up its grisly burden, then tied off. "Someone else had to have pulled him up after the noose was around his neck, alive or dead."
"That's right," Ham said. "Even Dondo saw it. I told him I was going to ask you to come, Sam--You and Mr. Baggins both." He gave Frodo a respectful little nod. "Now, Dondo's a good shirriff. He does all right when there's a quarrel at the pub that needs quieting down or a cow's gone wandering, but he doesn't know where he is with this sort of thing. You're the experts on investigating murders. You'll get to the bottom of this, if anybody can."
Sam, who had grown up with his older brothers calling him a "half-baked pudding-head," warmed to this expression of confidence. It showed how far he'd come, that Ham should think of turning to him in a time of trouble. "Who was he, the hobbit that was hanged?" he asked.
"His name was Malbo," answered Ham. "Malbo Glossum."
"Did you know him?"
"Not to say 'know.' I seen 'm at the Mousehole inn, a-playing games with the lads, but I never spoke more'n a word or two to him that I remember. I couldn't tell you how he came to hanged up here in our yard."
"You didn't hear anything during the night, did you?" asked Frodo.
Ham shook his head.
"What about Uncle Andy?" asked Sam.
"Him neither. You know his hearing's not what it used to be, Sam, though he won't admit it."
Uncle Andy had been working at the rope-wheel since Sam's and Frodo's arrival, letting Ham show them the tree and explain things. As the trio returned across the yard tooward him, he left his work to greet his visiting nephew. "`Tis good to see you, Sam-lad, and `tis kind o' your gent to come so far with you to see to our trouble." He tugged his cap rather shyly at Frodo. "You don't come out this way often enough, Sam-lad. Come inside for a mug o' tea, and tell us all about the goings-on of the family in Hobbiton--my old brother Ham, and your Missus and the little uns, and how your sisters are. We heard tell as young Marigold's expecting. Will you stop with us here while you're on this detectin' business? We'll make up a bed in the spare room for you."
"That's very kind of you, Mr. Gamgee, but we don't want to be an imposition. We'd planned to take a room at the inn in Gamwich," said Frodo. Gamwich was the nearest town to Tighfield.
Ham shuffled his feet and looked embarrassed, and Frodo realized that the invitation had been for Sam alone.
"I ought to be with Mr. Frodo," Sam said to his uncle apologetically. "It's my place. He'll need me by him while we're looking into this."
Andy accepted this, but shook his head. "You've come up in the world, Sam-lad, going about with the fine folk. It's all very well, but I hope it don't go to your head!"
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A Rope to Hang Himself by Kathryn Ramage
Story notes: This story takes place in the spring of 1424 (S.R.).
Rated for some talk of bondage, and a mildly kinky demonstration.
The Frodo Investigates! series
