Hide in Time (23 page)

Then annoyingly there were a couple of
shorthand squiggles and the next entry was not until:

‘March 4th – Saturday:
Feeling considerably better today. Well enough to write my journal.
Catherine administered the last of the tablets and the doctor said he
can prescribe no more as he did not prescribe these in the first
place. His tincture lies untouched. He clearly does not approve.
Catherine tells me he is too old for his responsibilities, forgetting
what he’d prescribed. It was thought I would die; such was the
severity of the fever. She says I was confused and calling out,
though I can recall nothing of this.’ Then there were more
squiggles – how annoying.

Laura closed the diary. She was too
tired and sank back in the armchair. It had been a long day and she
should take her own tablets; her doctor had been concerned that she
had a bacterial infection, she realized her temperature seemed a
little high now; she swallowed a tablet. She thought back to the
email. Was it true, that story about penicillin? Could life hang on
coincidences? No life was more than that; had her own not shown some
sort of plan? Alexandra Foxley; how well it had turned out for her.
She looked down at the cover of the diary, then she felt every sinew
in her body tighten. She shot out of the armchair, raced upstairs and
banged on Jeeves’s door.

“Jeeves, Jeeves, hurry, please
hurry.”

Jeeves came to the door in a silk
dressing-gown and, perfectly composed, enquired, “Is anything
the matter, Laura?”

“Forgive me Jeeves, I have just
realized there’s something I must do urgently. Please can you
take the alarms off while I get my coat; I shall need to take the car
too.”

“Forgive me, Laura, but you may
want to consider waiting until the morning unless someone’s
life depends upon you.”

“It does, Jeeves, it does.”

Hide in Time ~ Anna Faversham

Driving Matt’s Jaguar was a
dream. He kept threatening to get a more eco-friendly car. Laura
hoped Jaguar would develop one – perhaps they were working on
it. Next to her was a rucksack packed with instructions for returning
– most important. She’d remembered to pack a few
essentials for herself – water, chocolate, that sort of thing,
and some sprigs of rosemary to help with her memory; her throat spray
too. And the antibiotics. She was already on the Pelburton by-pass
and doing, good lord, one hundred and thirty miles an hour! How had
that happened? She’d better rein in these horses or they’d
never take the corners.

Once on the motorway to the coast
though, she could really let rip. There was little traffic so late at
night and Xandra’s life depended on her arriving in time. She
looked at the clock on the dashboard. Just past midnight. It was now
February 25th and no entry had been made in Xandra’s diary for
today; she was clearly too ill. She put her foot down further. This
car is so easy to drive, she thought, as she checked the mirror to
see if the funny little blue flashing light had disappeared. Yes, all
was well. It couldn’t be the police as they always made so much
noise. Besides, if it were, they would not have given up so easily.

~

They hadn’t.

“Would you get out of the car,
please,” enunciated the traffic policeman at the car’s
closed window.

It wasn’t a question, she
realized, as when she just stared wide-eyed at him, he reached for
the door handle. He couldn’t get in, of course but she’d
have to open the door and get out; there was no way round this. She
had eluded them all the way to her usual parking place near the
tunnel entrance but suddenly they appeared, or were they different
officers telephoned by one of her favourite gadgets – the
mobile? She reached for her rucksack and her coat, then turned and
opened the door, got out slowly, head spinning with the exhilaration
of the drive, and stood beside the bonnet. She tapped it, “Four
hundred horses in there.”

The policemen glanced at each other.

“Is this your car?”

“No.”

“What are you doing in this car?”

Laura saw a way out. She knew how
policemen were known for their compassion for damsels in distress.
Hadn’t they been wonderful when Xandra had been kidnapped. “I’m
trying to deliver some antibiotics urgently to a very sick girl. She
has pneumonia.”

One of the policemen, who had been
answering his radio, said, “The car is registered to Mr Matthew
Redfern. What is your connection with Mr Redfern?”

“Matt?” Just what was her
connection? Friend. Very good friend. He cared about her and she
cared about him.

“Does he know you have his car?”

She could not get him into trouble, yet
somehow she must get herself away from these meddlesome people. They
clearly did not realize what was at stake. “I have his
permission to use this car.” Say as little as possible; that’s
the way to deal with this. And smile. “His butler, Jeeves, will
confirm this. I can give you the number, if you like.” Smile.
Not too much.

They glanced at each other again. What
had she said wrong? Or should she stop smiling? She wished Matt was
with her.

“Do you know what speed you were
doing?”

“I just know that someone’s
life is ebbing away and there was no traffic on the road. I’m
so sorry,” yes, that’s the thing to say – or was
that admitting guilt? “I needed to go fast.”

“Blow into this please,”
said one of the policemen.

Laura looked at the odd contraption in
his hand. DNA, they wanted her DNA. What secrets might that give
away? They weren’t going to get it!

“It’s to check your alcohol
level. There’s no need to be afraid.” The radio strapped
to his shoulder crackled into life and he spoke into it, moving away
from her and consulting with the other policeman. Not ordinary mobile
phones then.

She had to take the chance. Grab the
rucksack, hurtle around the corner and she’d be within sight of
the entrance to the cave. Then all she had to do was fling herself
out of their eyeline and crawl into the tunnel entrance when they
were searching elsewhere.

It worked. Furthermore, as she lay
hidden behind one of the outer advertising hoardings, she pressed the
key and locked the car doors which emitted their customary
high-pitched squeal, distracting her pursuers’ attention
sufficiently for her to crawl through into the tunnel entrance
unnoticed. Matt’s car was safe and she was on her way to
Xandra. And Adam. She had caused Adam such sorrow; it would be quite
unforgivable for her to be the reason for his loss of Xandra too.

~

The tunnel had been freezing cold and
Laura, though wearing knee-high boots and her warm coat, was
shivering by the time she got to the top of the seventy-seven steps.
She made herself stop and consider before she allowed herself to
continue. She hadn’t had much time to think through the
consequences. The all-important tablets were in the rucksack on her
back. She must be very careful not to tire of it, take it off, and
put it down, for then, untouched by her, it would be visible. What
was paramount now was how to get to “Foxhills”. She
glanced at her watch – just gone four. Still dark. It was
possible she had arrived at the right time of year for it was very
cold. Please God, let it be February 25th 1815. Since that first time
she had gone back and found it was not in synchronisation with time
in the twenty-first century, she could never quite be sure, but then
she’d crawled at an angle through the curtain of light –
now she’d done exactly as she’d told Xandra. No time to
think of such things now, she chided herself. She just managed to
squeeze past the scraggy looking bush at the top of the steps; there
was no time to remove it properly. She leapt over the tufty grass to
get to the road where the early morning mail coach would pass. All
she needed to do was scare the horses, poor things, then as the coach
came to a halt she’d climb aboard.

She did exactly that and settled down
for a sleep in the empty coach. At Canterbury, she caught the Torwell
Bridge coach, which she had to share with a large man and two women
smothered in cloaks and blankets. All three moaned about the strange,
cold feel of the coach. All that Laura could think was, tough, it was
winter after all, and she surprised herself by saying out loud that
she had as much right to travel on the coach as they did. Except, of
course, she hadn’t paid her fare.

~

It was past midday by the time she
reached “Foxhills”. She peered through the morning room
windows but could see no one at all. She tried the door; it wasn’t
locked so she simply opened the door, walked in, silently closed it,
went into the hall and up the stairs to Alexandra’s room.

She listened at the door. She could
hear voices. Men’s voices. How could she slip inside? If the
door opened and no one came in, it would certainly cause alarm. She’d
have to wait. She peered through the keyhole. She could see
Catherine, and Adam was in there too. But it was another man’s
voice she could hear. She listened intently. It was Parson Emmanuel
Raffles and he was praying. He was asking God to heal Alexandra. And
here she was with penicillin or some such antibiotic. This would be
some tale to send around the world on the internet. She pictured
herself writing it, sending it off through the ether, and people
being sceptical just as she had been with the Alexander Fleming one.
Alexandra Foxley saved by Alexander Fleming before he’d been
born. No – she’d better not send that round the ether.
They’d be trying to do those tests on her again and probably
succeed this time in declaring her insane. Hurry up someone and let
me in. Laura returned to peering through the keyhole only this time
she also thumped on the door. Only Adam glanced at the door with a
puzzled look on his face. Through the keyhole Laura could see his
sorrowful brown eyes looking towards her. She was a cat’s
whisker away from weeping but she had a job to do and do it she
would.

There was a commotion in the hall
downstairs. The doctor had arrived. The door was flung open by the
parson. “Ah, the answer to my prayer – Doctor Hargreaves
is downstairs – come on up, sir.”

As Laura scurried through the doorway,
parson Raffles shivered and made the sign of the cross on his ample
chest, not that Laura noticed, she was interested only in what Adam
was saying.

“Hargreaves is no answer to
anyone’s prayers, Raffles. Don’t desist from praying.”

Oh how she loved the way he spoke; his
choice of words; his clear, powerful voice, so gentle when…

“Gentlemen,” said the
ageing doctor as he entered the room with an air of self-importance,
“Please leave the room whilst I examine my patient.” He
looked across to Catherine and indicated she should stay then placed
his large, black leather bag on the ottoman at the bottom of the bed.

Laura crept to the side of the bed that
had once been hers. Catherine was seated on the other side and
holding Alexandra’s hand. From time to time she patted
Alexandra’s forehead with a damp cloth. “You’d make
such a good nurse, Catherine,” Laura said aloud. Alexandra
opened her eyes. Could she hear? But her eyes did not see and they
slowly closed again.

As the doctor approached, Laura moved
aside and went to the writing slope by the window. Now would be a
good time to write the note. She checked that all attention was on
the patient before slipping out of her backpack and placing it on her
lap as she sat down. She retrieved the penicillin tablets. Blast!
They were in a blister pack. There’d been no time…
Painstakingly she released each one and tipped it into the blue glass
dish near the writing slope; they seemed to make such a loud ‘ting’.
Belatedly she checked it for dust. “Well done, Millie,”
she said, then clamped her hand over her mouth. She must stop doing
that. She looked across to Xandra and lifted the lid of the writing
slope carefully. Her hand found a piece of stiff card which she
pulled out. She checked the instructions on the packet – ‘One
to be taken four times a day. Finish the course.’ Dipping the
quill in the ink, she wrote, ‘Take one pill four times a day
until all have been used.’ Then signed it ‘Doctor…’
Drat! She could not remember the doctor’s name. Har…
Best not to get it wrong, an illegible squiggle would suffice.

The doctor finished his examination,
asked Cathy to replace the bedcovers and moved towards the window.
“Fever. It’s a bad one too. Chills and shaking. I do have
the very best medicine in my bag, as it happens. I’ll leave
this tincture here, Miss Leigh-Fox.” He placed a small, brown
bottle by the side of the writing slope. “I’ll write some
instructions, if you’ll allow.”

“Of course,” said Catherine
still watching Alexandra.

Laura felt her blood drain to her feet.
Do something. Stop him seeing the tablets and the note. She blew on
him. Any minute now and he would sit on her. She seized a fan, which
immediately became invisible, and flapped it frantically at his face.
He put his finger on the bottle top, looked across to Catherine and
said, “It’s mighty cold in here. There’s a draught
by this window. You should close these curtains and keep the room
warm.” He turned, his finger still on top of the bottle, and
shivered. “It’s simply a case of one dose, four times a
day. You can remember that, I am sure, Miss Leigh-Fox.”

Catherine looked up at him as she
mopped Alexandra’s brow once more. “I’ve been
giving her a lemon and cinnamon drink, doctor. Should I continue with
that?”

“You may and, with my medicine,
the parson’s fervent prayers, and your care, Miss Mulberry may
soon be well.”

Laura followed the doctor as he swept
out of the room and listened from the top of the banisters to his
conversation with Adam and Raffles. “I have to say my medicine
will be required to perform a miracle. I should have been called
earlier. Her recovery is doubtful.”