The Honours (23 page)

She had no idea. The scrimshaw handle felt greasy beneath her fingers. Her phlegm was thick. Lansley breathed through his nostrils in short, rasping starts, bracing to counterattack.

She kept the blade between them, tip swinging like a compass needle.

‘Don't trust them, Mr Propp!' she said. ‘They're planning to betray you. They're going to hand you over to your friends across the channel, as a prisoner.'

‘She's raving!' said Lansley, spit flying. ‘She doesn't know what she's talking about!'

She caught a flash of movement out the corner of her eye. She looked, but it was just Mr Propp, sipping his coffee. Lansley swung with a wide right hook. She slashed at his arm but it was a feint; his left rose through her open guard and connected with her chin. Her head snapped back. He tripped her, bringing her clattering to the floor.

A knee to her back emptied her lungs. She tried to breathe in.
She could not make room. She felt the knife slip from her grasp.

Lansley was speaking: ‘Ring for Alice. I want my bag. The girl is hysterical. She needs a sedative.' He shifted his weight and the pressure on her chest increased. Lights popped at the fringes of her vision. ‘What are you waiting for? Put your bloody coffee down and
get the maid
!'

She heard Propp rise with a grunt. The room was growing darker.

‘I'll need some way to restrain her, too,' said Lansley. His voice sounded far away. ‘Oh, don't look at me like that, you supercilious old goat. Fat lot of good you are in a scrape.'

Beside the skirting board, a dead woodlouse lay curled up like a tractor tyre. Propp murmured something. She tried to inhale, felt her body convulse at the lack of air. Someone smeared a rag over her mouth and nostrils. The pressure on her back eased. She inhaled compulsively. A sweet scent entered her nostrils. She was sinking into the floor. The room was high above her.

Chloroform.

It was exactly like in
The Champion
.

CHAPTER 19

THE SLEEP OF REASON

D
elphine's head felt fuggy and thick. She tried to scratch her ear; coarse rope snatched tight round her wrist.

Mattress springs creaked as she lifted her head. Her wrists and ankles were tied. She was in her bedroom. The bed had been dragged into the middle of the floor.

As she shuffled up onto her elbows, she felt a bruise on her tricep. Dr Lansley had injected her with something. Chloroform wouldn't have kept her out this long. He must have administered a tranquiliser. From that moment, her memory became a mesh of bright shapes like sunlight through leaves, a sense of heat, fragments of conversation that might or might not have been real. She remembered being carried, slung over a shoulder, a corridor jouncing upside-down. Mother, crying. She remembered Mrs Hagstrom, an argument – something about salmon-paste sandwiches? Had Mrs Hagstrom tried to bring her some food?

A surge of nausea forced her head back down onto the pillow.

The curtains were drawn. The house was soundless. She curled and uncurled her fingers. She felt like the last person on Earth.

She restaged the fight over and over, cursing herself for stupid errors. Maybe, deep down, she had never wanted to land the coup de grace. She hated Lansley, right to her marrow she hated him, but now, in the dim and the quiet, part of her was glad the blade hadn't
connected. What would it have achieved if she had slashed his throat? She thought of his glove whipping through air, the heat of the blow. Her stomach churned. She just wanted him to go away for ever, to never come back, to never have existed.

Maybe she did want to kill him. She just didn't have the guts.

Delphine came round with a start. She had fallen asleep again.

Where was everyone? How long had she been unconscious? Hours? Days? The thick drapes admitted no light. Her mouth tasted of soap.

Miss DeGroot. When she heard that Delphine had been tied up, might she not realise that Propp and Alderberen and Lansley really were spies? Might she not come to the rescue? What about Daddy? Or Mother? Would they really sit about and let her lie here?

She imagined Mr Propp's account of events, backed up by Lansley and Alderberen. He would tell Mother how Delphine had tried to murder Dr Lansley. Lord Alderberen would insist that the police needn't be involved, before looking grave and conceding that Delphine could no longer stay at the Hall. Dr Lansley would offer his ‘professional opinion' and the matter would be closed.

Perhaps she was mad. Perhaps the blood madness that Eleanor Wethercroft and Jacqueline Finks-Hanley and Prue Dunbar had taunted her about was real. Perhaps Daddy was mad, and his madness had mixed with the Stokeham madness that hung in the corridors like choke damp, and now both strains were blooming and fruiting in her ravaged brain.

What was going to happen to her? She tried to organise everything she knew. Propp, Alderberen and Lansley were not the united front she had supposed. Alderberen and Lansley were plotting to betray Propp – because he refused to hand over a child, a girl. They couldn't be talking about her, could they? Yet she was the only child in the house – and now, she was a prisoner.

But why on earth would Lansley believe she was a spy? He seemed paranoid, raving. Had their dealings with Bolshevik cells gone awry? And had Propp believed her when she revealed his conspirators' treachery?

She screwed her eyes shut. It was all so baffling. When she examined it, really scrutinised the pieces one by one, the structure collapsed. None of it made sense. And if she was wrong about the spying, might she not have been wrong about Mother and Lansley? What on earth would Mother see in such an ugly, slippery man, with his shaving rash and his deaf aid and his preposterous, snivelling ways? What if Delphine had made a mistake?

She thought on it and thought on it until the walls of her skull pressed in like a fist. If she was mad, her entire thinking process was tainted. Even her thoughts at this moment were the thoughts of a lunatic. No madman could ever correctly diagnose his own lunacy. If she was mad, she was doomed anyway. Therefore, the only rational course of action was to proceed as if she were sane.

Delphine lay back and allowed herself a half-smile at the logic of this. If she was mad, let her be wholeheartedly mad, floridly so. They would catch her and drug her and shave off her awful hair and keep her in a nice soft bed away from the school tests and the world with its maze of invisible boundaries, and she would eat and drool and doze in a grey, grey haze.

If she was not mad, she had to escape.

She and Mr Garforth checked his traps every couple of days. If a stoat got caught in a gin, eventually it would chew its own leg off and limp off to die in the wilderness rather than let you catch it. Even wild animals knew it was better to die free than spend your last few days trapped and helpless.

Most of her important possessions – the shotgun, her rucksack, the tortoise Daddy had carved her – were in the treehouse. The rest were at the cottage, easily pinchable. She could live in the woods. Mr Garforth had taught her how to trap things, how to shoot, how to fish. By day, she could sleep in the tunnels. Let Lansley and Propp and Alderberen try to follow her. She would kill them all before letting them take her.

How much better would things be if she just killed Lansley? She could bury his body in Prothero Wood. Who would ever know? They would think he had just gone missing.

A second, hived-off part of her brain watched these thoughts with
delirious fascination. Was she wicked, to fantasise like this? Did everyone think this way sometimes? Was God listening in to her thoughts, and would He punish her for contemplating such evil, brutish things?

Her scalp itched. She moved to scratch it and a noose ground into her wrist and she remembered that it was all very well to plan a murder when she was drugged and bound to a bed.

The ropes round her wrists were fastened with clove hitches tied off with double thumb knots. She glanced at the bedstead. A double thumb knot secured either rope to opposing bedposts. She gave a few experimental yanks but only succeeded in pulling her restraints tighter.

She looked down at her ankles. She could not make out the knots used but her feet had been tied to opposite ends of a single piece of rope, fastened to the centre of the bedframe with a simple cow hitch. She rubbed her ankle against the mattress. The restraints had a little give. Perhaps her arms and legs had been tied by different people. She kicked her left heel against the noose holding the opposite foot. With her socks on, it was hard to get a grip.

She rubbed her ankles against one another. Little by little, she rolled her socks down til she was able to pin down the loose material with her heel and drag, first her left, then her right foot out of the socks.

Her ankles were tied to the middle of the rail, and when she brought them together both bonds went a little slack. It hurt to keep craning her neck forward, so she lay back and worked from touch alone. By snagging her big toe round the noose on the opposite foot, she was able, with agonising slowness, to tug it down, over her ankle bone, towards her heel. Rope fibres sawed into her skin. Her soles were cramping. She kept stopping to catch her breath – the effort of concentration was exhausting.

For there to be enough room to slip the noose over her heel, she had to pull her big toe from inside the loop and try to nudge the rope round her heel with the tips of her toes. Her toenails offered no grip at all, because she bit them. The noose kept reaching the widest part of her heel, then slipping back. The third time it
happened, she swore and shook her fists till the whole bedframe rattled. She calmed down and tried again. The coil of rope slid over her quivering tendon; she focused on keeping her foot as straight as possible, pointing like a ballerina's. She nudged the rope forward, forward.

Her toes lost their purchase and it slipped back. She gasped.

Please God. Please help me. Please
.

She was begging God for help minutes after wishing for Lansley's grisly death. If God existed, hypocrisy would only arouse His contempt. She stopped her petition. She would escape without His help.

She started again. She pretended it was just a game. Her toes dragged the rope closer and closer to her heel. The noose tightened as it reached the widest part. Delphine relaxed, let her upper body go limp.

I can do it. It's just a game. I can do it
.

Her foot slipped. She pinned the rope in place with her toe.

It's just a game. I can do it
.

She stared up at the ceiling and imagined she was a moth.

I can do it
.

The rope slipped over her heel. She pulled her foot free.

Relief washed through her. She moved her freed leg in wide circles. All of a sudden her remaining restraints felt all the tighter, all the more unbearable. With one foot free, the cow hitch – a basic over-and-under knot anchoring the rope to the bedframe – sagged loose, and it was relatively straightforward to kick the slack noose over the end of the bed, then draw her left leg upward and rub the knot against her knee until she had worked it down over her heel.

She bicycled her untied legs. The wrist restraints were another matter. Whoever had secured them knew exactly what they were doing – she suspected Lansley. Delphine tried to stretch her legs back over her shoulders, as if she could pick apart the impregnable knots with her toes. Blood rushed to her head. She saw green and white pinpricks of light. She gave up, puffing, dots of sweat standing out on her brow.

It was no good. Even if she had an extra pair of hands, the knots
were probably too tight to untie. She would need a stout pair of shears, or a knife.

She lifted herself up onto her elbows again. Lansley and Propp weren't likely to have left a knife in here for her. Next to the wardrobe, on the writing desk where she did her schoolwork when the grown-ups wanted her out of the way – or rather, more out of the way than usual – were several pencils and a sharpener. Could a sharpener blade do the trick? Doubtful – it was too small. Besides, it was screwed in place. How would she unfasten it with her hands tied?

She rattled the bedframe again, heard it clang. The noise made her jerk upright. The bedposts were hollow. She had stored things inside them.

Delphine strained to reach the bedknob, but the rope round her opposite wrist was too short. She tried to flip onto her shoulders and unscrew it with her feet, but she couldn't balance properly. She had an idea. She swung her legs up over her head, then pushed with her elbows and flipped over the back of the bedstead, her bare feet touching down on the floorboards, her wrists now tied in front of her.

Well, it was progress of a sort. She still couldn't reach either bedpost with her hands, so she lifted her right leg and, balancing against the bedstead, began trying to shunt the bedknob round with her foot. It would not move. She had screwed it down tightly for the express purpose of deterring casual snoopers. She took a couple of deep breaths. If she panicked, she would sweat, and if her foot became moist she might lose her grip.

She placed the ball of her foot against the smooth metal, working it back and forth with gentle, coaxing movements, as if petting a mouse. Warming to its role, the bedknob began squeaking very quietly. At last, she kicked at the right-hand side of the bedknob and it twisted cleanly upwards, wobbling at the top of its thread before dropping to the floor with a stunning report.

She leant over and peered into the hollow bedpost. There was a length of parcel string, three marbles – including a beauty with an oxblood twist through its middle – the end of a Nestlé's chocolate
bar wrapped in foil and, right at the bottom, a packet of England's Glory matches.

She hoisted her foot up over the bedpost and tried fishing for the matchbox with her toes, but the matches were at least a foot deep, balanced on top of a wadded-up blue stocking. She tried pushing her tongue inside, but only succeeded in nicking her cheek on the bare metal.

She licked blood from the corner of her mouth and forced herself to think logically. What could she use in the room to hook out the matchbox? Her gaze fell on the wardrobe.

The bed was deceptively heavy. Its iron feet growled as she dragged it, inch by inch, towards the wardrobe. Someone was bound to hear. She felt veins standing out in her throat as she tensed and heaved it another fraction of an inch, stopped for breath, tried again.

At last, when she was close enough, she peeled the wardrobe open with her toes and kicked at the frocks inside until one fell from the rail, its hanger clanging against the pine floor. She dragged the frock out (a horrendous thing the colour of sunburn) and, with a bit of faffing, managed to tease the wire coat hanger out from inside. She used her feet to lift the coat hanger up into her bound hands, where she flattened it into a long, straight ellipse with the hook at one end. Then she gripped it in her teeth and leant over the hollow bedpost.

The hook was too wide to fit in the hole. She squashed it flatter, tried again. This time, it slipped in smoothly. Holding the coat hanger in her teeth meant she couldn't see what she was doing, so she had to work by feel and sound: the subtle vibrations working up the wire, the scrape of metal, the rattle as she tapped the box. When she thought she had it, she eased her head back up.

Twice, the hook emerged empty. On the third time, she saw the tip of the matchbox before it toppled,
shuck
, back into the hole. Delphine wanted to scream. She wanted to rip the bed to pieces then smash the pieces with a sledgehammer. Instead, she bit the inside of her cheek, hard. The pain was calming.

On her fourth attempt, the matchbox rose from the hollow bedpost, teetering on the cusp. She tilted her chin and the matchbox flipped onto the bed.

She dragged the bed the couple of feet to the writing desk and grasped sheets of paper with her toes. She passed the paper up to her hands and tore it into strips, then wrapped them in spirals around the hook of the coat hanger. Soon it was swathed in a ball of paper the size of two fists.