The Honours (24 page)

She picked up a match, struck it, and lit the paper. Golden flames lapped up fuel. She pulled the rope holding her right wrist taut and held the improvised torch beneath it. Fibres blackened, recoiling. She yanked. The final strands split. She transferred the coat hanger to her right hand and held the guttering flame under the rope securing her left wrist. She pulled. It held fast. The flame went out. She braced her foot against the bedstead and wrenched.

The rope broke. She was free.

Delphine stepped back from the bed, panting. Her arms felt like they were on springs. Rope hung from her wrists in charred bracelets.

She tried the door to her bedroom. It was locked.

She fished the club-headed key – the one that opened the hidden passage – out of her knickers, then unscrewed the second bedknob and drew out her bunch of copied house keys. The two doors to her bedroom – one connecting it with her parents' room, the other leading out into the corridor – were locked. She had a key for the connecting door, but she knew from trying it before that the opposite side was blocked by a heavy Indian travelling chest, probably dragged there by Daddy (on Mother's orders) for that express purpose. She did not have the key to her bedroom because she had never needed it. It had never been locked before. Besides, if she stepped out into the corridor she would be apprehended immediately.

That left the window.

Two ledges across, the ivy was glossy and lush, turning from apple green to deep lipstick red as it cascaded down the wall. It was much thicker than when she had arrived at the Hall. Back then, she had thought it would never bear her weight.

Today, it would have to.

Even if she fell, wouldn't that be an escape? Delphine climbed onto the end of her bed, folded her arms across her heart, closed
her eyes, and let herself drop backwards. The mattress caught her with a whump. She lay still, heart thudding, and imagined the wind against the nape of her neck, the fall, the black pit, the silence. That'd teach them.

Delphine got up from the bed a little fast, felt the room fade and return. She glanced around, gripped by a sudden urgency, afraid that she would lose her nerve. The effects of the sedative Dr Lansley had administered numbed the edges of her perception. Nothing felt quite real, and this, she discovered, made her strong.

She did not feel brave exactly, just dizzy and heedless. The fear, the peril – these things seemed to belong to another, frailer girl.

She fished her jottings out of the bedpost, pulled a chair up to her writing desk, took a fresh piece of lined paper and sharpened a pencil. She touched a finger to the tip and wondered why Lansley had not thought to confiscate it, given that it was perfectly designed for puncturing an eye. The keen scent of pencil shavings woke her up.

She wrote with slow, neat strokes, licking her lips between words. She imagined the reaction as one of the grown-ups read it aloud to the others, the falling faces, the gasps – a swoon? No, too much. Too Malory. But certainly a cry of anguish, certainly a fist pounding the desk in repentant fury.

If you are reading this note then the situation should be obvious. I am no longer a resident at Alderberen Hall. I have decided to repair to London to seek my fortune as my present circumstances have become unbearable. Do not attempt to find me. I assure you I have taken great care to cover my tracks
.

She paused, savouring her slyness. When she wrote, she felt older, stronger. She powered towards the letter's climax.

It has come to my attention that Dr Titus Lansley is an ADULTERER and SPY. He has tried to seduce my mother Mrs Anne Venner and she in her weakness has succumbed. He has also plotted to collude with enemies of the British Crown and in this endeavour he has been assisted by Mr
Ivanovitch Propp and Mr Lazarus Stokeham alias the 4th Earl of Alderberen, BOLSHEVIKS to a man. You will find enclosed sufficient proof to see that they
ALL HANG
.

When she came to the end of the sentence, she was pressing so hard she nearly tore the paper. She felt like she ought to add more. She spent a full five minutes trying to formulate a sentence to the effect that, should Lansley, Propp and Alderberen try to shift the blame to others, Mr Henry Garforth, Professor Algernon Carmichael and Miss Patience DeGroot were residents of impeccable moral character and in no way involved, but she could not summon the same righteous fire, and, if she was honest, she was not one hundred per cent sure that Mr Garforth
was
innocent. Why, after all, had he turned on her so sharply that night? What was he trying to conceal? In the end, she simply transcribed the key points from her notes, before signing the letter:

Sincerely
,

Miss Delphine Venner

She folded the paper in half, ran her thumb along the crease till it was cleaver-sharp. She set it down on the desk. She began to write ‘DADDY' across the back in large capital letters; she got as far as ‘DA' before changing her mind. She took a rubber and erased the big silver arc of the ‘D', adding instead two stiff, dark horizontal lines, like bayonets, to form the ‘F' of ‘FATHER'. She brushed twists of india-rubber from the warm page, placed the note on her pillow then walked to the window.

The curtains were puce and thick as quilts. She dragged them aside.

The sun was blond, the sky the colour of unripe sloes. It looked like late afternoon. A whole day
had
passed, then. No wonder she felt so hungry.

She unfastened the window latch, hooked her fingers beneath the frame and lifted the sash. It stuck two inches up. She slipped her palms underneath, bent her knees and pushed. The wooden frame
resisted, shuddered. Paint fell in hard black flakes. She took a breath, gritted her teeth and tried again. Again, the heavy sash rattled. It sighed upwards and she felt cold wind on her cheeks and eyes.

She took a last look around the room. Sunlight picked out dust seething above the carpet. An empty glass sat on the dresser beside her bed. Two moisture rings had stained a neat Venn diagram in the pine. If she waited any longer she would lose her nerve.

She planted a foot on the sill, gripped the sides of the frame and lifted herself up, ducking beneath the sash. The wind slapped her face, wet and freezing, stinking of loam.

She felt out behind her for the pane, rested her fingertips against it, straightened up. The gravel below tipped and surged. She wobbled, widened her stance.

She was standing on a wide stone sill. There was no reason to feel giddy, no reason why she shouldn't keep her balance. She made herself focus on the horizon. In the distance lay Prothero Wood, the brown ribbon of the saltmarshes, the sea.

Out of the trees rose the dark rip of a large bird.

She squinted, trying to get a sense of scale. It looked almost buzzard-sized. It climbed with laborious, lurching strokes.

She looked back at the gap between her sill and the next. A small jump. A trivial thing, really. She braced herself, taking big, fortifying breaths. The hard part was over. She could do this.

Out over the woods, another bird appeared. Then another. Then another.

The trees were haemorrhaging ink. At first she thought the woods were on fire, then she saw silhouettes against the pale blue sky, a scattergram of living Vs.

She heard a noise like the
pop-pop
of radio static, like someone blowing bubbles in milk with a straw, like ripping.

Black shapes. Dozens. More than a hundred.

And then she realised.

They were not birds.

They were bats.

CHAPTER 20

THE FOLORN HOPE

W
ithout thinking, Delphine took a step back. Her heel slipped from the sill. Pitching forward, she looked down.

She felt her gut plummet. She flailed her right arm and grabbed the underside of the sash, yanking herself back from the precipice. She stood on the sill, trembling. After a moment spent steadying herself, she clambered back into the room.

The pine floor felt good beneath her feet. The bedroom was unchanged. On the wall above her bed was the largest of three butterfly paintings, a rabble of red admirals across a meadow of cornflowers, tiger-oranges and blacks against muted blues and greens. The breeze through the open sash caught the note on her pillow and made it flap. She turned back to the window.

The creatures flew with ponderous drags of their wings. They were just like the thing that had chased her through Prothero Wood. They were far too big for bats. Together, they blackened the sky.

She did not remember moving but she found herself pounding on the door to the hallway.

‘Let me out! Something's coming! Let me out!'

Like most of the doors in Alderberen Hall, it was big and old and her fists hardly made any noise against it. Her shouts sunk into the soft furnishings. The thick walls that had let her drag an iron bedframe the length of the room without attracting attention now
muffled her calls for help. She pressed her lips to the keyhole.

‘Help!' She yelled till her throat burned. ‘Something's coming! Look out the window!' She stopped to catch her breath. She listened for a reply, footsteps, anything. ‘This isn't a trick! For God's sake, look outside!' Beating against the hard wood, she decided to change tactics. ‘I've started a fire! The room's on fire! I'm going to burn myself to death and all of you too!' The heels of her fists cramped with a cold pain. She clawed at the door; varnish squeaked beneath her fingernails. ‘Daddy? Where are you? Daddy!'

She slumped against the door frame, hoarse, exhausted. Even if they had heard her, they probably thought she was throwing a tantrum. She listened to her breath hissing in and out. A sour sort of freedom descended upon her. She was utterly alone. She had no one to rely upon but herself.

She lifted her cheek from the coolness of the door, and stood. She looked round her bedroom. There was nothing she could use to break down the door – that would take a sledgehammer, and even if Lansley had been thoughtful enough to leave her one, she doubted she could put enough force behind the blow to smash out the lock. The heaviest thing in the room she could lift was the green glass paperweight on her desk – it was the size of a goose egg, with a weighted base.

She retrieved her frock from the floor. She took the paperweight from the desk and wrapped the dress around her hand several times.

When she reached the window the creatures were still there, closer. They were big as dogs, flying low above the lawn, the sun throwing deformed shadows. A crackling, popping wall of sound grew louder, louder. She swallowed the sick feeling round her tonsils and climbed out onto the sill, the frock-wrapped paperweight clenched in her fist.

The jump to the adjacent sill was less than a yard. She looked at it and her head swum and her fingertips went numb and she wanted to wee. When crossing the marshes, she had done jumps twice the size without thinking. Even though she was only one storey up, Alderberen Hall had such high ceilings that the drop was thirty feet.

She stared at the gap, and an eerie sort of calm sluiced through her chest and stomach. Her panic felt like an argument going on in
another room – she was aware of it, but it was hard to get caught up in. She spent a moment watching her feelings, curious at her own detachment. Was this the tranquilisers, or bravery, or madness? Was she even awake?

Beneath the sound of wingbeats she could hear a rapid clicking in high-low scattergun bursts. All those times she had entered the woods, they had been roosting there in their hundreds. Perhaps they were migrating and had rested in on the estate after a long flight across the North Sea, and now, something had got them agitated.

Several creatures at the front exchanged some kind of signal then peeled off, pumping their great leathery wings as they climbed. They were not graceful; flying looked like a struggle, a torment, even. One of the creatures seemed to stare right at her. It spat a peal of pops and screeches to the others; they yawed away from the main group.

They were coming for her.

She watched. She knew she should be afraid, but she could not summon the emotion. The best she could manage was a memory of how she had felt that time at the tomb, a fast black shape at her heels, flickering through the trees. She had the strangest sensation that what happened to her was none of her business.

She turned away from the advancing horde, told herself to concentrate. She was in danger, even if she could not feel it. She focused on the other sill, counted to three, lost her nerve. She counted down again. She jumped.

Her heels hit the sill; her momentum carried her forward. She stopped, gripped the window frame.

The creatures were over the lawns.

She stood beside a big window like the one she had escaped through. The drapes were drawn. Delphine tightened the florid peach frock round her fist, hefted the paperweight and punched a hole in the glass. The pane fell away in fat, jagged triangles. Using the dress to shield her hand and wrist, she knocked away the biggest, sharpest slivers, then reached through and undid the catch.

Winged shadows blackened the gravel path.

She lifted the sash and, holding the dress above her head, ducked and jumped through the closed curtains into the room.

Glass crunched beneath her sandals. The room was gloomy, uninhabited. Dust-sheeted furniture formed strange, snow-smothered mountain ranges. She picked her way between them, letting paperweight and frock drop from her grasp.

The popping, ripping sound was like thunder. Behind it, she heard the
whumph whumph
of wings. She tried the door. It did not open.

She heard the scrape of claws or hooves on the ledge. The light in the room changed. She rattled the door knob. A body was pressing into the drapes.

The door gave.

She burst into the corridor and slammed the door. Snatching up her keys, she moved to lock it. There was no keyhole. She glanced around for something to block the door with. There were a few paintings on the wall – a portrait of a vinegary, wax-faced old dowager dressed in Flemish lace beside a spinning wheel, a landscape of a busy port cluttered with sailing ships, a still life of a milk churn – but nothing with any mass.

‘Help!' Her cry echoed stupidly off the walls. All the doors were closed. She ran for the landing. ‘Help! Help!'

Out in the Great Hall, light from the portico windows fell slantwise across the east side of the grand staircase. She ran to the balustrade and leant over. At the foot of the flowing red stair carpet, Mrs Hagstrom stood holding a yellow duster and a tin of polish. She looked up. She had a red mark on the bridge of her nose. Her sweaty forehead shone in the sunlight.

She and Delphine stared at each other for three long seconds. Delphine was dumbstruck – seeing Mrs Hagstrom made the experience of a few moments ago feel bluntly unreal. She had imagined it. Of course she had.

The doorbell rang.

Mrs Hagstrom glanced towards the entrance.

‘Don't answer it!' Delphine rocked forward on her toes.

Mrs Hagstrom raised a dark eyebrow.

‘Shouldn't you be in your room?'

ding dong

‘Don't answer it!' She could hear her own voice and it was shrill,
cracked from screaming – the voice of a frightened child. ‘Please! There are . . . things. Outside. Bats.'

Mrs Hagstrom set down her duster, jaw tight with disapproval. She snorted like a bull.

Something began to hammer on the door.

‘Miss Venner – '

ding dong

ba ba bang

‘ – I can't simply stand here and
ignore
it.' She began to walk across black and white squares, towards the door.

Delphine grabbed a vase off a plinth and held it over the edge of the balustrade. The vase was tall and blunderbuss-shaped and covered with a repeating pattern of mauve diamonds wreathed in vines.

Mrs Hagstrom stopped.

‘If you open the door, I'll drop it!' Delphine said.

‘Will you, now? And then what?'

ba ba bang

‘Miss Venner, that vase – '

ding dong

‘ – is over two hundred years old.'

‘If you open that door, it'll be a two-hundred-piece jigsaw, I swear to God.'

Mrs Hagstrom glanced down at the floor. She closed her fingers round empty air, clenched them for a moment, let them go limp. She looked at Delphine.

‘I was one of the few who spoke up for you.'

‘Then
listen
!' The vase was growing heavy in her sweaty palms. ‘Why would I lie? There are things coming towards the house!'

‘Things.'

ding dong

She took a breath. ‘Monsters. I know it sounds stupid, but – '

Mrs Hagstrom shook her head.

‘Miss Venner,' her voice carried as she marched towards the door, ‘I don't know a lot, but it's my understanding that “monsters” aren't in the habit of ringing the doorbell.'

‘No! I'll drop it.' Mrs Hagstrom was not even watching. Delphine heard the clunk of the bolt being drawn. She heard the door open. She heard a cry.

‘Gah! Argh! Shut the door! Shut the door! Jesus Christ, what took you so . . . ' Pant pant. The speaker was Professor Carmichael. The
clump-schlack
of Mrs Hagstrom shutting and bolting the door. ‘Have you seen it out there? Bats! Hundreds of 'em!' Pant pant. ‘Ruddy great things, like . . . like . . . '

From the corridor behind her came the sound of smashing glass.

‘Get everyone downstairs!' Delphine said. ‘Get to the gun room!'

Thuds came from many directions at once. Then ticking, continuous, like hail.

Black rags flurried from the Great Hall doorways. Mrs Hagstrom fell to her knees. Creatures thumped their wings and took off, filling the space. They rose towards the domed ceiling in tight spirals like flakes of burnt paper, hissing, crackling. The Professor stared, his bristled jaw slack, his face strangely calm. Mrs Hagstrom clutched at the Professor's jumper, trying to yank him down.

Delphine gaped. The things had
faces
– sharp, hairy faces, like pine martens', set between flared velveteen ears.

Something black and sinuous unspooled from one of the creatures as it flew. It snagged Mrs Hagstrom's thigh and began winding round her and the Professor – some sort of sticky cord.

She struggled. The cord pulled tight, binding her and the Professor together, pinning their arms to their sides. The creature at the end of the line landed directly beneath Delphine.

She felt the vase slip – a sudden weightlessness in her gut, as if she had fallen with it. It dropped through churning air, blasting apart on the floor.

The creature looked up.

Mrs Hagstrom hollered a single word:

‘Run!'

Delphine turned. Down the corridor, a door swung open. More of the bat-dog creatures capered out, stooped and clumsy. They walked erect, skitter-hopping on taloned feet. The tips of their wings ended in long black hooks. One of them spotted her.

If she had not been drugged, perhaps she would have screamed. She ran across the landing. The air boiled with torn sou'westers caught in a tornado. She sprinted for the east wing.

A black shape swooped for her. She dived, skidding on her chest. When she glanced back, the thing was spreading its huge wings, curving steeply upwards before its feet touched down on the floor. More landed behind it. Their eyes shone like wet berries. Their wings folded and they gave chase.

She scrambled to her feet and ran into the corridor heading east, back the way she had come, the clatter-scrape of claws on floorboards close behind her. She could smell the thick, slightly musty rug beneath her feet.

What about the Professor and Mrs Hagstrom? Were they dead?

Delphine made for the long library. She had to reach the gun room. She didn't care what these beastly things were – giant rabid bats, some exotic species of monkey, perhaps – if she had a shotgun, she could take them down by the dozens.

No use heading there directly – they'd catch her in seconds. If she made it to the library, she could slip into the hidden passage behind the bookcase and work her way downstairs undiscovered.

She could sneak from the smoking room to the green baize door northwest of the banqueting hall, with its steps leading down to the servants' quarters. She had no idea whether the hallways along the way would be swarming with . . . what had she said to Mrs Hagstrom?

Monsters
.

The ground whipped from under her. Her chin bounced off the floor. She bit her tongue and cried out.

She had tripped on a ruck in the carpet. When she glanced back the creatures were coming. What she had taken for smooth torsos were quilted leather jackets worn over serge trousers cut off at the knee. They were wearing
clothes
. The fur on their faces flashed bronze in the electric light, their teeth like chips of glass. She pedalled her legs and started to crawl backwards but she was too slow and they were almost upon her and the frontrunner spread its horrible ripped-bodice wings and she raised her arms to shield her face.

A patch of light spread between her and the monsters. A door
had opened inwards. Standing in the doorway was Dr Lansley.

‘Up – now!'

He stepped out into the hallway. In his right glove he held a heavy brass poker, the end decorated with several vicious flukes, like a grapnel.

The bat-monsters hesitated.

Lansley steamed into them with an underarm tennis swing, embedding the poker's spiked tip in the throat of the leader, lifting it off the floor. He pivoted and dashed its head against the wall.