The Honours Read online

  Professor Carmichael cleared his throat a second time. Mr Propp, Dr Lansley and Miss DeGroot turned to look at him.

  ‘Hello!’ Professor Carmichael stuck his cigar between his teeth and thrust out a hand, crossing an invisible threshold into the inner circle. ‘Algernon Carmichael. Uh, Professor Algernon Carmichael.’

  The crowd fell silent. Delphine felt their disapproval as a cold rush in her tummy. The Professor had breached some strange, unspoken rule. She wanted to run to him, but everyone was watching. What if Propp drew his pistol?

  Mr Propp’s smile neither widened nor shrank. He reached out and enclosed the Professor’s hand in his.

  ‘What is your, ah . . . “field”, Professor?’

  ‘Eclectics,’ said the Professor brightly.

  ‘Ah. I am very pleased to meet.’

  ‘Oh, likewise, likewise. It’s such an honour to meet you at last.’ The Professor turned towards the wall of disapproving onlookers, winced. He pumped his arms and let out a high, staccato laugh.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘perhaps this isn’t the time. It’s just that, well, I’ve been at the Hall almost a fortnight and somehow we haven’t bumped into each other . . . quite bizarre! It’s like you keep disappearing! The thing is, Ivan – may I call you Ivan? When you do have a moment, I’ve a project that I’ve been working on for five years now, and I think – well, that is to say, I hope – that you’ll be rather interes – ’

  ‘Actually,’ said Dr Lansley, stepping forward, ‘we were in the middle of a conversation.’

  ‘Really?’ The Professor looked from Lansley, to Miss DeGroot, to Propp. ‘Oh, I do beg your pardon. What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m not inviting you to join – ’

  ‘This thing,’ said Miss DeGroot, nodding upwards. ‘I was rather worried it might be placing us under some species of voodoo curse – that’s a tremendously fetching bow tie, by the way.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The words came out a little throttled and the Professor had to fan his face with his papers. Delphine followed his gaze back up to the ceiling. ‘Curse, you say? I should think the whole estate’s cursed, shouldn’t you? Entire medieval household, retinue and all – poof! Vanished like a Welshman on a workday. Or so the story goes.’

  ‘Oh! So is this your area of study, Professor?’

  Dr Lansley’s expression was flat and hard.

  ‘The Professor,’ he spat the word, ‘is here acting as schoolmaster for the Venner child.’

  Delphine felt a jolt of anger. Dr Lansley had wielded her as an insult.

  ‘Mrs Venner invited me here as a tutor, yes, but my primary area of study is . . . Put it this way – what’s the first word that pops into your head if I say to you: Lemuria.’

  ‘Um . . . lemur?’ said Miss DeGroot.

  ‘Folktale,’ said Propp.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Dr Lansley.

  ‘Ah, no, absolutely right, absolutely right.’ She saw the Professor nodding, grinning tightly. ‘Any wise man would say the same. The stuff of story papers. But uh . . . ’ He took a deep breath. ‘I, like yourselves, am disinclined to trust the official narratives thrust upon us by the powers that be. Therefore, I have made it my life’s work to uh, to . . . My point is this: during my studies of accounts of Ancient Britain, I have uncovered a glaring lacuna.’

  Dr Lansley rolled his eyes. ‘The only glaring lacuna is the one between your ears.’

  The Professor’s smile faltered. Miss DeGroot stifled a guffaw.

  ‘But surely,’ and here, the Professor made the mistake of appealing to the crowd, ‘in this gathering of our nation’s greatest freethinkers, no man would deny there exist worlds beyond our own?’

  Delphine felt the question hang. Her mouth had gone dry.

  The Professor wavered beneath a reproving silence. Dr Lansley sucked in his cheeks.

  ‘Mr Carmichael . . . ’ He paused to sigh heavily. ‘The Society is a meeting place for great men of science and politics. Not a charitable foundation for, for . . . crackpots.’

  ‘Ah, but I have proof!’ The Professor took a step back, flourishing his heap of papers.

  Dr Lansley glanced at them. For the second time that night, he and Propp exchanged a look.

  ‘Well. That changes things.’ Dr Lansley turned to the room. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Society for the Perpetual Improvement of Man has a new member. I propose a toast.’ He raised his brandy glass. ‘To Professor Carmichael . . . the discoverer of Oz!’

  Palpably relieved laughter and applause. Dr Lansley drained his glass. Other guests whooped and drank. Delphine felt heat building in her cheeks and brow. Dr Lansley turned his back on the Professor and began talking to Propp.

  The Professor attempted a smile.

  ‘All right,’ he said, but no one was listening except Delphine. Humiliation made him bigger, somehow; the papers were a wilted bouquet in his giant fist.

  She thought of how he had stuck up for her on the train. Indignation blazed in her heart.

  ‘Hey.’ Delphine stepped forward. ‘Hey!’

  Dr Lansley did not respond. She stepped nearer. ‘Hey!’

  He did not respond. She prodded a finger into his dinner-jacketed back.

  Lansley wheeled round with a fencer’s grace. When he saw her, his smile turned to a bored scowl. She stared up at his puffed-out chest, his hairy black nostrils. He exhaled from one corner of his narrow mouth.

  ‘What do you want?’

  A pulse hammered in Delphine’s ear. Her face felt sticky.

  ‘You oughtn’t to speak to the Professor like that,’ she said. All around, the party had gone quiet. People were turning to watch. She heard the tremble in her voice. ‘He’s not . . . he’s a very clever man.’

  Dr Lansley’s scowl melted into a smirk.

  ‘Ah, Professor – here’s your secretary.’ Sniggers, isolated claps. ‘What’s the emergency? Does the British Museum need an expert to label its new collection from Neverland?’

  Delphine clenched her fists. Her vision was narrowing around Dr Lansley’s wonky butterscotch grin. ‘Tell the Professor you’re sorry.’

  Dr Lansley cocked his head. The wan skin at the corners of his mouth crinkled.

  ‘Or what? You’ll set me on fire?’

  Delphine felt a cold hand on her shoulder.

  ‘I do apologise.’

  It was Mother.

  Dr Lansley nodded. ‘Anne.’

  ‘Mother, not now. I’m helping the Professor.’

  A woman in a diamond choker whispered something to the man at her shoulder, who snorted into his drink. Delphine glanced at the Professor for support. He did not look grateful.

  Very quietly, he said: ‘Miss Venner. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.’ He slapped a coil of slimy hair back from his eyes, grimacing. ‘Please, just . . . buzz off.’

  Delphine blinked, trying to hide the crushing sensation in her chest.

  ‘Come on, Delphine,’ said Mother, ‘that’s quite enough.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ Delphine shrugged loose. ‘It’s not enough at all.’ She glared at Dr Lansley. He raised his hand and she flinched. He saw and chuckled, smoothing his bloodless lower lip with a finger.

  Delphine felt an icy rage. She would rip his throat out. She would throttle him with the cable of his deaf aid.

  Then she saw it. Past the curve of Dr Lansley’s hip, a lump at the base of Mr Propp’s spine, smothered in silk robe. The revolver. Everyone was watching. She could unmask him, and Lansley – surely one of his accomplices – in a single stroke. Then they’d bloody listen.

  Dr Lansley noticed her staring. He followed her gaze.

  Delphine lunged.

  The double doors opened with a bang. A glass shattered. Everyone turned to look.

  Propp sidestepped out of Delphine’s range. Something was going on, past everybody’s heads. She heard gasps. She scrambled onto the divan.

  A figure stood in the doorway. He was soaked through; his trousers shone like sealsk
in. His shirt was nearly transparent, save for thick arterial creases lining his arms. Water puddled about his bare feet. His hair hung lank and drooling. Cradled in his shaking hands was something like a live heart dunked in potter’s slip, caught in the steel teeth of a gin trap.

  ‘Daddy!’

  ‘Gideon!’ Mother ran to his side. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  He stared at the mess in his hands. Delphine could no longer see it – people had moved in the way. Water dripped from his brow, nose and chin. Mr Propp cleaved through the crowd with an agility that belied his age and size.

  ‘Near the pond,’ Daddy said, then grimaced at some gut-deep pain. ‘I . . . I didn’t know what to do.’ He held out his hands, an offering. Onlookers gasped and groaned. Mother put three thin fingers to her mouth but made no sound.

  Dr Lansley was on the other side of the room, jabbing the bell button.

  ‘For God’s sake, someone fetch him a towel. Stop gawping!’

  Delphine followed Mr Propp through stinking, smoking guests, towards Daddy.

  ‘Come on, Giddy,’ Mother was saying, tugging at his shoulder, ‘let’s get you dry. Come on, Giddy . . . ’

  ‘I didn’t know what to do,’ Daddy muttered, over and over. He glanced down, screwed his eyes shut, chewed at the air. A moment later, he looked again. His agony was almost ecstatic.

  At Daddy’s shoulder, a silhouette resolved itself into two great eyes, a face. Mr Propp stepped into the light. His voice throbbed like a cello. ‘Please, everyone.’ He clapped twice. ‘Away.’

  The exodus was instantaneous. Guests retreated to the edges of the room and Delphine found herself standing alone.

  ‘Brother, please.’ Mr Propp placed a hand on Daddy’s elbow. The outline of the revolver was clear against his purple silk robe. He leant forward and whispered something in Daddy’s ear. Daddy became very still.

  Gently, almost tenderly, Propp scooped the gooey mass from Daddy’s hands. Daddy stared down into the hollow of his palms. Propp walked away.

  As he moved beneath the chandelier, Delphine saw. Mud dripped from something round and smooth – curved interlocking plates like a shoulder pauldron on a suit of armour. Reddish. Bits of straw twitched in the mush. She only caught a flash of it, but in that instant she swore she saw it move – flexing, jawing apart as if alive.

  Propp walked to the sideboard and calmly dumped the thing into a silver ice bucket. He turned, his eyes closed, and gestured towards the bucket.

  ‘Is dodosh. Um . . . ’ He stirred fingers in front of his brow. ‘Jean-Leonard! Comment est-ce qu’on dit “crapaud” en anglais?’

  ‘Toad, Monsieur Propp,’ came a voice from the crowd.

  ‘Ah! Bien sûr.’ He opened his eyes. ‘It is dead toad.’

  Whatever the thing was, Delphine knew it was no toad. It was too big.

  On the other side of the room, Daddy stumbled. Mother tried to take his arm but he yanked it away. He was beginning to shiver. A dullness had come into his eyes. Delphine had seen it before. Soon, he would sleep.

  Alice the maid arrived, wrinkled her nose at the mess and said she would fetch towels. Propp held out the ice bucket for Dr Lansley.

  ‘Please. Remove.’

  Lansley glanced inside. His upper lip curled. He snatched the bucket from Propp’s grasp and marched off.

  Delphine felt washed out and nauseous. She watched Mother try again to take Daddy’s arm. This time, he relented. Mother led him out of the drawing room.

  A low restlessness agitated the remaining guests – the sort of half-concerned, half-pettish muttering prompted by a late curtain at the opera. Professor Carmichael poured himself a very large whisky. Delphine felt a tap on her elbow.

  She turned to see Miss DeGroot, holding a brandy glass.

  ‘You okay?’ said Miss DeGroot. She was smiling. ‘Delphine, isn’t it?’

  Delphine nodded, studying Miss DeGroot’s eyes for slyness or mockery. Miss DeGroot watched her steadily. Delphine flushed and dropped her gaze, focusing on the blue swallow print of Miss DeGroot’s capelet against the white of her throat.

  ‘Here. Don’t tell your Mother I gave you this.’ Miss DeGroot held out the glass. In the bottom was a dribble of brandy.

  ‘Uh, no thank you.’

  ‘Don’t be polite. You’ve had a rough evening. It’ll help you sleep.’ She jiggled the glass and the brandy swirled round and round.

  Delphine hesitated. She took it, her fingertips brushing the cold silk of Miss DeGroot’s glove. She sniffed the brandy, tried to suppress a gag. She shut her eyes and emptied the glass into her mouth. It tasted like Daddy’s studio.

  When she opened her eyes Miss DeGroot was nodding.

  ‘You don’t let anyone push you around, do you?’

  Delphine looked down at the carpet, her throat and cheeks burning.

  A hubbub arose at the west end of the banqueting hall. Alice had returned. She was pushing a wooden wheelchair. Sitting in the chair, his knees covered by a custard-coloured blanket, was Lazarus Robert Stokeham, 4th Earl of Alderberen.

  ‘What on earth happened here?’ said Lord Alderberen, kicking a slippered foot.

  Delphine had once read* that cobra venom worked by making the blood coagulate, clogging arteries until the heart puffed out and exploded in an eruption of clotting gore. She had long imagined the sensation – the squeezing, aching pain shooting down from the wrist, following a webwork of veins and capillaries to smash, like a crossbow bolt, into the clenched sac of the heart. She felt something close to that now.

  She knew the voice, the slippers, and the blue stockings within them. Lord Alderberen had been the one talking to Mr Propp back in the room all those weeks ago. They were in league. Of course they were.

  Delphine stared at the puddled space where Daddy had stood. Electric fish glowed in mirror pools. Reflected in the water, the chandelier hung like a trap, about to snap shut.

  *The Society for the Perpetual Improvement of Man.

  *Boys’ Adventure Weekly, Issue #312.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE CURSE OF THE STOKEHAMS

  May 1935

  A few days after the symposium, Delphine sat by the fire in Mr Garforth’s cottage, steaming open letters. The copper kettle gubbled over the flames. She used a pair of coal tongs to pass an envelope through the steam, watching the paper corrugate like the lips of a clam.

  She had waited for the postman’s van and greeted him at the back door with a curtsey. He had not even asked her name. It had been a masterstroke of espionage.

  She practised on Professor Carmichael’s correspondence, building up her nerve. One was a typewritten slip, thanking him for his essay: ‘It does not meet our needs at this time. We wish you all success placing it elsewhere.’ Beneath, scrawled in blue ink, were the words: ‘no SAE = no MS return!’. A second contained the Quarterly Newsletter from ENVELOPE.* A final handwritten letter from someone called Walter (‘your chum, always’) comprised several pages complaining about the author’s ‘Hellish time’ at All Souls†.

  When Delphine tried to reseal the letters, she discovered she had held them in the steam too long and the gum had melted. She managed to stick the flaps down with a little paste, but they looked all bendy.

  No matter. The Professor had nothing to hide; he would not be looking for signs his mail had been tampered with. Perhaps he would think the postman had dropped his letters in a puddle. Delphine put them back in her rucksack, along with the others, and moved on to the central object of her investigation.

  Seven letters were addressed to Mr I. Propp or Mr Ivanovich Propp, including one to ‘Dr Propp’. She applied steam cautiously. Delphine licked her lips and ran a butter knife along the back of the first envelope. The flap yielded wetly. The cottage was empty. She had an hour before luncheon, at which point the post would be missed.

  Dear Mr Propp,

  I write to thank you for your little visit on the 7th. Since then we have followed your principles as best we can. Although
my wife’s neurasthenia makes performing the Hidden Steps a challenge on occasion, daily I find evidence of improvement in her mood and vital energy. As for myself, the constipation which was the despair of my three doctors is cured and the pills are no longer necessary. We are both indebted to you for imparting your method and our friends anxiously await your next seminar in London.

  Yours sincerely,

  Mr N. Rouche

  P.S. I enclose a small donation to allow your Society to continue its invaluable work.

  The letters that followed featured more of the same. Beneath her fingers, they felt faintly warm and damp. They were written on high-quality, thick-gauge paper – the sort she imagined was used by diplomats and viscounts and rich financiers of global intrigues. She found nothing explicitly incriminating, but if Mr Propp was receiving messages from continental spies, it stood to reason they would use code. Perhaps the names of conditions? She jotted down ‘rheumatic shoulder’ and ‘nervous collapse’.

  All the envelopes contained cheques, except the last:

  Dear Ivan,

  hao chiu pu chien! I am arriving sooner than expected. I hope this not cause you inconvenience. Two travellers back together at last. And share our discoveries.

  Your friend,

  Edmund

  She read and reread the letter. The cottage seemed to tilt like an ocean liner. Surely this was a message from one agent to another. And what were those first four words? She thought that ‘chien’ might be French for dog.

  The door swung open and Mr Garforth entered, rain-wet and snorting. He threw his coat off and made a beeline for the fire.

  ‘Oh, good. You’ve put the kettle on.’

  Delphine tried to hide the letter but the sudden movement drew his attention.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing. Post.’

  Mr Garforth sat in the chair beside the fireplace and slapped moisture from his scalp. His boots came off with a thump. He looked at the heap of opened envelopes.

  ‘Someone’s popular.’