The Honours Read online

  ‘Remind me of your name,’ he said.

  ‘Delphine, uh . . . ’

  ‘Delphina?’

  ‘Delphine.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He bobbed his head, yes, yes, as if he thought this exceptionally apt. He coughed. His eyes widened as he struggled to bring his palsy under control. ‘And, uh, how are you enjoying your stay at my house?’

  ‘I hate it.’ She threaded her fingers behind her back. ‘Sir.’

  Lord Alderberen put a fist to his mauve lips; his throat made a squelching noise.

  She wiped her forehead. He was so frail and papery. She breathed in the sweet stink of burning paraffin. She wondered if she could push him into the lake; everyone would think it was an accident.

  His eyes pinched. He tensed, then gasped and flopped back into his chair like a trance medium at the end of a séance. The process repeated. Sweating, he pulled a crimson hankie from his left breast pocket.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Dying,’ he said, dabbing at the folds of his throat. He caught sight of her expression and smiled. ‘Not now. Slowly.’ He folded the handkerchief into triangles and tucked it back inside his pocket.

  Delphine shot a couple of sly glances over her shoulder; a fine undertaker’s thread of smoke rose from the raft. She began using the point of her toe to scuff an arc in the dirt. The sun was warm against the nape of her neck.

  ‘I watch you, you know,’ he said.

  She looked up sharply. He had his head to one side and was rocking.

  ‘Capering about the grounds. Up there in your barrel like the Rector of Stiffkey. Used to be Arthur’s, that treehouse. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I watch everybody. It’s one of the perks of being ignored.’ He paused for a moment and let the latest wave of convulsions subside. ‘Makes me smile. Seeing you so carefree. I missed out on all that.’

  Delphine narrowed her eyes. Was he making fun of her? How could anyone think she was carefree? She scratched her scalp and looked away.

  ‘You’ll be old one day. Then you’ll understand. I’m expected to spend my twilight sipping quack medicines and sprinkling bonemeal round the aspidistras – busywork till I feel the tap from the bony finger.’ Briefly, the nodding turned to a shaking of the head. ‘They’ll do it again, you know. Send another generation into the mincer.’ He thumped the arm of his chair. ‘Perpetual improvement, my eye! Look at them!’ He flapped an arm at the rich people doing jumping jacks on the lawn. ‘That’s not improvement! It’s nigger-driving!’

  He gazed at the old ice house across the lake, breathing through his nostrils, his purple lips pressed into a thin horizon. The bottoms of his eyes began to glisten. When he spoke again, his voice had dropped to a quavering murmur.

  ‘I’m sick of all these Young Turks with schemes for changing the world. What I want is someone who’ll stop it from changing.’

  Gradually, he brought his breath under control. Delphine watched the veins around his throat flex and contract.

  ‘Why do you let us all live at your house?’ she said.

  ‘My house, is it? Yes, I suppose I have a piece of paper that says as much.’ He glanced at his hand. ‘When you’re near the end, ideas like money and property start to seem rather silly.’

  Delphine took a breath. She lowered her voice.

  ‘You’re a Bolshevik, aren’t you?’

  Lord Alderberen let out a dry laugh that fell in three stages. ‘Living here? In the Winter Palace?’ He laughed again, did the exact same laugh.

  She felt her face get hot. She had said something stupid and she did not understand what.

  Lord Alderberen’s drooping mauve face began to shudder. He clutched his wheelchair.

  A strange pressure built in Delphine’s gut and chest and behind her eyes. She had imagined confronting him so many times. She had pictured herself delivering the accusation before a roomful of witnesses, his blustering denial, his sobbing confession. Now she was finally alone with him, watching him shake and twist, she had to fight the urge to comfort him.

  ‘Are you all r – ’

  ‘It’s almost time,’ he said, giving himself over to the nodding, shutting his eyes. ‘I’m ready to leave this wretched body behind. I’ll be going to a better place. I’ll be with Mother.’ He slumped forward in his chair.

  ‘Delphine!’

  She turned. It was Mother, dressed in tan hip-jacket and trousers. The dregs of a gin and bitters sparkled in her hand.

  ‘You should be studying,’ she said, ‘not pestering our host. I’m so sorry, Lord Alderberen.’ Her voice dropped half an octave as she pivoted to address him. ‘Apparently my daughter is such a prodigy she can read books half a mile away. Come along, Delphine.’ Mother lifted her glass and rattled the ice, like Propp ringing his bell.

  Delphine balled her right hand into a tight, sweaty fist. Mother began to walk away. She glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Delphine.’

  She did not look Delphine in the eye. Delphine saw the hand come up and grip the back of Lansley’s slimy head, the sun against mousy hair, the hungry way Mother kissed him, a pig gobbling slops. Her nostrils stung with the salty-acrid scent of cremated frog.

  ‘Delphine.’ Mother shot a smirk at her daughter. ‘Come, let’s walk. I hardly get to see you these days. You can tell me what the Professor has been teaching you.’

  Delphine held her ground.

  ‘Now,’ said Mother. ‘This is not a negotiation.’

  ‘____ off.’

  Mother’s smile hung in the air like gunsmoke. Her eyelids fluttered. Lord Alderberen made a quiet, throaty noise, a trapdoor closing.

  Delphine glowered into Mother’s twitching hazel eyes. Very quietly, she said: ‘You’re drunk, Mummy. Go and play with Mr Lansley.’

  Mother stood there a moment longer, looking as if she were about to say something. At last she closed her mouth, gave a little nod, turned and walked away. It was the queerest thing. Delphine watched her getting tinier and tinier, till she was only a speck.

  *Professor Carmichael had recently explained to her that a common cause of death for elderly toads was being eaten alive. He said that flesh-eating flies laid their eggs in the hollow of the toad’s back and, being old, the toad was unable to dislodge them. When the eggs hatched, the young maggots ate through the toad’s eyes and consumed the living brain. ‘Which can’t be much fun for the old boy,’ he had concluded, popping a pear drop into his mouth. ‘Poor sod.’

  CHAPTER 17

  FALL

  September 11th 1935

  It was the day before the killing started.

  Dr Lansley opened his black bag and screamed.

  Everyone in the smoking room turned to stare at him. Delphine sat cross-legged on the carpet, her rucksack beside her, reading about the Frankish conquest of Italy in Volume V of Gibbon’s The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.* She did not look up.

  Miss DeGroot paused in the act of sucking a date, gauzy green scarf wound round her throat. She coughed, quietly, into a handkerchief, hacked up something, wiped her lips. Her swagger stick lay on the floor beside her. She leant over the back of the leather sofa.

  ‘Florence,† what on earth’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s another one.’ He lowered himself into a chair at the bridge table. His hands were trembling so violently he could barely slide a cigarillo from the tin.

  ‘Another what?’

  ‘A rat, a bloody dead rat in my medical bag!’

  From behind his copy of The Times, Professor Carmichael spluttered.

  ‘Something funny, Carmichael?’

  ‘No, nothing, nothing.’ The Professor turned the page with a flourish. ‘Just a very droll caricature of Roosevelt.’

  Lansley patted down his jacket for a light. Miss DeGroot stretched out on the sofa and popped another date into her mouth.

  ‘Perhaps the cat likes you,’ she said. ‘They leave them as presents, you know.’

  ‘We haven’t got a cat,’ said Lansley. He put
the cigarillo in his mouth. It was bent at a right angle. He tried to straighten it and it snapped clean in half. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Florence, language. There are children present.’

  ‘If you call me that one more time, I’ll break this table over your head.’

  ‘I thought doctors took an oath forbidding that sort of thing.’

  Lansley tossed his broken cigarillo into the wastepaper basket. ‘It’s a doctor’s duty to kill nasty little parasites.’ He flipped open his cigarillo tin but it was empty. ‘Damn it.’

  Miss DeGroot yawned loudly. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, help yourself to one of Ivan’s. The box is over there on the shelf. I’m sure he won’t mind.’

  Dr Lansley glanced across the room. He snapped his fingers.

  ‘I say, you, child. Look at me when I’m talking to you.’

  Delphine sucked all her anger deep inside. She slipped the red ribbon bookmark between the pages and raised her head.

  ‘Fetch me the cigar box,’ he said.

  She put the book down, slid her hand into the mouth of her rucksack, and stood. She padded across to the shelf. The cigar box had a polished rosewood veneer; a bat was carved into the lid. She stood over it for a moment, her back to the room.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ Lansley clapped his hands.

  Delphine turned and carried the closed box over to Lansley, placing it on the bridge table. He glared at her as she walked back to her spot on the rug.

  Miss DeGroot plucked another date from the glass dish on the table next to her. She held it up and turned it, like the world.

  ‘Are you looking forward to the symposium this weekend?’ she said.

  Lansley paused, licked his moustache. ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘Yes, dear.’

  ‘Well, then you know the answer.’

  ‘Oh, Flo, you’re such a pill.’ The leather sofa croaked as Miss DeGroot leant back. ‘It’s going to be the party to end all parties.’ She chuckled, then smothered it with a date.

  Dr Lansley inhaled sharply. Delphine watched his opera-gloved fingers reach for the catch on the cigar box. They got within an inch, then paused.

  ‘You know,’ said Lansley, ‘if Lazarus actually attended his own damn symposiums he’d see what a waste of time they are.’

  Miss DeGroot pursed her lips, pushing the date out before sucking it back in. ‘You always seem very happy, making eyes at Lord Wolfbrooke. Hoping he’ll name a paper after you?’

  ‘He’s the worst of all. Chuntering on about natural selection and “improving the stock”. You can tell he’s spoiling for another war.’

  ‘Aren’t you? I thought you said Britain needed more warriors and fewer stockbrokers.’

  ‘As a deterrent. Wolfie thinks war’s like a social laxative – you take it and it purges all the bad elements from your system. I told him: you want to see who does best on the battlefield. It’s the rats every time.’

  He flipped the little silver latch and lifted the cigar-box lid.

  And screamed.

  Behind the pages of The Times, Professor Carmichael let out a series of stifled, snorting coughs.

  ‘It’s a warning, I tell you.’

  Delphine lay on her side in the gap between walls, eavesdropping. The hole was an inch from her eye.

  She could barely believe it. After fruitless months of listening in on conversations about cricket scores and stomach pain, or requests for more fruit cake, finally she had caught them.

  ‘Calm down, man,’ said Lord Alderberen. He, Mr Propp and Dr Lansley sat facing each other, their chairs arranged in a triangle.

  ‘I will not – ’ began Lansley, then one of the others must have indicated he was shouting, because he continued, more quietly, ‘I will not calm down. I have watched men claw their own organs back into their rib cages. I am not given to hysterics.’

  ‘Please, please.’ Propp’s voice was deep and steady, like an idling motor. The dry pop-pop of lips puffing on a cigar.

  ‘Look,’ said Lord Alderberen, his consonants crisp, ‘all I’m saying is, if you look at it rationally – ’

  ‘Three in my medical bag,’ hissed Lansley, stamping his calf-leather Oxford against the floor, ‘two in my coat pocket, one in my riding boots, one when I opened my umbrella . . . ’

  ‘I did not know you wear riding boots,’ said Propp.

  ‘I mean, for God’s sake, I found one rolled up in my washcloth. In. My. Washcloth.’

  There was a long silence, into which Propp exhaled, hah.

  ‘I keep my room locked at all times,’ Lansley said. ‘Don’t you understand?’ His two companions left a pause which indicated they did not. ‘They’re sending us a message. They want us to know that they can get at us.’

  All three stopped to digest this. Delphine pinched her nostrils to stifle the beginnings of a sneeze.

  ‘Well, why are they targeting you?’ said Lord Alderberen. ‘Why not me and Ivan?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The only other people with keys to the rooms are Alice and Mrs Hagstrom. Surely you’re not insinuating one of them is . . . Titus, they’ve worked for me for years.’

  ‘I insinuate nothing. The facts speak for themselves. There is a traitor among us.’

  Delphine’s breathing quickened. And she’s closer than you think.

  ‘Hmph.’ Lord Alderberen sat back in his chair. ‘Sounds jolly fishy to me.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Propp sounded as if he had a pipe between his teeth. Delphine inhaled through her nostrils, thought she caught a whiff; it smelt like burning hair. ‘Maybe not so fish. Today I visited library. Prentice is missing.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Alderberen, ‘it’s just been miscatalogued.’

  ‘No,’ said Propp. ‘I walked room twice. Book is gone.’

  ‘Well, what if it is? Three-quarters of it is the purest fudge anyway. No wonder he published under a pseudonym. You’d have more chance jumping into pools at random than following . . . Oh. Oh my.’

  ‘What?’ Dr Lansley rose from his seat. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right, old man? Is it your heart again?’

  ‘I’m fine. Sit down. I just had a thought . . . You don’t think Kung was trying to . . . ’

  ‘Yes,’ said Propp. ‘I think exactly this.’

  ‘But how did he know?’

  Mr Propp made a small, noncommittal noise. ‘Your father’s library is world famous.’

  ‘Also,’ said Lansley, ‘evidently he did not know. If he did, he’d still be alive.’

  ‘Still,’ said Alderberen, ‘he knew enough. He knew to try, didn’t he?’ He let the innuendo hang.

  ‘Well,’ said Lansley, ‘now he’s gone. And the book’s somewhere at the bottom of the ocean.’

  The hairs on Delphine’s neck prickled.

  ‘This I doubt,’ said Propp. ‘This I very much doubt. He would not risk damaging it.’

  ‘If he had it in the first place,’ said Lansley.

  She listened to the three men breathing. In her mind, she saw Daddy on the moonlit beach, retrieving a grey book from the sand.

  Propp said: ‘You are correct. We speculate.’

  ‘It’s worse than that. It’s scaremongering.’ Lord Alderberen coughed up something wet. ‘A few dead mice and we’re up on a chair clutching our petticoats.’

  Lansley snorted. ‘Mice don’t fire shotguns.’

  ‘What in blazes are you talking about?’ said Alderberen.

  ‘Someone shot at me – twice.’

  ‘Oh, poppycock – that was just the wind.’

  ‘The wind doesn’t blow a hole in the chapel ceiling!’

  ‘What were you doing in chapel?’ said Propp.

  ‘That’s none of your damn business.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Alderberen. ‘So now you don’t trust us, either? Come on, man. Pull yourself together.’

  ‘That’s your solution, is it?’ said Lansley. ‘Stick our fingers in our ears and go la la la? If they’re onto us, we’re bugger
ed.’

  ‘All right,’ said Alderberen. ‘Supposing they are. Why on earth would they want us to know they’ve got an inside man? Why tip their hand like this?’

  ‘Two possibles,’ said Propp. ‘One, they feel very assured. Two, they feel very afraid. Either way, very careless. We may use.’

  ‘That’s it.’ Lord Alderberen’s slippers settled on the floor. With a shuddering effort, he stood. ‘I’m going to talk to them. Face to face. Get this whole ugly knot untangled.’

  Propp sighed. ‘Not wise.’

  ‘Hate to say it,’ said Lansley, ‘but I’m with the Fat Owl of the Remove on this one. Knots don’t send death threats. They’ll take you as a hostage, Stokeham or no.’

  ‘Why don’t we pre-empt them?’ said Lord Alderberen. ‘Say they can have her?’

  Delphine shivered. Her nails dug into her palms.

  ‘No,’ said Propp. ‘Not possible.’

  Nobody said anything for a while. Lord Alderberen sat back down.

  Propp said: ‘I will speak to them.’ He rose.

  ‘What?’ said Lord Alderberen. ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you just said it was a bad idea! What on earth will you say?’

  Propp’s voice dropped to a murmur, his accent thickening. ‘My dearest friend, you must not worry. Wait here. I will speak to them.’

  He walked slowly out of Delphine’s view. She heard the door click shut.

  Lansley spoke almost immediately. ‘He’s insane.’

  ‘No.’ Lord Alderberen sounded like he was talking through his fingers. ‘Very sane. Also: very arrogant.’

  ‘You’re even starting to sound like him.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Why has he got so much power over you?’

  Lord Alderberen exhaled heavily. ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘Prove it, then. Overrule him. Tell them what happened. Say that Propp acted alone, without your authority. Give up the child.’

  A freezing river poured down Delphine’s back. She clamped a hand over her lips.