The Honours Page 6

  Delphine wobbled, her hands out for balance. ‘The one who fished the pheasant.’

  ‘Well . . . ’ he kneaded his chin with thumb and forefinger, ‘I suppose I’ll give him a chance to mention it when I see him tomorrow. Perhaps he stumbled across someone else’s mischief, decided to put the bird out its misery. If he doesn’t mention it, that’s poaching. He’ll be out on his ear.’ Whipping a handkerchief from his pocket, he started rubbing down the shotgun. ‘Now come on, off with you.’

  She stepped off the imaginary tightrope and watched him clean. He glanced up. ‘That’s a ripe-looking bruise you’re going to have on your forehead,’ he said. ‘Best tell your parents you fell out a tree.’

  ‘I will,’ said Delphine, ‘on one condition.’

  ‘Condition?’ said Mr Garforth. He tried to hide his smile by rubbing his chin. ‘Go on, then. What’s this condition?’

  She folded her arms.

  ‘Teach me to shoot.’

  *The story went that, as two privates tried to break down the door, they could hear him haranguing each of the skulls in turn for ‘bad advice’.

  CHAPTER 4

  ORDEAL BY FIRE

  March 1935

  Delphine hurried through the corridor. She was hungry. She thought about the Siege of Antioch where the crusaders were starving to death and plundering villages for food and deserting, and some of them began hallucinating from hunger and having visions of God, and as she rounded the corner she crashed into Mr Propp.

  ‘Oh!’ Delphine dropped her Mars bar.

  Propp took a step back, rubbing his paunch. In the empty corridor, they stared at one another. His big grey eyes did not blink. His mouth was half-disguised behind his drooping white moustache.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Delphine.

  With a grunt, he began to sink. His smooth scalp tilted towards her and one pinstriped leg bent until his knee was almost touching the floor.

  ‘Ivan?’ Dr Lansley was coming up the corridor. He wore a checked cravat tucked haphazardly into his jacket. ‘What on earth are you bowing for?’

  Propp rose. He looked at his palm. The Mars bar sat in his thick tanned fingers. He turned the black wrapper so the name faced up, red letters on a white stripe.

  Lansley appeared at his shoulder. Side by side, the two men were stark opposites: Dr Lansley a tall, skinny wraith of middling years with pale cheeks, oily black hair, black deaf aid and a coal-smudge moustache above a thin frowning mouth, Mr Propp a plump, short figure, old but hearty, round-faced with a shaven head, a brownish complexion and a lush, bone-coloured moustache that framed a full-lipped smile.

  In Lansley’s severe, haughty demeanour Delphine saw an unbroken lineage all the way back to the Norman conquerors, but Propp contained a little of everything – Egyptian skin, a broad Siberian nose, and eyes tinged with dry, Asiatic glamour. In his patient, canny composure he could have been Jew or Norseman or ancient Tibetan hermit. Lansley was old England, but Propp was the world.

  Propp uncurled his fingers. He held out the Mars bar.

  She reached for it, half-expecting his hand to snap shut.

  ‘God of war,’ he said. The creases around his eyes deepened. He watched her hand withdraw with the chocolate.

  Delphine tried not to flinch. The Mars bar felt hot in her trembling grip.

  Lansley cleared his throat. ‘Well, what do you say?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I should think so, too. Now, you are between me and my lunch – move.’ He shoved past, wiping his glove on his lapel after he had touched her.

  Propp brushed imaginary dust off his knee. He followed at a plod.

  She watched him go. What had he meant by that comment? Did he know she was onto him? Was he threatening her?

  As she turned away, she spotted something on the floor where he had bent down. It must have fallen from his pocket.

  She crouched and picked it up.

  It was dull and tarnished, attached to a triangular fob of cracked brown leather.

  It was a room key.

  Propp’s study lay at the end of a gloomy corridor lined with artwork on the east wing’s ground floor.

  Delphine crept towards a huge panelled door. The walls were lined with increasingly weird and ugly paintings: a drab landscape of scrub, rubble and skulls, a distorted watercolour parody of what she guessed was meant to be a dodo, and several inferior studies of the young blond lady whose portrait hung in the Great Hall, identified by brass nameplates as Lady Anwen Stokeham. In each portrait she towered in a black silk mourning gown, her yellow-white hair swept back from her brow, her face set in an expression of defiant martial beauty. One depicted her on the deck of a storm-lashed galleon, another standing in a forest, a host of savage beasts lying supine at her elaborately side-buttoned black shoes. The final painting appeared to show her in Hell, surrounded by winged fiends, horned, cloven-hooved demons and giant red scarabs.

  Delphine remembered how Dr Lansley had mocked the obsequious portrait of the 1st Earl. Whoever had commissioned these paintings had wanted to present Lady Stokeham as a striking, almost mythical figure.

  No wonder Lord Alderberen had chosen to hang them here, away from impressionable guests.

  The door to Propp’s room stood between a pair of small black tapestries – on the left, an eight-pointed star, on the right, a rosy cross within a pentagram within a circle. Delphine glanced back over her shoulder. She listened for footsteps. The paintings looked like windows in a carriage. For an instant, she had the oddest sensation she was on a train.

  She knocked on the door. Sturdy wood swallowed the sound. If anyone answered, she would say she was returning the key.

  Delphine waited. She checked the corridor.

  They were all taking lunch. It was barely past noon, and the Society loved long, chatty meals rounded off with drinks and cigars in the smoking room. The coast would be clear for almost an hour.

  She slid the key into the keyhole. She was just checking it fitted, she told herself. Perhaps it did not belong to Propp at all.

  The key turned smoothly. The bolt slid aside with a chuck.

  Somewhere in the Hall a door slammed. Delphine froze, listening. Her chest felt tight. Was this a mistake? She had stumbled across two keys now. Could it really be an accident? She had seen the look in Propp’s eyes. What if he had dropped it on purpose?

  What if this was a trap?

  She looked back up the corridor a third time. One of the wall-mounted light fixtures dimmed then flared back to full brightness. She was alone.

  Her collision with Propp had been pure chance. He could not have known she was coming. Had he really, in those few seconds, decided to lure her back to his study? How could he know that she would take the bait, that she would even recognise a dropped key as bait?

  The security of the Empire might be at stake. The evidence she was hunting for might be feet away. She ran her fingertips down the grooved door and thought of trench periscopes, mortar blasts, Vickers guns strafing larch spinneys through fog. Her breath rose and fell.

  She closed her fist around the cold green glass of the rose-cut door knob.

  She stepped into the room.

  In the centre of the table, rounds of boiled gammon steamed and glistened. There were devilled eggs on a silver platter and potato salad and steamed spinach in glass bowls, garnished with croutons. There was a dish of prunes stuffed with walnuts, and beside it clay pots of mayonnaise and mustard.

  Gideon Venner did not feel hungry.

  The car journey had been long, sticky and nauseating. Something had been wrong with the air. Twice he had asked Philip to stop so he could stand by the side of the road and breathe. For the last part of the trip he had stripped down to his vest, and if not for Philip’s constant critical glances in the rear-view mirror he would have taken that off too.

  Now the maid had left him here alone. Where was everyone?

  Coming to Alderberen Hall had been a mistake. He could feel its h
istory pressing down on him, a wet heat. There were too many memories.

  Too many ghosts.

  ‘Ah! Our new guest.’

  A short, bald, thickset man had entered the banqueting hall. He looked Greek or Turkish or perhaps Arabic. Surely this couldn’t . . .

  Gideon used his napkin to wipe the sweat from his throat. He rose.

  ‘Gideon Venner.’ He extended a damp hand. ‘It is a true honour to meet you at last, Mr Propp.’

  Mr Propp smiled. ‘We do not speak of honour, my dear brother.’ He crossed the room with a strange elegance. ‘We speak only . . . of will.’ At this final word his hand engulfed Gideon’s, pumping furiously.

  Gideon stared into the old foreigner’s wide grey eyes. For an instant, he thought he felt a freezing current flowing up his arm.

  Mr Propp let go.

  Gideon blinked. He flexed his fingers. The tension in his forehead had dissolved to almost nothing.

  ‘You.’ Mr Propp pointed. ‘You are artist.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Gideon looked at his hand. ‘Did you . . . ’

  ‘No, no.’ The old man laughed. ‘Your wife tells me. Come.’ He beckoned. ‘Quick, before we eat. I show you something. In my study.’

  Delphine told herself not to rush. She had plenty of time.

  Propp’s study had no windows. One wall was taken up with glass-fronted bookshelves that rose to the ceiling. There was an armchair, a wardrobe, a wicker basket heaped with logs, a mahogany escritoire writing desk with its lid rolled down, and a wide fireplace. In the middle of the rug was a tea trolley. Several saucers, a knife, a plate covered in crumbs, an empty bottle of calvados and two crystal tumblers jankled as she pushed it aside to get to the desk.

  The room stank of pipesmoke and brandy. It was surprisingly cold – the skin on her neck and forearms had pricked up. She tugged at the desk lid.

  It was locked.

  She cast around for a key. What if she forced it?

  But then Propp would know he had been found out. He might flee, or hunt her down.

  She was about to turn her back when she noticed a tiny white triangle poking from beneath the closed lid. She knelt. It was the corner of a piece of paper.

  Delphine licked her thumb and forefinger and tugged. The paper resisted. She tried again. It started to slide out through the crack.

  She almost had it out when the paper snagged on something. She pulled. The top of the sheet tore sickeningly.

  She examined the damage. The rip went right along the top of the page. She felt as if she were choking. She tried holding it back together. Was it still noticeable? Yes, very.

  There was nothing to be done. She just had to hope that Propp would not notice. She spread the page flat on the desk lid. It was handwritten in blue ink on smooth rag paper with crisp edges. The text was annotated in several spots by a second author – the marginal notes were not in English; they were peppered with exclamation marks. These additions, she assumed, had been made by Propp.

  She read:

  believe we were sent as punishment for their sins. They had grown idle – so the second book teaches – foregoing the hunt and strength and the extermination of fear, and adopting the sedentary life of the farmer. They had forgotten Hem, Makash, Requen, Dar, Matesh and Ko, cultivated grain alcohol and opened their minds to foreign ideas. They had mixed with the vesperi.* And when we came – so the third book teaches – their warriors were slow with drink and they had lost the tongue of the horned pantheon and so could not call to Hem, Makash, Requen, Dar, Matesh nor Ko (who would not have heeded their petitions in any case), and thus they were brought low, and made serfs in the land they once ruled. Whether atonement (if possible at all) is best reached through self-abnegation and acceptance of this divine punishment or by exacting vengeance upon their subjugators is a tense point of doctrinal

  And the page ended there.

  It sounded like something from the Bible. Delphine did not recognise any of the names. She wrinkled her nose. Maybe it was a red herring.

  She slipped the paper back under the lid, taking care not to tear it any further, and turned to the bookshelves. As she crossed the room, she noticed four deep dents in the rug, left by the trolley’s casters. She would have to remember to return it to its original position before she left.

  She tried to open the shelves’ glass doors. They were locked too. She peered at the tomes inside – tobacco- and scab-coloured spines, with crumbling gold-leaf titles in French and Latin and languages she didn’t know.

  A clatter made her spin round. She held her breath, listening.

  There. A scuffling, like a rat.

  The sound had come from behind the green armchair. The armchair squealed and growled as she heaved it aside.

  She had revealed a large object covered with dust sheets. She knelt. She felt dizzy. The sound had stopped.

  The dust sheets were grey and slightly clammy beneath her fingers. She bit her lip. She lifted a corner. She squinted. Wires? Her head was blocking the light from the room’s single bulb. She leant to the right.

  Voices.

  She dropped the sheet and leapt up. The words were muffled but the easy, baritone lilt was unmistakable.

  Propp was coming.

  She felt the walls closing in. What was he doing back so soon?

  Delphine threw her hands up, clutched at her hair. She caught her panicked reflection in the bookshelves’ glass doors and stopped.

  Mother had taught her to plant her feet firmly on the floor and take a deep breath whenever she felt overwhelmed. Delphine forced herself to hold still for a single inhalation. She breathed out.

  She could lock herself in.

  She ran to the door. The keyhole was empty. She must have left the key in the other side of the door.

  Propp’s voice was getting nearer. She heard him chuckle.

  There were no windows, no exits except back the way she came. She ran to the wardrobe. The doors creaked as she eased them open. She gritted her teeth. Propp’s voice in the corridor continued.

  The wardrobe was full. The bottom was heaped with packing cases. The hangers were thick with clothes – one side full of Mr Propp’s usual pinstripe suits and neatly pressed trousers, the other packed with plus-fours and little jackets and lots of male garments many, many sizes too small for him. She shut the doors.

  Propp was just outside the room.

  The fireplace! The hearth was spacious (Delphine had heard Dr Lansley loudly complain that the Hall’s ancient flues were too wide and lacked suction), the iron grate replenished with fresh kindling and logs. She could hide herself inside until he had gone. She was about to scramble in when she remembered she had moved the armchair. She grabbed it and began dragging it back into position.

  She heard Propp’s voice rise in surprise. He turned the key. The door locked. He rattled the door knob.

  Delphine ran to the fireplace and ducked under the lintel. She heard the bolt unlock. The chimney was broad and cool. Hidden behind the lintel, a raised brick platform curved out at chin height to form the base of the flue. She threw an arm up onto it. Her palm skidded in hard, crumbly dust. Ash rushed about her ears as the study door swung open. With a hop, she dragged herself up onto the smoke shelf.

  Pulling her legs up behind her, she remembered the tea trolley, shoved into a corner so she could reach the desk.

  She remembered she had left the light on.

  ‘Come,’ said Propp. If he was shocked to find his room lit up, it did not show in his voice. ‘Please excuse mess. I write book. I stay very, very late. Ho – so cold! You like calvados?’ She heard the clank of the empty bottle. ‘Good for writing, good for dreams. Hmm.’ He made a noise in the back of his throat. ‘When we live, it is best to be awake. But when we must sleep, it is best to dream.’

  Delphine looked up. The flue was a black pillarbox, rising, rising towards a distant smudgy slit of light. It smelt like paint and liquorice. She could not see her hands, but when she smeared her thumb a
cross her palm she felt a greasy layer of creosote.

  Hugging her knees to her chest, she listened to Propp’s heavy footsteps as he moved from rug to floorboards. What were all those wires connected to under the dust sheet? Why did he have a wardrobe half-full of clothes that would only fit a young boy?

  ‘I show you something.’ A click. The squeal of hinges. The light in the hearth narrowed and flared as his shadow crossed it. ‘Eighteen years ago, in Kars, old woman sell me this book. You are artist. Look at pictures. Tell me what you think.’

  Delphine held her breath and listened. She could hear the crackle of pages turning.

  ‘She was, uh, houselady? How to . . . She, uh, she rent rooms?’

  ‘Landlady?’ said Daddy.

  Delphine let out a small involuntary yelp then slapped a hand over her mouth. That was his voice! It was him! Daddy was here!

  ‘Yes,’ Propp purred, rolling the syllable, giving no indication he had heard her, ‘landlady. Thank you. She find book in room.’

  ‘I, um . . . I’m afraid I can’t value it.’

  It was peculiar hearing Daddy’s voice again. The chimney’s acoustics gave it a dull, mechanical ring.

  ‘I’m not an antiques expert,’ he said. ‘I’m a painter.’

  ‘Ah!’ Propp’s cry was so loud she shrank back from the opening. ‘But this is why I ask you! Book is pffft. Paper. Leather. Worthless. What do you see?’

  Delphine could hear the slight squeak in Daddy’s nostrils as he breathed. Mother said the war had ruined his sinuses. He was for ever getting nosebleeds. Daddy said the bleeding helped his headaches.

  ‘Well . . . they’re perfectly nice woodcuts. Rather . . . conventional. I can’t read the text but I presume this is a book of fairytales?’

  ‘Hmm.’ Propp’s shadow wavered in the fireplace. Delphine leant forward, waiting for him to speak. She ached to drop down into the hearth and surprise Daddy.

  But no. If she just waited until they left again, she could get a look under that sheet . . .

  ‘Thank you, my dear friend,’ said Propp. ‘Interesting. Very interesting.’ His footsteps tramped back across the room. ‘It is just pastime of mine, collecting books. Now, I expect you curse my name – I keep you from food!’ Hinges shrieked. Something clicked. ‘Come, brother, let us go.’