The attack, when it came, was no real surprise to Miss Pillbody. Why the other inmates of Holloway had waited so long was the genuine puzzle, given how she had bested them at every turn. Perhaps it was the visit by the Gregson woman that triggered it. The prison’s rumour mill would have ascribed all sorts of motives for that. Including the gossip that had finally been whispered along her own landing – that the German whore-of-a-spy was going to be pardoned and repatriated. That would incense those who had been biding their time to repay the many slights and slaps she had dealt out since her arrival.
It began with an unexpected summons to the bathhouse, the usual change into the chemise and a visit to the medical office for weighing. When she returned, the bath was drawn, not to the usual four or six inches, but close to the brim.
‘Ma’am?’ she asked, knocking on the door of the linen room. There was no reply. The soap and square of towel had, however, been left on a stool for her.
Miss Pillbody lowered herself into the water, enjoying the feel of submerging all but her head and the tips of her breasts.
She shuddered with pleasure. What a luxury. Had the Gregson woman engineered this? Special treatment for her pet prisoner? Two bathing sessions in five days?
She was an enigma, that Mrs Gregson. Miss Pillbody could see that she despised her – perhaps even feared her. But she had suppressed all that to create a scheme that even Miss Pillbody, trained in secret missions by the Sie Wölfe, considered what the British called hare-brained. Verrückt for certain.
Initially the Englishwoman had wanted to talk about Von Bork, but even had she wished to, Miss Pillbody could offer her little. She had seen him but once, when Admiral Hersch had brought him for a tour of the Sie Wölfe training facility outside Mainz. Then Gregson had asked about the admiral and his loyalty to his little She-Wolves. It was only at that point that Miss Pillbody grasped exactly what role Mrs Gregson envisaged for her.
But the woman had let slip the weakness in her plan. The look in her eyes told Miss Pillbody that Mrs Gregson was acting out of sentiment. Miss Pillbody knew the feeling of old. She herself had enrolled in the Sie Wölfe because of a mixture of love for her dead husband and the desire to avenge him. That had been expunged during the training. There had been no sentiment left; even when she began an affair with Hersch it had been a pragmatic choice, a way of getting the best assignments. Oddly, it was Hersch who had shown worrying signs of emotion when it came to her deployment abroad. He had even offered her an administrative post in Berlin instead, as if that would have satisfied her after all those months of training. The putty at the core of even so-called Iron Men never failed to amaze and sicken her.
But Mrs Gregson was also pliant and malleable at heart, for she was proposing something even a She-Wolf would consider insane or suicidal or both. Still, Miss Pillbody thought, if she could turn the tables, use this deranged woman for her own purposes . . .
Lost in her thoughts, Miss Pillbody heard the rustle of feet on coconut matting just a moment too late to react. A splayed-out hand pressed down on her head, the pressure irresistible, and she was quickly under the water, fighting for breath, her limbs thrashing, fingers scrabbling for a grip on the sides of the bath. She could feel other hands on her, holding her ankles and wrists. She opened her eyes, and through the distorting lens of the broiling surface, she could just make out three figures, each with swollen, dark heads. Golliwogs were drowning her, she thought, as her airways filled with the bath’s contents.
One of the trio took a fistful of her hair and she was yanked clear into the air. She expelled the lungful of water with a series of barking coughs. Before she could recover her composure, an open palm stung her face and the flannelette rag was forced into her mouth. Miss Pillbody could see now that the three attackers had pulled thick prison-issue black stockings over their heads to disguise their features; all that she could see were the eyes, burning with hatred through hastily ripped holes. She gagged against the rag in her mouth, sure she must suffocate. A sense of panic rose in her, and a silent scream filled her head.
One of the three held a pottery bottle and she cracked it against the rim of the bath until it shattered, causing a series of razor-edged shards to drop onto the tiled floor. The woman picked up one of them, a long, tapering triangle, and leaned over Miss Pillbody, who tried to twist, to kick and scream, but it was useless. She was held fast. All she could do was close her eyes once more as the tip of the improvised dagger approached her skin.
So they weren’t out to kill her. Just disfigure her, as she had the Dryden woman.
A woman or man without clothes is exquisitely vulnerable. Any training is forgotten in an attempt to protect their modesty and their private parts. It was why Hersch had insisted the Sie Wölfe at his camp wrestle, run and fight naked for a good proportion of the time. Hence Miss Pillbody had few inhibitions, not once her training kicked in. And the moment it did so, the scream in her skull stopped dead.
She pulled one hand free, oblivious to the friction burns on her wrist as she twisted it from the grip. The blade hidden between her buttocks needed a few more sessions before it was a perfect prison weapon. But needs must.
The point sliced through the wrist of the attacker who was twisting her hair. As the grip loosened, Miss Pillbody yanked away, ignoring the splinters of pain rippling across her scalp as a fistful of hair came away. The eyes staring from the stockings made perfect targets and she jabbed at the woman’s left one. She fell back with a squeal. Eyes had always been a Pillbody speciality.
Now for the one with the pottery shard. Miss Pillbody grabbed the wrist, pulled the woman close, felt her slap against her breasts, and stabbed up and under the ribs, before pushing her back towards the third woman. Blood was pooling and streaking the water now. She reared up from the bath, crouched slightly, ready to parry the next thrust. Miss Pillbody pulled the rag from her mouth and took in several deep lungfuls of air. The cry she let out, the howl of the She-Wolf they had practised, was amplified into something unworldly by the room’s tiled surfaces.
Then, as quickly as it had started, the assault was over. The pack of imbecilic would-be assassins and mutilators were stumbling out of the door. No matter, she would be able to find at least two of them later from the wounds. And she would deal with them then.
She looked down at her glistening body. Some of that blood swirling in the bath was hers. She had a gash running from the side of her left breast almost to her navel that she didn’t recall receiving. It was only now beginning to sting. She replayed the frenzied moments of the attack in her mind, but could not isolate the moment she received the cut or who inflicted it. She would have lost marks for that at the academy.
Miss Pillbody stepped from the bath, careful not to pick up any splinters in the soles of her feet from the shattered pottery, and used the linen square to dab at the bleeding. Red globules continued to well from along the break, as if someone was blowing tiny bubbles from beneath her skin. It would need a dressing.
She dropped the towel and went next door to fetch a larger piece of material. In the far corner was Gray, the bathing wardress, wrists and ankles tied and a laundry bag over her head. Miss Pillbody contemplated cutting the ropes, but that would reveal her weapon. Instead, she secreted the knife above the doorframe, pulled off the bag, removed a gag, and set about the knots.
‘Miss Pillbody, thank you,’ gasped Mrs Gray, blinking hard. ‘But you are hurt.’
The curtain of blood busy pooling around her groin certainly looked spectacular, but Miss Pillbody knew it was a superficial injury. Still, she permitted herself a theatrical wince. ‘It can wait, ma’am. Let’s get you free from these first. Must be cutting off the circulation,’ she said, unthreading the bindings.
From the grateful look in Mrs Gray’s eyes she knew she had just gained an ally. Perhaps Mrs Gregson’s verrückt plan might work after all.