SOMETHING WAS CRAWLING over my face from the angle of my jaw across my cheek. It tickled, but not in the affectionate way that Uncle Postilius would tickle me when I was tiny nor in the even more affectionate way that he would tickle me when I was less tiny.
Was it a spider? I had heard of them laying eggs under people’s skin and causing blisters that erupted into hundreds of baby spiders. It disappeared, buzzed and reappeared on my forehead – a bluebottle from the size and sound of it. I had heard of them laying eggs under people’s skin and causing blisters that erupted into hundreds of flesh-eating maggots.
I tried to slide my arm up to brush it away with my elbow but, succeeding only in blocking my nostrils, I slid it down hastily. Even mock turtle soup, which I detested more than pea, might be preferable to suffocation by couture.
Wormwood had gone on to loaves and fishes.
The fly had reached my eyebrow and was carefully parting the hairs like a woman looking for a lost earring in the long grass.
You will not find anything of interest there, I warned, but blowflies are not feted for their powers of telepathy – in fact I am not convinced that they have any at all – and it continued its painstaking if exceedingly irritating search.
At least, I consoled myself, I was not getting hot and bothered for I was both of those already.
Wormwood read out something about America. I had never been to the land of Beeman’s and native peoples who, Romulus had told me, were not really Indians and were no redder than the average Englishman on Cromer beach. It did not look like I would be going there in the near future – unless the valet sent me in my ottoman by steamer in an attempt to dispose of my body. It seemed an unwarranted expense and I bridled at the waste of his employer’s money.
You could just as easily push me off a rowing boat into the North Sea, I suggested and hoped, that if I had said it out loud, nobody had heard.
The fly was on the bridge of my nose now, but there were no hairs there for it to explore because I had plucked them all.
‘Christian pastures,’ Wormwood narrated or was it Christian pastors? It was a long time since I had read the book.
If I die now I shall never get to know what happens to The Prisoner of Zenda, I pondered.
If you die now, the line dies with you, Ruby reminded me, but it did anyway for women are much too silly to be entrusted with titles that they can pass on, so the next of the Thorns would be my second cousin Romulus who, having an innate dignity, would take good care of his inheritance I felt sure. You would not find him squashed in a blanket box.
But I would not necessarily die with you, Ruby continued smugly. Ted Wilton, your agent, might give Dangerous Tuesday to Grantham Hogarth to finish.
‘Never!’ I cried as the fly reached my upper lip.
‘What was that?’ Dolores asked in alarm, though I could not help but feel that I had a great deal more than her to fret about in the immediate future. ‘It sounded like a puppy.’
‘Probably the yelp of a bitch,’ Wormwood suggested, maliciously, I suspected.
That does it, I resolved indignantly. I am definitely going to get out of here now.
Now? Ruby checked.
The fly was investigating my nostril and no amount of blowing could dislodge it.
Soon.
How? Ruby challenged. Have you got a spare key up your sleeve?
Let me worry about that, I said as breezily as I could. All I had up my sleeve was an arm that managed to be numb and ache simultaneously.
Wormwood finished reading and, by the sounds that reached me, closed and locked the door.
‘Try to rest, madam,’ he said but not, I suspected, to me.
I bumped on the lid with my knee.
‘Let me out,’ I commanded as his footfalls faded.
You read about these things all the time – servants who pretend not to hear and will not do as they are bidden – but you never think that it will be a matter of life and…
Death, Ruby contributed portentously.