I SNEEZED SO violently that I banged my head on the woodwork, but at least it shifted the bluebottle from my nose.
Houses are never quiet. They creak and shift. Water pipes make water pipe noises and birds scrabble on rooftiles. Dogs bark, canaries twitter and cats miaow. Mice scamper over the floorboards and, if you are really lucky, rats scramble beneath them. Haglin House, however, was quiet as the…
Do not even think it, I scolded myself and lay still as there was not much else that I could do.
You could try lying still and thinking of a plan, Ruby suggested, preferably one that involves escaping.
I did as she suggested. If I pulled out my hat pin I might be able to bend it and at least try to pick the lock. It could not be that difficult.
It is, Ruby assured me, apart from which, I could not get a finger to my bonnet anyway.
What about your left hand doing something for a change, my right hand challenged, which was fair enough, I supposed, for – amongst other chores – it had to do all the writing and lifting of coffee cups, but my whole left arm had gone missing.
Only you could mislay a limb – and one of your own at that – in the confines of an ottoman, Ruby scoffed, sounding rather like Miss Kidd when I had lost a boot on my way to the chapel.
Here I am, it gasped from underneath me, which explained what that pain had been but, struggle as I might, I could not extract it.
Arch your back, somebody suggested but it was arched already and I was so busy squabbling with my character and my body parts that I did not hear any footfalls approach my prison or, if I had, I had not paid any attention. Nor – to my chagrin – had Ruby, Hefty nor even Mrs Le Pram, the nosey old woman from Death in the Parsonage, warned me.
There was a metallic scraping sound that I had come to recognise as the key being inserted followed by the click of the lock being turned.
The roof rose and my world was flooded with light, only partly blocked by a figure and, after a lot of blinking, I made out that it was a man. A dark dot – the fly I assumed – flew off over his shoulder. I screwed up my eyes and saw that it was Dr Poynder and, because he did not look in the least bit pleased to see me, I did not feel in the least bit pleased to see him either.
‘What in the name of the devil do you think you are up to?’ he demanded.
‘Your man locked me in here,’ I explained, fully aware that that was not what he was asking.
This might be a good time to sit, Ruby suggested, though I was already twisting about and struggling to pull myself up. My left arm had expired, but I still harboured hopes that it might, like Lazarus, return to the land of the living.
‘What are you doing in my house?’ He rephrased the question, probably not sure if I was being awkward or stupid for both are proven feminine traits.
I could have told him that I was sitting in a box but that might well have overstretched his patience and – whilst I could match many a man in a game of croquet and quite a few at Beggar-my-neighbour but, even strictly adhering to the Marquis of Queensbury Rules, I did not fancy my chances against one in a fistfight.
You made me go against Killer Mulvane, Ruby pointed out, omitting to mention that she had a crowbar, which was yet another thing that I had neglected to bring with me.
Dismissing Ruby’s suggestion that I claim to have been kidnapped and sent here against my will, honesty, I decided, might not always be the best policy but was the only option available to me.
‘I wanted to see Dolly,’ I told him, ‘and your servants were obstructing me.’
‘Why did you want to see her?’
‘I was worried about her.’
He chewed my words more thoroughly than Agnust with her page of St Mark and spat his next words far more venomously.
‘You were worried?’ He bunched up furiously. ‘YOU were worried?’
You can’t accuse him of not listening, Ruby pointed out in his favour.
‘Yes,’ I mumbled nervously.
Anthony Appleton would not get away with the beautifully understated range of emotions that Poynder’s face expressed, for nobody could have seen them from beyond the front row of the stalls, but they were all too clear to me and ranged from anger to loathing to resentment to indignation building up towards rage before the doctor inhaled profoundly and composed himself.
‘Get up.’ He exhaled so glacially that, overheated as I was, I found myself shivering as I struggled to oblige.
‘My man is outside,’ I warned, and he piffed.
‘He would do well to get past mine.’
‘He will call the police.’
‘Then he will save me the trouble.’ Poynder glared at me. ‘Take my hand.’
He stuck it out and I poked mine up tentatively. He did not look like a man who would crush my fingers for a joke, but I had thought the same about Parson Gray, who had almost broken them to the hilarity of his cod-faced, halibut-breathed, bloater-shaped wife. She had not found him so amusing when he put chillies in her eye-drops.
Poynder grasped my hand firmly though not painfully and hauled me to my feet. My legs, taken off-guard, did what unprepared legs do best. They buckled.
‘Oh!’ I managed before I toppled over.