‘All this, because I didn’t believe your feeble inscription.’ Sir Jocelyn had started to laugh, shaking his head. ‘Really, Charles, you have excelled yourself this time.’ He wiped a tear from his eye.
‘Why, thank you, Sir Jocelyn.’
‘You idiot, Charles,’ Sir Jocelyn snapped.
‘But, Sir Jocelyn, you told me to dispose of her,’ Diprose protested. ‘You have always referred to her as our whore. Before I throw her into the Thames, I thought I might as well get our money’s worth. So they will discover that one of the many prostitutes’ corpses they find today has been flayed. Qu’est-ce que cela peut bien faire?’
‘I said that I believed she was coming to the end of her employment with us, and that we had to find a reasonable way of disposing with her. Reasonable. Not barbaric.’
‘Dispose of . . .’
‘Yes, but I didn’t mean kill her! Relinquish. Remove. Not rub out! And reasonably, too.’
‘So what are we to do?’ Diprose asked. I looked from him to Sir Jocelyn, and back again. My future was held in their decision. Sir Jocelyn walked towards me, looking me up and down.
‘I always thought you were too scrawny, Dora,’ he said at last. ‘Charlie, couldn’t you at least have found me a woman with an arse that had been fattened on the cushions in the Dey’s harem? The perfect quarto, you said? Mrs Damage’s arse, I’m afraid, will cover little more than an octavo, and a crown octavo at that.’
Mr Diprose’s vile mouth broke into a smile, then a laugh, and soon the two men were chuckling heartily at my demise, and I knew I had no ally in Knightley.
‘Never mind,’ Sir Jocelyn continued. ‘She shall be our perfect pocket-book!’
‘And as for her daughter,’ Diprose adjoined, laughing so hard he could scarcely get the words out, ‘there’s no pleasure like the ploughing of a first edition.’
Quicker than the men could follow what I was doing, I ran to the wall and seized one of the tribal spears, feathered with orange and yellow. It came off easily in my hand, and I hurled myself with it towards Mr Diprose’s shaking back. I rammed it in hard. It met with resistance. I saw his round, purple face turn to me with surprise; his eyebrows were lifted, and his wet little mouth grinned over his shoulder at me. I battered the spear into him again, this time into his side, and then, now he was facing me fully frontal, into his chest. Still nothing. He was still laughing, and looking at me in wonder. Possibly the spear was blunt. Again, and again, I hammered it on to him, fear growing with every blow, from every angle I could, until he simply caught hold of the shaft and held it upright to keep me from attacking him further.
‘I had not thought until now how fortunate I am to wear this wretched back brace,’ he said superciliously. ‘ “The advantages of scoliosis as a life-protector.” Another treatise for you to write, Sir Jocelyn.’
But before he could finish smirking, the spear was removed from him and he was flattened against the wall with the same spear across his chest, before any of us knew how it had happened. But then it became obvious, for the man holding the spear across Mr Diprose, the man whose face was pressed up against his, eyeball to eyeball, and threatening to crush the very life out of him there and then, was Din. Din, holding the spear, the same spear he had brandished at Sylvia’s bosom.
I did not stop to think how he had managed to be here; instead I ran to the wall again, and seized the another weapon, which had a short shaft but a long blade, and without testing it with my fingers ran with it straight towards Diprose, but this time I aimed for below his brace. He saw me coming, and there was nothing he could do, for his arms were pinned by the spear. I landed it directly into the softness of his crotch. Oh yes indeed, this one was definitely sharp. Fabric and flesh yielded. Diprose screamed and quailed. Blood was dripping from the spear, and from Diprose, onto the tiger’s head on the floor at our feet. I knew what I was capable of, and what I had to do. I looked at Diprose’s pale, shaking face, and knew I had to strike somewhere up here next. I had to find his elusive throat somewhere beneath his quivering chins and beard.
But with every murder there is a moment of possibility, and when that passes, the deed cannot be done. With Diprose pinned to the wall by a stronger man, squealing like a pig, I could pretend I was safe. With every second that ticked by, the moment evaded me further. I was still holding the bloody spear, but did not know what to do with it.
‘Kill him,’ Din shouted at me. ‘What you waitin’ for?’
Sir Jocelyn was watching me with the bemusement of a man who has seen too many peepshows, but has finally found a more interesting one. ‘Damned if you do, but what if you don’t, Mrs Damage?’ he asked, cocking an eyebrow at me.