And I wondered then why it was Diprose I needed to kill, and not this other man, who was glowing redder than the devil in front of me. After all, were not I and Diprose both his victims? But I knew the answer before I had even finished the question. What murderous feelings the prostitute dares entertain are reserved for her pimp, not for her clients, no matter how loathsome. Besides, I dared believe, as Sir Jocelyn looked at me, that although his gaze had not the sombre shadow of respect about it, yet it radiated a certain admiration. No, I would let Lucifer live, for his Faustus was the more despicable to me, having chosen his devilish entente. The devil, I believed, had no such freedom of choice.
And it was choice that I had here. It was no longer the choosing of a mother for the welfare of her daughter: Lucinda would suffer either way now, with a mother flayed and murdered or hanged for murder herself. My choice was a simple one: good versus evil, virtue versus revenge.
But even though I quickly knew what my choice would be, I heard Sir Jocelyn say, ‘Buy yourself some time, my dear. Give him a taste – or rather, a smell – of his own medicine.’ He walked over to Diprose’s pocket, and said, ‘Chloroform, Mrs Damage.’
Diprose started to thrash again under the spear, as Sir Jocelyn tried to pull the bottle out. Diprose spat in Din’s face, and kicked out, just as I had when he had earlier restrained me, and got Sir Jocelyn squarely in the shin. The man buckled slightly, and grimaced, nearly losing his grip on the bottle; Diprose was pinned at the shoulder, but his flailing hand seized hold of Sir Jocelyn’s hair, and tugged.
‘Charles!’ Sir Jocelyn yelled, for it seemed as if Diprose had actually ripped a handful of hair from Sir Jocelyn’s head.
‘Oh!’ I cried. What pain he must be in! And how peculiar he looked, with only a dark shadow over his skull. I blinked, and tried to grab the bottle of chloroform off him in case he dropped it. Chloroform. Of course. It must have been chloroform that subdued me for the tattoo. Chloroform. I would render him unconscious, and delay the evil moment.
And as I uncorked it and was wondering how to administer it, I saw Sir Jocelyn upright again, with his hair as normal, and the strange hairless image of him disappeared. A cloth was what I needed now, surely. I looked around for one, but had none. I grabbed the bottom of my skirts, drenched a section in the liquid, and pulled it up to press it firmly into Diprose’s face, my whole body lunging over his as I did so. I think I must have showed my tattoos again, but dignity was the last thing on my mind.
‘How long do I hold it for?’ I screamed at Knightley, but he shrugged, and seemed to recede from me. Diprose shuddered and panicked beneath my skirts, then he could not help but inspire deeply, and his body immediately went limp, and slumped. Din pressed the spear further into the wall, to keep him upright.
‘You can take it away now,’ I panted.
‘He’s bluffin’, Dora!’ Din shouted.
I pulled my skirts away from Diprose’s face; his skin had blistered around his nose and mouth. His eyes were glazed; I pulled his eyelid upwards, and prodded his eyeball.
‘No, he’s gone.’
Din relinquished his grip on the spear; Diprose’s body hit the floor, and lolled over the tiger. And I knew then that I had done the wrong thing; I would never be able to kill him now, a sleeping man, in cold blood. A curse on Sir Jocelyn. Possibly this had been his intention all along.
Sir Jocelyn. What would he do to me now? Would he let me make my escape, for Diprose only to find me and kill me in anger at a later date? Or would he finish me off? As I thought of the Devil, he sauntered out of the shadows, and knelt down next to Diprose. He felt for his pulse. ‘He has, indeed, gone, Mrs Damage. He is dead. Congratulations. You have killed him after all.’
Din reached for me, but I would not be held. I waited for Sir Jocelyn to say something, but he did not. Presumably he would now send someone to Scotland Yard. I would be hanged for murder. The inevitability of it stretched out before me. Whatever my claims, who would believe a woman and a black man over a Knight of the Realm? I had killed a man.
‘Go to my room, clean yourselves up,’ he said, with a calmness that terrified. He opened the door for us himself, and led us down the corridor into a room with pale blue walls. It had a bath in it, and a sink, and a pan with a cistern hung above it on the wall. Din and I stood in the middle of it all, and dared not move.
‘Here.’ Sir Jocelyn handed us both a small flannel square, and a white towel. ‘Come now, act quickly.’ Still we did not move. We watched as Sir Jocelyn turned the taps, and the steam rose from the water to fill the room.