'Fine.' Delphine looked the old gamekeeper in the eyes. 'I won't play in the tunnels. I promise.'

*The Esteemed Neo-Vrilian Epistolary League Of Potential Enlightenment.

Everything was 'Hellish': the food, the weather, and especially Walter's lack of money. The letter closed with an appeal for a loan 'just to tide me over till the end of term. Of course I miss you blackly. If I can only survive this Hellish year I promise I shall come and visit. Scout's honour.'

*Delphine had taken the position that the Prince of Denmark was 'stupid' for not killing his blackguard uncle Claudius while he prayed. 'Hamlet knows the Bible is not true, because he has already met a ghost' she wrote, before conceding that the true dilemma facing Hamlet was: 'what's the point of murdering someone if they just end up as a ghost?' She closed her essay by positing an alternative 'more believable' ending, where Hamlet kills Claudius, then himself, the two ghosts 'duelling vigorously on the spiritual plane' before Hamlet finally consumes his uncle's soul.

*The ha-ha was a concealed ditch that ran widthways across the south lawn, a gentle slope on the south side, on the north a nose-high stone wall bearded in moss. Delphine considered it an exceptionally poor piece of landscaping, on account of the cover it would afford attackers in the event of a siege.

CHAPTER 8.

UNDERWORLD.

June 1935 The tunnel entrance was half her height, cut into a bank of soft brown clay set back from the beach. The stonework bore an orange corona of rust from the old iron grate, which lay half-buried in silt, like the rib cage of some furnace-born horror. The tunnel looked like a sewage outlet and stank of putrefying fish. She dropped down on all-fours, switched on her electric torch, and peered inside.

She was not playing in the tunnels, she reminded herself this was research.

Professor Carmichael had assigned her a book on horse breeding (in retaliation, she suspected, for her disparaging remarks on Malory* in a previous essay). The Modern British Breeder was so punitively dull she had passed into a kind of trance while reading, and it was with groggy eyes that she began a section on the old stables at Alderberen Hall.

What she read next snapped her awake: Latterly, the Earl's contribution to modern equestrianism has been almost entirely overshadowed by the manner in which it ended. After the fire of 1854, the Earl never a gregarious man, even in his prime retreated from public life completely. During this period, he commissioned a great deal of building work: the widening and extending of old smugglers' tunnels beneath the estate, the construction of corridors within the house hidden by internal walls, and the long overdue relocation and expansion of the Stokeham family mausoleum. Although the tunnels seem to have been built to accommodate horse and rider (perhaps for ease of transport between the stables and the railway station), in 1855 the Earl dismissed Mr Mercer, the stablemaster upon whose expertise and dedication the success of the Alderberen breeding programme had been predicated. The stables entered a rapid decline, losing all of their prized studs to theft, anaemia and mystery ailments, before the remaining stock was sold off and the stables closed.

Construction work continued until the Earl's death in 1884, providing employment for a large number of labourers, each of whom he furnished with a pony and a parasol to ease their burden in hot weather. This, alongside his sacking of Mr Mercer, is often held up as proof of his diminishing mental faculties, but the affection in which his workers held him is evidenced by the fact that many moved to the village and remain there to this day. Throughout the last years of his life, the Earl was rarely seen or heard. He moved about the estate by means of his passages and tunnels, often going for long midnight strolls, his valet walking twenty paces ahead, holding a lamp, the master's face always obscured by a high collar and wide-brimmed hat. By day, he lived in five rooms of the Hall's west wing, receiving correspondence and delivering orders by means of a letterbox. Such behaviour earned him the nickname 'the Silent Earl'.

Rumours abounded as to the cause of his reclusiveness, ranging from absurd fancy to the basest libel: the Earl had been disfigured by syphilis, the Earl was a vampire, the Earl was gradually turning into a woman, the Earl was leading a double life as a London upholsterer one Leopold Speed and had fathered a second son. Though it is beyond the purview of this modest volume to speculate as to the true nature of his Lordship's burden, a note in Mr Mercer's diary, dated one week before the fire, records that her Ladyship had twisted her ankle dismounting a visiting Holstein mare, and was confined to her bedroom. Perhaps the Earl blamed himself for letting his young wife ride so soon after childbirth. Certainly he may have concluded that her lack of mobility counted decisively against her in the tragedy that followed. It is this author's humble opinion that gossipmongers looking for scandal in the Earl's retreat from society ignore the simplest explanation: he stayed indoors because he was grieving.

Not just madness, but accusations of vampirism? And his young wife dead in a fire not long after giving birth to their only son. No wonder he had filled the Hall with paintings of her.

Most pertinent of all was the book's suggestion that Lord Alderberen's father had built the tunnels to transport horses. As a diligent student, Delphine had a responsibility to find out more.

She had a duty to her country, too. What if Mr Propp were using these tunnels to meet his contacts from across the channel? She must at least check the entrances for signs of use.

The long library had big leather books marbled with damp, containing maps of the Hall and grounds. Design sketches in faded brown ink showed structures like the mausoleum and the ice house. None appeared to show the tunnels, but then most were more than fifty years old. At last, in a thick new album stuffed with photographs (mainly studies of trees, but including several pages of hunting parties in the field, reposing on wicker chairs in bowler hats and tweed waistcoasts, the grandeur of their moustaches matched only by the circumference of their paunches) she had found a foldout hand-drawn map behind a sheet of glassine paper, depicting the entirety of the Alderberen estate: to the north, Prothero Wood and the ocean, to the west, the village of Pigg, to the south, the railway station, and, sinuating from the Hall like the arms of an octopus, four trails of red dashes signifying, according to the legend: tunnels.

They all appeared to begin at the house, but getting below stairs was a trial worthy of Orpheus. The housekeeper Mrs Hagstrom ruled everything her side of the green baize door. She was impressed by no one, serene in her judgements, strong and terrible as a valkyrie. If she had a weakness, Delphine could not yet guess at its nature.

Delphine had decided to search for the tunnel entrances across the estate. Surely Mr Garforth would see no harm in her observing from a safe distance. How could she avoid them unless she knew where they were?

One tunnel apparently emerged inside the boat house, but after jemmying the lock (the wood was splintered anyway and it would have fallen off sooner or later) and slipping inside, hunting amongst the humid funk of mildewed canvas, listening to punts bump and knock, she found no sign of an entrance. Perhaps it was underwater.

The mouth of the western tunnel, near Pigg, was a sandstone arch blocked with dirt and smashed bricks. It had obviously been that way for some time beech roots had threaded into the soil, binding it together. She dug at the pile for a few minutes before giving up.

When she found the northern tunnel, near the beach, she stood back, observing. Surely it would make no odds if she shuffled an inch closer. Soon, she was ducking inside. After all, she had obeyed Mr Garforth's edict about staying away from the woods. She would just have a quick glance, for the purposes of her essay, then leave.

The stone floor was slimy with mud; ragworms squelched beneath her splayed fingers. Pools flashed in the torchlight. She found a sprat, twitching forlornly. This section obviously flooded at high tide. The stench got thicker as she went deeper. The ceiling dripped. She had to duck right down and squirm forward on her belly. Sharp nodules of rock scraped her breastbone, her bare knees, her raw and freezing hands. If Lord Alderberen's father intended these tunnels for horses, he must have bred them very small indeed.

The crawlway ended in a ladder of iron stemples leading up. She stood. Now she had come all this way, it seemed silly to turn back ungrateful, almost. She needed both hands. She switched off the torch.

The dark was liquid. She slipped the torch into her rucksack then felt for the first rung. Her hand slid over lichen-greased rock. The rung was gone. She spider-walked her fingers up the wall. They closed round cold, wet metal.

The stemples were slippery. The only grip came from blisters of rust and, on the lower rungs, the occasional barnacle. Delphine climbed, the sure weight of her drawstring bag swaying between her shoulder blades. Her hand found a ledge. She swung her bag onto it, hauled herself up.

She switched on her torch. Ahead, a long, vaulted tunnel led into darkness. She pulled the bag tight on her shoulders, spat, and marched into the unknown.

According to the map, the tunnel ended beneath Alderberen Hall's wine cellar. Delphine stood at a crossroads, breathing damp, chilly air. Other tunnels branched off into the darkness. A ladder led up towards a trapdoor.

Delphine picked a tunnel and followed it. It was wide and airy and apparently not very deep underground through corroded ventilation grilles in the ceiling, she could hear the wheezy ee-wits of lapwings. The tunnel curved and the damp atmosphere increased. Delphine's feet were aching and she thought she might be getting blisters.

The beam from her electric torch was beginning to dim. She would have to go to the village to buy new batteries. It had just occurred to her that they might not last till she found an exit when the light winked out.

For a dizzying moment, she did not know which way was up. She steadied herself against a cold stone wall. She shook the torch.

Her eyes began adjusting. Faint threads of light from a ceiling grate caught the curve of the walls. There was something up ahead.

Dragging her fingertips along the stonework, she edged forwards. Hard black lines sharpened into the bars of two sturdy iron gates. Metal flaked under her thumb as she felt for the lock. They were rusted shut. She gave them a few experimental kicks; they did not even wobble. She pressed her face to the bars.

In the darkness she could make out broken, half-shapes things that might have been smooth clods of earth, things that seemed to shift and cower as she peered at them. She heard rustles, clicks.

'Pow!' she yelled. Her voice shattered and faded.

As she stepped back from the gates, the torch clipped the wall and the tunnel blazed with light. She was blind. She threw an arm up to shield her eyes. She heard scuttling, a clatter, breaths. Rats? Or her own panicked stumbles echoing back at her?

As her eyes adjusted, she squinted in the direction of the torchbeam. The tunnel was empty.

*'He manages to make war and swordfights boring. I hated all the swooning.'

CHAPTER 9.

THE INSCRUTABLE MR KUNG.

June 1935 Delphine walked the track into Pigg, buzzing with secrets. Rain had fallen that morning and the big walnut tree over Mr Wightman's shop was fragrant and dripping. Outside the forge yard, an upended pram rusted beneath a sign for Spratt's Patent Dog Cakes. The pram's wheels had been removed; horse parsley sprouted through a rip in its black belly.

She entered through a fog of brushwood smoke. Mr Wightman was shoeing cartwheels. He had finished the dreary bit with the machine and the rollers, and was heating each iron tyre on a bonfire to make it expand. She watched him hammer a tyre onto a wooden wheel then douse it in water; it hissed like a goose and coughed great bushes of steam as it shrank and tightened. He repeated the process, shoeing four more wheels of different sizes. Without waiting to be asked, Delphine tossed sticks onto the fire when she felt the heat dwindling.

When he was done, Mr Wightman stepped back and rubbed his buckled forehead with a rag. He rolled himself a cigarette, then snatched a twig out the fire and blew on the end for a light. He paused between drags to take the cigarette from his mouth and frown at it sceptically, as if he thought it were somehow trying to cheat him. Once he was halfway through, he looked at her.

'All right?'

She wiped a twist of hair from where it had caught in the nook of her eye, and nodded.

'Good.' Mr Wightman's head had a deep dent just above his right eye. He said it was from where he'd been kicked trying to shoe a horse with the misleading name of Punch. He wore a leather apron and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing forearms decorated with glossy pink-white scars.

Delphine loosened the drawstring on her bag and rummaged through a drift of envelopes until she had retrieved one, two, three, four large keys. Mr Wightman held out his hand. She gave him them one at a time. His skin had the same tough, grainy texture as a pig's. He held each key to the light, like a jeweller.

'I'll get them done this afternoon.'

'Thank you.'

He tipped his head back and took a long pull on his cigarette. 'So they've got you running errands for them?' He looked at her.

'Yes.'

'Not got domestics for that?'

'No. I mean, yes, but I said I'd do it.'

'Do you want me to send my bill to the Hall?'

'No. I have some money. They gave me the money.'

'They've been losing a lot of keys lately.'

'Yes.'

He dropped his cigarette and scrunched it out with his heel. 'How's the crab hook?'

'Good, thank you.' A fortnight earlier, Mr Garforth had given her a birthday gift a broom handle with a bit of thin iron rod attached to one end, twisted into a hook. He'd had Mr Wightman make it for her, and though it was clearly the work of a few minutes, she treasured it because it had been her only present. Mother had given her a smart blue skirt, a hairbrush decorated with a butterfly and an atlas for her studies, but those didn't count because they were things Mother thought Delphine ought to have, not what she had wanted.

'See you later, then,' he said.

She walked out of the forge. Wiping her nose, she sniffed the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. A metallic tang mixed with woodsmoke mixed with vinegar.

She only ever borrowed the keys. It was not stealing, and besides, she was acting in the defence of the realm. If she was to gather the proof she needed, she had to get access to every room in the house especially the locked ones. Time was running out. She had not managed to get back into Propp's study, nor his bedroom, but when she did, his ticket to the gallows was all but assured.

She closed her eyes and, for a while, walked blind. Her bag felt light. As she reached the edge of the village, she heard voices.

Two children a girl, perhaps ten, in a frayed, sloe-blue frock, and a boy around six, naked except for a pair of red underpants, his hair wild like a savage's stood by an open gate, engaged in passionate, noisy debate over the terms of their game.

'You be the Queen Snake,' said the boy, 'I'll be the clockodile. And I have to catch you.' He made snapping gestures with his rigid, tanned arms.

'No, you can be the crocodile, and I'll be the hunter.'

'No, you can be the clockodile and I'll be the hunter. No, the tiger!' The boy began to spin.

'No, I'm the tiger.' The girl started giggling. 'And you're the monkey.'

'No! You're the monkey and I'm the bunky.' The boy chuckled like a drunk, whirling.

'There's no such thing as a bunky!' The girl tried to grab the spinning boy but he twisted out of her grasp and spun faster. She laughed, piercingly, explosively. 'Tommy, stop!'

'I'm a monkey, I'm a bunky, I'm a lunky, I'm a tunky,' round and round and round, and the girl, perhaps his sister, fell crippled with hysterics, suffocating, collapsing in the dust as he danced and danced.

Delphine watched these strange, thoughtless creatures as she might have watched tribesmen from the Peruvian jungle or Martians, their rituals and their happy, untamed weightlessness utterly opaque to her.

The girl rolled over and spotted her. For one impossible second, Delphine believed the girl would say, 'Come, play with us', and the two children would teach her how to be a snake, a queen, a tiger, a clockodile the knack of it, the magic.

The girl's expression became solemn. She stood and, as if noticing dirt for the first time, brushed down her frock. She looked to the boy.

'Come on, Tommy.'

She grabbed his little brown hand and led him swaying through the gate.

Delphine watched the gate click shut. She imagined the rich, vast land beyond. A gust rushed across the village. The trees of Pigg exhaled.

She had her afternoon planned out: i. memorise all genera of the order Chiroptera native to the British Isles, ready for Professor Carmichael's test ii. eat the Mars bar she had wrapped up in her hankie (disguising the action, if necessary, by pretending to blow her nose) iii. use her new keys to search the rooms on the east wing first floor for evidence iv. help Mr Garforth with his feeding rounds As she opened the door to the long library, she heard a whap, like someone hitting a tennis ball. Mr Kung turned to look at her. He was at one of the bookcases, dressed in a crisp suit. He had just slapped a book shut. It sat between his palms. He looked a little like a vicar about to lead the congregation in prayer.

Delphine felt herself wince under his gaze. Most adults in the house did not see her she was like a spectre, or a servant but he was looking straight at her. He smiled and let the book dip. She nodded.

'Hello,' he said, giving equal weight to the two syllables.

Delphine nodded again. Mr Kung nodded. She waited for him to turn away, but he continued to stare. She nodded a third time, then, clasping her hands behind her back, walked over to the Nature section. Mr Kung watched. Delphine turned her back and pretended to scan the shelves for A Guide To British Animal Life. She could feel his eyes on her. She felt sure he sensed her anxiety that, in some horrible way, he was feeding off it.

She heard footsteps. She froze, then realised they were heading not for her, but the far door. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him exit with quick, purposeful strides, hands behind his back, just like hers. The door clicked shut.

Her heart was galloping. Had he been holding his hands like that to mock her? She counted to ten, then dashed to where he had been standing. She scanned the shelves for the book he had been reading.

It took her several sweeps. The spine was dismal grey-brown, and blank. Its dullness worked like camouflage. She took it to the window, where the light was better.

The book was plain, with no title. The first page had a brown water stain and a signature she could not read. The next couple of pages were blank. On the next, she found the title: Transportation And Its Practice A Guide By A. Prentice.

Her shoulders sagged. What had she been expecting? The Opium Smuggler's Compendium?

Delphine stood on tiptoes and slid the book back on the shelf. The letter, the channel, the tunnels. The old Earl's supposed madness. Delphine felt as if she were teetering on the precipice of something.

As if something dark and hungry were about to burst out of hiding.

CHAPTER 10.

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS.