THE OLD LIE.

The story came out of her in a gabbling rush. She told Mr Garforth about the black cloud that had smutted the horizon, the coarse ungainly monsters smashing their way into the house and swamping Mrs Hagstrom and the Professor, the beast with breeches and duelling pistol, the death of Dr Lansley, the masked stranger, Mr Propp alone in the master bedroom, the pistol shot, and her slow escape through the tunnel, dragging the drooling old woman on her blanket. Mr Garforth sat, not saying anything. He did not laugh, or get angry, or call Delphine a liar. Her throat felt sore from where the dagger had nicked it, and when she was done it felt sorer still.

'There are my parents, Professor Carmichael, Miss DeGroot, the servants, maybe others. They were all in the Hall.'

Mr Garforth nodded. With Delphine's help, he had put Propp's sister to bed in the adjacent room, where she had immediately fallen asleep. The kettle began to whistle. He filled the teapot.

'You knew this would happen, didn't you?' she said.

He exhaled.

'You think I'd have sat here while they came for you? If I'd known?'

'But you believe me. About the monsters.'

He glared into the dying fire. 'I told you. I know everything that goes on in these woods.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'Because it's none of your business! You're a child. It was for your own good.' He glanced at her grazed and bloodied body. She saw him grimace at the welts on her palms. 'I never thought they'd make it through.'

'Who? Through what?'

'The vesperi, the harka any of the beasts throwing their lot in with Stokeham. Someone must have let them in.'

'No one let them in,' she said. 'I told you, they broke through the windows.'

'Not into the Hall, you ninny. Into the world. Someone must have opened the channel on our side.'

Delphine threaded her fingers then used them as a cradle for her forehead. 'What.'

'Just leave it. This is estate business.'

She stared at a knot in the table, lines banding round it like ripples spreading from a black island.

'What matters now is you're safe,' he said. 'Once you've rested I'll get you as far as the village, then you can ca '

'Hush. I'm thinking.'

She concentrated on the gentle weight of her brow against her fingers, the throb of her rope-burned palms. The table had nicks in it where Mr Garforth had slipped with his tools. She listened to his breathing, the purr at the end of each out breath, and began to copy its rhythm. At the edges of her attention, she swore she heard ticking.

She looked up.

'There's another world?'

'This won't solve anything.'

'I nearly died.'

Mr Garforth poured the tea. 'You wouldn't understand.'

'Then it won't matter if you tell me.'

He banged the pot down, slopping hot water. 'Where d'you learn to be so damn stubborn?'

'My Mother, who may be dead.' She let the riposte hang. 'Now what did you mean, someone "let them in"?'

Mr Garforth set a mug down in front of her. He turned his chair round and straddled it with his arms folded over the back. He gazed out the window.

'They're from Avalonia. It's got older, truer names, but they don't care to learn those.' He unfolded his arms and rested his grubby fingers on the lip of the table, like a pianist. 'It's not part of this world. It's somewhere else entirely. There are pathways channels that connect there and here. One is on this estate.'

'And that's how these . . . vesperi got here?'

'To the best of my knowledge. Never been there myself.'

'But Mr Propp and Lord Alderberen and Dr Lansley they have.'

Mr Garforth chewed his dentures. 'Not Lansley too young. Mr Propp and his Lordship say they have, and I've no reason to doubt them.'

'Why did they . . . I mean, how did you, uh . . . '

'Why would they tell someone like me, you mean? A lowly gamekeeper.'

'Head gamekeeper.'

'I'll let you in on a secret.' He lifted his mug to his lips with both hands, sipped. 'You can learn a lot if you're still and quiet and act harmless. They spoke as freely in front of me as you would a dog.'

Delphine frowned. She slid her fingers apart.

'No,' she said. 'You're lying.'

'Excuse me?'

'I don't believe you. Mr Propp isn't so foolish and you're not so good an actor.' She slapped her brow, trying to shake off the fog around her thoughts. 'That first day I reset the rat traps you knew I'd spared one.'

'I could see it in your eyes.'

'Oh, balderdash. I'm an expert liar. You knew.' She took a slurp of tea, watched him over the rim of her mug. 'You knew about the tunnels too.'

Mr Garforth sniffed and turned away.

'I followed you,' he said. 'Watched you go in.'

'That's funny.'

'What's funny?'

'Just how I purposely only ever went in them on a Sunday, yet somehow you managed to watch me from a church four miles away.'

Mr Garforth sipped his tea and watched the fire.

'All right,' he said. 'All right.' He put down his mug. 'The truth.' He stood, took his cap from a hook by the door. He picked up his shotgun. 'The bloody truth.'

In the middle of the silver birch spinney behind the cottage was a thicket of brambles. Mr Garforth parted them with his stick and hooked a rusty iron ring lying flat in the grass. Delphine watched the sky for vesperi.

Mr Garforth grunted. His knees cracked. A circle of sod lifted from the surrounding earth. His palms slipped on the shaft of the stick. He swore out the corner of his mouth. Taking a breath through his nostrils, he lifted and pushed. The lid, hinged on one side, jawed open. He stepped forward. The lid reached its apex, then toppled wide.

'You first,' he said.

Delphine climbed into the hole. The ladder was cold. Mr Garforth climbed in behind her. He pulled a piece of twine and the hatch closed above him.

At the bottom of the ladder he switched on his electric torch. They were in a tunnel with a low ceiling. Mr Garforth started walking.

'This isn't on the maps,' said Delphine.

'There's a lot not on maps,' said Mr Garforth. The torchbeam flashed over brown, clayey puddles. Their footsteps sloshed.

The tunnel was cool and quiet. Soon, it split in two. The left fork led away to the west. Mr Garforth took the right.

The ground began sloping upwards. They came to a set of iron rungs hammered into the rock. Mr Garforth switched the torch off.

'Up,' he said to the blackness. She listened to the clang, clang, clang as he began to climb.

Delphine clambered out the trapdoor into a building large and dark as a barn. Canvas had been tacked across the high windows.

'Where are we?' she said.

'Old hunting lodge,' said Mr Garforth. He clapped his hands three times. 'Gentlemen.'

A swarm of shining eyes slammed open.

CHAPTER 23.

THE LITTLE GENTLEMEN.

'They're refugees,' said Mr Garforth, spooning sugar into warm water. 'They don't want a war.'

Delphine sat in the cottage, surrounded by foot-tall red beetles fourteen of them.

The scarabs stood erect, hunched beneath segmented carapaces, watching her with bright, swirling eyes. Their pupils were smoked blue marbles floating in milk. Beneath the eyes was a tangle of complicated mouth parts: wet hooks around a moist proboscis.

Mr Garforth did not have enough cups so he poured the sugar water into bowls. The beetle-things sat three or four to a bowl, dipped their crimson proboscises into the water, and fed.

Delphine wrinkled her nose and did her best to hide her revulsion.

'Can they . . . understand us?'

'Of course. They're not animals.'

'What are they?'

'Not what. Who,' said Mr Garforth. 'And there's not the word in English for their kind. Out of respect, I call them the Little Gentlemen.'

At this, the creatures ticked and popped in a similar manner to the vesperi, but higher-pitched, like cards riffling. The noise made her scalp crawl.

'They help me on the estate,' said Mr Garforth, 'and I keep them safe.'

'They've been watching me, haven't they? I felt them in the tunnels.'

'I knew you wouldn't listen. I asked them to keep an eye on you.'

Delphine thought of climbing the chimney the cold grip round her wrist that had saved her from falling. Had that been them, too? She was shocked that a little thing could be so strong.

'I saw one,' said Delphine.

'Your father.'

'He found something by the lake.'

'Wasn't one of ours,' he said. The Little Gentlemen tick-chittered restlessly.

'There are more?'

'Of course there are more. You can't control a threshold without one.'

'Threshold?'

'One end of a channel. That's how the Gentlemen came here. It's why they came here. They don't want to pick sides. They don't want to work as slaves. They want to live out their days in peace.'

'God.' Delphine squeezed her head between her palms. 'So, what are we going to do now? Shall we call for the police?'

'And say what?'

'That monsters are . . . ' She caught his expression. 'All right, Bolsheviks. We'll say the Hall has been overrun by Bolsheviks.'

'This is exactly why I shouldn't have told you.'

Delphine ruffled her hair. 'Fine. Burglars. Fifty burglars with rifles.'

'Fifty?'

'Ten, then.'