She could just make out an opening above her toes, cut into the side of the flue. It was a few feet wide, just large enough to squeeze through if only she could reach it. She ground her elbows into the brickwork behind her and squinted at the gap. Her arms were shaking; tremors spread through her back, into her legs. If she slid her feet in first, she'd fall backwards down the chimney. Just imagining it made her woozy.

Gingerly, she lifted her left elbow and reached for the lip of the opening. Her outstretched fingers clutched at air, a clear six inches shy. She replanted her elbow, trying to ignore the pain in her calves. The only way she could think to do it was to push off from the wall behind her and grab the opening with both hands. Then she could scramble through head-first.

It would mean a dizzying instant of holding on to nothing. If she missed her handhold, she would die.

The longer she waited, the weaker she would be. Delphine shifted her weight from her heels to her toes. She coughed, spat. She sucked in a last breath.

Three . . .

The trick with a countdown was to fool yourself. To go before you were ready. Before your body tried to stop you.

Two . . .

Delphine slapped her palms against the tacky wall behind her and shoved. She tucked her legs and swung her arms forward. She felt her toes drop. She was falling.

Her fingers grasped the lip of the opening. Pain slammed through her wrists. Her toes scrunched to a halt. Her sweaty right hand slipped, then found purchase.

She breathed out.

A chunk of wall came away in her fist. Her body swung out in a cascade of mortar; her feet skidded, lost their grip. She saw the black brick vanish, heard it pulverise against the bottom of the flue.

She was hanging by the fingertips of one hand.

Her legs dangled helplessly beneath her. She clawed with her free hand; soot and mortar showered her eyes. She could not see. She was coughing, gasping.

Her fingers found the jagged edge where part of the wall had come away. The back of the fireplace was just a single layer of bricks it was never built to hold a person's weight. She felt it shudder as she strained to drag herself upwards, her feet scrabbling for toeholds. She had to pull herself into the hole. Her arms were about to give out completely.

She could not breathe. She dry-gagged. Her ears rung. She was blacking out.

Her fingers slipped.

Cold fingers gripped her wrist.

A jolt of shock and revulsion energised her. She pedalled her legs. She scrambled and scraped and kicked and screamed and dragged herself hand over hand up into the gap. She wriggled through the slot between the back of the fireplace and the lintel, emerging in an unlit room.

Delphine crawled out of the hearth and rolled onto her back. She lay there, hacking, breathing. The floorboards felt so good against her head and spine.

But who had grabbed her?

She glanced around. Dust sheets formed a grey mountainscape. A dim, buttery glow leaked from the edges of a door.

She looked at her hands. They were thick with soot and creosote. Blood shone on her fingertips.

Perhaps the lack of air had made her hallucinate.

When she was finally able to stand, Delphine dragged a dust sheet off what turned out to be a stack of wicker lawn chairs. She wrapped it round her filthy clothes and pulled it over her head to hide her hair and face. It dragged behind her as she crossed the room.

The door opened onto a quiet hallway. Everyone was still at lunch. Delphine stepped out, clutching the dust sheet to her chest. She staggered through empty corridors like a ghost.

In the bathroom, steam clouded as she brushed ash from her hair. Her clothes lay in a sticky black grot, ruined.

She was about to take the scrubbing brush from its brass hook when she noticed a scrap of writing-paper stuck to one of her discarded socks. She stooped and unpeeled it.

It was badly charred, but she recognised the elegant handwriting immediately. A few words were still legible, pristine in a dark halo of burnt paper: r sleeps in Avalon *Propp had underlined this word three times in red ink. The third stroke ended in a blot, as if his pen had lingered while he contemplated adding a fourth.

CHAPTER 5.

I CANNOT BEAR A GUN.

April 1935 It was a cloudless morning. Delphine and Mr Garforth stood in rippling shade on the east side of the meadow. The wind broke against a bank of elms sleeved in ivy and fell away to the gentle chook and baw of broody hens inside their sitting boxes.

The plywood boxes were arranged in rows of seven, raised from the ground, with sloping roofs, like little beach huts. In front of each one, Mr Garforth had driven a Y-shaped hazel stick into the grass. From each stick trailed a length of butcher's string. He tapped his cane against the side of the nearest box.

'It's ten o'clock.'

Delphine knelt at the first box. Three neat air holes had been drilled in the door. She twisted the latch at the top and the door fell open to form a ramp. A Light Sussex hen, with plump white body and black speckled wings, sat on a nest of hay. It turned one eye towards the light and let out a low, rather surly, cluck. Just as Mr Garforth had shown her, Delphine slid one hand under the hen's warm breast and lifted it clear of a nest containing twenty small olive eggs. The hen pumped its wings and kicked. Delphine placed a palm on its back. She waited. The bird calmed.

'Good,' said Mr Garforth.

Holding the hen in one hand, she tethered it to the first hazel stick, looping the string round its leg in a slipknot. She set the bird down beside a dish of water and closed the box. She looked at Mr Garforth. He nodded. She moved to the second box, turned the latch and repeated the process. Mr Garforth watched as she worked down the line. He leant on his stick, occasionally tilting his head and narrowing his eyes to indicate qualified approval.

She tethered the seventh hen, scattered a few handfuls of mixed grain.

'Why won't you teach me?'

Mr Garforth raised his downy eyebrows. 'I am teaching you.'

'To shoot.'

Laughing, he took one hand from his cane and swiped at the air.

'Come on. There's two more rows to be done.'

'I'm serious.'

'So am I.' He walked to the next row of sitting boxes and tapped his cane against the roof. 'If we don't get them out on time they'll empty their backsides over their own eggs.'

Delphine hid her reddening cheeks by pretending to massage her temples. She worked down the next row of broodies in silence.

When the last hen was pecking at grain, she looked at him again.

'I already know all about guns.'

'How could you possibly know about guns?'

Delphine gazed down at the feeding hens and thought of a sheriff crouched amongst boulders on a windswept mesa, picking off Red Indians with his 1873 Winchester lever-action rifle, their hallooing war cries in his ears and the taste of salt on his lips as he loaded another magazine, took aim, squeezed the trigger. She thought of a detective inspector brandishing his heavy police pistol as he thundered down a wooden jetty after scar-puckered platinum smugglers. She thought of Rogers of the Machine Gun Corps, ripping through Boche with his Vickers gun while the boys dragged Jenkins into cover and used a pocket knife sterilised in a candle flame to dig shrapnel out of his thigh. She thought of pages crackling beneath her fingertips, the taste of butterscotch candies, her toes warm under the quilt, the smell of ink and paper; the refuge; the horror.

'Research,' she said.

'Research.'

Delphine waited for him to say more. When she glanced up, he was watching her with thin, canny eyes the colour of tea.

'Well then, expert,' he said, 'answer me this: when a soldier looks into his enemy's eyes, what does he most fear to see?'

Delphine tutted. 'That's not a gun question.'

'Certainly it's a gun question.'

She hesitated. 'Hatred.'

Mr Garforth shook his head. 'You don't know anything.'

'What's the answer, then?'

'It's no good telling. You have to learn it.'

'So teach me,' she said. 'Please.'

Mr Garforth walked to the third and final row of sitting boxes. 'Give me one good reason.'

Delphine knelt by the first door in line. The latch was stiff.

'We might get invaded.'

'By who?'

The latch gave. 'Bolsheviks.'

'You don't even know what that means.'

'I do.'

Mr Garforth leant forward on his cane. 'Go on, then.'

Delphine lowered the door. She lifted out the soft, white hen.

'Well, I didn't say it would definitely be Bolsheviks. They were just an example.'

'What on earth makes you think there'll be an invasion?'

She fumbled the string and had to grope around for it, hen clutched to her chest.

'Nothing.' She worked the loop over sharp, splayed toes, pulled it tight. 'Anyway, if you teach me to shoot I can help control vermin.'

'Like Bolsheviks?'

'Like foxes.'

'They're not "vermin". I don't like that word. They do what they must to feed their families. They're predators.'

'You still shoot them.'

'Sometimes,' he said, 'but mostly I use traps. A trap doesn't need to be fed, doesn't mind waiting, and while men sleep, a trap is at work. Well-laid traps do the work of twenty men.'

'Poachers, then.'

'The answer is no.'

Delphine moved to the next box. 'You're worried about breaking the law.'

'Nonsense. It's my land and I do as I please.'

'It belongs to the 4th Earl of Alderberen.'

'Do you see him anywhere?' Mr Garforth scanned the horizon.

'So teach me.'

'No.'

'Hey, these eggs are cracked.'

Mr Garforth came and squinted into the gloomy box, grunting as he stooped.

Delphine stood holding the broody. 'Are they ruined?'

He gripped his cane and heaved himself back upright.

'They're not cracked. They're chipped.'

Delphine wrinkled her nose. The hen pedalled its legs; she stroked behind its blood-red comb till it settled.

'I don't understand.'

Mr Garforth rolled his eyes. 'They're ready to hatch, you halfwit.'

'Oh.'

'Yes, "oh".' He retrieved a stub of chalk from the pocket of his waxed jacket and drew a cross on the roof of the box. 'When we come round tomorrow they might be the first of the new covey. Shut the door before they chill.'

Delphine closed the box and tethered the broody to its hazel stick. She watched it pecking at the dirt.