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Authors: Caroline Dunford
A Death for King and Country (14 page)
Fire in the hold
The men advanced towards us. All of them were carrying knives. Not kitchen knives, but the kind you use for butchering carcasses. There was determination in their eyes.
‘Open the pens,’ said Fitzroy.
‘What?’ said Bertram, whose head was practically coming off, he was looking around so quickly.
‘The pens. Open them.’
Rory realised before the rest of us what he meant. He dashed forward and opened two of the pig gates. Four enormous pigs surged forwards and headed towards the farmhands. They were huge porkers and they were setting a fast pace. Panicked by the fire, they formed a solid flank of flesh as they advanced down the passageway. Rory moved forward, opening more and more gates. The panicked animals fled.
I expected the farmhands to retreat. Frightened pigs are not only large, but fierce. They are capable of biting and mauling. My heart was in my mouth. I prayed Fitzroy’s plan would work.
‘Get her over the wall,’ he said to Bertram.
‘But you will never make that!’
‘I know. Get Euphemia out of here.’
Bertram looked from my face to Fitzroy’s. Then he set the spy down on the ground as gently as he could.
‘I am not leaving you,’ he said. And then with strength I did not know he had, he tossed me up and over the wall.
I landed on the other side in a heap, bruised but with nothing broken.
‘Come on,’ I yelled. ‘Come on.’
‘He can’t make it, Euphemia,’ called Bertram. ‘Rory and I will find another way out.’ I jumped up and down helplessly on the other side of the wall. ‘Did the pigs take those men down?’
‘No,’ called Bertram and I could hear how resigned he was in his voice. ‘They leapt up on to the sty walls. Rory is running out of pigs. They will be coming for us soon. You need to get away.’
‘I am not leaving you,’ I yelled.
‘Yes, you bloody are,’ yelled Bertram and Fitzroy together.
I put my hands against the wall. Tears were coursing down my face. ‘I am not,’ I said quietly and furiously. ‘I am not. There has to be a way.’
I felt a sudden tap on my shoulder.
‘If you would stand back, ma’am we will have this wall down in a trice.’
I turned to find myself facing a small group of soldiers. Two men stood behind them in suits looking remarkably calm.
‘Stand away, sir,’ called one of the soldier. ‘Fire in the hold!’
‘Hell,’ I heard Fitzroy yell. ‘Move, Bertram!’
The next moment the wall blew apart, throwing dust into the air and clouding my vision. The soldiers rushed in.
One of the men in suits came over to me and held out his hand.
‘It is good to finally meet you, Euphemia. You are a remarkably difficult woman to follow.’ I took his hand and then to my everlasting embarrassment dropped into a dead faint on the spot.
It seems that from the moment the officer from the SOE had dropped off Fitzroy’s package to me at Muller House, Fitzroy’s colleagues had been following me. They had not expected to find Fitzroy alive, but had taken a professional interest in whatever tasks he had left me to complete for him.
Fitzroy was livid. ‘Can a man not have any privacy?’ he demanded once we were safely back in a nearby house that the other spies seemed to have commandeered. A doctor had been fetched for him, and he was now a walking, or rather stumbling, mess of bandages and splints.
‘I would have thought you would be glad to be rescued,’ said Bertram, who had taken to lying on the sofa in what was clearly a family living room with a bandage soaked in ice-water on his head. ‘I was certainly very pleased to see the fellows.’
‘But to follow Euphemia when I had set her on a personal errand. My last wishes in fact. It goes beyond the bounds of common decency.’
‘Something you would never do,’ said Rory drily.
Fitzroy had the grace to blush slightly. ‘That is not the point.’
‘What will happen now?’ I asked.
‘They will send cleaners into the farm. It will be tidied up. Dreadful accident or some such thing. You will all return to your respective homes and I will be taken back to be debriefed for hours, days, perhaps even weeks.’
‘What was this all about?’ asked Bertram.
‘Same thing that Scotland was about,’ said Fitzroy. ‘They wanted to know if the plans were going ahead.’ He looked over at Rory. ‘Incidentally, they are not, but that’s a state secret. We are going to build extra dreadnoughts instead.’
‘To where shall I return your letters?’ I asked.
Fitzroy grinned. ‘Keep them,’ he said. ‘For next time.’
Wounded as he was I threw a pillow at his head.
‘No,’ I said, ‘never again.’
‘Ah, Euphemia,’ said the spy, ‘you know you loved it.’
Caroline Dunford
The Euphemia Martins Mysteries
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A DEATH FOR KING AND COUNTRY
A Euphemia Martins Mystery
Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2015
ISBN 9781783755400
Copyright © Caroline Dunford 2015
The right of Caroline Dunford to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 4SN
