The Dark Palace

‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ cried Mrs Ibbott.

Qui

She produced a large fob from her apron. Her hand shook as she held out a key. ‘I’m all fingers and thumbs.’

Qui

They were in the same room now as the thumping. It was like a heaving of the darkness. A giant hand pounding a box of springs. The bed: it was coming from the bed. It was the sound of the bed rattling and kicking against the boards. It was not quite rhythmic. There were pauses in it. Then it would come back with renewed force.

‘Give me the light!’

Qui

‘What’s the matter with her?’ cried Mrs Ibbott.

‘She appears to be having some kind of a fit,’ said Qui

Mrs Ibbott could not answer. She too was shaking now, uncontrollably. She held her hand out to a small dark bottle on Miss Dillard’s bedside table.

‘What is it? What’s in that bottle? Do you know? What has she taken?’

The answer came from Mrs Ibbott in a shriek: ‘Strychnine!’

That raised any number of questions, which would have to wait for now. ‘We must get her to a hospital!’ Qui

Qui

Her eyes were open, more than open, bulging starkly from her head. The pupils were fully dilated; the wonderful, miraculous pewter grey of her irises shrunk almost to a fine circle. For all their dilation, it was clear that she saw nothing.

Her mouth was stretched back into a grimace of helpless agony. Flecks of foam appeared on her yellow and grey teeth, seeping out through the gaps between them. The flecks grew quickly to an abundant froth.

He knew that the longer he hesitated the worse it would be for Miss Dillard.

He touched her quivering frailty, and was repelled. This was a strange, unasked-for intimacy. The effect on Miss Dillard was catastrophic. Her convulsions redoubled in ferocity. It was as if she was trying to throw herself away from herself, to escape the misery of her existence by some final, doomed act of self-discarding.

Her body, her flesh was patently present to his touch, a blazing heat beneath the delicate nightdress. She was on fire, it seemed. His touch wracked her like raging flames. He pulled her to him in a firm embrace, clinging to the muscular writhing of her body. Her convulsions were transmitted to him. He became convulsed too.

At first he carried her like a groom bearing his bride across the threshold, but she was a bride who struggled every inch of the way. So much so that he was forced to swing her over his shoulder into a fireman’s lift.

It shocked him to discover how little weight there was to her. She could have been made out of crumpled foil for all she weighed. No, it was not her weight that made her hard to carry; it was the tensioned kick of her body, every muscle wrought and spasming at once.

A small group of the other residents had been drawn by the commotion, including Messrs Timberley and Appleby. ‘One of you run ahead!’ shouted Qui

But the two young men seemed incapable of movement, like the specimens they pi

‘She’s dying. She will die, unless we get her to St George’s.’

‘Dying?’ Timberley regarded Miss Dillard with a scientist’s interest, as if he had always wanted to see someone die and this presented a rare opportunity.

‘For God’s sake, will one of you not go for assistance?’

Timberley held a balled fist over his mouth and coughed. If the cough was forced, it soon turned into an uncontrollable hacking fit. He turned reluctantly from the interesting spectacle and began to make his way slowly downstairs, one hand on the wall to steady himself against the crashing waves of his coughing.

‘Hurry, will you! This is a matter of life and death!’

Timberley waved a hand, an impatient gesture that seemed to convey that he was going as fast as he could. Qui

Appleby seemed to take the hint. At any rate, there must have been something in Qui

‘I suggest you run ahead,’ wheezed Timberley through his coughing. ‘I ca

By the time he got to Brompton Road, Qui

Appleby was in the middle of the road, shouting and waving both arms to stop the traffic. At last something of the urgency of the situation seemed to have struck him. Timberley stood at the roadside and hung his head disconsolately. He cast sly, fascinated glances towards the heaving burden over Qui

At last Appleby persuaded a motor taxi to stop. He screamed the destination at the driver, who when he saw the intended passenger seemed about to refuse the fare.

‘I am a police inspector,’ said Qui

‘What’s wrong wiv ’er, guv? She ain’t go

‘You had better hope that she does not die in your cab.’ Qui

It was a hard job getting her into the back of the taxi. Her arms were flailing everywhere, her feet kicking out. Qui