pillar and strapped the bomb to it, covering it again. He was sweating profusely. Those beautiful hands shook violently. He’d never done anything like this before, nothing so heinous, but then he was at the end of his tether. If he did not get rid of the girl he would surely go mad with frustration. She was the bane of his life. He had been before her and she had simply settled here without his permission. He hated her with venom. Why wouldn’t she go away? It was her fault he was driven to such desperate measures. She had forced him to do it.
It had been different once. When she had first arrived in this part of the attic they had been friends. Good friends. But after a while she turned funny on him, started rejecting his friendship, told him he was not respecting her privacy, her right to solitude. He had argued with her, put his point of view, but she just kept saying she would prefer it if he left her alone. Then no matter what he did, what he said, she would not listen. She would have nothing to do with him. Well, damn her! He would be noticed. He was a genius. Who did she think she was, ignoring such a great musician? Was he nobody? Was he nothing? He would have the last word!
He set the timing device, a pocket-watch, so that the bomb would explode at noon in several days’ time.
It would go off on the very last of its final chimes.
Finally, out of the depths of hinterland Attica came a single, long, deep, resonating note which made every stringed instrument vibrate. A hastily formed charge halted at once in its tracks. Spidery bagpipes turned and limped away. Twice more the bass notes came, without doubt from a great chapel organ. This seemed to be the signal to the musical instruments and their riders to return whence they had come. All those which had not been broken or injured trickled away into the gloom. Some of the mercenaries dismounted and picked up their wounded, turning to shake their fists at the amazon girl standing on the piano wall, her rags and ribbons flapping like victory banners in the draughts from the interior.
She laughed at their creaked curses and waved her sword.
‘You’ll never get me to go away,’ she cried, delighted at her triumph. ‘Tell your master I’ll be here until doomsday!’
The owl hooted in derision at the retreating enemy.
Alex climbed down from his piano and removed Makishi. He wiped the sweat away from his forehead with a rag.
‘What was all that about?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s the Organist. Selfish brat. Just like a boy. He wants the whole of this corner of the attic for himself, for him and his musical instruments. Well, he can’t have it, because I’m here now and I’m not leaving. You give some people a little room and they want it all! He won’t listen to reason. I choose to live here and no one is going to chase me away, so there. And no, you can’t have the watch. I need all my watches.’
Alex let the ‘Just like a boy’ go without an argument, though he was wrinkled with annoyance.
‘You’re wondering if you can steal my watches, now that you know where they are, aren’t you? It’s no good thinking crafty thoughts. I’m on to you. You won’t get halfway across the lake. I’ll be after you like a shot.’
Alex said haughtily, ‘I wouldn’t steal from anyone.’
‘Not even a girl over a hundred years old?’
‘Not even you.’
Alex wanted to get back on her good side again, though, and needed to flatter her.
‘Your collection is superb,’ he said, dredging up a few Chloe words from his memory. ‘Those watches are simply exquisite!’
‘Yes,’ she squealed, jumping up and down and clapping her hands, making the owl sway dangerously, ‘that’s what they are. Oh, I’m so glad you came. I just knew there was a word which would describe them exactly. Exquisite. That’s what they are, aren’t they? Simply exquisite. Superb and exquisite.’
That he had pleased her was beyond doubt. But he still had to try to find Mr Grantham’s watch. That’s what he’d come for.
‘A hundred years old,’ he said, looking into her clear blue eyes. ‘I still can’t believe it.’
‘More than,’ she replied. ‘I came up here when I was at a Board School. But they used to tease me a lot, because I didn’t know who my father was,