of his ruptured bowels mingling with the gun smoke in the air. He was still conscious, and while Rosie’s first thought was to help him, Eugene gestured frantically down the hallway.
The German who’d shot Eugene had fallen on his face with a kitchen knife sticking out of his calf. Madame Lisle had shown great agility for an elderly woman, jumping on the German’s back, ripping out the knife and thrusting it back towards his stomach. But the soldier was much stronger. He’d gashed his right hand badly as he grabbed the blade plunging towards him. Now Rosie watched him turn the knife around and go for Madame Lisle’s throat.
She was afraid of shooting the unfamiliar pistol and taking out Madame Lisle by mistake. She also had no idea who was still alive outside, so she feared a bullet in the back as she charged down the hallway.
Madame Lisle screamed as Rosie stepped over the blood pooled around the dead admiral. She took aim at the German. The bullet cavitated the top of his head, and took a huge chunk from the back of his skull as it exited. Rosie couldn’t have aimed any better, but the German’s final spasm had driven the kitchen knife deep into Madame Lisle’s throat.
Lisle was losing blood fast. Rosie wanted to help, but more shots ripped along the hallway. As she took cover by backing into the kitchen, Eugene swung around with his machine gun.
He’d fixed the fresh clip on to the machine gun half a second before he’d been hit and he opened up, hitting a pair of Gestapo men coming across the front lawn towards the house.
Then it all went quiet again. Madame Lisle was past saving, so Rosie dashed back towards Eugene.
‘Don’t hang around,’ he said.
Rosie tried to pull up Eugene’s shirt to get a look at his wound, but he blocked her with a trembling hand.
‘Get out of here. I’m going to die.’
Eugene was fiddling in a blood-soaked area around his belt. She realised he was going for his L-pill, which packed a fatal dose of cyanide.
‘They might be able to keep me alive for a while,’ he said. ‘Taking this makes sure.’
Rosie straightened up, breathed deep and slumped against the wall in a state of complete exhaustion. The scene was carnage: gore splattered up the wall, boots swilling in blood. Part of Rosie felt blind panic. She had to get her mind back in focus.
Edith shouted weakly from upstairs. ‘Hello?’
Just because it had gone quiet didn’t mean that all the bad guys were dead. The vehicles out front were both destroyed. There were horses to escape on, but it would take time to saddle them up and sort Edith out. Time she might not have…
Rosie looked up the stairs and saw Edith in the bedroom doorway, wearing the dress but no shoes. ‘I’ve got to go check the outside,’ Rosie said urgently.
Everyone in front of the house seemed dead, and although Eugene was dying he was still poised with the machine gun in case something came out of the bushes.
Rosie went to the back of the cottage. She rolled the dead German off Madame Lisle’s corpse and snatched his rifle, knowing it would do better than a pistol or a machine gun if she had to shoot at someone in the bushes.
She reloaded as she peeked out of the back door. The paddock looked idyllic, though the horses in the stable blocks on either side had been disturbed by the noise. There was no sign of the admiral’s horse, though its path was clear from the chunks torn out of a hedge.
There were four dead Germans out back, but the one Rosie shot on the helmet was just knocked out. It seemed wrong to kill a man who was unconscious, but he could come round at any moment and she didn’t have time to mess about tying him up.
After shooting him through the heart with the rifle, Rosie made a complete circuit of the cottage, keeping close to the walls in case one of the Gestapo men was hiding out in the bushes. Besides the admiral and his two companions, Rosie counted eight dead Gestapo.
Back in the hallway, Eugene was losing the fight. He’d gone much paler and tried saying something, but all he could do was shake and make a long croak. But his eyes showed Rosie his problem: his grip was weak and his lethal pill floated in the blood pooled between his legs
‘They can’t take me,’ he