Secret Army - Robert Muchamore Page 0,45
after the drama with Marc his mind was blank. He almost didn’t want to jump because it would make Marc feel even worse, but he had to for his own sake, and before Paul knew it the wind was blasting his face. His body jerked as the static line caught and the chute began slowing him down.
Terrified and thrilled at the same time, it was the biggest rush of his life.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Joan Henderson stood by the front door, screaming in her husband’s face. ‘I know why you want me out of here, you dirty pig. I know what you’re like!’
‘Darling, I just made a suggestion because you complained to McAfferty about the noise from the artillery range. In your condition you need rest and Bushy Brooke will give you that. You can swim in the river, it has beautiful gardens.’
‘I can’t leave the spiders,’ Joan shouted.
As Joan said this, Troy peeked around the kitchen door. His path to the conservatory was clear and he dashed down the hallway without the Hendersons seeing him.
‘Perhaps you should put the well-being of our unborn child before a bunch of hairy bugs,’ Henderson suggested.
‘Ignorant pig!’ Joan screamed.
Troy glanced backwards as Joan lunged at Henderson and began clawing his face. ‘They’re not bugs. They’re rare and beautiful. They have their own personalities. They have souls.’
‘Paul looks after them well enough,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m sure he’d cope if you went away for a few weeks.’
‘Paul feeds them,’ Joan screamed. ‘But he doesn’t know what to do when they’re sick. He can’t adjust their conditions and he doesn’t have time to collect fresh insects for them.’
Henderson sighed. ‘Then perhaps we can rent a cottage a few miles from here. Or even buy a place. Your inheritance is sitting in the Westminster bank. You could afford a full-time servant to look after your blasted spiders if needs be.’
In the conservatory Troy grabbed the feeding diary and unscrewed the lid on a jar of beetles that Joan had collected from the surrounding fields. They’d been in the jar for a day or so and most were either dead or close to it.
‘You just want me out of here,’ Joan yelled from the hallway. ‘I know you. You want to carry on with other women and you can’t do that while I’m stuck in your teeth.’
‘Darling, you’re being preposterous. I’m too busy working to have an affair. I can’t even get ten minutes to put my feet up and do the crossword.’
‘I know you’ve slept with half the women in France.’
Troy felt awkward as he overheard this. Marc had told him that Henderson had an affair with a glamorous woman named Maxine in France the previous year, and it was common knowledge that Henderson was a womaniser.
‘Don’t start on that,’ Henderson said. ‘I’m prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles that I’ve never cheated on you, Joan. These fantasies about other women are just in your head.’
‘Pull the other one,’ Joan screamed. ‘It’s got bells on.’
‘And what are we going to do when the baby starts walking?’ Henderson asked. ‘I don’t want my child living in a house filled with dangerous spiders.’
‘You’re just looking for an excuse to get rid of them,’ Joan yelled. ‘If you so much as touch them I’ll wait till you fall asleep and cut your throat.’
Troy sprinkled a handful of beetles into a cage filled with coin-sized spiders with ladybird-like domed bodies and custard-yellow legs. As they scurried about collecting the fresh bugs and dragging them back towards their hiding places, Troy turned his attention to the next cage.
Mavis the cobalt blue had a reputation for aggression. Like most large spiders, she only ate live prey and, rather than hunting in the fields, Joan now bred worms, dormice, grubs and crickets in a small shed at the end of the garden.
Troy smiled as he raised the hinged lid of a wooden cigar box and picked out a tiny black dormouse. It sat in his palm with its tail curled up and its black eyes shining. It seemed a shame that this cute fur ball’s fate was to be injected with paralysing venom and eaten while it was still conscious.
But Troy’s stomach was grumbling for his own lunch, so he flung the mouse unceremoniously into Mavis’ enclosure and closed the lid.
The Hendersons’ row had progressed to the kitchen as Troy moved on to the largest cage, which contained a pair of giant bird-eating spiders.
‘I’m going back to work,’ Henderson was shouting. ‘Stay here if you