“Untie me first,” he said gruffly.
“No—key first,” I said. “That way you won’t run off with it.”
Colin groaned as he rolled slightly onto his left side. I reached into his pocket—Ugh!—and pulled out an iron key.
As he twisted, I could see that Colin’s wrists were bound firmly behind him and lashed to an iron pipe that rose up vertically before vanishing into the roof.
The poor creature could have been tied up here for days!
“You must be in agony,” I said, and he looked up at me again with such blank puzzlement that I wondered if he knew the meaning of the word.
I struggled with the knots. Colin’s efforts to free himself and the moisture from the seeping walls had shrunken them horribly.
“Do you have a knife?”
Colin shook his head and looked away.
“What? No knife? Come on, Colin—Boy Scouts are born with knives.”
“Took it off me. ‘Might hurt yourself.’ That’s what they said.”
“Never mind, then. Lean forward. I’ll try the key.”
Putting the torch on the ground so that its light reflected from the wall, I attacked the knots with the business end of the key.
Colin groaned, letting out little yelps every time I applied pressure to his bonds. In spite of the clamminess of the tunnel, sweat was dripping from my forehead onto the already saturated rope.
“Hang on,” I told him. “I’ve almost got it.”
The last end pulled through—and he was free.
“Stand up,” I said. “You need to move around.”
He rolled over, unable to get to his feet.
“Grab hold,” I said, offering my hand, but he shook his head.
“You have to get your circulation going,” I told him. “Rub your arms and legs as hard as you can. Here, I’ll help you.”
“It’s no good,” he said. “Can’t do it.”
“Of course you can,” I said, rubbing more briskly. “You need to get some circulation into your toes and fingers.”
His lower lip was trembling and I felt a sudden surge of pity.
“Tell you what. Let’s have a rest.”
Even in the half-light his gratitude was hard to miss.
“Now then,” I said. “Tell me about the blood on the fountain steps.”
Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but I needed to know.
At the word “blood,” Colin shrank back in horror.
“I never done it,” he croaked.
“Never did what, Colin?”
“Never done Brookie. Never shoved that sticker in his nose.”
“He roughed you up, didn’t he? Left you no choice.”
“No,” Colin said, managing somehow to pull himself to his feet. “It weren’t like that. It weren’t like that at all.”
“Tell me what happened,” I said, surprised by my own coolness in what could prove to be a tricky situation.
“We was chums, Brookie an’ me. He told me stories when we wasn’t scrappin’.”
“Stories? What kind of stories?”
“You know, King Arthur, like. ’Ad some right lovely talks, we did. Used to tell me about old Nicodemus Flitch, an’ ’ow ’e could strike a sinner dead whenever ’e took the notion.”
“Was Brookie a Hobbler?” I asked.
“ ’Course not!” Colin scoffed. “But ’e wished ’e was. ’E fancied their ways, ’e used to say.”
So there it was: I should have asked Colin in the first place.
“You were telling me about the sticker,” I said, trying to steer Colin gently back to the moment of Brookie’s death.
“He showed it to me,” Colin said. “Ever so pretty … silver … like pirate treasure. Dug it up behind your ’ouse, Brookie did. Goin’ to make dozens of ’em, ’e said. ‘Enough for a garden party at Buckin’ham Palace.’ ”
I dared not interrupt.
