Part 1 "Johnny, Miss Gilham is here for you! " The piercing voice trilled up the mammoth staircase and along down the hallway, was scarcely muted by the bedroom door. The boy gave a start and slipped the French novel he was reading under his pillow. Rising from his bed, he unbolted and opened the door a crack, calling "Right away, mum!", adjusted his waistcoat in front of the wardrobe mirror and buttoned his flies. John - as the boy would have liked to be called - was tall for his fourteen years, nearly 5 ft. 10. In a poor light, people often mistook him for a grown-up and he was therefor vexed that Lady Dunsany - not really his "mum" at all but his divorced foster-mother - had taken on a woman to be his tutor. As if he needed a nanny! His school marks were admittedly disgraceful and he had been sent down for the Winter term on account of a lavatory prank. But his scholastic fate was of little concern to John and he was at no great pains to hide the fact. Of what use to him Greek, biology, mathematics? He was sole heir to the family fortune, however depleted and could reasonably look forward to a long life of leisure. Whence an affectation of bored resentment as he descended the arching carpeted stairway. Miss Gilham, when first he saw her, was standing stiffly in the centre of the circular foyer. A suitcase that had seen better days lay on the marble floor by the tips of the burnished lace-up boots that peaked out from under her coat. John was at an age when boys have usually begun to discover the charms of the opposite sex and the delights of the god Onan. His new tutor’s ageless silhouette seemed thoroughly unprepossessing, yet his gaze was unaccountably attracted to the supple footwear which seemed to mould the woman’s toes, and the gloves of pearl grey suede that encased her slender fingers. Everything about this woman was grey, the shapeless travelling coat, the wide-brimmed hat and veil of mourning that added a dash of mystery - or coquetry - to the modest dress and demeanour of the new domestic. From where John stood at the bottom of the steps, the woman’s eyes and mouth were indistinct; only a prominent, well-formed nose and extraordinarily high cheek-bones showed through the veil, but the blurred, inscrutable visage gave John a sense of unease. At his foster mother’s bidding, the boy took two steps forward and stiffly held out his hand. And became aware, with a sense of relief, that this woman whom they meant to have authority over him was a head shorter than himself! Miss Gilham took his proffered hand...in a grip so astoundingly firm for a woman that he gasped aloud. The time had come to show her face, Miss Gilham decided, lifting the veil. John was transfixed by her steel-grey eyes. The drab hair was drawn back in a tight bun and the cheeks were pulled taut to the temples. This was certainly not a pretty woman, John decided: those cheekbones gave her a disquieting air of authority, and the tight smile was almost threatening. He attempted to withdraw his hand and felt a sharp pain at the base of his thumb. Now he tried to jerk his hand free with all his strength but he could not, for his fingers and wrist had gone numb. Looking down, he discovered that Miss Gilham was deliberately causing the pain and the numbness, burrowing into some vulnerable recess of his hand with the tip of a gloved thumb. His indignation knew no bounds: a domestic was purposefully hurting him in this underhanded way! The new tutor’s lips parted at last and she drawled loudly, with the affected accent of the servants of the rich : "So this is the young man who won’t learn his lessons? Well, we’ll soon put that to rights, won’t we John?" John was too ashamed to protest his pain and humiliation. But this woman had no right to do such a thing to him. Many years ago, a headmaster had dared actually to strike him: John had complained to his foster-mother and she had had a word with his father, who was something important at the House of Lords. The headmaster had been replaced. Miss Gilham, he sensed, would be a tougher nut to crack. He made one more feeble effort to withdraw his hand, then turned to Lady Dunsany. "I say, Mum she’s..." Miss Gilham cut him off in mid-sentence with an excruciating squeeze: "Master John and I will get on famously, I know. I have a way with young boys..." She abruptly relaxed the punishing handshake: the pain ceased soon enough but the numbness remained. "Pick up my bag, John and show me to my room..." Though still smarting from the foul trick this strange woman had played on him - indeed, she seemed to be treating the whole thing as a game - John was grateful to her for using his grown-up name. Conquering his resentment and his fear, he picked up the suitcase - with his left hand. But hardly had he taken two steps towards the stairs when a surge of resentment caused him to stop and look back pleadingly at his foster-mother, still hovering in the background. " Go along with Miss Gilham, Johnny, and see you obey her! I’m at my wit’s end, you know. Think what your father would say if he knew!" John’s heart sank: there would be no help from that quarter. Yet still he hesitated - a shade too long for Miss Gilham’s taste: he heard the rustle of her coat by his side and felt her grasp his arm firmly just above the elbow. "Yes, John, from now on you’re in my care." As the pressure of her fingers grew unaccountably painful, her free hand gripped his wrist with a sharp downward twist. John gave a squeal of fright: his arm was suddenly locked in such a way as to render him utterly subject to the woman’s control. He was not really in pain, she had eased up the pressure on a part of his arm he never dreamed so sensitive, but he knew he could not possibly break free. In this humiliating posture, with his foster mother and at least two servants looking on, she marched him briskly up the carpeted stairs. And all the while speaking she was speaking in his ear, quickly and quietly, almost intimately: "Have you ever heard of Jujitsu, John? No? Well, it is what I’m using on you now. I always use it with unruly pupils, you must remember that, John. In Japanese, Jujitsu means "the gentle art", and you can feel how gentle I can be, I can subdue you without hurting you very much. If I so choose. But if you were foolish enough to try to escape from this grip, your own strength would cause your arm to snap like matchwood. Very few women outside of Japan are as proficient as I in these techniques. I spent eight years in the Land of the Rising Sun as governess to the children of an American diplomat, and all that time I studied with a grand master. You, John, are considerably taller and heavier than I ... And yet whenever and wherever it pleases me, I can drop you with an ankle-sweep, break your arm with a twist of my wrist, render you unconscious with finger-pressure on some vital part of your anatomy, or simply punish you... thus! " They had reached the top of the stairs, and she unexpectedly abandoned her painful pincer grip to snake her gloved hand over and under his captive arm, gripping her own wrist and applying such powerful leverage that a fresh pain almost made John to drop his tutor’s suitcase. The boy was genuinely frightened now: this woman was obviously insane! But even as this worrisome thought passed through his mind and as she led him briskly down the long hallway, he became aware that part of her control over his body came from the pressure of a firm, muscular hip braced against his thigh, while his captive arm was in fact nestling against a resilient breast. To his dismay, he felt his manhood stirring. On the threshold of John’s inner sanctum, his precious refuge from Lady Dunsany, he ventured a verbal rebellion (no physical resistance was conceivable, so daunting was Miss Gilham’s "gentle" grip). "I demand that you release me at once! You are a domestic here, my foster-mother pays you a wage and you have no right to be doing these things to me!" "Of course I’ll release you," Miss Gilham fairly chortled as she withdrew her restraining hands. John could not help remarking to himself the suppleness of the thin leather that moulded her wiry fingers. He faced her angrily, massaging his outraged limb, still searching for the strong words appropriate to such an unprecedented situation but she glided towards him with a smile and "accidentally" planted the sole of her boot on his instep, poking him "playfully" in the pit of the stomach with her finger-tips. To his amazement, he found himself falling helplessly backwards and for a split second knew his trapped ankle must break. Miss Gilham liberated his instep however before the precious joint incurred any irrevocable damage; he merely crashed to the hardwood floor with an explosion of pain in his spine and shoulders. Instinctively, he sat up nonetheless and was about to scramble to his feet, but a gesture from the new tutor froze him to the spot. "Now listen to me young John." Even as she spoke - softly, almost kindly - she unbuttoned and removed her travelling coat to appear in a short, tight, rather stiff linen jacket and bloomers that she wore tucked into the calf-length lace-up boots like plus-fours. "You and I are going to spend the next three months in each other’s company and I am going to help you to improve your learning methods. You will be expected to perform in accordance with your capacities as I evaluate them, and if you do not, you will be thrashed! Not with a cane but with... Jujitsu." She stooped without warning and lifted his legs by the trouser-cuffs, wedging his ankles under her armpits and clasping her hands tightly across her flat stomach. John was again helpless. But then she did something so shocking, so outrageous, that John’s heart skipped a beat and his mind went completely blank: she placed the sole of her boot squarely between his legs, bearing down gently but firmly on what had recently become the most important part of the boy’s anatomy! Though scarcely heavy, the pressure soon began to induce that unpleasant feeling familiar to all males. "I saw you looking at my Jujitsu attire. I hope you like it. I had it specially designed to facilitate certain footwork and certain kicks which the Jujitsuan uses to disable an adversary. I always wear these clothes when I am with a pupil, if only to remind him of my skills. Do you understand what I am telling you, John? Do you believe me when I tell you that I can and will punish you whenever necessary?" And the frightening pressure increased. "Don’t, please... Yes, I understand..." The pressure did not relent. The dull pain grew sharper by the second. "Yes, who?" "Yes, Miss Gilham." "Good." She removed her boot, dropped his legs and stepped back a pace. "You may stand up now, John." And John stood up to gaze more calmly upon a hitherto undreamed of side of his tutor’s terrifying persona: when her body was at rest, when she was no longer inflicting pain and humiliation, Miss Gilham’s "Jujitsu attire" revealed a very fetching silhouette indeed. As the weeks went by, John rapidly found himself doing his best to please his tutor. For apart from her daunting physical prowess, Miss Gilham turned out to be an intellectually stimulating presence, able actually to make him enjoy subjects he had hitherto found excruciatingly boring, like mathematics and literature. Miss Gilham had, moreover very advanced ideas, of which his father and Lady Dunsany surely would have disapprove had they learned of them. She spoke to him of suffragism and Mrs. Pankhurst, of socialism and Mr. Morris, she even spoke to him of anarchism and a Russian named Kropotkin whom she seemed to admire. By the end of the first month, he had only once incurred his tutor’s displeasure, albeit not for any lack of studiousness - he had truly turned over a new leaf, was leaning to use his natural faculties - but for a very different breach of discipline. One winter afternoon in the library, as his tutor bent to stoke the fire, he had been unable to resist abandoning one of Keats’ longer poems, to lay a timid hand on the woman’s gracefully firm posterior. With astounding quickness, the woman whirled and seized the offending hand, giving it such a powerful and cunning wrench as to make him rise precipitously from his chair and then to send him tumbling head over heels, landing flat on his back with a screech of pain. "Little boys do not touch their female elders," she snapped, still holding his hand in a painful twist that prevented him from so much as stirring a muscle. "Especially not when she knows Jujitsu." And she underlined the ominous word by probing the back of his captive hand with one knuckle in a way that made him squeal and beg for mercy. The lesson had been well-learnt, and never had he touched Miss Gilham again. But it had also served to spark the fire of a secret infatuation, especially as her glowering expression had softened into a half-smile when she relaxed her punishing grip and gave him permission to stand. The following week-end, visitors arrived at the manor-house: a Mr. and Mrs. Prendergast. Molly Prendergast had been Lady Dunsany’s best friend since grammar school. She was an exquisitely dainty woman whom none would have imagined to be the same age as John’s foster-mother were not Harold her third husband. John took an instant dislike to this loud young man with the plummy accent and resented the time he was forced to spend with him. The weather having grown unexpectedly clement, at Lady Dunsany’s behest (only Harold had heartily concurred) wickets were set out on the lawn. Partnering John against the Prendergasts, Miss Gilham displayed great skill at croquet. The boy, on the other hand, had always been clumsy with a mallet, and his tutor never seemed to tire of chiding him for his awkwardness. His inability to concentrate on "a children’s game", however, did enable him to make one interesting observation: Miss Gilham stole several very affectionate glances in the direction of Mrs. Prendergast, herself clearly bored by the game and by her husband’s noisy boasting. At supper, it seemed to John that Harold was drinking more than usual, and that Lady Dunsany was beginning to frown upon him. That night, the boy heard loud voices from the guest-room and the next morning at breakfast, Molly wore an incongruous scarf around her neck, lamely pretending she’d caught cold the day before. John caught Miss Gilham looking quizzically at Harold’s wife, and when the husband asked her to pass the sugar, she complied with a hard glint in her eye such as John had never seen before. The next day, John was visiting the snares he was in the habit of laying down for squirrels and hare when he heard a faint rustling in the underbrush and caught sight of a man making his way rather cautiously through the wood. John stood perfectly still and Harold Prendergast passed less than six feet away, oblivious to his presence. The boy was intrigued and decided to follow along behind to see what was afoot. Molly’s husband seemed too preoccupied to observe he was being followed. Suddenly, the man ducked behind a tree, and crouched there in silhouette, peering into the brightness of a clearing ahead. John circled about until he too could observe the grassy glen, and there a startling sight greeted his eye: Mrs. Prendergast and Miss Gilham lay on the turf by a mulberry bush, locked in amorous embrace. The two women were kissing passionately and John even thought he saw Miss Gilham’s hand under Molly’s skirt. A muffled sneeze was heard, which John knew belonged to Harold Prendergast, and which caused Miss Gilham to leave off whatever she was doing, raise her head and look about. There was a loud scurrying in the bushes. John lay perfectly still in the tall grass. Miss Gilham stood up, gently shook off Mrs. Prendergast’s clinging hands, and moved quickly towards the trees. John prayed she would not discover him hiding there - for although he dearly loved and admired Miss Gilham, the idea of her using Jujitsu on him in anger was one he cared not to contemplate. However, his tutor was moving in the direction from which the sneeze had come, apparently hesitating whether or not to follow whomever could still be heard hurrying away through the underbrush. In fine, she returned to her companion and sank down onto the grass. John averted his gaze and crawled away as silently as he knew how. That evening, there was a strange silence at the supper table. Lady Dunsany strove valiantly to spark a semblance of conversation. But Harold could only glare at Miss Gilham and his wife by turns, while Molly kept her eyes on her plate throughout the meal. Nor could his foster mother get a rise out of either John or his tutor. He retired early to his room and lay on his bed, recalling the tableau in the clearing as he fondled himself. Miss Gilham had turned out to be one of "those women" the servants sometimes talked about amongst themselves when they thought he wasn’t listening. But though he knew that the idea of women together was somehow meant to be revolting, it had always secretly excited him. Was there something the matter with him? he wondered. In his mind’s eye, disturbing images returned unceasingly: Miss Gilham’s gloved and booted figure on horseback; Molly Prendergast, yielding her body to the Jujitsu hands of his tutor; and he himself, voluptuously helpless at the mercy of her skills... He took his pleasure and dozed off. He was roused from a fitful slumber by loud whispering in the hallway. Unable to identify the voices or understand the words, he cautiously opened his door a crack. The hall was lit only by the dim glow of night-lights, but he could plainly see the trio of adults in tense confrontation: Miss Gilham, Molly and Harold. His tutor actually had her arm around Molly’s waist : "So you see how things stand, Harold" the tutor was saying. Now the slender woman pulled away from her grasp and came striding down the hall, past the door behind which John crouched peaking, towards the guest room at the end of the hall. "You settle it between you, I’m going to bed!" she exclaimed in a whisper so forceful it was almost a shout. Harold glared at Miss Gilham, then decided he would follow his wife. Miss Gilham, however, grasped his sleeve to retain him and when he swung round to confront her angrily, she cuffed him sharply with open hands on his shoulder-blades, then immediately grasped him under the jaw with thumb and forefinger, propelling him effortlessly against the wall. Though the scene was taking place only a few feet from his observation post, John could scarcely hear Harold’s feeble croaking : "What have you done to my arms, I can’t move them!" "Just a little Jujitsu, Harold," was the woman’s reply, "The numbness will go away soon enough... But I warn you: if you ever so much as raise your hand to Molly again, I will see to it that you never use your arms again! Is that perfectly clear? And I shall destroy what is left of your manhood!" So saying, she clapped her free hand between his legs and appeared to squeeze! At this new proof of Miss Gilham’s lack of respect for male genitalia, John gasped aloud and the Jujitsuan half-turned towards her pupil’s room. Worried that she had heard him, he silently shut the door and pressed his ear to the panelling. Harold was whimpering pitifully and he heard Miss Gilham saying, as if to herself: "But no, not yet and not here ... Just a little something to remember me by." There was a dull impact, a loud "whoosh" and what sounded like a body collapsing onto the carpeted floor. "Another Jujitsu strike, Harold ...to the pancreas. Concentrated in the edge of my hand, the force of the blow has caused a severe shock to your central nervous system. You will be feel very unwell for the next twelve hours or so, plenty of time think on what I could and would do to you if you so much as think of asserting your male prerogatives with your lovely wife! Molly no longer belongs to you, Harold!" Soft footsteps climbing the attic stairs soon told John that Miss Gilham was on her way to her room under the eaves. A door closed and the house was silent again. Seated on the floor behind the door, he recalled how a half-smile had softened the formidable woman’s beloved lips when she half-turned towards the doorway where John crouched and watched. He started stroking himself and then suddenly remembered "poor Harold". He opened the door a crack and saw the man lying flat on his stomach, arms and legs moving feebly. He lay with his cheek to the carpet, facing the boy, and John could see that he was quite conscious. When he espied John peering at him, he made a tremendous effort to speak but only incomprehensible gargling could be heard. What had Miss Gilham done to him, John wondered. And what was he to do? Shut the door again as if nothing had happened and go on about his business? Try to help the man? Get someone else to do it? His foster mother would be useless, she’d be likely to call the police, dismiss his tutor... And as for Miss Gilham, well clearly she wanted Harold to suffer. That left only Mrs. Prendergast. But telling her what had happened would necessarily involve him, and this he did not want though he knew not why. He was about to close the door again when a plan formed in his mind. He moved quickly and quietly to the guest room, knocked sharply on the door, then hid in the closet across the hall. Mrs. Prendergast appeared, peered this way and that, gasped at the sight of her husband’s recumbent form. "Oh my God, she’s done it! " she exclaimed under her breath in a tone that was almost admiring, all the while rushing to her husband’s aid and seemingly relieved to find him alive. The valiant woman actually managed to half-lift, half-coax the tall man to his feet, supported him all the way to their room, closing the door behind her with one dainty foot. Deeply aroused by what had transpired between Miss Gilham and Harold, John lay awake all night. Considering the turn events had taken, he assumed the Prendergasts would be leaving that very day, a perspective he viewed with dismay. Because for reasons he cared not to think too much about, he was determined to see Miss Gilham’s threat of further violence carried out before his eyes. He had spent the night searching for a way to bring this about, and as the first rays of dawn filtered through the French windows, he found it. Mr. and Mrs. Prendergast failed to appear at the breakfast table, Lady Dunsany took her porridge in silence with her sleepy stepson and his tight-lipped tutor. The maid was just clearing the table when Molly appeared at ten, gave Miss Gilham a look full of passion, and announced in a strangely bouyant tone that her husband was feeling unwell and would be keeping to his room. As Miss Gilham and John retired to the library for a geography lesson, the tutor shot her pupil a warning glance of complicity which thrilled him to the marrow. She knew he'd been watching. At midday, Harold dined in his room on cuts of cold meat prepared specially by the cook and brought to him by his wife. After which, Molly and Lady Dunsany drove off together on some errand while Miss Gilham retired to her room "to catch up on some correspondence." John decided it was time to put his plan to execution. Always clever at disguising his handwriting, he had devoted his morning to the calligraphy of two short missives addressed to Miss Gilham and to Harold Prendergast. When the house had fallen silent, he quietly delivered them under the respective doors of the two enemies, watching from a safe distance until each was collected from within. An hour later, John lay hidden in the bushes on the edge of that same clearing in the woods. A scant fifteen minutes later, Harold was the first to appear on the scene. Thinking himself alone, he sat down on a thick stump to wait. It was not long before there came further rustling from the bushes and Miss Gilham appeared. She was a striking sight in a long cloak of fine white linen, an unusually elegant garment for John’s tutor, one which she had never worn at the manor, which she had been reserving from such special occasion, perhaps. It was easy for John to guess what she was wearing under that cloak, and that it augured badly for Harold Prendergast’s health. "So you want to have it out with me, do you Harold?" she called, steadily advancing towards him. " ‘Man to man?’ " she added sarcastically, as she threw her cloak on the grass with a dramatic flourish and appeared indeed in bloomers and jacket, matched today by white suede boots and gloves that were also new to John. "Dressed to kill?" he joked to himself. Harold appeared nonplussed. As John well knew he had never expressed any of the bellicose intentions complacently flaunted in the letter which Miss Gilham had found under her door. "I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you have something important to tell me about Molly...well, I’m listening." Under other circumstances, this might have prompted Miss Gilham to further question Harold, possibly to revise her deadly purpose. Such an eventuality did not jibe with the boy’s amorous aspirations and he held his breath. But the formidable Jujitsuan, since the moment she received John’s cleverly provocative forgery, had been priming herself for violence. Nothing on earth could have kept it from erupting then and there, a scarce ten feet from John’s marvelling face. Miss Gilham had pursued her inexorable progression and was now within a yard or so of Harold. Her posture remained unthreatening, her arms dangling harmlessly at her sides. John saw her smile at her enemy and almost missed seeing the quick little kick she gave his ankle with the tip of her boot. From his own experience of Miss Gilham’s martial repertoire, John knew that while she seemed to strike at random, her blows always seemed to hit some sensitive nerve. And indeed, the effects on Harold of her kick appeared out of all proportion to the moderate force behind it: he quite simply shrieked like a woman and sank to one knee, reaching feebly for his injured ankle, seemingly about to faint. Miss Gilham stood arms akimbo, watching him suffer with a look of satisfaction. "How do you like a little pain for a change, Harold... I know how often you have made Molly cry with your slaps and punches, many’s the time in the last few days I’ve dreamed of evening the score ... Here," she offered hypocritically, "let me help you up." The man was still in such a daze that he let her grasp the sleeve of his jacket and set him on his feet again. But as he loomed unsteadily, above her, still dazed with pain, she grasped his lapel with her other hand, spun with the grace of a ballerina, drove her buttocks unceremoniously into his stomach, and bent forward, effortlessly, spectacularly flipping his tall frame over her shoulder! His legs flailed high in the air and John saw in a flash that if Miss Gilham had not held on to Harold’s wrist, he would have landed straight on his head! As it was, he landed on his back with a thud and another shriek of rage and pain. John was tempted to applaud the spectacular exploit. Miss Gilham wasn’t through with the man: she planted her boot on his throat and braced his elbow against her shin : the man gave a strangled scream of pain: "Shall I break your arm Harold? Would that be adequate punishment for your sins?" The man tried to talk, but the pressure on his Adam’s apple was too great. Bringing both gloved hands to bear now, Miss Gilham did something to the captive wrist and fingers, causing the defeated man still more pain, which he could only relieve by laboriously rolling onto his stomach, all the while cursing and pleading. It was a pitiable and laughable thing to see, John thought, this man who must have weighed fifteen stone in his stocking feet, alternately insulting and begging for mercy from a chit of a woman in bloomers, who could not have weighed more than ten and yet was in total control of his body. Still holding his wrist, the fair Jujitsuan circled about the prone body and stooped to twist the captive arm up behind his shoulder-blades; then, stepping cruelly on the biceps, she locked the forearm with her instep and stood up with hands on hips: the integrity of her victim’s shoulder and elbow was now at the mercy of the slightest flexion of her leg. There was something so magical in the way she stood there in radiant white, pinning this tall man helplessly to the ground with one dainty booted foot, that caused John a thrill such as he had never known before: she was like some avenging fairy godmother from the picture books of his childhood, endowed with mysterious powers to make mortals pay for their misdeeds! "It was awfully stupid of you, Harold to challenge me to a duel, you know I’m an expert Jujitsuan." Harold was in great pain and his face was buried in the grass, so that John could not hear his reply. But Miss Gilham was listening carefully, and suddenly she raised her head to look around the glen, her eyes seeming uncannily to encounter John’s fascinated gaze. He ducked out of sight. Had she seen him in the penumbra under the trees? Impossible to say. "That’s all very well, Harold. And I do believe I know who’s at the bottom of this misunderstanding. If it’s of any comfort to you, rest assured that he will get what is coming to him!" She was speaking quite loudly now and John felt certain he was meant to hear every word. Fear began to cast its sickening pall over his excitement and he longed to run away, but he could not: he had to see more, never would he tire of the spectacle of Miss Gilham "mixing" it with men. Just as John was loath to run away for fear of missing out on his tutor’s further exploits, so too Miss Gilham seemed in no hurry to be done with Harold. "However," she went on, "I have a score to settle with you and I am not yet entirely satisfied. Why don’t you have a little nap while I think the matter over?" She reached down, grasped Harold’s hair and laughed as his toupee came away in her hand. She tossed it aside and reached over his forehead, seemed to actually hook her fingers into his eye-sockets, lifted his head a few inches off the ground, took careful aim with the edge of her white gloved hand and struck a quick blow just beneath the man’s ear. Harold stopped struggling. Miss Gilham felt his pulse for a moment, seemed satisfied, then whirled and began to run - with remarkable speed "for a girl" thought John - straight for his hiding-place! She had seen him, after all. He scrambled to his feet and started to run. "I’ve seen you, John and I advise you to stay right where you are if you know what’s good for you! I’ve had enough exertion for the afternoon, thank you!" His fear got the better of him and he turned to wait for her. She slowed to a walk, then stopped a few feet away. "Well, master John, what is the meaning of this little plot? Could it be you wanted the repulsive Mr. Prendergast get his just desserts? A laudable ambition, I dare say, but not an altogether convincing excuse. Perhaps what you wanted was to watch? In which case, you’ve achieved your ends," she said moving closer. "I see your flies are unbuttoned, master John. Could it be that the spectacle of little me tossing that big man on his ear and dominating him completely has caused you to have an erection?" Accustomed as he was to Miss Gilham’s free and easy ways, the boy nonetheless gave a start when she put his hand to his crotch. "I see it does," she said with a smile. "I’ve known males like you before, though none so young." John finally found his tongue. "Wha... what did you do to him...?" "I merely sent him to sleep for a while, I promise you..." John tried to step back, to flee the exciting and embarrassing contact of her hand: begun as a clinical auscultation, it had gradually become a caress, but turned now into a vice-like grip her other suede-gloved hand appeared threateningly before his eyes, fingers tense, thumb tucked under the palm : "Should I do the same to you? Would you like that? In Japan I learned to make my hand as hard as bamboo, and I know exactly where to hit a person to cause pain, temporary paralysis, unconsciousness... or even death. Would you like me to show you? Would you like me to hit you?" He dropped his eyes and said nothing. "Like this?" she concluded, give him quite a hard tap on the bridge of his nose, which made him see stars. Then she released him and stepped back with a fair imitation of a mischievous grin, which seemed completely out of place and which surprised John even more than his tutor’s latest Jujitsu demonstration on his person. Her tone became deadly serious. "So! what should I do with Harold now? What would you suggest, Master John?" Incapable of answering such a question, the boy could only put a query of his own: "Are you in love with Mrs. Prendergast?" "That, young man, is none of your business... But since you mention the good lady’s name," she looked at her wrist-watch, "your foster mother will be back from town by now with Molly, so why don’t you go find Harold’s dear little wife and bring her out here: we’ll let her decide. After all, she is the person most concerned." "But what shall I tell her?" "Anything you like." "The truth?" "Why not? It won’t surprise her in the least." "And are you... are you going to... punish me as you said just now?" "Punish you? Why? You’ve done me a service, I said that for Harold, I might never have given that imbecile his just desserts without your little subterfuge. Oh, you are a wicked boy all right, and when this is over, I might just punish you too... But that would be a reward, I think, because you would probably enjoy it, n’est-ce pas?" The boy blushed and turned away, mumbling "I’ll try to find Mrs. Prendergast..." He found her easily enough, crocheting a shawl in the drawing room. "Where is my husband," she asked John immediately he appeared. "Uh... well, actually he’s with Miss Gilham. I’ll take you there." The woman and the boy were already halfway across the garden when Molly emerged from a her brown study to ask: "Where are they, boy? What has she done to him?" "In the glen where you were together with Miss Gilham yesterday..." Molly gasped and shot him a sharp glance. He hastened to cover his faux pas with what he assumed were glad tidings: "She hasn’t really hurt him... not yet..." "Oh my God," was all the woman could say as they trudged into the wood. Now it was Miss Gilham who sat on the tree-stump, while it’s previous occupant still lay on the ground. It seemed to John that Harold had been unconscious for an awfully long time now, but his breathing was even and seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Miss Gilham joined the newcomers as they bent over Molly’s husband : "I’m afraid my atemi strike to the jugular was a bit severe, poor Harold slipped into a mild state of shock. Fortunately, I also learnt healing shiatsu massages in Japan. Now he is in a deep, natural sleep..." Her tone was extraordinarily business-like: "Thank you for your help, John you may go now. I have something I wish to talk to talk to Molly about... And mind you, no snooping." But of course John did snoop, loping off obediently but then circling back as quickly and as quietly as he could - for John was a pretty good woodsman. Before he was close enough to see, he could overhear them talking: First, Miss Gilham : "So you see, few paths seem open to you. The enmity between yourselves will be even greater after this episode and the stubborn fool will never agree to a divorce until he’s finished your dowry. And what’s more, you’ll never see me again. You know that, don’t you? Is that what you want?" "You know it isn’t!" Molly’s voice was unexpectedly vibrant. "As for the dowry, it’s almost gone. We’re quite poor, it’s why we sponge off wealthy freinds, like Lady Dunsany." There was a silence and then, in a hushed voice, she asked : "What do you propose?" As was her wont, Miss Gilham, did not beat about the bush: "Precisely this: I know a way to kill this husband of yours which will leave no trace. It will look like coronary thrombosis. In fact, it will be coronary thrombosis, except that I will have brought on the attack with a Jujitsu trick which leaves no visible mark of any kind." A long silence followed. John’s mind was in a turmoil. What was happening here? Was this real? Was his beloved tutor Miss Gilham speaking of killing a man in cold blood? True, John had come to hate Harold Prendergast as much as he had ever hated anyone. John was suddenly aware he had at last encountered that very grown-up thing which his philosophy manual called a Moral Dilemma! Should he reveal himself and attempt to dissuade Miss Gilham from her gruesome plan? At what risk to himself he knew not. But deep down inside, John caressed an even thornier dilemma, for the idea that Miss Gilham might use her Jujitsu expertise to kill a man was an extraordinarily troubling one. Molly finally broke the silence : "Have you ever done it before?" It was a practical, not an ethical question. Miss Gilham hesitated a fraction of a second but did not really answer her: "I can do it," was all she said. All this time, John had been inching forward over the ground until at last, through a gap in the bushes, he had a view of the proceedings. The two women stood in silence over the prone figure of the husband. "Then do it!" Molly fairly shouted and turned away with her head in her hands. Miss Gilham came from behind to comfort her, but something was clearly bothering her: "Molly, dear: do you think you can go through with it? You must go back now, you must appear very distraught, and you must have a story: you went for a walk, you met Harold on his way back to the manor ; the two of you then went for a walk in the woods and he suddenly just... collapsed. You immediately ran for help ... Do you think you manage that!" "Yes... yes, my beloved, I can manage it all right," Molly said firmly and the women sealed their plot with a long embrace. "You might as well start back now, no need to stay for it, I’ll be done in a jiffy. But we mustn’t see each other again around here, you understand that." The woman moved away like a ghost. Miss Gilham stood for a few moments looking down at the sleeping Harold, then said distinctly "You sod!" and knelt beside him. Seized his left wrist with gloved hand, she raised it high in the air. Then, with a queer little cry that John had never heard her utter before, she drove the stiffened finger-tips of her other hand deep into the man’s exposed arm-pit. Harold made strange noises in his sleep, his body writhed in agony. Miss Gilham placed a soothing hand on his forehead. "Now, now, it will all be over in a few seconds", she said gently, but then spoke harsher epitaph : "Can you hear me, Harold? I hope to Heaven you know you’re dying, I hope you know who’s killing you and the reasons why..." She bent over to inspect the dying man’s eyes, felt the pulse in his throat and shook her head with irritation as she again lifted his arm. Once more his armpit was the object of her attentions, but this time she seemed rather to squeeze it with all her might. The man’s body arched once and then lay still. John had taken in every sickening detail of the murder, and now he was rooted to the spot, less by the terror of the scene than by his own horror at the voluptuous sensations this spectacle had caused him: in fact, he had ejaculated violently, straining every fibre to keep from crying out. Satisfied that Harold was dead, Miss Gilham searched his pockets until she found what she was looking for: John recognised the letter he had put under the dead man’s door before it disappeared inside her fighting jacket. The woman picked up her cloak, threw it over her shoulder and walked away beneath the trees at leisurely gait, without once looking back at the cadaver she left behind. She might have been a woodsman homeward bound after an honest day’s toil. But for John, she was the goddess Diana, who had just punished the giant Orion with the mortal sting of a scorpion. He lay there long hours, half hoping that Harold would get up and walk away, half fearing he might encounter Miss Gilham in the woods were he to leave too soon. How would he feel when next he met his forbidding goddess at lessons! What would she do if ever she discovered he knew what she had done? Would he even be able to keep from telling her straight out! After all, he loved her! Everything went as the women had planned. It even turned that Harold’s father before him had prematurely succumbed to the self-same affliction, and so it came to pass that the coroner’s inquest quickly concluded to a natural death and the bereaved Molly Prendergast took Harold’s casket up to London in the luggage van and buried it in Highgate cemetery. In the meantime, life resumed at the manor house, and John spent long hours with a murderess who had no idea that her pupil shared her guilty secret. Miss Gilham, John thought, had changed for the better. Since the fateful day she had seemed happier, more jovial, even exalted at times. One day she began talking to him about a French female novelist called Rachilde and about her strangely perverse novels which were the talk of Paris in those years before the Great War. She spoke to him of one of her heroines, a certain Mary Barbe, who killed off one by one all the males in her life - her baby brother at ten, her uncle at twenty, her husband at thirty and no doubt many more. Feeling increasingly embarrassed, John suddenly interrupted her: "Miss Gilham, forgive me, but do you really believe this is a suitable conversation to be having with a child of fourteen?" There was something caustic, almost hostile in the boy’s manner that made Miss Gilham to look at him sharply. And what she saw displeased her. For suddenly she knew he knew. "You were there, weren’t you? You were watching? You sneaked back to watch when I forbade it! Is that what you did? Is it?" John felt sick to his stomach : "I don’t know... what you’re talking about," he said lamely. She had been moving towards him, staring him down with those steel-grey eyes he had learned to love and fear. "You were there, I know you were there... John, I..." She put out her hand out to him and he fled to the furthest corner of the room. "I won’t tell, ever! I promise! I’d rather die. I love you." Miss Gilham looked long and hard at the tall fourteen year-old. Then, without a word, she turned and left the room. John’s state of mind may easily be imagined: he was in mortal terror of the first woman he had loved since his mother died when he was three. What was he going to do? More to the point, what was she going to do? He felt incapable of any action at all, let alone anything so definitive as confiding in Lady Dunsany or one of the servants. Or going directly to the police himself. Would she kill him, too? Would she do that awful thing to his armpit which would make him die? Casting about for more reassuring thoughts, he said to himself that coronary thrombosis would be awfully suspicious in a healthy boy of fourteen, a coroner’s jury would never "buy" that! "She" did not appear at dinner and John could not swallow a morsel. He finally excused himself and went to his room. As he pushed open the door, there he had a dire premonition and sure enough, she was there before him, sitting on his bed in her Jujitsu attire, boots, gloves and all. A gracious sight which sent terror to his heart. "Shut the door, John," she said quietly. He did as he was told but then just stood there with his back to the door. "Now tell me: just how much did you see?" John already saw himself doomed to die by the devilish hand of his beloved tutor, and his instinct was to get it over with. "I saw the whole thing," he said as neutrally and as confidently as possible. There was a silence. Neither had moved. "Come over here." But still he stood his ground. "John, you know I can set upon you much faster than you can open that door again... You might as well come a little closer so we can talk properly. I’m not going to hurt you... yet. Sit in that a chair..." John found her tone surprisingly light and almost intimate. He obeyed. "Now John, what would you do if you were I?" He though a moment: "Probably kill me, Miss Gilham." She laughed in a way he didn’t understand: "That is absolutely correct, Johnny! By rights, I ought to kill you! And perhaps I shall do, I think it’s only fair to warn you. However, I can promise you shan’t suffer, and you won’t even know it’s coming... I’ve grown very fond of you, John..." John began to cry for the first time since he cared to remember... When Miss Gilham took him in her arms, he panicked and half-tried to ward her off. But in his present state of confusion and despair, he could only surrender to his tutor’s maternal warmth and tenderness: was this to be the end of his life? he wondered dimly. Would these caressing hands suddenly burst some vital organ? Stop his heart? His breath? His life? But Miss Gilham was talking softly in his ear and when the meaning of her words dawned upon, hope returned: "There is another way my big dear boy: you and I shall elope together and you will become attached to my person. I know I have a certain sexual power over you, which you must not confuse with desire on my part: I have none for you or for any man. You will have new life but you will never have freedom out of my sight. The moment to decide is now... If you cannot accept such a perspective ..." and suddenly her hands became unyielding as she gripped his skull with both gloved hands and twisted till he knew something must snap. "...you’ll have had a nasty fall down that beautiful staircase and sadly broken your neck." John finally found his tongue : "Please don’t! Please take me with you to the ends of the earth, you are my dream, Miss Gilham." The hands on his head were caressing again: "You understand this means a lifetime of servitude? Perhaps a short one...I will I never become your wife or your lover... I suppose you’re a virgin, aren’t you? Just a little wanker!" She hugged him and stepped back. "I will never allow you to forget that these hands can kill you at any time..." She smiled ambiguously. "And when I really am fed up with having you around, that’s probably what they will do, so this dream-life of yours will be fraught with suspense!" She kissed him on the forehead and went to her room to pack. They left on the stroke of midnight. Since to start the old Dion-Bouton would wake the whole household and too great an effort would be required to push it as far as the gate. Miss Gilham had decided they should take two horses from the stable. But what was old Bart doing in there with a lamp at that time of night? Attending to a sick foal, perhaps. Pushing John back into the shadows, Miss Gilham, whose dark boots and white bloomers were visible under a half-length black travelling cloak, stepped confidently towards the old man, who stood up and doffed his cap. Miss Gilham said a quietly disarming "Good evening" and as she continued towards him, cocked her arm and drove the edge of her hand into a precise spot on the old man’s abdomen. He said something like "ouf" and collapsed into her arms, dead to the world - or perhaps dead tout court, John feared. She lowered him carefully to the ground and turned his head in just a certain position, picked up a rake, gave him a hard poke on the temple with the tip of the handle, then laid the tool down by him, simulating an accident. John could not help marvelling at her ingenuity. Joining her to saddle up, he ventured the first opinion he had dared emit since the conclusion of their pact : "You look as if you’ve been doing that all your life!" Miss Gilham made no comment and he took another tack: "Why did you hit old Bart like that again? He was already unconscious and doing no harm!" He tried not to make it sound like a reproach. She was tightening the cinch on her mount : "I wanted to give us more time. That spot behind the ear will give us three hours, perhaps more." "That’s not much time on horseback," John worried aloud. "Ah, but we’re being met in Kimberly with a Bugatti that does at least 25 miles per hour." John knew little about automobiles, but was duly impressed. Now they were in the saddle. Miss Gilham gave both their mounts a quick little touch of the crop and they were off. They had reached the woods and the start of the cross-country trail to Kimberly without mishap, when Miss Gilham broke the long silence : "Aren’t you going to ask me who is driving the Bugatti". "No, my dear Miss Gilham!" he said ironically. "It might just be someone I don’t want to know!" "It seems to me, Master John that you are getting a little uppity for your tender years..." but then her tone became disturbingly salacious "In fact, you are getting a damn sight too mature for your age, and you will probably have to be punished ere many days go by, wouldn’t you say?". John, of course, said nothing: what could he say to that? "And though the idea may excite you now," she continued with the nuance of sadism he remembered from their first encounter, "I wouldn’t count on having very much fun in the process. You have not seen one tenth of things I can do to a man’s body... But as for the driver of the Bugatti, you do know her as a matter of fact, for she is none other than the Widow Prendergast, Molly herself! What a trio we will make, my boy, three partners in crime à la vie, à la mort! " As they rode into the night, John was shivering in his saddle. End of part 1