Jasper Fforde - The Constant Rabbit

‘We’re not running,’ said Connie. ‘It all ends here and now. He’ll ask me what I know of the Venerable Bunty’s greater plans and movements, I’ll tell him nothing, and that will be it.’

‘You don’t have a chance,’ I said, ‘he’s a fox , for Christ’s sake, a four-legged multi-fanged rabbit-killing machine.’

Doc and Connie’s ears popped up as a rapid series of thumps were heard on the upstairs floor.

‘In the back garden between the runner beans and cabbages,’ said Doc, reading Kent’s lookout thumps perfectly. ‘They like to sneak up in an unannounced assault so they can paralyse us with fear before they pounce. I think it excites them. The vixens too,’ he added. ‘In fact, I think they’re worse.’

‘Please,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to leave. He’ll kill you all. Kent and Bobby and everyone you ever knew.’

There was another series of rapid thumps on the floor upstairs, and Doc and Connie moved so they were with me, at the far end of the hall facing the door to the kitchen. Connie’s hind leg quivered anxiously. As we watched, the door to the kitchen opened a crack and a whiskery snout sniffed the air cautiously. We were about twenty feet away, with Doc taking up a defensive position a couple of yards in front of us and to the right.

‘Hello, Doc,’ said Mr Ffoxe.

‘Hello, Torquil.’

‘Been a while.’

‘Never long enough. Haven’t seen you at any regimental get-togethers.’

‘I’ve moved on,’ said Mr Ffoxe. ‘Dwell in the past and you’re stuck in the past. Your wife has some intel about the Bunty that I want, and she’s going to give it to me. We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the exceptionally unpleasant way.’

‘Far as I recall there’s only ever an unpleasant way between your kind and mine.’

Doc’s voice sounded confident. I guess he’d faced dangers as great or greater than this in the armed forces. But I don’t think he’d seen the speed at which Mr Ffoxe could move. The fox could be across the room, snap both their necks and have them half buried behind the compost heap before they’d even realised he was through the door.

I could feel Connie trembling as she moved closer in behind me and wrapped one arm around my waist. I could smell her earthy scent once again, her whiskers tickling the back of my neck.

‘Mr Smethwick says the whole ripping-to-pieces thing is bad PR,’ said Mr Ffoxe, still with only his snout showing through the kitchen door, ‘so I’m willing to forgo the good sport that is my right and simply give you a deal: I get to question Constance at my leisure, and you and the boy upstairs go free.’

‘I’ve a better deal,’ said Doc. ‘You take your mangy ginger butt out of our house right now, and we’ll forget this ever happened.’

Mr Ffoxe gave out a raspy chuckle.

‘There’s only one deal on the table,’ he said. ‘Mr Knox, are you there?’

‘I’m here,’ I said.

‘You’ve been a fool, Mr Knox, but at least you’ve got to see rabbits for what they truly are: vermin, eager only to invade, dominate and then assimilate us all to their ways. I will spare you, Knox, but you should leave unless you’ve got a strong stomach, which I doubt.’

‘I’m staying,’ I said, not quite in the brave voice I’d intended.

Mr Ffoxe’s snout sniffed the air again.

‘You were warned. When the orange mist comes down I rarely show restraint. Final offer, Doc: give up the wife or I’ll take out every last one of your friends and relatives. There’ll be no rabbit left alive who even knew you.’

I looked at Doc, who was swaying on the spot, readying himself for the attack. He was the biggest and most powerful – Mr Ffoxe would kill him first. Connie was still behind me, holding on tight. I could feel the warmth of her body, her heart thumping rapidly beneath her soft fur.

‘You want to know my answer, Torquil?’ said Doc. ‘Here it is: your wife, mother, sister, aunt and grandmother … all mate out of season .’

There was a shocked intake of breath from Connie.

‘Is that an insult?’ I whispered.

‘The worst ,’ she whispered back.

Several things then seemed to happen at once. The door was kicked open to reveal Mr Ffoxe, who seemed to have transformed. His eyes were large and bloodshot and his mouth was wide open, revealing sharply pointed teeth wet with saliva. He gave out a dark and forbidding noise from the back of his throat and with his hair rising stiffly on his neck looked about as terrifying as I had ever seen him before – and that included the time when he nearly took out my eye. That fear, I realised, was just a taster. A cold lump of bile rose in my throat, and Doc’s ears went flat on his back.

There was a brief pause as Mr Ffoxe savoured the moment of our terror and then I saw Connie’s arm in front of me holding Doc’s lark-decorated duelling pistol in her gloved hand. I only had time to register this for a split second as there was a flash, a sharp detonation and Mr Ffoxe’s head vanished off his shoulders in an explosion of blood and fur. A fragmented part of his skull actually stuck to the wall opposite, just next to the light switch, and a single yellow eye bounced on the carpet before rolling to a stop near the coal scuttle. The fox then dropped to his knees but didn’t fall forward. Rigor mortis, unusually fast in anthropomorphised foxes, kept him on his knees, his arms still upright, making him look not threatening, but imploring – and without a head.

‘ Sic semper tyrannis , you contemptible shit,’ said Connie.

I stared blankly for a moment at Mr Ffoxe’s corpse, the blood bubbling weakly out of his severed neck and running on to his tweed jacket. Connie released her hold on me, and lowered the pistol.

‘That was seriously risky,’ said Doc. ‘You should never go for the head shot with only one up the spout.’

‘I hear you,’ said Connie, ‘but it was truly satisfying, and at that range I couldn’t really miss.’

I took my first breath after the pistol was discharged and breathed in the sharp odour of cordite in the room. Doc, Connie and I stared at the headless body of Mr Ffoxe in silence until I found my voice.

‘Think of the reprisals,’ I said. ‘ What have you done? ’

‘ I haven’t done anything,’ said Connie, and she handed me the duelling pistol. ‘It’s a crime of passion. We were having an affair and you defended me against an aggressor. Your prints are on the weapon, and you’re covered in gunshot residue and bits of fox. My husband, eternally grateful, forgives us both.’

‘Wait a moment,’ said Doc, ‘so you were having an affair?’

Constance stared at him for a moment.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I get it now. I’m to pretend you were having an affair.’

And that was when the penny dropped.

‘Wait, this is the intervention?’ I asked. ‘This is how I make good?’

‘As I told you,’ replied Constance, ‘everyone’s repairable. One bad act shouldn’t define a person for life, if there is an opportunity to find absolution.’

She smiled.

‘And I’m so in love with you right now, Pete. If you get out of this jam you can make a play for me.’

‘I knew it,’ said Doc triumphantly, ‘we do get to duel.’

‘If I get out of it,’ I said.

‘True,’ said Connie, and she opened her flick-knife, stepped forward and cut off one of Mr Ffoxe’s claws. ‘Torquil Ffoxe was the true architect of the Rehoming plan, and with him gone, we may have bought some renegotiation time. The Taskforce will be here presently,’ she added, threading the fox-claw on to a leather lanyard, ‘so the next part of this is really up to you.’