The Stone Wife

First challenge: how to escape from the tower room. The floor and walls were solid, the window too narrow to squeeze through.

What about the ceiling? Presumably she was in part of the original house, so the ceiling would be constructed of traditional lath and plaster. Logically, this was the escape route. The room was at the top of a virtually free-standing tower with a conical tiled roof over it. She was certain she was the only inhabitant, so it was unlikely she’d be heard. She could scrape, scratch, hammer at the plaster to her heart’s content. But what with?

The ceiling was out of reach, about nine feet above floor level. She upended the latrine bucket and stepped on and off to test the extra height it would give her. Not enough. She tugged the blankets from the primitive camp bed and examined the wooden frame. Hinged at the centre and mounted on six folding legs, it would make a cumbersome battering ram, but it might do. It was not too heavy to lift. She grasped one end and hoisted it to the vertical. Balancing the frame on its end, she stepped on the bucket. Then she braced herself and thrust the bed upwards so that one corner struck the ceiling with a satisfying crunch at a point quite close to the wall.

Some powder came down.

She tried a second time. The noise was louder than she expected, a boom like a bass drum. To hell with that. You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs, as Lee would say.

She began a regular pounding of the ceiling, hitting it with all the strength she could muster. She was glad of her state of fitness. The weight of the bed worked to her advantage as a destruction implement, but was hell for her back and biceps. And the hinged legs swung loose more than once and rapped her knuckles.

Thankfully, the plaster started coming down in chunks. She used one of the blankets to protect her head.

After fifteen minutes, the progress slowed. Not much more was shifting.

She paused and stared up. So near and yet so far. A sizeable dent had appeared, revealing some of the laths. A few small lumps of plaster hung down, attached to the animal hair once used as a binding agent. She’d removed about half an inch, and she was tiring with the effort to penetrate those close-packed strips of wood. She couldn’t hoist the cumbersome thing to that level and she was tiring with the effort. She needed to get up there herself and force a way through, but how?

Before being locked in, she’d been subjected to another body search. This time the minder had enjoyed himself and it had been a revolting experience. He’d taken her phone, of course, and made sure she wasn’t armed. But in the process of running his hands over every curve and fold of her figure, he’d failed to check inside her shoes — where she had slipped the metal nail file she’d been using as a screwdriver in the bathroom.

Nail files aren’t designed to be cutting tools. This small round-ended strip of metal was impractical for working on the laths, but she had another use for it. The bed frame was held together by L-shaped angle plate brackets screwed into the lengths of wood. They were a handy size. If she could free one of them, she’d have a useful tool.

She lowered the bed to the floor and got to work with the nail file. Difficult. The four screws weren’t round-headed, like those in the bathroom. They were flat to the wood and difficult to shift. The curved end of the nail file got in the slot, but kept slipping out.

Resolved not to be beaten, she jammed the file into the door frame and snapped off the end with a kick of her heel. She was left with a flat tip that made a better tool. Now she had some purchase on the screw and got a little movement that with more effort became a forty-five degree turn and then more. Fortunately she had always had strength in her wrists. The other screws followed and the bracket was freed. As a tool it felt good in her hand. It was at least three inches along each side, thin galvanised steel.

The next task was to get up to a level where she could work on the ceiling, and the only way was by propping the bed against the wall and using it as a ladder, hoping the canvas slats would bear her weight. Removing the bracket had made it a distinctly unsafe structure.

For the present, the frame held together and she climbed within reach of the damaged ceiling and got to work with her new tool. The laths were nailed to the undersides of the joists. They had to be forced downwards if possible. Get one out and the others should follow.

Whoever had made this ceiling had built it to last, using a strong bond. But by probing steadily with the bracket she eventually found a weak point and forced the end right through. By much jiggling and gouging she enlarged the slit and felt a small movement of the lath. She worked at it with such energy that the camp bed bounced against the wall. And at last the lath gave way and split at one end.

Elated, Ingeborg forced the strip of wood downwards, levered out the other nail, and threw it on the floor. With the space to reach through, the others were easy to remove.