The Girl In the Cave Read Free Page A

really two jars, stuck together at their bases, with tiny holes drilled from one into the other. It was kept in the cupboard, on its own special padded shelf. To reach it Kate needed to climb three steps up a small stepladder, then she’d carefully lift it down.
    â€œGood. And now the chloroform.”
    Chloroform was the chemical that Uncle Dermott used to put the butterflies to sleep. It came in a jar and looked like ordinary water, but when he poured a little bit onto cotton wool, it turned into a gas that put butterflies into a deep sleep. Then Uncle Dermott killed them with sharp pins. Some collectors use a poison called ether to kill their butterflies, but Uncle Dermott believed that ether made their colours go dull.
    â€œPins are the only way,” he would tell a horrified Kate. “The only way indeed. Right, let’s get started.”
    Uncle Dermott knew that Kate hated helping to kill the butterflies, which was the only reason he made her do it. He could have easily done the work himself, but he enjoyed seeing how upset Kate became as she poured just a few tiny drops of chloroform onto the cotton-wool balls and then carefully placed the balls into the bottom half of the killing jar. Once this was done he would smile, a thin and nasty expression, before pointing at the tank.
    â€œWhich one shall we do first, girl? You choose.”
    Every week Kate had to choose the first butterfly, and every week she would try to take as long as possible, hoping that all of the gas would dissolve from the cotton wool before the butterfly was put into the jar. It never worked.
    â€œHurry up, child!” Uncle Dermott would snap, eventually. “We haven’t got all night, you know.”
    And finally Kate would just close her eyes and point.
    â€œThat one, Uncle Dermott.”
    Her uncle would use a tiny net to scoop the delicate creature out of the tank.
    Carefully he would slip the butterfly through a gap in the lid of the killing jar and close it again. Now the butterfly was trapped in the top half of the jar, with the poisonous sleeping gas seeping up from the chloroform-soaked cotton wool in the bottom half. For a few moments the butterfly would flap around wildly, fluttering and battering against the clear glass walls, trying to escape. Then its fluttering would slow down little by little, until it stopped all together and the thing slipped quietly to the bottom of the jar.
    â€œRight, then. Let’s get to work.”
    This was where things became really awful. Using a fine pair of tweezers, Uncle Dermott retrieved the sleeping insect from the bottom of the jar and laid it out on a piece of black felt. Then, using a pair of magnifying glasses, he took up a fine stainless-steel pin and slowly pushed it through the butterfly’s body. Often the body would twitch a couple of times, before falling still forever. Once he’d done that, Uncle Dermott would place the butterfly to one side.
    â€œGood. Next one …”
    And so they would continue, until all of the butterflies he had caught were lying in stiff little rows on his desk. Then he would take the jar to the window, test the breeze and, certain that the remaining chloroform wouldn’t blow back into his face, open the jar.
    â€œNow, let’s see what we have.”
    Uncle Dermott used his tiny tweezers to examine the dead butterflies one by one, arranging the limp wings to reveal the patterns more clearly.
    â€œHmm. Posterior extensions on the hindwings … Brightly coloured osmeterium … Turquoise patches on the undersides of the wings …”

    And then he would sigh.
    â€œWhat a pity. Nothing more than a common Graphium sarpedon and I already have ten of those.”
    And with a quick flick of the tweezers he would throw the dead butterfly off his desk and into the bin.
    All Kate could do was watch. One time she was brave enough to ask, “Uncle Dermott, why don’t you identify the butterflies before