Gordon paused a long moment, and blinked. He sipped his tea with great care. “The deadworld, eh?”
“She says we just have to find the records on Father and Antony — ”
“If he’s there.”
“Precisely,” I said, perhaps more bitterly than I’d intended.
Gordon put his chipped teacup down and took up the note again. “Or, of course, you could just pay this bugger the money.”
He was right. It had occurred to me that potentially I could avoid a jaunt in the deadworld by simply paying my correspondent his thousand pounds — except, where was I to lay my hands on one thousand pounds, in cash, at short notice? I had the money, but withdrawing it would most likely mean going up to my bank in the city and arranging an appointment with my bank manager, who would then have to arrange for that amount of cash to be available, and that could take some time.
“The problem there, though,” Gordon went on, speaking softly, even as his dogs snuffled and squabbled under the table, “is that the money might just be for ‘opening the account’, so to speak. He says he’s got a very detailed confession — though who knows how he’s got it? — what’s to say he doesn’t give it to you in pieces, and each piece costs you more money?”
This had crossed my mind, too. Equally, I was baffled by the implication that I was so wealthy that I had great piles of cash sitting around, perhaps in jam tins, in my house! It was ludicrous. Whomever my extortionist might be, he clearly had no idea about such things. On the other hand, I would be prepared to part with a considerable sum of money if it meant I would not have to visit the deadworld. This was a shameful thought on my part, one that I did not share with Gordon. I wanted the truth very badly. The question was, how badly?
However, the other question was: what did Mr Nor have to do with it all?
“Interesting that he’s asking you to pop the money in your own letterbox,” Gordon said, thinking out loud. “Surely he must realise we could simply sit by the letterbox all day and all night, waiting for someone to come by and collect it.”
I was thinking about Gordon’s sideline business. “He’s got a demon at his beck and call. He could send that along at any time and take the money and probably we’d never see it. Or at least I wouldn’t … ”
“I have heard of wizards using demons as various kinds of thugs, enforcers, and errand-boys. You owe the wizard a bit of money for doing something for you on the shady side of the law. If he sends some bag-man type fellow around, you might or might not feel like paying up, depending. But if he sends Mr Nor, you might feel much more inclined to cooperate.”
“Wizards and demons are involved in organised crime?” This was new to me. It was strange enough thinking about such things in these Modern times at all.
“Oh yes, very much so. Wizards, I mean, they’re just men, for the most part. Some women. But they’re human. They have the same urges and desires and dreams and schemes as anyone else. It’s just they also have … other things.”
I thought about this. “How would we go about finding another wizard living in this town?”
“You’re still keen to investigate those properties?”
“Of course!” I said, too brightly.
Gordon smiled, amused at my fib. He returned to the table with a fresh cup of tea. He also had a small plate of Empire Cream biscuits. “Forgotten about these — silly me!”
I remembered that I had come out here to Gordon’s without stopping first to have breakfast. Two of the biscuits helped a great deal.
Gordon sat, dunking a biscuit in his tea, thinking things over. “So Miss Templesmith is returning from the hospital today?”
“Yes, and will probably require mechanical restraints to keep her from jumping straight into you-know-where as soon as she gets to the house.”
Gordon concealed a smirk as he chewed. “And we have these properties to prowl about, getting up to no good at all … ”
“I’m sure Julia would be keen to join us on that as well. I swear, she never got over being eleven years old.”
“And now there’s this new note.” He was looking at it again. “What do you think might happen if you don’t pay the thousand pounds?”
“I would expect him — or, rather, them — to keep at me until I do pay.”
“Risky sort of gambit, for them, at least. They don’t want to give away all their secrets, but if you steadfastly refuse to pay, they need to find ways to encourage you to play along. And yes, that ‘we’ business there at the end. I thought we were just up against one lunatic!”
“I thought so, too, Gordon,” I said. “But what if the extortionist simply wants to create the illusion that there’s more going on than one person with an extraordinary grudge? Is he trying to intimidate me?” Gordon looked thoughtful again, and picked up a third Empire Cream. This one he split into its two halves and absent-mindedly licked the cream. He seemed quite to have forgotten that I was there. Biscuit eaten, he rummaged about in a drawer until he found his magnifying glass, and set about examining the type on the letter. “Looks like the same machine again. But he’s — they — are still trying to get the strikers clean, see? Here, and … here?” He pointed with his little finger, showing me where the note-sender had been busy removing dirt from the spaces inside the letter-forms.
One of Gordon’s dogs latched onto my right leg and began working with great keenness. I muttered something in disgust and prised the animal off me. Gordon shouted and chased it out of the kitchen. I think it was a dachshund. Gordon apologised.
I was thinking again about Gordon’s suggestion that Father and Antony were somehow involved in espionage, the mere suggestion of which had upset me — and still upset me — so much. I still believed that Father died of heart failure, compounded by profound grief following the loss, the year before, of his wife, my mother. The note-sender’s question — WHY DID YOUR HUSBAND KILL YOUR FATHER? — like his other questions, assumed certain things while asking about others. He assumed that there were things between Father and Antony, and that there were intrigues concerning their deaths. It was difficult to resist these assumptions when they were so plainly posed. I felt as if I were living in a world of refusal, insisting again and again that my, admittedly simple, view of their relationship was true. All else were lies aimed more at disturbing me than at exposing suppressed truths. But the more I refused to accept these assumptions, the more they occupied me. I had no objective, straightforward means of refuting the claims, which did not help. The only two ways I now had open to me by which I might learn the truth were both things I could not bring myself to follow. Either enter the world of the dead — I had noticed that Aunt Julia had never spoken of the Christian “Heaven” — and consult shades who might prefer not to see the living, or accede to the note-sender’s demand. What I wanted was a way to learn the truth without having recourse to either of these choices. I wondered out loud when Gordon’s time machine might be ready. He shook his head. “Oh, Ruth,” he said. “No time soon.”
I said suddenly, “At the hospital yesterday, you said you thought there might be some wizardly means of extracting the true name of the demon’s summoner … ”
“That’s right,” he said. He was doodling with a chewed pencil in the margins of a sheet of newspaper, drawing some kind of elaborate device whose purpose I could not guess.
“But with the summoner’s true name, we could get him to tell us things?”
“Correct. It’s just that … ” He was concentrating on his drawing.
“Just that what?”
“We still need to locate his circle of power.” He did not look up.
“All right. How does tonight strike you?”
“Tonight?” He looked at me now. “Are you sure?”
“I refuse to pay the money, and I wish very much to avoid the deadworld. So, yes, tonight.”
That afternoon, Rutherford took me up to the hospital, where Julia signed her discharge papers. Her doctors had advised her to return at the first sign of renewed tr
ouble, and she assured them that she would. “I wouldn’t miss it!” she said, finishing a last cup of tea.
On the way home, Julia was keen to discuss our venture into the deadworld. I cut her off. “Julia, before we go that route, there are fresh developments, and a new plan of attack.” I informed her of the new note and its demand for money. She looked at once shocked and also a little excited, and she listened, saucer-eyed, as I explained what we would be doing this evening. “You are most welcome to join us, though I really think, considering this ghastly weather, you would be far better waiting at the house, with the fire going and my staff taking care of your every whim.”
She surprised me. “You may well be right about that. I am feeling a little weary, I must say.”
I paused, surprised. “Pardon, Julia? Are you not feeling …?”
Julia yawned. “Up all night travelling, I’m afraid. Snooping about, trying to find your summoner.”
“No luck?”
“Not as such. Whoever it is, he’s got some excellent protection charms of his own, I can tell you that. The entire town seems completely dead, and yet at the same time it fairly tingles with some sort of activity that I can’t isolate and follow. Most perplexing!”
I thought about this. “Are you sure the source of whatever it is is actually in Pelican River? It’s not someone or something elsewhere?”
“Oh, quite,” she said, nodding, and looking very convinced indeed. “That would be relatively easy to trace. But that’s enough about me and my nonsense, dear. How are you holding up? You’re looking not quite your best — though it’s a little hard to tell, sometimes, what with the way you dress and your lack of, well, polish.”
I glanced out the large window to my left. Scrubby bushland studded with skinny, diseased-looking trees rushed by. To the right, dunes strewn with struggling coastal vegetation blocked my view of the sea and the western horizon. Brooding cloud smeared out the afternoon sun. I felt cold, looking at it all. To Julia, I said, “Things are piling up, somewhat.”
“I’m sure they are, dear,” she said, patting my knee.
“I mean to say,” I went on, “I still do not know just why this note-sender bastard, and these alleged chums he may or may not have, is even doing this! Clearly he wants money, as clichéd as that seems, but why does he want it? And why do all this to me? Why can’t he simply take out a modest bank loan to cover his shortfall? Is he picking on me because I stick out, so to speak, around here, because in some fashion I do not quite fit in? And where on Earth did he get all this alleged information? He says he has a detailed confession written by my own father, who never, to the best of my knowledge, set foot in this country. How does one acquire such information?”
Julia looked at me, and she looked sad. “My dear Ruth,” she opened, speaking more softly than I had, “he’s some sort of magician. He can visit the rest of reality. He may well have found your late father and obtained his confession that way. It’s entirely possible, though very much in the way of things that are simply not done.”
I could hardly speak. My heart raced. My insides felt like knots of steel, and I thought I might be getting carsick. I wound down the window for some fresh air. It did not help. There was, I realised, one thing worse than having to visit the land of the dead in order to ask Father about things he had done and which he must have thought were done and finished, and that was learning that someone else had already been there and visited him, and probably coerced the information from his wretched spirit. All for the sake of extracting money from me, and hurting me? If I found out who was behind all this, I could not imagine letting them live. I far preferred the thought of such a swine trapped in the deadworld, where the other shades could punish them for violating the sacrosanct barrier between the world of the living, and the world of the dead.
22
Rutherford volunteered for letterbox-watching duty that night. Sally and Murray provided him with hot soup and coffee. The weather prospect looked bleak so he wrapped himself in a sou’-wester and took a black umbrella. I told him, “You can’t do this on your own, Rutherford. You’ll catch your death!”
He insisted. I argued. He continued to insist. He had that determined look which said he would man the letterbox even if it did, indeed, lead to his death. I had only mentioned the situation to him, that I was the victim of an extortion attempt, and so forth, and he had done the rest. There had been no need to concern him with all the supernatural aspects of the situation. He did ask, “And what sort of character am I looking for, ma’am?” I told him I did not know. I explained that I was not going to play along, and that whomever the extortionist sent by would be disappointed. As to who it might be, I said it could be anyone, or it could be no-one. I also said to take note of strange occurrences, anything peculiar or unsettling that might give a moment’s pause or concern.
“Strange occurrences, ma’am?”
“It’s rather hard to explain, I’m afraid, Rutherford.” I felt glum, and wished I could reveal the whole matter.
He said, “If you are being extorted, ma’am, the police should be notified. This is very serious business.”
I agreed. “All right. I’ll talk to them in the morning.”
“Very good, ma’am,” he said, then looked at the rest of the gathered staff. He had the air of an explorer setting out for the remotest parts of the world. He flashed a jaunty salute and headed out the door.
I wondered if he would be all right out there alone. Suppose the note-sender did send his tame demon along. How would Mr Nor react on learning that I wasn’t playing along? How much latitude did he have for bringing mayhem to my staff? I did know, however, that Rutherford also had his Webley Mk VI .455-calibre service revolver on his person, and professed great confidence in its “man-stopping power”. That was some help, I supposed, but I knew that I would be worrying about him all night long.
Julia did indeed take to her bed. She announced that she would attempt a catnap or two, and, failing that, would catch up on her correspondence, of which she had a great deal, more even than I had. She also tried to get me to let her read my unfinished Too Many Worlds manuscript, but I drew the line at that. It was bad enough that I was starting to have doubts about the thing without having Aunt Julia offering me critiques over breakfast.
After dinner had been cleared away for the night, I wrapped myself in my warmest, darkest clothing and stepped out of the house. The Tulip roadster was a vivid royal blue with white stencilled markings; it hardly looked like the sort of vehicle one would choose for a night of illicit adventures in the bush, but I did not want the cumbersome Bentley. The Tulip, small and light, not too noisy, would have to do.
Gordon was ready when I arrived. His dogs went through their usual deafening and enthusiastic routine, even as he herded them into a back room while we talked about our plans for the evening. There was, I thought, still something wrong about them, but in all the bustle and noise I could not place it. Over coffee hot enough to scald my palate, we studied the maps Gordon had managed to procure from the offices of the Shire of Pelican River. He pointed with his little finger. “The two properties are here, and here.”
“Right,” I agreed, noting that the abandoned Cahill property was located about one and one-quarter miles from the spot where Julia had had her disastrous turn the other night, along Country Road Three, a one-lane gravel strip in dire need of repair. The Hawkins property was two miles outside town, on Hawkins Road, another narrow strip, named after the family whose property brought about the need for the road. The Hawkins property was draped over the side of a broad, low hill and surrounding flat pasture land. The Cahill property, on the other hand, occupied a modest allotment of perhaps one hundred and twenty acres of what once would have been ideal grazing land. Now it was probably a hundred and twenty acres of waist-high weeds. The buildings were clustered together near the centre, at the end of a driveway perhaps one hundred and fifty yards long. Gordon and I had agreed that any cellars would be under the kitchens o
f the main homesteads. Unfortunately, he had not been able to obtain copies of either house’s plans. Gordon shrugged and muttered something about imperfect intelligence, and also said, chewing on a nail, “We should be prepared for the possibility that this cellar is somewhere else on the property, too.”
“I was already thinking along those lines,” I said. “Which do you want to look at first?” I knew which I wanted to look at first, particularly if it involved sneaking around kitchens. That rather raised some delicate problems. I could not see how we could enter the Hawkins kitchen without giving the game away and winding up arrested. Even though Gordon insisted that his shadow glamour would work wonders, the entire prospect daunted me. He had said, for instance, that certain animals could see through it. I’d asked him if that included guard dogs, and he’d allowed, rubbing his chin, that guard dogs might be a problem.
Gordon said, leaning down over the maps, and pointing, “I say we try the Hawkinses first.”
“I disagree!”
He said, looking up at me, “Look, it’s late. They’re farmers. They’ll have already turned in for the night. And besides, this is the one you really don’t want to visit, the one you’re most nervous about, so I say we get it over with quickly and move on to the other one.”
He had a point, but I didn’t like it. “And if they catch us?”
“They won’t catch us, Ruth.” He seemed eerily calm and confident about this.
“I expect their dogs will go spare!”
“I know about dogs. We’ll be fine.”
“What if their dogs smell your dogs on your clothes?”
“They’ll be distracted.”
“You’re very sure of that?”
“I’m sure.”
I did not like it one bit. All I could think of was my future career in prison for breaking and entering. The chance that we might, in fact, locate the summoner’s circle of power, and gain an advantage over him was there in my mind, but it was not uppermost, where perhaps it should have been. I had always, at least in my youth, been the kind of girl who liked to take risks, particularly if it alarmed or even offended the stuffy establishment types whom my parents were always trying to get me to impress, and whom I could not have found more loathsome. I still shudder at the memory of the time, not long after I had graduated from Cambridge, when Father took me aside one afternoon and explained how he had found me “a suitable young man”. The suitable young man in question was the vicar Charles Fawley, all of forty-four years old at that point, who emitted noxious odours, and who “would be an excellent steadying influence” on me. I had no doubt at least some of my “difficulties” with organised religion, and men like Father William here in Pelican River, stemmed from the explosion of horror I experienced on that day, and which only grew stronger and more intense the longer Vicar Fawley stayed in my orbit.
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