The Doorkeepers Read online

  They walked away from the newsstand, past the half-timbered frontage of The Kings Head pub, and the Wig & Pen Club. The traffic noise was so loud that they could hardly hear each other speak. On the opposite side of the road stood the Law Courts, with their wide Gothic arch and their complicated spires. As far as Josh could see, they were the same as the Law Courts in “real” London. But as they walked past, a flood of people came hurrying out, almost as if they had been cued by a movie director, all shouting at each other. Men in trilby hats and long heavy coats; women in a whole variety of hats, with ostrich feathers and veils and trailing ribbons.

  A pale-faced woman in an ice-blue suit stood in the center of the crowd, and dozens of photographers clustered around her, taking pictures. They had old-fashioned flashbulbs, which Josh could hear popping, even over the traffic. One man held a heavy cine-camera on his shoulder, while his companion carried a tape recorder the size of a suitcase, and brandished an enormous black microphone.

  “We must have traveled back in time,” said Josh. “Look at this place … steam trains, autogiros, disposable flashbulbs, everybody wearing hats. This is more like the 1930s or thereabouts.”

  A stray newspaper tumbled across the sidewalk in front of him. He tried to step on it, missed, but then he stepped on it again and caught it, and picked it up. At the top of the page a large headline announced PROTECTOR GREETS PRESIDENT. There was a photograph of a black-suited man with a deathly-white face shaking hands with a tall gray-suited man with bouffant hair. In the background there was a gleaming railroad car and a station sign saying Naseby.

  But above the headline was the date March 17, 2001.

  “Look at this, we’re still in today, leastways as far as the date is concerned. We’re still in the same place, too, pretty much. But everything’s so out of date. Like the past seventy years never happened.”

  Nancy was reading the crumpled-up newspaper. “Listen to this: ‘Lord Pearey of Richmond Forest died at the weekend at the age of thirty-four. He contracted tuberculosis on a visit to Vienna late last year and failed to respond to a convalescence in the Scottish Highlands. His personal physician, Dr John Woollcot, described him as a brilliant young man, full of glittering promise, and called for renewed Government efforts to find a chemotherapeutic cure for tuberculosis as a matter of the gravest urgency.’”

  “And look at the headline: KING’S EVIL TAKES PEER. That’s a pretty quaint way of describing TB, wouldn’t you say?”

  Josh stopped on the corner of Arundel Street and looked around. He was trying to imagine what Julia was looking for, when she came here. It was noisy and it was smelly and it was old-fashioned but it must have appealed to her for some reason.

  “You’re thinking of Julia,” said Nancy.

  Josh nodded. “She always did have a quirky sense of humor. Do you know something, when she was a little kid, she used to pretend that she was a puppet and that she was made out of wood, and I had to tie string to her wrists and the bow on top of her head, to make her dance.”

  He suddenly pictured Julia’s appearance at Ella’s séance, her feet wildly pedaling frantically in the air. Nancy caught the sudden look of distress on his face and squeezed his hand.

  They crossed over the Strand and began to walk westward toward Trafalgar Square, past dark, sour-smelling wine bars and men’s outfitters with faded tropical suits and topis in the window. The sidewalks here weren’t quite as crowded as Fleet Street, but everybody seemed to be walking very fast, and Josh had several irritating collisions with people who refused to deviate from their chosen path.

  He found the photographic grayness of the sky more and more oppressive. It was like walking through a 1950s newsreel. The air was so polluted that he had to keep clearing his throat with a sharp, repetitious cough, and he was beginning to develop a headache.

  He was struck by how dirty everything was. The “real” London was a grimy city, but this London was even worse. Very few passers-by looked as if they bathed very often. He saw clerks with soiled white collars and pimples and girls with greasy hair pinned up with criss-cross patterns of grips. Whenever they were jostled in tight with a knot of people, Josh could smell sweat and stale tobacco and a cheap, distinctive perfume like lily-of-the-valley. And almost everybody seemed to be smoking. There was no gum on the sidewalks, but the gutters overflowed with cigarette butts.

  A third of the way down the Strand they found a red telephone booth, and there were two fat well-thumbed directories hanging inside it. They squashed themselves side by side into the booth and Josh hefted up one of the directories and searched for Wheatstone Electrics. Nancy peered in the mirror and said, “I don’t look any different. But I feel different.”

  “Maybe you’re suffering from door lag.”

  “Maybe I’m frightened I’m never going to get back home again.”

  “Here it is,” said Josh at last, and he was almost sorry that he had found it. “Wheatstone Electrics, Great West Road, Brentford. Julia must have been here.”

  “Why don’t you see if Julia’s listed? She was here for ten months, wasn’t she? She might have installed a phone.”

  Josh thumbed through residential numbers, under Winward, but there was nothing there. Then he looked up Marmion, of Kaiser Gardens, Lavender Hill, and he found her almost immediately. “She’s here, look. LA Vender Hill 3223. But we don’t have any money to call her.”

  “We could try calling collect.”

  Josh lifted the receiver and dialed 0 for the operator.

  “Number please.”

  “I want to place a collect call to LA Vender Hill 3223.”

  “You mean a reverse charge call? Who shall I say is calling?” The operator had such a clipped accent she pronounced it “kulling”.

  “Mr Josh Winward. No, no – tell them it’s Julia’s brother.”

  “Hold the line, please.”

  He waited while the phone rang, and rang. Eventually, he heard a quavery woman’s voice say, “’Ullo? ’Oo is it?”

  “Is that LA Vender Hill 3223? I have Julia’s brother on the line. Will you accept the charges?”

  “Will I what?”

  “The caller is asking you to pay for the call.”

  “’Oo did you say it was?”

  Josh broke in and said, “Tell her it’s urgent, for Christ’s sake. It’s a matter of life and death.”

  “I can’t pass on any more information, sir. I’m sorry. Otherwise you could have a whole conversation, couldn’t you, and you wouldn’t be paying for it.”

  “Look, I have to speak to this woman. It’s desperately important. My sister’s been murdered, and this is the only way I’m going to find out who did it.”

  “Hold on, kuller.”

  There was a pause, and then the quavery woman’s voice asked, “Did you say Julia’s brother? Yes … all right. I’ll talk to him. Only for a moment, mind. I’m not made of money.”

  Josh said, “Mrs Marmion? Mrs Marguerite Marmion? Yes! This is Josh Winward speaking, I’m Julia Winward’s brother from San Francisco.”

  “You are, are you? And ’oo’s Julia Winward, when she’s at ‘ome?”

  “You don’t know her? I found your address amongst her belongings.”

  “That must’ve been a mistake. I’ve never ’eard of anybody called Julia Winward. I don’t know anybody called Julia.”

  Josh was just about to shout at her, Why did you agree to pay for the call, if you don’t know anybody called Julia?, when it dawned on him what Mrs Marmion was trying to tell him. She must have known Julia – otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to talk to him at all. But she didn’t want to admit it over an open telephone line.

  “So nobody called Julia ever stayed with you?”

  “No. I’ve got a big two-bedroomed flat upstairs in my house. I wouldn’t go renting it out to some chit of a secretary, would I?”

  “I guess you wouldn’t. How long has the flat been empty?”

  “Ten months, just over.”

&nbs
p; “Do you think I could take a look at it?”

  “It’s full of stuff. Nobody’s been round to collect it all yet.”

  “I see. Do you think I could just come down to Lavender Hill and talk to you, then? I’m pretty interested in renting a flat myself.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m afraid. That’s impossible. I really ’ave to go now. Goodbye.”

  Mrs Marmion hung up and Josh was left with a long disengaged tone. He replaced the receiver with a frown.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Nancy. A small man with a bristly moustache was standing outside the phone booth glaring at them impatiently.

  Josh said, “Julia was staying with Mrs Marmion the whole time she was here. Mrs Marmion said that she didn’t … but she knew that Julia was a secretary. I think she was saying the opposite of everything that was true.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Maybe she suspected that her line was tapped. Maybe she’s frightened. She said the flat was full of stuff, but I think she meant that somebody had been round to clear away all of Julia’s belongings. When I asked her if I could go visit her, she said ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible’. But then she said ‘I’m afraid,’ like she was really afraid. And a pause, and then ‘That’s impossible’.”

  “You’re not reading something into this that wasn’t there?”

  “She said she didn’t know anybody called Julia. But if that was true, why did she agree to talk to Julia’s brother?”

  “So what are we going to do now?” asked Nancy.

  “We’re going to go see her, of course.”

  “In Lavender Hill? How? It’s miles away, and we don’t have any parallel-Londonish money.”

  “I don’t know … maybe I could hock my watch.”

  They were still discussing ways to get to Lavender Hill when the man with the bristly moustache rapped a coin very sharply on the window. Josh gave him a wave to show that they were nearly through.

  “I still think we ought to go back and change our clothes and work out a way to pay for things,” said Nancy.

  “Oh, yes? Supposing we do that, and then we can’t find our way back here, ever again?”

  “Josh, this place is real. I can feel it. I can hear it. I can certainly smell it. If it’s real, we can get back to it.”

  “What about candles?”

  “There’s a church on the way back to Star Yard. They must have candles in there.”

  Josh thought for a moment. He knew Nancy was right. They wouldn’t get far without money, or suitable clothes. What would happen tonight, when they needed someplace to stay? And apart from that, he didn’t think it was a good idea for them to look so conspicuous. Whoever had taken all of Julia’s belongings away from her flat at Mrs Marmion’s house obviously didn’t want anybody to discover that Julia had ever been here. And Mrs Marmion was plainly frightened of them.

  The man with the moustache rapped on the window again. Finally he tugged open the door and demanded, “Look here! Are you going to make another phone call or not? Some of us have trains to catch.”

  “Sure, I’m sorry,” said Josh, and they stepped out of the booth and back into the crowds.

  They started to walk back toward Fleet Street. The wind began to rise, and sheets of newspaper blew across the sidewalks, catching against the legs of the passers-by. A speck of grit flew into Nancy’s eye, and they had to stop for a moment while Josh carefully extricated it with the dampened tip of her headscarf.

  They walked as far as Kingsway, jostling their way through the crowds. As they reached the zebra crossing, however, they realized that they were the only people heading eastward, and that everybody else was hurrying west. Not just hurrying – they were walking as fast as they could possibly go without actually breaking into a run.

  Josh stopped again and turned his head. “What the hell’s going on here? What’s the goddamned rush?”

  As they crossed over the road, he looked into the faces of the tide of people coming toward them. They weren’t panicking, but there was a kind of determination on their faces that was even more unsettling than panic. When he was a boy, he had seen an audience trying to escape from a burning movie theater in Santa Cruz, and these people had the same grim look. Me. I have to save me.

  Nancy caught hold of Josh’s hand to prevent herself from being jostled away. “This is so weird,” she said. “Where are all these people going?”

  Josh was buffeted by a large man in a flapping camel-hair overcoat. “Hey – watch it, fellow!” he called, but the man stared at him and hurried on.

  “They definitely know something that we don’t,” said Nancy.

  They reached the wide area of paving in front of the Law Courts. Only a few minutes before it had been crowded with reporters and lawyers and curious bystanders. Now it was almost deserted, except for two barristers who were hurrying into its vaulted interior as fast as they could, with their black gowns flapping.

  The eastbound traffic was still solid, but dozens of people were making their way between the cars and taxis, their briefcases and umbrellas held high, as if they were wading waist-deep through water. Passengers were abandoning buses, laden with shopping bags and briefcases, and joining the throng on the sidewalks.

  “I don’t like this,” said Josh, looking around. “Something has seriously spooked these people. It looks like Godzilla’s arrived in town.”

  He tried to catch a man’s sleeve. The man jerked up his arm, as if he expected Josh to start beating him.

  “Hey!” Josh demanded. “I’m not going to hurt you! Just tell me why everybody’s running!”

  The man fled away without answering, colliding with a young woman pushing a large baby carriage. Josh watched him go, shaking his head. “That’s one terrified dude.”

  “Whatever’s happening, we still have to get back to Star Yard. And we still have to find some candles.”

  They pushed their way through the crowd until they could see the grimy facade of St Osbert’s Church, which fronted directly on to the street. The traffic was still deafening, but as they came nearer, Josh thought he heard a muffled drumming sound, with a sharper rat-a-tat-tat! on top of it that echoed and re-echoed all the way up Fleet Street.

  Nancy reached the church door and twisted the handle. “It’s locked,” she said. “I thought churches were always supposed to be open.”

  Josh gave the handle a hefty tug. The door was definitely locked and bolted, and it was made of studded black oak. There was no possible way of forcing it open.

  “What do we do now?” asked Nancy.

  “I saw a couple of stationery stores around the corner. Maybe they have candles. I don’t know. Maybe we can improvise something out of sealing wax. In any case, I think the best thing we can do is get the hell out of here.”

  They had almost reached the lower end of Chancery Lane. The muffled drumming grew louder and louder, and the rat-tat rhythm was bouncing off the windows all along Fleet Street like hailstones. It was then that they saw what everybody was hurrying away from.

  It was frightening because it was so solemn, and so out of place, like a funeral being held in the street. A procession of men all dressed in black, old-fashioned clothes, cloaks and britches and tall black hats were making their way up Fleet Street, past the Olde Cheshire Cheese pub, led by two dog-handlers with four black dogs between them, straining at their leads. Behind them came six or seven drummers, also dressed in black, with wide triangular black caps that looked like rooks’ beaks. The larger drums were beating a dead-slow march time, poom and poom and poom. The smaller drums were rattling out an aggressive volley of noise that made it almost impossible to think.

  Behind the drummers came a group of ten or eleven men, all wearing tall black hats and black capes that trailed along the sidewalk. They carried drawn swords, which Josh could see glinting in the gray daylight. Their faces looked gray, too, until Josh realized that they were wearing hoods over their heads … hoods with exaggerated black
eyes painted on them.

  “The Hooded Men,” said Josh. “This may be London, 2001, but they still have those Puritan guys patrolling the streets.”

  “Come on, Josh, I think we ought to stay way out of their way.”

  “You’re right. Let’s get back to Star Yard. Maybe we won’t need candles for the trip back.”

  They jogged up a Chancery Lane whose sidewalks were increasingly deserted. A few spots of rain began to fly in the wind. They reached Carey Street and crossed over to Star Yard.

  As they entered it, however, two young men came toward them. One of them was dressed with almost ridiculous elegance in a long gray coat with a black velour collar. The other was much more bulky, with a round brown face that looked half-Burmese.

  Josh took hold of Nancy’s arm and drew her to one side of the yard, so that the two young men could pass them. But the thin young man stopped right beside them and the larger one moved himself in front of them so that they couldn’t go any further.

  “What is this?” said Josh. “A mugging, or what?”

  “Depends what you’ve got to offer, guvnor. We’re always on the lookout for novelties. Especially if they come from over there.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The thin young man leaned forward and looked into Josh’s face so closely that he could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. He was elegant, he was so handsome that he was almost beautiful, but he was a wreck.

  “Jack be quick?” he ventured. “Now do you know what I’m talking about?”

  Twelve

  “What do you want?” asked Josh. “If you’re thinking of mugging us, you’re out of luck. We don’t have any money at all.”

  “You’re a Yank,” said the thin young man, cocking his head on one side like a parrot. “How about that, then? We don’t often get Yanks.”