The Slanted Worlds (5 page)

Summer stood barefoot on the soaking grass. Behind her the boat shriveled. Its flags became cobwebs, its canopy shredded to rags; the four boatmen lifted their arms and flew away, starling-dark, into the stormy sky.

“Oh Venn,” she whispered. “I will destroy your house for this.”

Venn pushed Sarah toward Wharton. “Get back inside. Now.”

She couldn't move. She stood mesmerized, like a mouse before a swooping predator.

Because Summer was transforming.

As they stared, her eyes darkened, widened, her pale dress shivered into feathers. She fragmented, fell to pieces, her fingers curled to talons, her small red mouth warped into the cruel hooked beak of an owl.

“Move!” Venn yelled. He grabbed Sarah, forced her away. “Run!”

The Wood was alive with crawling shadow. Tree-shapes stirred. A cascade of bats clattered up across the moon.

The wind screamed.

Sarah tore her gaze from the dissolving woman and fled, running blind into the darkness, Wharton puffing beside her.

Venn came last. Glancing back she saw he too was looking over his shoulder; between the trees the lakeside was ablaze, as if all the lanterns had flared into a great conflagration. Lightning, swift as a silver dagger, stabbed from the sky.

A branch above her cracked like a pistol shot; leaves and foliage crashed.

Wharton's hand grabbed hers. “This way!”

Flying leaves blinded her. Then, far over the darkened countryside, thunder came, a low, angry, incredibly sinister rumble that seemed to shake the Wood and the landscape even to the horizon.

“She'll kill us,” she gasped.

A snort behind her. She realized it was Venn's bitter laugh. “Not yet.”

They floundered through the undergrowth and out onto the black lawns. As suddenly as if all its switches had been pushed at once, the Abbey burst into light, windows blazing, its door wide open, a small figure in a white lab coat hovering anxiously on the threshold.

Even as Sarah ran for the steps, the rain crashed down, a deluge that soaked her in seconds, plastered her hair flat, streamed in her eyes and down her neck.

She scrambled up the wet stones, her hand slipping from Wharton's, and stumbled into the black-and-white tiled hall.

Breathless, she crouched on the floor.

Wharton was bent double, gasping. Venn crashed in last; the wind gave a wild screech, snatched the door from his grip and slammed it in his face. Breathing hard, he shot home the bolts, top and bottom.

“Do your worst, Summer!” he yelled.

Outside, like a scornful answer, the thunder roared again.

Piers, wearing a wine-red waistcoat under his lab coat, stood gripping his hands together. Venn turned on him. “Where were you? What sort of coward are you?”

“She terrifies me.” Piers shrugged. “Sorry. Sorry. But there was no way . . .”

“Shut up.” Venn swung on Sarah. “If you weren't telling me the truth . . . If I've just lost my only chance . . .”

“Relax.” She stood, wearily, pushing her wet hair back. “Like I told you, we don't need her. I've got Dee's page. Well, photos of it.”

“And,” a low voice said from behind them, “you've got me.”

Gideon sat, knees up on the stairs. He wore the green patchwork clothes of the Shee, and his eyes glinted with their alien brightness. But his ivory-pale skin was human, and his voice was full of scorn.

“If you want Jake found, let me find him. I'll go into the Summerland for you. And out the other side, into wherever he is.”

Venn stared at him, intent. “If Summer knew, she'd destroy you.”

Gideon looked at Sarah. “Let her. It would be a relief.”

“What would?” she asked.

He shrugged and leaned back, and she saw his bitterness was so deep now it burned him.

“Death,” he said.

Tonight I try again. I have the table set out, and the cards, and the board. I have the mysteries of the tarot and the scrying ball. I have my father's black mirror propped near the window.

One of these things must have engendered the power, the thrilling, quivering power. After all these years, to see a spirit! Right there, Jane, in my room!

No one will laugh at me now. The ladies of the League for Psychic Research will no longer titter into their handkerchiefs. Oh my dear Jane, my spirit guide even told me his name!

It is David!

Letter of Alicia Harcourt Symmes to Jane Hartfield

“S
IT DOWN.”

The interview room held one chair, a stool, a table.

Jake perched warily on the stool.

The night in the cells had been a living hell of noise, fear, and hunger. He was sore from the straw mattress, itching from fleas, and had a bloody lip from stupidly yelling at a drunk to be quiet.

All he wanted was some hot food and a bed.

Instead he had to keep his wits alert.

Inspector Allenby sat on the chair, a lean man in his neat gray suit. He said nothing. Instead, in an ominous silence, he took out from his pocket the small wallet they had found on Jake when they searched him. Opening it, he laid the contents out deliberately, one by one, on the table.

Jake watched, trying to look unconcerned.

A comb. Wooden, not plastic.

A purse of money. Safely pre-decimal.

The med kit. Tablets, a small glass syringe.

“What are these?” Allenby's nicotined fingers separated the painkillers and antibiotics.

Jake shrugged. “My aunt's prescription. Some stuff for her heart.”

“I see. And this?” Allenby looked up.

The gun.

Jake's heart sank.

It was a lady's tiny pearl-handled pistol from about the 1850s. Piers had found it somewhere in the Abbey's storerooms, brought it down, cleaned it, loaded it. It looked ridiculous but it was deadly, because Wharton had insisted on him bringing a weapon. Jake sat back, silently cursing Wharton to hell.

“Just an antique.”

“Illegal.”

Jake shrugged. “There's a war on. My aunt wanted it. In case.”

“In case of what? Nazi parachutists breaking into her house?”

“I don't know! The blackout. Burglars. Whatever. She was old . . . nervous. She got scared.”

Allenby took out a cigarette and lit it. Shaking the match out, he said, “Tell me about your . . . aunt.”

Jake didn't miss the hesitation. With a feeling he was digging himself into a deeper hole, he dragged up the snippets of information he had glimpsed in the suitcase of documents.

“Well, her name is . . . was Alicia Harcourt Symmes. She lived . . .”

“I know where she lived. I also know she was an elderly woman of seventy-two and unmarried and an only child. What I don't know is how she suddenly acquired a loving nephew.”

Jake was silent.

Allenby leaned forward, curious. “In fact, you really puzzle me, Jake. There's something . . . foreign about you. Something alien. And here we are in the middle of a war.”

He slid the cell phone across the table. “What is this?”

Jake was sweating. “I don't know. I found it.”

“Found it?”

“On a bomb site.”

“Remarkably undamaged. What is it made of?”

“Bakelite?”

“What does it do?”

He kept his voice light. “Absolutely nothing, as far as I can see.” Which was perfectly true.

Allenby sat back. He stared at the phone, down where it lay on the table between them. Tapping the cigarette on an ashtray full of butts, he said, “Shall I tell you what I think? Shall I cut to the chase?”

Jake shrugged. It was better to say nothing at all.

“We know what Alicia Symmes was. To all the neighborhood she seemed a dotty old lady who read tea leaves and held séances. Eccentric, well-off, harmless. Middle England in person. Lace handkerchiefs, tea with the vicar, no one you would ever suspect of anything. And yet we had a tip-off that she was the spider in the heart of a spy ring that maybe goes all the way up to the German Secret Police—to the SS itself.”

Jake stared. He felt a terrible cold chill down his spine. “Now wait a minute . . .”

“Three days ago she realized we were onto her. One of our watchers got too close, maybe. Maybe the spirits told her. She packed a suitcase and went to St. Pancras. We were following, all ready to close in. Maybe she knew that too, because she didn't get on any train. She put the suitcase in the left luggage office and then went and had a cup of tea at the station buffet. She chatted, knitted, read the newspapers. The bloody infuriating old biddy wasted a whole afternoon of my men's time. And then she went home for tea.”

Amused, he stubbed the cigarette out. “I have to say I had a sneaking admiration for her.”

Jake shook his head. “I don't get it. You're the police. Why not get the suitcase out . . .”

“Oh, we did. We examined everything in there.”

“So you saw. It's just family stuff. Papers. A roll of film . . .”

Allenby shook his head. “The film is too fragile to be playable. Those papers must be in some sort of code. Names, dates, operations. Maybe she wasn't doing anything herself. But she was the center, the contact. We've known for some time that important information was being passed, from the offices of the Cabinet. So we slipped in some disinformation.”

“What?”

“False stuff. Just to see. It got through all right. So we checked for any connections between the ten people who had known of it—ministers, secretaries. Their wives. Turns out six of their wives regularly attended dear old Alicia's séances.” He smiled, bleak. “What better cover? We posted watchers. We found that all sorts of people came to her house every week: civil servants, army wives, members of Parliament. What messages were passed, what information changed hands there, under the tilting table, in the fake voices of spirits?” He laughed. “She was a charlatan, they all are. But worse, she was a traitor.”

Jake shook his head, then stood and paced restlessly to the window. “You don't know that. It could have been anyone there. My aunt was just an old woman who thought she could talk to the dead.”

“You believe that?”

Jake remembered the word
from the rubble.
David
. “Of course not. But she did.”

“No. She was a deliberate con artist. She took money from gullible people—well, I don't blame her for that. But treason is another matter.”

He was watching Jake with professional calm. When he said, “Sit back down,” his authority was complete.

Jake frowned. And sat.

“We searched the suitcase. Then we put it back. We were waiting for you to collect it.”

“Me?”

“Someone. Her contact.”

“Don't be ridiculous . . .”

“You had the ticket. You knew the code name.”

“She gave me the ticket! Passed it to me, through the rubble, in the air raid.”

“You said she was your aunt.”

Jake thought fast, cursing his own stupidity. “All right. All right, you want the truth? I'll give you the truth. I lied. She wasn't my aunt. I'd never met the woman. I just chanced along the street, right? And this ARP warden made me help him. We tried to dig her out, but there was no way. She was trapped, she knew she was dying. So she gave it to me—that ticket.” He rubbed his dirty face with a dirtier hand. “I was going to throw it away. But then I thought . . . there might be something valuable. Not that I'm a thief . . . I was . . . just curious.”

Was he saying too much? He had to sound scared and confused, as if he was breaking down. After all, it was pretty much the truth.

Allenby sat back. His brown eyes studied Jake with an inscrutable stare.

“Not so cocky now, are we.”

Jake shrugged. “It was stupid. I'm sorry.”

“So you never met her?”

“No.”

“Never even heard of her.”

“Before today, no. I swear.”

Allenby put his fingertips together and gazed at his yellow-stained nails.

“I want to believe you.”

That was unexpected. Jake sat up.

“Can I go then? You've got no reason to keep me here. I've got rights.”

“So you keep telling me. But this is war, Jake. Life and death, for millions of people. And you need to explain something to me.”

“What? I don't . . .”

“You need to explain why, when she left the suitcase, three days ago, dear old batty Alicia said to the office-boy
My nephew will call for this. His name is Jake Wilde.
”

Oh God.

Jake stared.

And understanding crashed through him like the bomb through the houses.

He must already have met her—no,
he would meet her.
In his future, and her past. That's how she knew his name, who he was, that he would be there.

“So you see,” Allenby said calmly, taking out another cigarette, “that you are in it up to your neck, Mr. Jake Wilde. Of course, you could come clean. Tell us who you work for, how they get the information out, where the transmitter is. Spill the beans on the whole network. I'd advise you to do it, because if you don't, our orders are to hand you over to the military. They have a few unpleasant little methods to get their information. And that's before they hang you.”

Jake rubbed a hand over his face and closed his eyes. A click on the desk made him open them quickly—

The bracelet lay there.

“Look, Jake. I like you. Talk to me.” Allenby put the cigarette down and pulled his chair closer with a scrape along the floor. Suddenly he was animated, his lean face alight. “This bracelet. Not the sort a thing a lad like you should have. Silver. Heavy. Old. And then, these.”

He fished out a few coins from the purse and slid them over.

Jake stared at them. A shilling, a sixpenny piece. Piers had made sure they were all safely . . .

He closed his eyes again . . .
Oh hell hell hell.
Pre-1960!

The sixpence, close to his hand, was dated 1957. The young Queen Elizabeth's face looked at him sideways.

“Where do you come from, Jake?” Allenby tapped the coin. “This is the one thing I don't understand. They sent you out all prepared, but with coins dated fourteen years in the future. That's one big mistake. It's almost as if . . .”

A rap on the door interrupted him. He frowned, scraped the chair back, and went over. Jake saw the burly sergeant framed in the doorway, murmuring, sounding anxious. Allenby glanced over. Then they both went out.

Jake leaned back and groaned aloud. How on God's earth had he gotten into a mess like this?

He couldn't sit still; he got up and slammed around the bare brick walls in fury.

It wasn't like the interview rooms on police TV shows—no two-way mirror, no recording device, no responsible adult. But surely he must be entitled to a solicitor? Or had the war changed all that too?

Hang.

That was the word that already was choking him. Sticking in his throat. For a moment he couldn't swallow, coughed in stupid panic.

Get a grip.

Get . . .

He turned, instantly. The bracelet lay on the table. He picked it up and shoved it on his wrist, clicking it shut and pushing it well up under his sleeve. They'd find out, but . . .

Voices.

He jumped back, stood by the chair.

The door slammed open; Allenby came in with the sergeant behind him. They both looked fraught.

“Sorry, Jake. Too late. The military police are here.” Jake backed away. “What?”

“They're taking you now. Nothing I can do about it, I'm afraid. Sergeant!”

The big man tugged a pair of steel handcuffs from his pocket. “Come on, son.”

“No way!” Jake backed against the wall. He balled his fists.

“Forget it laddy, I've cuffed more prisoners than you've had hot dinners. You wouldn't know what hit you, and I won't even break sweat.”

Jake felt the damp bricks at his back. He flung a despairing look at Allenby. “You can't let them take me like this.”

“Nothing I can do about it.”

“I'll talk. I'll tell you everything. The whole thing. But I won't talk to them. No one else. Just you.”

The sergeant stopped.

He looked at Allenby. Quietly the inspector said, “You might just be bluffing.”

Jake forced himself to stand up straight. He unrolled his fists and spread his hands wide. “Let me go and you'll never know. I'll make a deal. Don't let them take me, and I'll spill.”

Allenby's scrutiny was intense. “If you try . . .”

“I won't try anything. What can I do?” He stepped forward. “I'm trapped and I know it. I'll give you the biggest spy network in this country. The whole thing. Names, dates, sabotage plans. On a plate.”

They looked at each other.

Silent, Jake prayed. Surely he couldn't resist.

Then Allenby shrugged. “All right. This may cost me some groveling. Sergeant, take him to the holding cell. Get this stuff locked up. No one to know about the suitcase but us, understand.”

As he spoke, a distant drone rose up through the walls and roof, a hollow whine that made Jake stare until he realized it was an air-raid siren.

“Oh Gawd. Here the beggars come again,” the sergeant muttered.

“Get him downstairs.” Allenby hurried out.

“No cuffs,” Jake said.

“You think something of yourself, don't you.” The sergeant sucked his teeth. “I could take you blindfolded.”

Jake was hauled up and shoved out into the dingy corridor, down damp stone steps, down and down past a few guttering lamps. Outside, the sirens stopped abruptly. There was a moment of almost breathless silence. Then, far off, a low pounding.