Читать книгу Mystery Lady - Paul Magrs - Страница 16

I’m so glad to be back in the normal world.

It really felt that for the time we were in that dreadful downstairs flat we were in some kind of other realm, where the rules of everyday life were suspended.

The supernatural. There’s no other explanation for it. And yet Dodie takes it in her stride. I must try to be more like her. I must try to contain the panic that threatens to overcome me as we hurry through Shepherd’s Bush.

I’m relieved that Dodie is so well-spoken and matter-of-fact. The police are called from a phone box on the corner of the next street, and she calmly gives them the basic details. She politely declines to identify herself. She tells them what they need to know and says she is merely a concerned neighbour who has made a shocking discovery.

When she replaces the handset and steps back into the snowy street she clutches her coat collar tight about her throat to keep out the stinging cold.The two of us hurry through snow-laden streets, retracing our steps to the nearest main road. ‘We have to fetch Timothy from Television Centre, once he’s done with this foolish game show of his. Then we can sit down together, as a team, and decide what we must do next. Henry Duke will have to be informed, of course…’

Suddenly I experience one of my rare flashes of inspiration. ‘We have to warn them! All of them! All the authors in the book! If this is a mad person coming after them all…I think we should phone up everyone on the list and tell them…’

Dodie doesn’t look so sure. ‘Would they listen? Would you listen? If someone you didn’t know rang you up and raved about some unseen force coming after you..?’

She has a point. ‘What should we do then, Dodie?’

She thinks hard, just as we turn the corner onto the high street. The mundane sight of glowing shop windows and a queue at a bus stop are so reassuring I could weep. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘I think the first person we need to go and see is Helen Spedding. We need to find out who she really is, if she isn’t a copy editor after all. We need to know how she even managed to get hold of the book… And who scribbled those strange runes on the contents page…’

‘Did you pick up her letter?’ I ask. ‘From the table before we left?’

Dodie looks alarmed. ‘Balls! No! I forgot! We hurried out of there so quickly…’ And then she swears, floridly, just as the bus pulls up at our stop.