Читать книгу Mystery Lady - Paul Magrs - Страница 7

We were perhaps halfway on our journey to London and Timothy was slumped against the window, fast asleep, which meant that I could speak openly with my assistant.

‘Oh, look how sweet he looks,’ Cassie sighed. ‘All rumpled in his blue velvet, like a little lord. And he’s still got glitter in his hair from last night, too…’

‘Never mind him,’ I heard myself turn rather snappish. ‘What was going on, that was so sinister Cassie?’

Cassandra focused her wits and described the man of gaunt, almost cadaverous aspect in the pin stripe suit. He had been staring rather alarmingly at the large, tweedy women as she worked on her manuscript. The lady seemed to be vaguely aware of his presence, but was determinedly paying him no heed. She was being staunch and brave, Cassie thought, because she couldn’t have been unaware of the waves of sheer evilness that the man was giving off.

‘Did he say anything to her?’

‘Not a word, while I was there. He just made one horrible, long hissing noise at her, like a coiled snake. And his hand lashed out like a claw to touch the manuscript on her lap. Well, then she suddenly came to life, and snatched that pile of papers away from him, clutching it to her huge bosom. She stared at the man and he hissed again.’

‘All a bit peculiar,’ I mused.

‘He was definitely up to no good,’ Cassandra said decisively. She might be dithery sometimes, but I’ve come to trust her instincts.

‘And then you’ll never guess what happened next, Dodie.’

‘Go on.’

‘The rather large lady set her parcel of papers aside and suddenly reached out with both hands, taking the skinny man by surprise. He had time to squawk once before she seized him. And proceeded to throttle him, and pummel him, and squash him face-first into her massive bosom.’

‘What?!’

‘She was up on her feet and stamping on him. She yanked his arms and legs around like she was going to pull them off. By the end of it he was sobbing and begging for mercy…’

I stared at her, aghast. She continued.

‘Whatever that manuscript was, she was prepared to defend it with her life. The man wriggled and fought to escape, but then suddenly he stopped struggling. He turned his head and he looked me right in the eye. He licked those liverish lips with a bright red tongue. His eyes boggled at me horribly. And suddenly I was really scared. I had to get out of there. And so I dashed out and I hurried straight back here. I don’t know whether he escaped or she killed him and chucked him out of the moving window.’

She was tired now from having re-enacted the scene. ‘Oh, he deserved everything he got I’m sure. He’d been carrying on in such a sinister manner towards her. I’m glad the old dear fettled him, but still… it did make me feel a bit peculiar… Dodie, do you think we should tell the conductor or something?’’

‘I’m sure if it’s anything important, we’ll read about it in the papers tomorrow,’ I mused. Sometimes Cassie had a habit of exaggerating things. She’d probably witnessed a far less melodramatic scene than the one she described…

Now she was back to staring at Timmy as he dozed, his hairdo flattened against the window.

‘Did he tell you any more about the show he’s appearing in tomorrow night?’

I flicked through the Listener Magazine. ‘Oh, a little. It sounds very silly. A panel game show or something. He’s replacing a famous puppeteer, I believe and has to perform a magic trick of some kind.’

‘He’s getting really famous,’ Cassie simpered. ‘This is at BBC Television Centre, is it?’

‘We can go along and be in the audience, if we like.’

She shivered. ‘Ooh, I’d love to. I loved being on ‘Smashing Tunes’, didn’t you? The only thing wrong with it was that it went out live. We never had time run home and watch ourselves on the box.’

‘I didn’t really want to watch myself dancing,’ I laughed.

‘But you looked fabulous!’ she assured me.

‘Oh, probably,’ I tell her. ‘But I bet I looked a right ‘nana, bopping away like that. Now, let me have half an hour’s peace while I write in my journal. I’ve not had a chance to scribble anything down today, and if I don’t, I shall have an awful headache later…’

It was only a couple of hours later we were in a taxi zooming our way towards Chelsea and the fancy little mews flat Timothy had recently bought himself. Two bedrooms and rooms painted in chocolate, salmon and midnight blue. Antiques bought by the quarter tonne, tastefully arranged by a designer person he’d hired. Instant taste and splendor. I was impressed.

He hurriedly changed into a cable knit polo neck in tangerine wool with mustard yellow slacks and popped open a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.

‘I’m not drinking tonight,’ Cassandra shrugged. ‘I’m working, really.’

Oh, the bubbles were silvery and wonderful. ‘Are you sure I’m not cramping your style, staying in your spare room?’ I asked him. ‘I could easily get a hotel?’

‘Are you kidding?’ he laughed. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you were in the capital and you didn’t come to stay with me. I get so lonely when you’re not near to tease and humiliate me, Dodie Golightly.’

‘I don’t do anything of the sort!’ I gasped. ‘I just keep you on the straight and narrow, and prevent your head from getting too big.’

‘Cheers!’ He made us both drink to that.

Cassandra drifted about the flat mulishly, looking a bit put out.

‘I have dinner plans for this evening,’ Timothy announced. ‘For both of us. My treat.’

My tummy rumbled at the very thought. All we’d had on the train was a corned beef sandwich.

He rushed to the phone in the hallway to book us a table. Cassie sloped over and whispered at me: ‘Good job I hardly eat anything at all, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, Cassie. You can come with us. Timmy won’t… er… mind.’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’d be very welcome. Also, I’ve just been having a poke around in his bedroom…’

‘What? You shouldn’t!’

‘And guess what I found on his bedside table?’

‘I shudder to think. Cassandra, you must really control this rampant inquisitiveness of yours…’

‘It was a small velveteen padded box. The kind that rings are kept in.’

I put down my glass and stared at her very hard. ‘No!’

‘I had a peek inside. Very fancy. Lots of carats. Lots of sparkle.’

‘Oh, God, no!’ I gave a tiny, silent scream.

‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about.’

‘Yes, you do,’ I snapped. ‘You know he’s not the one for me. Oh crikey. Do you think he’s going to bring the ring to dinner tonight?’

‘Well,’ said Cassie heavily. ‘I don’t think he’s taking it to Mordor, put it that way.’

‘Cassie, what should I do?’

‘Let him down gently. And then push him in my direction. Let him see that I even exist.’ She sighed hopelessly. ‘But mostly – try not to break the poor lad’s heart. He’s not as tough and brash as he likes to seem.’

Oh, Timothy, I think, as he returned from making our reservation, looking all keen and eager in his tangerine sweater. I’ve known you so long and we’ve been good friends nearly all of our lives. Why start messing about now with something as dull and conventional as the idea of getting hitched?

Of course Cassandra came with us to the restaurant.

Knightsbridge. French. A tiny bistro twinkling with lights and ersatz Left Bank charm. There was even an old gent playing the accordion. Onions and bushels of herbs hanging from the ceilings. Cassandra wasn’t impressed. For some reason she had an aversion to haute cuisine. She couldn’t remember why, but I could. I wasn’t about to enlighten her.

‘It just makes me shudder,’ she said. ‘Like a goose stepped on my grave… A horribly fattened goose.’

‘Sit with us,’ I whispered to her. ‘Maybe it’ll stop Timmy trying out any of the sexy stuff.’

She joined me on the banquette opposite Timothy. He’d booked a table big enough for four, though goodness knows why. Maybe he wanted space enough around us so that no-one would overhear his proposal, I suddenly thought in horror.

The candlelight was so beautiful. It made us feel like we really were sitting in Paris, in a tiny little bistro, far away from all our worries and cares.

More bubbly, more chatter.

Timothy, resplendent in a suit swirling with Bridget Riley designs, expounded on his agent’s ideas for his future career. It all sounded rather exhausting and ambitious to me.

Despite the threat of a possibly imminent proposition I was feeling quite relaxed.

‘You just watch,’ Cassandra muttered in my ear as I cracked the glaze on my crème brulee. ‘When he gets back from having a word with the manager, it’ll be lovey-dovey time. You’ll see.’

I glared at her.

But then I saw that her eyes had widened in surprise. ‘Oh!’ she gasped. ‘Look who’s just come in!’

There was a breath of frosty October air sweeping into the bistro just then as the door slammed shut behind a rather bulky lady in a hat and tweed cape. She was staring with great urgency into the candlelit gloom.

‘Who is it?’ I asked Cassandra.

‘It’s the lady from the train,’ she frowned. ‘And look! For some reason, she’s heading towards us!’

Helen Spedding was an expert with an eye like an eagle. She was a freelance copyeditor now, but once she had been a spy she told us. She’d been in France during the war working with the women of the Resistance and she’d got herself into and back out of some dreadful scrapes.

‘Does that surprise you, my dears?’ she said now, guffawing loudly over the cognac the management had brought her. She studied both Timothy and I intently as she sat at our table, hugging a brown paper parcel to her vast bosom.

Timothy looked piqued that she’d barreled into our private bubble and interrupted our tete-a-tete. I was quite relieved, to be honest. I was glad we had a distraction before he could start whipping out any unwarranted bits of jewellery.

‘I’ve had some wonderful adventures in my time,’ the old lady sighed, dipping an elegant finger into the crème anglaise left in Tim’s dessert dish. ‘I know you look at me now and see a bumbling old trout, but my point is, I’m not easily scared. It’s not very easy for anyone to put the wind up me.’

‘I can imagine,’ said Timothy.

She beamed at him. ‘Oh, I saw your television debut last night, young man. Very good. But you needn’t shout so much. You tend to sound slightly shrill when excited.’

Tim blushed. ‘You watch ‘Smashing Tunes’, Miss Spedding?’

‘I like to keep up with the happening sounds,’ she said gruffly. ‘I’m very with-it, you know. I go to a great many underground dancing and drinking clubs at the weekend and one has to know all the correct groovy moves.’

My best friend looked at Helen Spedding then raised his eyebrows at me. I, however, was most impressed by her. I thought she cut a very dashing figure in her tweed cape and her tiny, feathered hat. Her ancient face was like a crinkled map of all the many countries she’d had adventures in.

I cut in: ‘Miss Spedding, you haven’t explained why you urgently need to speak to us this evening.’

‘Oh yes, my dear. I am so sorry for wedging myself into your romantic meal…’

‘It isn’t romantic,’ I assured her.

‘Well,’ she went on. ‘The fact is, I have been following you for a little while. All the way from Manchester, in fact. I was on the same train as you and your companion here this afternoon.’

I nodded at this. ‘I know that,’ I told her .

‘Ah yes,’ said Helen, draining her cognac and gesturing for more by waving the heavy balloon glass above her head. ‘I was attacked! In First Class! Can you imagine it? What the devil ever happened to standards, eh? And no guard came to check what was going on. All the muffled thuds and crashes and screams of pain. No one popped their head round to see that I was okay!’

‘Who attacked you?’ I asked.

‘An enemy agent,’ she said mysteriously. ‘A skinny malinky kind of fella who thought he could put the willies up me. Well, I’ve dealt with worse than him before. I soon sent him packing. But the point is – whoever sent him won’t stop there. There’ll be others. And worse. And it isn’t just me they’ll be after.’

By now Timothy was looking cross. No one had paid him any attention for ages and he couldn’t quite follow what this old dear was telling us. ‘Look, what is all this? It’s like the plot from some kind of silly thriller…’

Helen Spedding shot him a glance. ‘I do hope you’re not going to be an idiot, Mr Bold. You seemed rather more intelligent on the tellybox, somehow…’

‘Tim will be all right,’ I told her quickly. ‘But explain to me, please. Why was this man attacking you? What was he after?’

Her face became dark and cunning. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ She glanced down at her hefty lap and the parcel still resting there. ‘It was this. This parcel contains a manuscript. I’ve been copy-editing it in a secret location for the past fortnight. When I took this job on for Mephistopheles and Company I never realized that it would end up with me being in fear for my life.’

I gasped. Next to me, in the shadowy light of the bistro, Cassandra gasped too.

I was filled with an amazing sense of foreboding. I was feeling excited, too, as we all watched Miss Spedding clear a little space on our tablecloth and thump the parcel down. With slightly trembling hands, she untied the string and opened up the brown paper to reveal a thick wodge of typescript held together by rubber bands.

THE HORRIBLE BOOK OF TERROR

VOLUME 27

Edited by Fox Soames

‘I knew it,’ I breathed. ‘Somehow I just knew it.’

‘This book,’ said Helen Spedding in a lower, more tremulous voice. ‘Somehow this book has… enemies. How can a book have enemies..? But it does. And it isn’t even a book yet. It’s not printed. It’s not even fully assembled yet. It’s just a pile of paper with my corrections in blue pencil. This is the only copy of the whole book as yet in existence. I am about to deliver it tomorrow, to the offices of Mephistopheles and Company in Bloomsbury.’

The old lady was trembling more violently now, as the manager brought her more brandy and she downed it in two thirsty slurps.

She was much more frightened than she wanted to appear.

‘Somebody has… a grudge against this book,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure why. I have read the whole thing. All the stories. And yes… they are horrible. They are ghastly beyond belief. They might even be said to flirt with dark ideas and notions of awfulness… but who would go so far as to attack a book..?’

Timothy and I glanced at each other. His eyes were asking me what on earth I was doing, getting mixed in with a bunch like this. For myself I was thrilled. This was just the kind of stuff I loved.

Miss Spedding was becoming more and more depleted by the minute. Her initial robust presence had dwindled into a mere shadow of what she was. I could see I needed to take charge.

‘Look here, where are you living?’ I asked.

‘A little North Yorkshire village called Ramificashun, just south of Pickering. I’ve been hiding out there, doing my copy editing and living at my sister Edna’s cottage. But that’s been spooky enough, to be honest. They’ve been having some funny do’s there with sudden deaths and unexplained whatsits, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it wasn’t connected to this business of the book.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well. Why don’t you go straight back there, as soon as you can? And why don’t I take this manuscript off your hands? I could deliver it to the offices of Mephistopheles and Company myself, tomorrow, when I go for my meeting with the Chief Editor. I’m sure it’s no skin off his nose who actually brings the thing to his desk.’

Helen Spedding brightened. ‘Oh, well. That would be most kind of you. Not that I’m scared or anything… It’s just…’

I completed her sentence, ‘It’s just you hoped that I might shorten your visit to London for you.’

‘There’s a sleeper train to York leaving in thirty-five minutes. I could make it back for breakfast and see that Edna is safe.’

I took hold of the heavy parcel of manuscript. ‘Miss Spedding, I will guard this with my life and see that it gets to where it needs to.’

‘Bless you, my dear,’ she said. And ordered another brandy.