The Mysteries (27 page)

Out of the silence, I thought I heard a bell ringing—distant, muffled, as if sounding from another world.

I shivered and tried to ignore it, forcing myself to speak.

“What happened to change your mind?”

He looked puzzled. “How do you mean?”

“You wouldn't help me, before. According to you, she'd made her choice and left you. Now you think she
might
want to come back to you.”

He took a deep breath, nodding. “I've seen her. I mean, ‘seen' her, living with me. I don't know how far ahead it might be, but—there's a baby.”

I could still hear the bell, ringing far away. For a split second I imagined I was back on that Scottish hillside in the dark cold of an October night and that everything since then had been just a dream.

Hugh was looking at me with an odd expression. “Are you going to answer that?”

Belatedly, finally, I recognized my own telephone's ring tone and scrabbled to dig it out of my pocket. “Hello?”

“Ian—oh, Ian—” a woman's voice, American, Texan, tearful; almost unbearably familiar. For one heart-stopping moment I thought it was Jenny.

“I have to talk to you—you have to help me—I'm afraid I'm going crazy!”

“Calm down, Laura. Take a deep breath. You're not crazy. Tell me what's wrong.”

“Polly's dead!” She gulped and fell silent.

“I know.”

“You do?”

“I read her obituary last night, on the Internet. Your friend died in a car crash in Texas in 1995.”

“But I
saw
her! How can she be dead? I know there was an accident; she
told
me she'd been in a terrible accident, it was how she'd lost her leg.”

My eyebrows went up at that. I was certain Laura had never mentioned her friend was a one-legged woman.

“I tried to e-mail her last night and it bounced back. I went to find her phone number—she wasn't listed, but there was one for her sister. When I called her, she told me Polly died years ago—long before Peri disappeared! I didn't believe her—how could I?—after a while she got pissed off and didn't want to talk to me, but she faxed me a copy of the obituary, and a piece from the local paper, and also the phone number of the mortuary, and the crematorium and the public records office if I needed further confirmation.” She broke off. I could hear her breathing raggedly.

“Laura, I'm so sorry. You must be in a state of shock.”

“It gets worse. There's more. Just now—this morning—look, I hate talking into this dinky thing—I'm outside the underground station—can I come see you? I need to talk to you. I'm sorry I fired you. I need your help. I've changed my mind about everything. Everything.”

“I'm in the West End right now. Soho. Just having a talk with Hugh Bell-Rivers. Why don't you meet us for breakfast?” I glanced at Hugh as I said this, but he wasn't paying attention. His eyes were fixed on the other side of the square. I followed the direction of his gaze, toward Number 23, but there was nothing going on.

“Soho? Where?”

I suggested an American-style diner, which she knew, and it was agreed.

Putting the phone away I raised my voice to get Hugh's attention. “What's so interesting?”

“I just saw someone go into the basement of Number 23.”

“Really?” I jumped up. Hugh didn't move.

“No point. I've seen her before.”

“So who is she?”

He sighed. “You still think we're going to find a
real person
behind all this? A mad, all-powerful, millionaire obsessive playing mind games with us?”

“What did you see?”

“A woman. She opened that gate as if there was never a lock on it and went down the steps. I saw her as clearly as I see you now, but not in the same way. I can't explain it, but I know. It used to freak me out, seeing people, and things, that weren't really in our world . . . but I've kind of got used to it.”

“The first time I met Laura she told me you saw things other people didn't see. She figured you for a fantasist.”

He nodded. “Laura sees less than she could. Less than she should. She insists on such a rigid, narrow view of the world that she makes herself crazy.”

“That may be about to change.”

He looked at me, and a gleam of mischief shone in his eyes. “Oh, and you're the man for the job? Good luck, mate!”

“You said you'd seen that woman before?” I inclined my head toward the house across the square.

“That's right, change the subject.” He crushed the styrofoam cup absently in one hand. “Yeah, I saw her coming out of that same basement just a few days after Peri disappeared. I was keeping watch on it, just in case. I followed her down the road, to see where she went. I had my brand-new, state-of-the-art video camera with me—Christmas present from my dad—and so I used it. I even got a full-frontal shot of her when we were on the underground—she never seemed to notice me; I was sure she never had a clue I was following her, and I followed her all the way.”

“All the way where?”

He looked me in the eye. “All the way to West Hampstead. To Laura's. I watched her go in.”

The hairs rose on the back of my neck. “Polly Fruell?”

He nodded. “So she said.”

“Did you tell Laura?”

“I tried. I was all set to show her the proof on video but, guess what? She wasn't
in
the video. That was when I realized that there were things I could see that wouldn't show up on tape. When Laura asked her, Polly denied ever having been in Golden Square. She said she didn't even know where it was. She didn't seem flustered, just bewildered. She said she hadn't even gone by underground, she didn't do a lot of walking because of her bad leg. I must have mistaken her for someone else. Laura thought she was being too kind to me. That's when she became convinced I couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality.” He stood up. “I should go.”

“Come and have breakfast. There's things I need to tell you.”

He hesitated.

“That was Laura on the phone. I said we'd meet her.”

“Oh, well, you don't want me along . . .”

“Yes I do. Yesterday Laura fired me. Today, she's hired me again. She just found out that her old friend Polly Fruell died in 1995.”

His eyes widened.

“The limits of her reality have just expanded. Come on, Hugh. We need to talk. You're not the only one who's had contact with the Otherworld.”

For the first time since I had known her, Laura looked less than perfectly turned out when she entered the diner. Her clothes were smart, as usual, but had an air of having been thrown on without much thought; her hair hung limply, without its usual shine and bounce, and her face was bare of makeup. For the first time, she really looked her age, the mother of a grown-up daughter, someone who had struggled, and suffered, and lost.

She kissed Hugh on both cheeks, but for me there was only an awkward nod as she slipped into the seat beside him, across from me.

“I have to apologize—”

“No, forget it. I'm all in favor of the skeptical mind—still try to keep mine that way. Why don't we order breakfast; then we can talk.”

Hugh and I both went for the Good Morning America special: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and hash browns. Laura asked for a fresh fruit salad.

Then she began her story.

Learning of Polly Fruell's death had been disturbing, but it didn't push her into what historians and theorists would call a paradigm shift. Everything could still be explained in human terms. After all, why couldn't a competent actress have convinced Laura she was the friend she hadn't seen in over eighteen years, especially when there was no reason for her to be suspicious? The reason for this pretense was harder to understand, but must be connected with the man who called himself Mider, and, no doubt, given time, she could have concocted a plausible explanation.

But there'd been no time for that.

“I got up this morning and found her in the living room, sitting on the couch. I was amazed. At first, I wasn't even scared, because, well, it was
Polly.
I was just so happy to see her, to find out that the story about her death had been a terrible mistake, it was all so easy and natural to find her in my flat, that I was afraid I was still dreaming.

“But I knew I was awake. It's only in dreams that you think you might be dreaming, isn't it? And then I wondered how she could have gotten in. Even while I was still relieved to see my friend alive, I glanced at the door, and the chain was on, just like the night Peri disappeared.” Her voice wobbled slightly, and she paused to take a steadying breath.

I reached out to touch her hand, which was lying on the table. It felt very cold as I covered it.

Laura looked startled, and her eyes flashed to mine. I thought I'd overstepped, and started to take my hand away, but hers turned and caught mine and held it tight. The rush of pleasure this simple act gave me took me by surprise. I saw the faintly mocking smile that curved Hugh's mouth and tried to pretend I was alone with Laura.

“All of a sudden, instead of being relieved, I was scared. ‘What the hell's going on?' I said. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?
Who are you?
' I was between her and the door. I was trying to look aggressive—well, I might be little, but I'm fit, and I've got both my legs. I was staring at her, demanding to know the truth, and all of a sudden, she just vanished. I mean, one minute I was looking right at her—I really was wide-awake, this was no dream, she was there—and then the next second, she just wasn't.

“I totally freaked. Well, not totally. I nearly went running out barefoot, in my bathrobe, but I managed to keep it together long enough to race back upstairs and throw some clothes on, and make sure I had my phone and keys and everything. I was so afraid she'd
be
there again when I went downstairs that I really thought about calling the police from my bedroom—but then I'd've had to go downstairs to let them in, and I'd've felt like a complete idiot if there was no one there, and after all, this was
Polly,
not some maniac stranger who'd broken in . . .” She sucked in a long breath, and squeezed my hand.

Her squeeze felt like a warm shot of whisky. “Was she there when you went back down?”

Laura shook her head. “No. But I'm sure I saw her the first time—I'm sure I didn't just imagine it.”

“I'm sure you didn't.”

“She was a ghost,” Laura said. She shook her head. “I don't understand, how could that be? Was she a ghost the first time, when she stayed with me? Hugh, you met Polly.”

He nodded without comment.

Laura frowned. “That video. You said you'd followed her from Golden Square until she went into my house. But she didn't appear anywhere on it.” She pulled her hand away from mine to cover her mouth. “Oh! I touched her. She hugged me. She was real, we went out and around London together—ghosts don't do that; how could she be a ghost?”

“Not a ghost,” I agreed, missing her touch.

“Then what?”

“Someone from the Otherworld, a shape-shifter, someone friendly, I think; someone who wanted to help you and took Polly's form because it would make it easier for you to accept her.”

She stared blankly.

“A one-legged woman. Long blond hair?”

Hugh and Laura both nodded.

“Did she wear a purple dress by any chance?”

Laura frowned. “Actually, she was wearing purple this morning. She did like that color, and she nearly always wore long skirts, because of her leg, I guess.”

“To hide her missing leg,” I said. “Who does that remind you of?”

I could see that Laura still had no idea where I was going with this, but Hugh did.

“Queeny,” he said.

“Bingo.”

Laura looked from Hugh's cool smile to mine and back again. “Who's Queeny?”

“One of Peri's Guardians.”

Laura seemed to hold her breath as she looked at me. “You're not talking about Peri's old toys.”

“I'm afraid I am.”

“Oh boy.” Her shoulders slumped, and she sighed and shook her head. “Oh boy, oh boy. Ghosts and fairies and talking toys. You really do think my daughter is living in Fairyland.”

“You could think about it as another dimension,” I suggested. “Another world that has always coexisted with our own. It's not crazy; physicists have been theorizing about alternate realities for at least a century, and before that—well, it would explain a lot of things if there really was another realm, another state of existence somewhere. Usually we can't sense it, it's completely cut off from us, but just occasionally the barriers open, and people from one world can slip across into the other.”

“And they can come back again, right?” She fixed her gaze on me. “You've brought one woman back.”

That caught Hugh's attention. “You have?”

The waitress arrived with our meals before I could reply. Once we'd all been served and our coffee mugs and water glasses refilled, Hugh said, “I'd like to hear about that.”

So, with an apologetic shrug to Laura for putting her through it twice, I told him about Amy and how I rescued her. It was easier this time, and I told it more economically while we all ate.

When I got to the end, Laura had a question.

“What happened to Fred?”

“I don't know.”

“You didn't go back to look for her?”

“Of course I did!”

She looked taken aback and I quickly apologized.

“I'm sorry. I thought you were blaming me—and, God knows, I've blamed myself, letting her slip away like that . . . As soon as I'd said good-bye to Amy at the airport, I went straight back to Aberfoyle.”

It was late afternoon when I arrived, and already the long November evening was gaining on the day. But I went up Doon Hill anyway, quite fearless now, and spent a couple of hours searching fruitlessly for any sign of her. Afterward, without much hope, I went to the caravan where she'd lived during her stay in Aberfoyle. It stood, dark and clearly unoccupied, in the side yard of a little white bungalow on the edge of the village.

I knocked at the front door of the bungalow. After a few seconds it opened and a short, balding, elderly man peered up at me suspiciously.

“I'm looking for someone who was living in your caravan . . .”