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“We just want to ask her a few questions,” said Mr. George. “Mrs. Jenkins, please find out where she lives today.”
“I’m on my way,” said Mrs. Jenkins, disappearing through the side door again.
“Who else knows about this?” asked Mr. George.
“Only my husband knew,” said Mum, and now there was a tinge of defiance and triumph in her tone of voice. “And you can’t cross-examine him, because I’m afraid he’s dead.”
“I know,” said Mr. George. “Leukemia, wasn’t it? Tragic.” He began pacing up and down the room. “When did this start, did you say?”
“Yesterday,” I replied.
“Three times in the last twenty hours,” said Mum. “I’m afraid for her.”
“Three times already!” Mr. George stopped pacing. “And when was the last?”
“About an hour ago,” I said. “I think.” Since these events had begun coming so thick and fast, I’d lost all sense of time.
“Then we have a little while to prepare for everything.”
“You can’t possibly believe this, Mr. George,” said Aunt Glenda. “You know Charlotte. Now look at this girl and compare her with my Charlotte—do you seriously believe that Number Twelve is standing before you? Ruby red, with G major, the magic of the raven, brings the Circle of Twelve home into safe haven. Do you believe that?”
“Well, there’s always the possibility,” said Mr. George. “Although your motives strike me as more than mixed, Mrs. Shepherd.”
“That’s your problem,” said Mum coolly.
“If you really wanted to protect your child, then you ought not to have left her in ignorance for so many years. Time traveling without preparation is very dangerous.”
Mum bit her lip. “I just hoped it would be Charlotte who—”
“And so it is!” cried Aunt Glenda. “She’s had obvious symptoms for the last two days. It could happen any time now. Perhaps it’s happening at this very moment while we waste our time here listening to my jealous little sister’s totally outrageous stories.”
“Maybe you could switch your brain into gear for a change, Glenda,” said Mum. Suddenly she sounded tired. “Why on earth would we invent such a thing? Who but you would willingly wish something of this kind on her own daughter?”
“I insist on…” But Aunt Glenda left whatever she insisted on hanging in the air. “This will all turn out to be a wicked deception. There’s already been sabotage, and we know where that led, Mr. George. And now that we’re so close to achieving our aims, we really can’t make such a terrible mistake again.”
“I don’t think that’s for us to decide,” said Mr. George. “Please follow me, Mrs. Shepherd. You too, Gwyneth.” He added, with a little smile, “Don’t worry, those fanatical mystery mongers and pseudoscientists obsessed with esoteric subjects don’t bite.”
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNET XIX
SEVEN
WE WERE LED UP a staircase and down a long corridor with sharp angles at every turn, and now and then went up or down a couple of steps. The view from the few windows we passed was different every time. Sometimes we looked out into a large garden, sometimes at another building or a small dark alley. It seemed like an endless journey over wooden parquet and mosaic stone floors, past closed doors, and along lines of chairs, framed oil paintings, and glass-fronted cases full of leather-bound books and porcelain figurines, with statues and suits of armor standing just about everywhere. It was like being in a museum.
Aunt Glenda kept casting venomous glances at Mum. As for Mum, she ignored her sister as best she could. Mum was pale and looked extremely tense. I wanted to take her hand, but then Aunt Glenda would have seen how frightened I was, and that was the last thing I wanted.
We couldn’t possibly still have been in the same building. I felt that we’d been through at least three more by the time Mr. George finally stopped and knocked at an enormous wooden door.
The large room we entered was paneled in dark wood, like our dining room at home. The ceiling was dark wood as well. But here everything was almost entirely covered with elaborate carvings, some of them painted. The furniture was dark and massive. The atmosphere ought to have been gloomy and sinister, but daylight was streaming into the room through the tall windows, and you looked out at a garden full of flowers. I could even see the Thames shimmering in the sunlight where the garden ended.
But it wasn’t just the view and the light that brightened the place, there was something cheerful about the carvings, in spite of a few ugly grimaces and skulls. It was as if the walls were alive. Lesley would have loved feeling the real-looking rosebuds, the archaic patterns, and the amusing animal heads and searching them for secret mechanisms. There were winged lions, falcons, stars, suns and planets, dragons, unicorns, elves, fairies, trees, and ships, each carving more lifelike than the one before it.
