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I blink in surprise. A man is standing behind the counter. In his mid-forties, his brown hair is peppered with a dash of grey at the temples. He looks good in his brown tweed suit, even with the cute little glasses perched on his distinguished nose. A veritable silver fox, not that he knows it.
A book is in his hand and he has a distracted air as if his mind is still in it. I’m sure he hadn’t been there a moment earlier. He seems to have appeared out of nowhere.
His smile is slightly nervous, as if he is socially awkward, but that doesn’t stop him from launching into speech. “No, let me guess.”
He reaches into the window display and extracts one of the boxes of jewelry there and holds it towards me with a flourish. It contains a glimmering necklace with a large red pendant nestling on black velvet. “It was this beautiful necklace which caught your eye. You noticed the magnificence of this fire ruby. It comes from Otherworld, you know. It belonged to a—”
I slide his business card across the counter towards him. He looks at it and stops speaking. He puts his finger on it. Worried he might take it, I snatch it away. He smiles and there is a twinkle in his eye. He puts the box with the necklace back in the window display.
“Ah,” he says. “I should have known a young lady like yourself would be here for something a little more out-of-the-ordinary. Please, come this way.”
He comes out from behind the counter and walks straight through a wall. Feeling disconcerted, I warily follow him, putting my hands out before me to touch a wall that my fingers tell me is not there. I follow them through to the other side of this illusion, and emerge into a larger room filled with books and jars and ornaments and shelves full of all kinds of weird stuff.
He marches straight to a rack of glass bottles and tubes and vials, all filled with concoctions of different colors and consistencies.
“These are the potions and elixirs the young ladies are usually interested in. Make up and love spells and the like. We don’t deal in anything contentious or dangerous here.”
He gestures around the store. “Everything else you can peruse at your leisure. Unless there was something specific you already had in mind?”
“Actually, yes,” I say. “What I am after is the key to this.” I hand him the slip of paper with the ornate circular symbol on it.
I don’t even know if what I have said makes any sense, but I thought it was important to sound like I know what I am talking about.
Fortunately he does not seem confused. He is looking at the paper with an expression of severe distaste. He quickly folds it up and hands it back to me.
“As I said, we don’t deal in anything contentious or dangerous here,” he says.
He had picked up a crystal vial of purple stuff to show me, but he drops it back into its slot with a clunk. He’s not smiling any more. He is ushering me back towards the exit.
“Wait!” I say. “Look Theodore, or is it Theo? I know my friend was here so there’s no point hiding it.”
“I’ll tell you what I told your gentleman friend. There is no key to that,” he says bluntly.
I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I sense that if I admit this to him, he will refuse to cooperate entirely. So I say with perfect confidence, “Of course there’s a key to that. You’ve just admitted my gentleman friend was here. Unfortunately for you he’s also dead.”
This has the effect I had hoped for. Theodore Grimshaw looks startled.
Satisfied, I continue, “And while I know your connection to him, the Special Agents investigating his murder have no need to know anything about you. So long as you tell me what I want.” I inject a hint of menace in the last few words. That’s how they do it on TV.
“Well!” Theodore Grimshaw seems to swell up in dignified outrage. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “I’m terribly sorry to hear about your friend, and if you wish to send the agents here you are welcome to do so. I have nothing to hide!”
Damn it. I got so worked up that I’ve used entirely the wrong approach with him. The guy doesn’t seem a bad sort. I bite my lip in regret.
“Look, I’m sorry. I tried to play hardball and overdid it.”
He looks a little mollified. But he is still ushering me towards the exit.
“Please! My friend’s name was Raif Silverstone. You might have read about him in the papers? All I want is your help to find his killer.”
“Then you should’ve gone to the Agency, not come here.”
“I did! But they didn’t want my help.”
“Young lady, you should give that paper to the agency and be done with it,” he says briskly. “You are out of your depth.”
“Please? Can you just tell me what I need to know and I won’t bother you again.”
He sighs. “Young people,” he says under his breath. “This is not some exciting adventure. You may think your magic makes you invincible, but it does not. That’s right. I can sense it. And if I can sense it, so can others. You really should be setting yourself on a course of education—”
