Part 10 (1/2)

She went into the kitchen to fetch the key from the dresser.

But it had been removed. Undeterred, she searched for something with which to force the door. She had settled on a large screwdriver when she heard the front door open.

Mrs Cywynski was hanging her hat up in the hall as Victoria burst out of the kitchen.

'Oh, thank goodness. I think one of the cats is trapped in there.' She pointed to the shrine door. 'I heard it...' She tailed off as she saw the old woman's face.

'What have you been prying after? That room, it is private.'

'I know. I couldn't find the key.'

'What have you been doing? You certainly weren't expecting me home so early. Coming down into my home like this!'

'But you always let me. I was worried about the cats.'

'The cats, the cats. Impossible. The door stays closed. They cannot possibly be in there.'

Victoria was stunned. 'Well, something something is,' she insisted. is,' she insisted.

'Nonsense! n.o.body goes in there. n.o.body! n.o.body! ' '

'I'm sorry,' said Victoria and went miserably upstairs.

Half an hour later there was a knock at her door. She let Mrs Cywynski knock several times before answering.

The landlady was there, all smiles. ' Kochano Kochano. It is I who should apologize. I have checked and that wretched ginger Thomas was in there all the time. Please forgive me. I've brought you some biscuits.'

Victoria took the plate of fresh piernicki piernicki and closed the door. She was not convinced. When she had been looking for the screwdriver, 'that wretched ginger Thomas' had been sitting outside on the kitchen window sill complaining that he had not been fed. and closed the door. She was not convinced. When she had been looking for the screwdriver, 'that wretched ginger Thomas' had been sitting outside on the kitchen window sill complaining that he had not been fed.

The next morning at the museum dragged itself so slowly that she thought it might expire totally before it ever reached lunchtime. She had taken to spending her lunch hour in the hallowed rotunda of the Reading Room. She still had a century of history and culture to catch up on and the library was too good a place to waste.

The usual gathering of academics and researchers were there poring over their various ancient tomes, but she found a corner and began to study a copy of Karl Marx's Das Kapital Das Kapital.

She had seen a man cleaning daubed paint off the huge bust of Marx on a tomb at Highgate and had decided to find out what all the fuss was about.

She was just dozing off when there was a disturbance.

From somewhere in the room, she could hear a droning sound, like someone chanting. There was a chorus of indignant shus.h.i.+ng. Various researchers were staring across the library in the direction of the droning.

Victoria stood up to see better.

A dishevelled old man was sitting at one of the central tables, a heavy book open in front of him. He had unkempt white hair and a dirty white beard. He was staring blankly ahead as he ran his fingers lightly across the pages of the book. He looked like a blind man reading braille. His chanting was becoming more p.r.o.nounced, like a h.e.l.l-fire preacher d.a.m.ning all sinners to the flames.

It was years since she had seen the old man, but she knew him immediately. She went cold as she recognized Professor Edward Travers, late of the Yeti invasion in the London Underground, and further back on her original visit to Det-sen.

And somewhere more recently than that, she was sure...

She intended to wend her way through the academics, but suddenly felt very faint and forced herself to sit down again.

Two attendants were already descending on Professor Travers.

As they tried to remove him, the frail old man picked up a white stick and lashed out wildly with an extraordinary fury.

The weapon caught one attendant on the head with a resounding crack. The second was caught across the stomach and keeled over in agony.

The white stick seemed to lurch to the left, pulling Travers after it. The occupants of the Reading Room fell back to let him pa.s.s.

Victoria hauled herself up from her chair and called, 'Professor Travers' after him. He faltered, his back to her.

Then he threw back his head in wild unnatural laughter and vanished through the doors.

There were general looks of astonishment. Several people stood round debating what to do and one very hasty person began to help the two attendants.

'Extraordinary,' observed a professor with a green bow-tie, who was next to Victoria. 'I'd say you were absolutely correct.'

'I'm sorry,' she said weakly.

'Travers. Yes, absolutely incredible. Definitely Travers.'

Victoria was feeling faintly nauseous by now.

'Of course, you're wrong,' continued the professor.

'Couldn't possibly be him. Ted Travers died...ooh, at least a couple of years ago.'

'Four years,' added another professor. 'Went to the funeral.

Same week that my paper on Etruscan viticulture came out.'

'Must have been some sort of double then,' suggested the first. 'Extraordinary. I wonder what the odds are on that?'

'Excuse me,' said Victoria and made her way slowly across to the table where Travers had been sitting.

'Ah, fascinating stuff,' commented another academic who was leafing through the yellowing pages of the volume Travers had been reading.

'What is it?' asked Victoria.

The script was in symbols resembling Sanskrit. 'All about the Bardo,' said the academic. 'The astral plane. Out-of-body experiences. It's The Tibetan Book of the Dead The Tibetan Book of the Dead. In the original, of course. Do you know it?'

Victoria excused herself from work and went home. When she reached the house, she saw that the hole in the pavement had been filled in. There was now an uneven mound of earth bigger than the hole it had once filled. Someone had stolen the paving stones.