Downtime - Marc Platt [29]
She even thought Charles might have been a dream until she saw the newspaper.
She thought she remembered waking up in hospital, but the more she thought...
‘Thinking again?’ the Duchess asked with another dig of her sharp little chin.
The words of a song began to circle in her head: Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream –
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily...
And there was the letter from St John Byle. It had been waiting when she got back. She’d read it and taken it straight to Mrs Cywynski.
The letter curtly informed her that her father’s will had been resolved. She was entitled to an undisclosed eight figure sum of money. There were papers to sign, but no other complications.
‘Who were your family?’ Mrs C had said. ‘Exiled Russian royalty?’
‘I never even said he was my father,’ protested Victoria. ‘I don’t want any money. Why don’t they leave me alone!’
‘You could always give it to charity,’ the landlady suggested. The noticeboard in her kitchen was covered in leaflets from the local cats’ home.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Victoria had mumbled. That had been a week ago.
As she sat on the stairs between Mrs C’s flat and her own, brooding over the paper, she heard a loud thump as if something had fallen. It had come from the locked room – the forbidden sanctum that was the late Mr Cywynski’s shrine.
Mrs C was out at her bridge circle evening, so Victoria went and listened at the door. There was definitely something moving inside. On impulse, she knocked. The movement stopped.
Silence.
The musty smell that had permeated the house seemed at its strongest here. She called Mrs Cywynski’s name and tried the handle. The door was locked as usual. She waited.
It must be a cat, she decided. It had got trapped inside.
Heaven knows how long it had been there.
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 is,’ she insisted.
‘Nonsense! Nobody goes in there. Nobody! ’
‘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. 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 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.
She had seen a man cleaning daubed paint off the huge bust of Marx on