Downtime - Marc Platt [7]
Victoria shuddered in the heat. Her throat dried. The pyramid pulsed with energy, humming a malevolent chord into her head. After a moment the barrage of sound relented, and in the sudden calm, she thought she heard the tinkling of tiny distant bells. It seemed to lift her as if she was weightless, spiralling up on a thermal above the grass and the flowers, and below her a figure lay sprawled at the foot of the pyramid.
Then something tugged at her. A wrench in her stomach that jerked her back down to the ground, back into cumbersome bones and her earthly body.
Gasping for air, she scrambled to her feet and ran.
Mrs Cywynski, elderly doyenne of number 36 Aubert Avenue, Hampstead, crouched at the window, appearing to study the clusters of white star-flowers studding her precious money-plant. It was a large specimen, rather dusty and much prized, because it was one of the few plants she had found that the cats would not cat. In fact, Mrs Cywynski was spying. She peered between the fleshy leaves, scrutinizing the avenue outside.
That man had gone. No, there he was again. Sitting opposite, on the bench by the park entrance.
He had come to the door asking for Victoria Waterfield.
Mrs Cywynski did not like his expensive coat, sunglasses and slicked hair – all at odds with his barrow-boy accent. Three of the cats came to look at him and were not impressed. The others, perceptive creatures, could not be bothered. Mrs Cywynski thickened her own Polish accent to make him uncomfortable. Reaction to an accent, she always said, was a sure sign of character. He looked irritated and spoke loudly and slowly to her. He needed to contact Ms Waterfield as a matter of urgency. But he would not say why.
She said, ‘No, no, no. I do not know this person. My piernicki will be burnt.’ And she shut the door.
She had heard Victoria’s phone ringing in the flat upstairs several times during the day. Nothing unusual in that, and of course no one was in to answer. Nevertheless, she had an intimation that something was wrong. All day she had been conscious of something. Some intangible disturbance in the ether, but nothing that had been foretold by her cards. Even so, she had an instinct for this sort of thing.
It was past seven-thirty and Victoria was always back from the museum by now. Mrs Cywynski, ever protective of her tenants, but never interfering, determined to waylay Victoria before she reached the house.
She put on her coat. No, that was no good. How could she leave the house with that man outside? Still outside. She went back to the window.
The dark shape sat motionless on the bench in the lengthening shadows. Mrs Cywynski thought about phoning the police, but they would never understand her instincts.
Ignoring the cats’ demands for their dinner, she went into the kitchen.
Ten minutes later, she descended the front steps carrying a tray with a solitary cup of tea. ‘Such a waste of time for you,’
she said as the mirrored sunglasses looked up. ‘I thought you might like this.’
‘When you see her, tell Ms Waterfield I called, all right, love?’ He planted a card on the tray and walked off up the avenue into the dusk.
The card was marked ‘Byle and Leviticcus – Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths’. Mrs Cywynski put it into her cardigan pocket and went back indoors. She poured the tea down the sink in case any of the cats drank it and were sick.
Then she fed her complaining rabble and toasted herself some cheese. She put on Sinatra and sat down on the window seat to wait for her prodigal tenant.
The sound of the key in Victoria’s front door woke her. A hard orange light cut into the room from the streetlamps outside.
Thanking Heaven, Mrs Cywynski groped for the table-lamp. It was a quarter past two. She heard laboured footsteps on Victoria’s stairs, followed by familiar movements overhead.
Her worst fears unrealized, the landlady felt for the card in her cardigan pocket. She decided to wait until the morning before speaking to Victoria.
Something must have disturbed the air, for the prisms that hung