Robin Jarvis - The Fatal Strand

He did not have to roam far to find him. The raven was roosting in The Fossil Room, which opened off from the passage. With his head tucked under one wing, the bird sat upon one of the display cabinets, making faint purling noises in his sleep. In fact, his slumber was so profound that Neil managed to walk straight up to him without the raven waking.

The boy did not have the heart to disturb his rest. Quoth looked so contented there, in his dim little corner, that he almost tiptoed away again.

At that moment, however, a sudden pounding resounded within the museum and the raven was startled awake. With his scruffy feathers askew and his head wiggling drunkenly up and down, the bird stretched open his beak and fixed his eye upon his surroundings.

‘Good morning,’ Neil greeted him.

‘Fie!’ Quoth squawked in alarm. ‘The hammers of the underworld doth strike! Alarum! Alarum!’

‘I think it’s just someone at the door,’ the boy chuckled.

The bird rubbed the sleep from his eye and stared at Neil with dozy happiness.

‘Squire Neil!’ he croaked, slithering across the glass in his haste to salute him. ‘The argent stars of heaven’s country are but barely snuffed in their daily dowsing, yet already thou art astir! Good morrow, good morrow, oh spurner of Morpheus!’

Neil laughed and stroked the bird’s featherless head. ‘I’m sorry about what happened last night,’ he apologised. ‘Were you okay out here?’

‘This lack-a-bed sparrow hath nested in more danksome grots than this.’

‘Once an idea gets into Dad’s head there’s nothing anyone can do,’ Neil explained. ‘With any luck he’ll have calmed down by tonight.’

Again the knocking sounded and Neil held out his arm for Quoth to climb up to his shoulder.

‘We’d better see who that is.’

‘Good tidings ne’er rose with the dawn,’ the raven warned in his ear.

Through the collections they hurried, until they came to the main hallway, and Neil pulled the great oaken door open. To his surprise, he found the Chief Inspector waiting upon the step.

‘What’s happened?’ the boy asked, instantly fearing the worst.

‘Nothing yet,’ Hargreaves reassured him. ‘I’ve come on an errand – Urdr commanded me.’

Neil peered past him and saw, standing in the alleyway, the fidgeting figure of Austen Pickering. The boy recognised him immediately. The pensioner had stopped him in the street after school a few days ago, and warned him of the dangers of living in The Wyrd Museum. Neil had not forgotten those forbidding words and it made him uneasy to see this little man again.

‘A plainer pudding this nidyard ne’er chanced to espy,’ Quoth reflected, regarding the man with his beady, yet critical, eye. ‘’Twas a poorly craft which didst shape yonder lumpen clay.’

The Chief Inspector coughed awkwardly but added in a whisper, ‘I brought him as soon as I received the message from Urdr. I was to bring Mr Pickering here. It’s not my place to ask why.’

‘But that’s the ghost hunter,’ Neil muttered. ‘I don’t understand. What can she want with him?’

‘If you would be civil enough to allow the gentleman inside,’ a clipped voice rang out from the hallway, ‘you might be able to learn.’

Neil turned and Quoth chirped morosely. Upon the stairs, looking as regal and supreme as any empress, Miss Ursula Webster stood gazing down on them. At her side, in contrast to the old woman’s tall, stately figure, Edie Dorkins looked like a Thames-scavenging mudlark. Her oval face was smudged with dirt, her clothes were torn and wide holes gaped in her woollen stockings.

Hargreaves lowered his eyes in reverence and bowed to both. ‘I have done what was asked of me—’

‘Is there an outbreak of deafness?’ Miss Ursula demanded. ‘I said for you to let the man inside!’

Hastily leaving the entrance steps, the Chief Inspector permitted Austen Pickering to take his place, and Neil looked at him keenly.

It was obvious that the man was fighting to remain calm, but he was so excited that his breaths were shallow and gasping. With his already large-seeming eyes widening behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, he came to the arched doorway and placed his stubby fingers upon the bronze figure at his left.

Timidly, he stared in at the museum’s gloom-laden interior and took another gulp of air, as if he were swigging a measure of whisky for courage. Then, with an acknowledging glance at Neil, the man calmed himself. He had been longing for this moment for so long that he wanted to cherish it in his memory ever afterwards.

‘First impressions,’ Neil heard him mumble to himself. ‘I must be free to receive all I can. Come on Austen, old lad – be the blank paper, the empty jug, the untrodden snow.’

‘What are you waiting for?’ Miss Ursula called. ‘Be quick to enter.’

Half-closing his eyes, Austen Pickering stepped purposefully over the threshold and drew a deep, rapturous breath. For several moments he stood quite still with his head tilted back, and Neil began to wonder if the old man had gone into a trance.

But the peculiar silence did not last, for Mr Pickering presently opened his eyes and looked gravely about him.

‘Yes!’ he sighed. ‘I was right. But so many – hundreds upon hundreds. I never dreamed!’

‘What is it?’ Neil asked.

‘Most incredible!’ the man exclaimed. ‘I never expected so staggering a number. Quite astounding.’

Neil exchanged looks with the Chief Inspector, but Hargreaves’ hollow-cheeked face was solemn and the boy couldn’t guess what he was thinking.

Her chin resting upon the banister, Edie grimaced and took an instant dislike to the strange newcomer. Everything about the man’s bearing and attire suggested the strict, military discipline with which he ordered his life. What was left of his tightly waved hair was too neatly combed, a veritable knuckle of a knot secured his regimental tie in place, and his brown brogues shone like chestnuts freshly popped from their casing.

During her untame life in the bomb sites, Edie had spent too long distrusting and evading the figures of authority who had tried to catch her to abandon those natural suspicions now. To her, this fastidious little man was no different from the countless air-raid wardens she had hated; Austen Pickering wore his clothes like a uniform and she despised him for that fact alone.

Forsaking him in revolt, she looked to see what Miss Ursula made of him and was intrigued to read in the old woman’s face a considerable degree of approval.

‘You admire my museum?’ Miss Ursula said suddenly.

Mr Pickering turned to her and peered over the rim of his glasses. ‘Admire is not the word I would have chosen, Madam.’

‘That is to be expected,’ she said. ‘From the many letters I have received from you, I would have been sorely disappointed if you had not felt the pulse of life which courses through this building.’

‘Pulse of life!’ the man spluttered in disbelief. ‘I assure you, Madam, that it is the pain of the anguished dead which I feel – and that most deeply.’

The taffeta of Miss Ursula’s black gown rustled faintly as she stirred and gripped the banister rail a little tighter. ‘Tell me what it is that you sense,’ she commanded. ‘When you walked through that door – what was it like?’

The ghost hunter knitted his brows and in the grave tone he reserved for these matters said, ‘The atmosphere is electric – charged like a battery. No, more like a dam that is close to bursting. If nothing is done to release the pressure then I cannot begin to imagine what will occur. The tension is unbearable.’

Casting his gaze about the dim entrance hall, from the small window of the ticket booth to the drab watercolours which mobbed the panelled walls, he tapped his fingertips together and nodded grimly.