Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

“We must have traveled back in time,” said Josh. “Look at this place … steam trains, autogiros, disposable flashbulbs, everybody wearing hats. This is more like the 1930s or thereabouts.”

A stray newspaper tumbled across the sidewalk in front of him. He tried to step on it, missed, but then he stepped on it again and caught it, and picked it up. At the top of the page a large headline announced PROTECTOR GREETS PRESIDENT. There was a photograph of a black-suited man with a deathly-white face shaking hands with a tall gray-suited man with bouffant hair. In the background there was a gleaming railroad car and a station sign saying Naseby.

But above the headline was the date March 17, 2001.

“Look at this, we’re still in today, leastways as far as the date is concerned. We’re still in the same place, too, pretty much. But everything’s so out of date. Like the past seventy years never happened.”

Nancy was reading the crumpled-up newspaper. “Listen to this: ‘Lord Pearey of Richmond Forest died at the weekend at the age of thirty-four. He contracted tuberculosis on a visit to Vienna late last year and failed to respond to a convalescence in the Scottish Highlands. His personal physician, Dr John Woollcot, described him as a brilliant young man, full of glittering promise, and called for renewed Government efforts to find a chemotherapeutic cure for tuberculosis as a matter of the gravest urgency.’”

“And look at the headline: KING’S EVIL TAKES PEER. That’s a pretty quaint way of describing TB, wouldn’t you say?”

Josh stopped on the corner of Arundel Street and looked around. He was trying to imagine what Julia was looking for, when she came here. It was noisy and it was smelly and it was old-fashioned but it must have appealed to her for some reason.

“You’re thinking of Julia,” said Nancy.

Josh nodded. “She always did have a quirky sense of humor. Do you know something, when she was a little kid, she used to pretend that she was a puppet and that she was made out of wood, and I had to tie string to her wrists and the bow on top of her head, to make her dance.”

He suddenly pictured Julia’s appearance at Ella’s séance, her feet wildly pedaling frantically in the air. Nancy caught the sudden look of distress on his face and squeezed his hand.

They crossed over the Strand and began to walk westward toward Trafalgar Square, past dark, sour-smelling wine bars and men’s outfitters with faded tropical suits and topis in the window. The sidewalks here weren’t quite as crowded as Fleet Street, but everybody seemed to be walking very fast, and Josh had several irritating collisions with people who refused to deviate from their chosen path.

He found the photographic grayness of the sky more and more oppressive. It was like walking through a 1950s newsreel. The air was so polluted that he had to keep clearing his throat with a sharp, repetitious cough, and he was beginning to develop a headache.

He was struck by how dirty everything was. The “real” London was a grimy city, but this London was even worse. Very few passers-by looked as if they bathed very often. He saw clerks with soiled white collars and pimples and girls with greasy hair pinned up with criss-cross patterns of grips. Whenever they were jostled in tight with a knot of people, Josh could smell sweat and stale tobacco and a cheap, distinctive perfume like lily-of-the-valley. And almost everybody seemed to be smoking. There was no gum on the sidewalks, but the gutters overflowed with cigarette butts.

A third of the way down the Strand they found a red telephone booth, and there were two fat well-thumbed directories hanging inside it. They squashed themselves side by side into the booth and Josh hefted up one of the directories and searched for Wheatstone Electrics. Nancy peered in the mirror and said, “I don’t look any different. But I feel different.”

“Maybe you’re suffering from door lag.”

“Maybe I’m frightened I’m never going to get back home again.”

“Here it is,” said Josh at last, and he was almost sorry that he had found it. “Wheatstone Electrics, Great West Road, Brentford. Julia must have been here.”

“Why don’t you see if Julia’s listed? She was here for ten months, wasn’t she? She might have installed a phone.”

Josh thumbed through residential numbers, under Winward, but there was nothing there. Then he looked up Marmion, of Kaiser Gardens, Lavender Hill, and he found her almost immediately. “She’s here, look. LA Vender Hill 3223. But we don’t have any money to call her.”

“We could try calling collect.”

Josh lifted the receiver and dialed 0 for the operator.

“Number please.”

“I want to place a collect call to LA Vender Hill 3223.”

“You mean a reverse charge call? Who shall I say is calling?” The operator had such a clipped accent she pronounced it “kulling”.

“Mr Josh Winward. No, no – tell them it’s Julia’s brother.”

“Hold the line, please.”

He waited while the phone rang, and rang. Eventually, he heard a quavery woman’s voice say, “’Ullo? ’Oo is it?”

“Is that LA Vender Hill 3223? I have Julia’s brother on the line. Will you accept the charges?”

“Will I what?”

“The caller is asking you to pay for the call.”

“’Oo did you say it was?”

Josh broke in and said, “Tell her it’s urgent, for Christ’s sake. It’s a matter of life and death.”

“I can’t pass on any more information, sir. I’m sorry. Otherwise you could have a whole conversation, couldn’t you, and you wouldn’t be paying for it.”

“Look, I have to speak to this woman. It’s desperately important. My sister’s been murdered, and this is the only way I’m going to find out who did it.”

“Hold on, kuller.”

There was a pause, and then the quavery woman’s voice asked, “Did you say Julia’s brother? Yes … all right. I’ll talk to him. Only for a moment, mind. I’m not made of money.”

Josh said, “Mrs Marmion? Mrs Marguerite Marmion? Yes! This is Josh Winward speaking, I’m Julia Winward’s brother from San Francisco.”

“You are, are you? And ’oo’s Julia Winward, when she’s at ‘ome?”

“You don’t know her? I found your address amongst her belongings.”

“That must’ve been a mistake. I’ve never ’eard of anybody called Julia Winward. I don’t know anybody called Julia.”

Josh was just about to shout at her, Why did you agree to pay for the call, if you don’t know anybody called Julia?, when it dawned on him what Mrs Marmion was trying to tell him. She must have known Julia – otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to talk to him at all. But she didn’t want to admit it over an open telephone line.

“So nobody called Julia ever stayed with you?”

“No. I’ve got a big two-bedroomed flat upstairs in my house. I wouldn’t go renting it out to some chit of a secretary, would I?”

“I guess you wouldn’t. How long has the flat been empty?”

“Ten months, just over.”

“Do you think I could take a look at it?”

“It’s full of stuff. Nobody’s been round to collect it all yet.”

“I see. Do you think I could just come down to Lavender Hill and talk to you, then? I’m pretty interested in renting a flat myself.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible. I’m afraid. That’s impossible. I really ’ave to go now. Goodbye.”

Mrs Marmion hung up and Josh was left with a long disengaged tone. He replaced the receiver with a frown.

“What’s the matter?” asked Nancy. A small man with a bristly moustache was standing outside the phone booth glaring at them impatiently.