Maureen Johnson - The Madness Underneath

There were only three doors on the third floor, and the middle one was slightly open. I pushed it gently and stuck my head inside. This room was very large and, unlike the rest of the house, wasn’t quite as starkly black or white or silver. This one was pretty much what I imagined an Arabian spice market to be like, or maybe the tent of a king in the deserts of Morocco. Or something. Really, the room had no precedent.

The floor was covered in multiple Persian carpets, overlapping each other to form a soft but uneven patchwork surface. There were several low octagonal tables inlaid with mother of pearl and ebony, others made of multicolored tiles. But there were also Victorian elements—a yellow chaise lounge, a rose conversation chair. There were mirrors as well, two massive ones, leaning against the wall. The walls were full of built-in shelving, mostly filled with books. One wall contained records. There was a large wooden cabinet that appeared to have built-in speakers, but not speakers like I had ever seen before. It had to be an antique. The table was covered in pots and bowls and ashtrays, dancing golden Shivas, and three alabaster chalices.

Despite the sensory overload, I managed to find a telephone. A dial telephone, no less, and a receiver with a spiral cord. And it was heavy, some kind of special, fancy plastic that probably could have deflected a bullet. Dialing a phone is ridiculous. You have to spin the wheel for every number and wait until it rotates back into position before you can dial the next one. The receiver, along with being weighty, was also massive, easily as long as my head. The past, I decided, was a complicated place.

Boo answered on the first ring with a cautious and confused, “Hello?”

“It’s me,” I said.

“What number is this? It says blocked.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I kind of…left?”

She paused for a moment. Then it sounded like she was moving away and closing a door.

“Left?” she said.

“Ran away. Took off. You know.”

“You didn’t,” Boo said. “Seriously?”

“Very seriously. They were going to kick me out, and I couldn’t go to Bristol. I couldn’t go home. So I left.”

“My God, you don’t do things by half, do you? We’ve been trying to call you all morning. Something’s happened near your school.”

“What? Is everyone okay? What happened?”

“It wasn’t at your school,” she said. “Just nearby. A woman died…it’s a strange one.”

“Is it related to the other thing?” I asked.

“We don’t know yet. That’s what we’re trying to work out. Where are you? We’ll come get you.”

“I’ll come to you,” I said. “Just tell Stephen I was out and forgot my phone, okay? Don’t tell him what I just told you. I’ll tell him myself.”

“Have you been taking Stephen lessons?”

“Seriously. Let me. I don’t think he’s going to take the news well.”

“You’re probably right,” she said. “Fine. I’ll cover, but get over here, yeah?”

As I replaced the extremely big receiver on its base, I heard someone in the doorway behind me.

“Oh, here you are,” Jane said. “Phoning someone?”

“Sorry,” I replied. It wasn’t like I could deny it. “I know you said, but…it was just a friend.”

“No need to apologize. I understand the impulse.”

Her words said one thing, but her demeanor suggested another. Her face tightened a bit, like she was clenching her jaw a little. I understood why she would be mad. She was putting herself at risk to help me, and here I was breaking the rules and sneaking around her house. And I was about to break another of those rules.

“Before I go,” I said, “there’s just one thing I have to do. I have to meet someone.”

“I don’t want to tell you what to do,” Jane said, “but in my experience, it’s usually best not to do that, not at this juncture. Friends tend to report things back to authorities.”

“Not these friends,” I said. “I promise. They won’t say a word. And I’ll be careful. I just need a few hours.”

“If you feel you have to,” Jane said, her face relaxing into a reassuring smile, “then do what’s right for you. I’m glad you came up here, actually. This is my favorite room. I wanted you to see it. This, as you can see, is the library. Lots of classic works of spiritualism, many not so classic works. And I keep the vinyl records up here, along with the turntable. As I told you, my friends and I were very involved with the rock-and-roll scene. We had just about every album that came out between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies. It’s quite a collection. I suppose they’d be worth something, as they’re all original, but I’d never sell them. And they’re not pristine. We played our albums until they wore out. We weren’t gentle with them.”

She smiled lightly at the memory, then went over to the shelves and fished something out of a bowl. She held up a silver Zippo lighter.

“Mick Jagger’s cigarette lighter. He left it here one night. We have all sorts of things like that in here. I’ll show them all to you when we get back—that’s if you’re interested. You probably wouldn’t even know who most of the people are. I know this house must look odd to you. The early seventies were quite an unusual time.”

“I like unusual,” I said.

“That’s an excellent quality, and one that will certainly help, considering who we are. Now, if you’re going to go out, I think Mags has a coat that would fit you. And let’s find a hat and sunglasses as well. Devina can drive you wherever you need to go.”

In the end, I was outfitted in a red coat, something they called a “bobble hat,” and a big pair of shades. When I looked at myself in the mirror by the door, I was greeted by a bright red buglike object in a big wool hat with a puff on the top. It was definitely not my usual look.

There were two cars in front of Jane’s house—a buttery yellow Jaguar, clearly a classic from some other era, and a modern, more practical black car. We took the newer one.

“Where do you need to go?” Devina said.

I didn’t want her to take me directly to the flat, so I asked her to drop me at Waterloo station. Devina didn’t talk when she drove. She blasted music, and she drove fast. She tailgated, and she played chicken with every light, only screeching to a halt on red at the last moment. On the positive side, though, I did get there very quickly.

“I’ll wait here,” she said.

“I…um…It could be a while?”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I have a book.”

“No, I mean, really a while? I can get back on my own. No one’s going to recognize me in this.”

Devina shrugged. As soon as I was out of the car, she sped off. I hurried over to the flat. I buzzed up and took the steps two at a time, slipping on some slick pizza menus and falling in the process.

“Where have you been all morning?” Stephen asked as he let me in. “We’ve been calling. And—”

“I was out,” I said. “Forgot my phone.”

“Isn’t this exam week?”

“I don’t have one now,” I said. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

Boo’s eyes met mine from across the room. She took in the hat and the coat.

“There’s been a death in the Wexford neighborhood,” Callum said. “About a five-minute walk from your building.”

“The facts are these,” Stephen said, waving me to the sofa. I sat down as he picked up his computer. He clicked through a few documents. “Just before midnight last night, a woman named Lydia George went in to have her tarot cards read by a woman named Dawn Somner. Dawn was a psychic who operated out of her flat. The reading ended around quarter past. Lydia left Dawn’s flat and proceeded down the street while making a phone call. She was just on the corner, about twenty yards from Dawn’s door, when she heard Dawn scream ‘no, no.’ Immediately afterward, Dawn toppled headfirst out of the window. At this point, Lydia fainted. All of this is confirmed by a second witness, named Jack Brackell. He was standing there, directly opposite, waiting for a ride from a friend. It’s when we get to Jack Brackell’s story that it becomes of interest to us.