Their laughter followed me up the stairs and out into the street.
Perhaps it would work, I thought as I quickly boarded a passing omnibus. Or perhaps it wouldn’t. At the very least, it would buy me some time. At least I knew now where to go next. George Sutter had suggested I interview Ramona again, and despite myself, I agreed. I would get off this bus after several more stops and use George’s money to take a taxi to Streatham.
* * *
Dusk was falling when I arrived, the light fading from the bruised sky. I paid the taxi driver and hesitated in front of Ramona’s building. As before, there was no sign of life. I glanced across the street at the soon to be shuttered wig shop, thinking of how I had stood under its awning in the rain waiting for Ramona’s séance. I didn’t want to think about the séance, and I certainly didn’t want to go back into Ramona’s awful block of flats. But there was nothing for it, so I plunged ahead.
The vestibule and the hall were as dark as I remembered, and the grimy smell was the same. Since the previous night, however, a thin rope had been strung across the entrance to the stairwell, a simple handwritten paper sign over it: OUT OF ORDER.
I approached the rope and peered up the dark stairwell. How could a flight of stairs be out of order? I waited and listened, but heard no sounds of ongoing work. Perhaps some of the stairs had caved in, or a section of ceiling had fallen. If so, any workers that had been hired to fix it must have left for the day.
That meant only the horrible old elevator could get me to the fourth floor. I gritted my teeth and slid open the diamond grille, pulling at the door and stepping into the yawning black space inside. Only a small eye-level window in the door lit the interior of the elevator, letting in the fading gloom. There had been a light in here last time I’d used it, but it must have broken. I fumbled in the dark for a long moment, looking for the lever. Outside the window, nothing moved and no one came or went.
There was a distinct smell in there, as of someone who hadn’t washed in weeks, underlaid with a more sinister odor. I breathed shallowly and slid my gloved hands over the controls, no sound but my own breathing in my ears. I was about to give up and try the hazardous stairs when I finally pressed the lever the right way and the elevator began its shuddering ascent.
It seemed, if possible, even slower than the last time. Something creaked high overhead as we passed the second story, and the floor juddered under my feet; I grasped the wall with one hand, wondering whether I would have to burn my gloves. I wasn’t certain I wanted to look at them in the light once I was out of here.
The third story passed by slowly out the window. I slid into the bored stupor of the elevator captive, staring out the window and waiting for my floor. Then the fourth floor came into view and I froze, the hairs on the back of my neck on end.
On the other side of the tiny window, Ramona stood in the hallway.
She was in front of the door to her flat, barefoot, facing me. She watched as the elevator finished its climb and my face appeared in the window. She was wearing only a brightly patterned dressing gown in the Chinese style, its pink and blue muddy in the dim light of the hallway, the belt tied loosely around her waist, the top gaping open to reveal the bony center of her small chest. Her dark hair was untidy, her makeup smeared.
The elevator stopped with a lurch. Silence fell, complete and stifling. Ramona stared at me.
The back of my neck roared into life, an itching crawling from the base of my skull, and a nauseating smell overpowered me.
“No,” I said softly.
I reached one gloved hand to the handle of the elevator door. Ramona shook her head, the motion slow and eerie, the dim light from the high window glowing pale on the high skin of her forehead.
“No,” I said again.
She raised one white hand, palm out. Her arm shimmered in the air, and the movement was uncanny, like the imperfect imagination of how a human might move. I had seen too many dead in my life to misunderstand, yet part of me refused to believe it. I had just left her the night before.
She held her hand out to me, and I recognized Mr. Bagwell’s gesture. Stay. Only this time it was directed at me. I remembered the first time I had come here and knocked on her door, how I’d seen a vision of her lying dead on the floor of her flat. She shook her head again.
My heart flipped in my chest and I backed mindlessly away until I hit the wall of the elevator chamber. A strangled sob came from my throat. Someone has murdered her, I thought, and he is still in there.
And he must have heard the elevator move.
I fumbled in the dim darkness for the lever again, my hands slick inside my gloves. The elevator started with a sound so loud to my ears that I gasped out a whispered scream. She can’t be dead, I thought in high-pitched disbelief. First Davies gone, now Ramona dead. Is Davies dead, too? Am I too late for everyone? Pulleys creaked, the cab juddered again, and I began to lower. I backed against the wall as I watched Ramona disappear through the window, first her head, then her wasted body in its awful dressing gown. When her feet vanished past the top of the window, she still had not moved.
He would hear me. He would have to—everyone in the building would have been able to hear this execrable elevator. Had he heard my ascent? Had he—whoever he was—stood just inside the door of Ramona’s flat, waiting for me to exit the elevator and come to the door?