It was then that Nell began to think the bang on her head might have affected her hearing, because the traffic did not sound quite right. It sounded more like wheels rattling over uneven ground than cars whizzing along a London street. In addition, she could hear voices and music, and these did not sound right, either. Oh God, thought Nell, I’m suffering from concussion or something – I’m hearing things. But there was nothing odd about hearing traffic and voices in the middle of London. Except there was something very strange about the sounds. The voices were speaking English, but it was an odd, unfamiliar English. Sharper, with different emphasis on words and different vowel sounds. It was speech that Nell thought confusedly she should recognize. If the pain in her foot would ease and if she could overcome the sick dizziness, she might be able to think more clearly.
And then quite suddenly, the spinning fragments of sound and memory fell into place, like the colours in a child’s kaleidoscope, and with a cold feeling of panic Nell knew what she was hearing. It was the speech of the nineteenth century. It was the street patois that long-dead authors had reproduced for readers. She was hearing the raucous calls Charles Dickens had written for his beggars and urchins, and the speech Conan Doyle assigned to the Baker Street Irregulars when they related their findings to Sherlock Holmes . . .
No, of course it was not. She was confused from the fall and the pain of her sprained ankle, and there was probably a party of angry foreigners out there – maybe tourists whose minibus had broken down.
But the sounds came again, more vividly, and with them was the memory of something someone had said recently. Memory clicked a little more firmly into place. Benedict Doyle had talked to her about researching crime from the end of the nineteenth century and he had said London would sound different. It’s always noisy, he had said, but it would have been noisy in a different way. Hansom cabs rattling over the cobblestones, and people shouting and quarrelling.
That’s what I’m hearing, thought Nell. Those are wooden wheels bumping over unpaved surfaces – and horses’ hooves. And that music . . .
Overstrung, out-of-tune pianos played in smoky pubs. It was exactly what the music sounded like. But it could not be that. It must be somebody’s radio or television with a Victorian play on it. Something with particularly good sound effects. Please let it be that.
Very slowly she turned her head to the door that led to the drive and out to the street. Even the light was different. And if she could reach that door and open it, what would she see?
Open it, Nell . . . Take a look at my world . . . Just a glimpse, where it’s trickling into your mind from mine . . .
The final shards of fragmented memory dropped into place and Nell turned to look at the stair. Declan, the man of shadows and mystery, who had somehow compelled her to come here.
He began to move down the stairs and, as he reached the lower stairs, he stepped into the edge of the light from the lamp. He drew back at once, putting up a defensive hand, but it was too late. Nell gasped, because his face, oh God, his face . . . What had done that to his face?
She managed to scrabble a couple of feet towards the door, because surely if she could open it and call for help, someone would hear her. Someone in that alien street? The street that was filled with the sound of horses’ hooves and wooden wheels clattering over cobblestones and people shouting in a form of English that no one in the twenty-first century had heard . . .
But Declan’s hands were reaching for her, and his eyes were no longer the piercing blue she remembered; they were black, huge, like the eyes of some monstrous insect . . .
He came down the last few stairs, and bent over her. As he pulled her to her feet, severe pain twisted through her injured foot, and Nell tumbled all the way down into complete unconsciousness.
TWENTY-ONE
Benedict had intended to be back at the flat to see Nell before she set off for Holly Lodge, but on the way back from buying his newspaper he had looked in at a second-hand bookshop, where he had become absorbed in several books about Victorian street life. Among them was a dictionary of Victorian colloquialisms, titled ‘Slang, Cant and Flash Phrases’, which he thought might be useful for his essay on Victorian crimes. It was battered and foxed, but it was full of what appeared to be genuine nineteenth-century jargon, and Benedict bartered happily with the bookseller, whose day would have been ruined if a customer paid up without challenge, then walked slowly back to the flat, thumbing through the pages.
It meant Nell had left when he got back, but Nina was there, still putting together her Silver Wedding dinner. She told Benedict she was disgustingly behind schedule, and if he had nothing else to do, could he possibly lend a hand, because at this rate the duck à la Montmorency would not be ready for the clients’ Golden Wedding, never mind the Silver one.
It was twelve o’clock before Nina finally bore the duck portions off, and Benedict switched on the laptop to work on his essay. Most of what he had written so far was still in note form, but he thought it was a fairly good outline of what he meant to do. As he started to type, he wondered how Nell was getting on at Holly Lodge and if she had found anything valuable. Like tell-all diaries signed by Declan and dated c.1898? his mind said cynically.