Confessions from a Haunted House. Timothy Lea
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to go to, Harper?’
‘Oh yeah.’ She turned to me. ‘It’s in the letter just inside my vanity case. Somewhere near a saloon called Gray’s Inn. Can you get it out, Timmy?’
‘Right away.’ Ever eager to oblige, I popped the case up on my lap and flicked open the clips. To my surprise I was not looking at little feminine goodies but an alarm clock strapped to a couple of sticks of rock. Where they came from it was difficult to say because there was no lettering running through the candy. I glanced at the time on the clock. One minute to twelve. It bore no relation to the real time. ‘You’d better reset your travelling clock now you’re in England,’ I said.
Harper looked puzzled. ‘What travelling clock?’ We both stared into the case and when I next heard Harper’s voice it sounded even more surprised. That’s not my case.’
Sid turned his nut to take a gander and I will never forget the expression on his face if I live to be twenty-five. His eyes took over his face like two bloodshot raw eggs tipped onto a couple of saucers. ‘It’s a bomb!’ he screamed. ‘Chuck it out!’
The thought was not slow in occurring to me, especially as I had a nasty feeling that the minute hand approaching twelve o’clock could signify bang-bang time. I grabbed the window handle and started unwinding fast. Maybe too fast. The handle was still turning in my mitt but it was not attached to the door any more. Funny how you panic sometimes, isn’t it? Maybe funny is not the right word. Everybody in the car was going berserk. Sid started off by putting his foot down as if he hoped to leave the bomb behind and then realized that he was still carrying it with him. Harper was trying to open doors and windows all over the car and I was attempting to force the case over Sid’s shoulder so that I could push it out of his window. Unfortunately, in my eagerness, I pushed his nut against the dashboard so we ran into the car in front. At this point we were going over the Hammersmith Flyover and I must say that Sid acted with commendable courage and determination. Pausing only to clip another car he bounced the motor up against the parapet with an ugly scraping sound – I think it came from the car but it might have been Sid – and flung open the door. This did not do the paintwork any good but that seemed the least of our worries at the time. Without a word that I would care to repeat in a book that might fall into the hands of those of genteel upbringing he snatched the case from my hands and hurled it over the parapet.
Now of course Sid meant to chuck the bomb into somebody’s back garden but it is amazing how panic lends you strength. It is also amazing how close some of those houses are to the flyover. If you doubt me, here was a case in point. Only a few seconds after the case had left Sid’s fingers we heard the tinkle of breaking glass followed by a loud explosion. My heart dropped lower than Idi Amin’s bottom lip. Hardly daring to look, we got out and peered over the parapet.
Oh dear, what a sight met our eyes! This poor old lady sitting in her bath and looking up at us through the hole in the wall where the bathroom window used to be. Even as we watched, another few bricks fell down on top of the shed below. ‘Are you all right?’ I shouted. ‘It’s all right. It was a bomb.’ I was worried that she might think it was a gas leak, you see.
Well, I have to confess that I was surprised. Where a nice-looking old lady learned that kind of language I just cannot imagine. As for what I assumed was her old man in the outdoor karsi – no, it wasn’t a shed – he did not even have the good manners to pull up his trousers before he started sounding off at us. I was quite embarrassed for Harper.
‘Come on,’ said Sid nervously, starting to edge back to the car. ‘They’re all right. Probably due for rehousing anyway.’
‘Or at least a redevelopment grant,’ I said.
Still shaking, we jumped into the car and drove off. Nobody talked very much. We were all thinking what would have happened if the bomb had gone off on my lap. One bang I could certainly have done without.
‘I can’t get over it,’ said Sid. ‘How could we have picked up the wrong bag?’
‘Maybe it wasn’t us,’ said Harper slowly.
‘What do you mean?’ said Sid.
‘Maybe somebody switched the bags.’
‘But that would mean they wanted to kill us,’ said Sid.
‘That’s right,’ said Harper soberly.
‘But—’ cried Sid. Then his voice sort of tailed away. You had to think about the implications of what had happened to us but the more you did so, the more frightened you got.
CHAPTER THREE
For the rest of the journey to Grays Inn I was very jumpy. Very jumpy indeed. I even had the feeling that there was a black limousine following us. Every time we took a turn it seemed to be a few cars behind. It disappeared just after we had passed Chancery Lane and I felt better.
Sid was beginning to feel more like his old self as well. ‘I know, I know!’ he said when I told him I thought we were getting near the address Harper had given us. ‘Don’t think I’m not counting the moments. You realize there must be about three hundred quid’s worth of damage done to this car.’
‘I’m real sorry, Sid,’ said Harper soothingly. ‘Won’t the insurance pay?’ This did not go down very well because, of course, Sid had not got around to insuring his motor. ‘I was going to do that this morning,’ he snapped.
‘The chambers should be just along here,’ I said, always trying to avoid an incident.
I thought a chamber was something you went to the john in,’ said Harper innocently. Sid ground his teeth.
‘It means a lawyer’s offices,’ I told her.
‘All these new words. I must start making a list. I’d never heard of a solicitor until Eileen told me it was a writing lawyer. Now a barrister, he’s a talking lawyer isn’t he?’
‘A barrister is a barrister,’ snarled Sid. ‘Why do you keep having to change the English language?’
‘Here we are, Sid,’ I said to avoid any argument. ‘Number eleven. I can see the sign. Wittering, Stammers and Crachit.’ We had come through an archway and were in a little square of old buildings with a balcony running round and staircases going up into each set of offices. There were pots of flowers on the balcony and a lime tree in the middle of some cobblestones. It was all very picturesque. Harper clearly thought so. ‘Gee,’ she said. ‘This is really Dickensian. I gotta to take a picture of this for the folks back home.’
She sprang out of the car and started snapping everything that did not move. Sid was only interested in his car. He was practically sobbing as he examined the smashed headlight and the dented wing. ‘I blame you for this, you stupid berk!’ he hissed. ‘You and your blooming relations. I can’t wait to see the back of both of you. I’ve a good mind to give you your tube fares and tell you to piss off.’
‘I’m sorry about the car, Sid,’ I said. ‘I—’ I broke off because the wing mirror that I had accidentally nudged had dropped off into the gutter. Luckily Sid was clocking Harper’s rear view as she bent to photograph an antique foot scraper so I swept the mirror under the car with my foot.
‘Cracking looking bird,’ I leered.
‘Uhm.’ Sid was not prepared to commit himself to a favourable impression. I knew he fancied it but he was trying to turn his lust into hate so that it made a neat twosome with his detestation of me. ‘She’s all right if you like American birds. Come on, let’s get inside and get this whole blooming business over with before anything else goes wrong.’
There Sid had a point and I was not loath (good word, eh?) to lead the way up the creaking wooden staircase. I could see what Harper meant about Dickensian. It was very old-fashioned. Right down to the bell that tinkled when I pulled the stopper next to the highly polished brass plate. The geezer who opened the door was no chicken either. He wore a pair of pince-nez on the end of a beaky nose