NaNoWriMo Day 25

“I’ll bet,” said Janet.  She wriggled like something cold was walking down her spine.  “I’m not good with rats.  Or mice for that matter.  My parents got me a gerbil once and I made them get rid of it.  Yucky things.”

Marie smiled gently.  “Don’t worry, the traps will see them off pretty quickly,” she said.  “There’s not much in the museum to attract vermin anyway, but sometimes they come in when it’s cold outside.”

“It’s May,” said Janet.  “It’s hardly cold outside anymore.”

Marie laughed, thinking of her wardrobe that morning.  “Not for all of us,” she said.  Her eyes caught sight of Janet’s watch on her wrist, and she twisted her head to look at it properly.  To her surprise she realised that she’d read it right the first time, it was just after three.

“Where did the time go?” she said.  “I’m sure I wasn’t on the computer for that long.”

“Hours,” said Janet.  “You didn’t go to lunch unless you sneaked out when I went to the toilet.  As if cued, Marie’s stomach rumbled.  She rubbed it.

“Didn’t you go for lunch then?”

“Got mine with me, I’m on a diet.”  Janet’s diets tended to last about five days then disappear for three weeks, and reappear again when her magazines came out with the next fad that celebrities were engaged in.

“What is it this time?” asked Marie.  Janet shrugged, her eyes averted.

“Oh, it’s a fruit thing,” she said, and then when Marie watched her, waiting in silence she tossed her hair and flushed.  “Kiwi fruit,” she said.  “You eat fifteen of them a day, and it’s all you’re allowed from when you wake up until tea-time.  Then for tea you can eat anything you like so long as it’s no more than 800 calories, and then you’re allowed green fruit between then and bedtime.  So apples, grapes, and kiwis.”

“That’s a lot of kiwi fruit,” said Marie.  “Does it taste good?”

“Not really.”  Janet pulled a face.  “It’s a bit chewy too, and I don’t like the black seeds.”

“Are you losing weight?”

“Oh loads!”  She cheered up as quickly as the thought of kiwi fruits had dampened her mood.  “I was a whole kilo down from the weekend when I weighed myself this morning!”

“That’s good!”  Marie meant it; her infrequent attempts at dieting usually ended when she realised that she was slowly gaining weight instead of losing it.

“Tickets!”  Jimmy flung the main doors open, both of them bouncing off the little door stops there to protect the walls from his dramatic entrances, and shuddered on their hinges.  “I’ve got two return tickets to London, and we shall be visiting Mr. High and Mighty himself tomorrow and telling him all about my statue!”

Marie had jumped, but Janet was unperturbed.  She smiled.  “No ticket for me, boss?”

“Hah, someone has to man the fort,” he replied, his white teeth brilliant in his broad smile.  He came over and put a muscular arm around her shoulders, squeezing her slightly.  “And you do such a wonderful job of it that I couldn’t possibly take you away.  No-one would do it as well as you if you weren’t here.  You have to teach Marie and myself how you do it sometime.”

“Stop it,” said Janet, but she didn’t try and wriggle free and she was smiling almost as broadly as Jimmy.  “It’s not like we get anyone in here most of the time anyway.”

“That will change!”  He spread his arms expansively.  “That will change when we can tell the world that we have better exhibits than the de Havilleau collection!  When I have humiliated Oscar, when he bows down and kow-tows at my knees, then we will get the attention and acclaim that we deserve!  This is our moment girls, this is our hour in the sun.  And like Jacob, we shall sit there and hold it motionless until the battle is won!”

Janet raised her eyebrows at Marie, who shook her head back.  Jimmy caught the shake and roared, “Oh but it will be true, little chickadee!  The important people all know the de Havilleaus, and now they will learn of the Grices as well!  We shall show them all tomorrow!”

He stood back from them both.  “Smile a little more, girls!  This is good news!  This is fantastic news!  This is the best news I had since Terrapin House called four years ago!  Now, I shall go and take some suitable photographs of our statue, so that we can exhibit them tomorrow and show Oscar too-good-to-be-true what we have!”

He marched off, his head held high and his coat flapping about his skinny frame.  Janet laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Oh, I shouldn’t laugh,” she said, trying to control herself.  “But he’s just so funny when he’s in a good mood.”

“I think he’s been taking something,” said Marie, staring after him.  “Why is he coming with me now?  He said I’d be going by myself tomorrow.”

“What’s Terrapin House?” asked Janet, lowering her hand at last.  “I don’t think I’ve heard him talk about that before.”

“It’s the sheltered housing complex his mother lives in,” said Marie.  “She moved there after his father died; she’s a bit of a recluse, I think.”

“So what happened four years ago?”

“I don’t know.”  Marie mulled it over in her mind.  “I don’t remember him even talking about it to be honest.  He told me about his parents when his father died, but that was at least six years ago.”

“How long have you been working here then?”

Marie grinned.  “And have you figure out my age?  Not likely!”

“You sound like Jimmy when you say that,” said Janet.

“Marie?”  Jimmy’s voice floated through the still air of the museum, and the two women looked at each other.  He sounded nervous.  “Marie!”

“Coming,” she called, and left Janet to go back to manning the desk like no-one else could.  Jimmy was holding a camera in one hand, and standing half-in, half-out of the catalogue room.  He appeared to be looking at something with a little trepidation.

“Marie, what were you looking at on the computer?”  His voice was so odd she actually questioned herself and wondered if she’d been looking at anything that might have offended him.  She remembered the de Havilleau website, and wondered how deeply his jealously of Oscar ran.

“The de Havilleau website,” she said.  “I wanted to see more about what they say about –“

“After that,” said Jimmy.  “What did you look at after that?”

“Nothing,” said Marie.  “That’s all I was looking at.  Why?”

“Look at this, said Jimmy.  He moved out of the catalogue room so that she could stand in the doorway and see the computer screen.  On it was a website written in a language that she didn’t recognise.  Some of the text was in bright red letters and boxed on a black background, while much of the rest was black text on a lurid green background.  It hurt her eyes to try and focus on it.  In a sidebar on the right-hand side things slid up and down, but she couldn’t make out what they were; they were dark,murky images and the contrast between them and the background was poor.

“I don’t know what that is,” she said, looking away.  The afterimages burned in her eyes for a moment before fading into  cyan rectangles that gradually dissipated.  “I didn’t go there.”

“The language,” said Jimmy.  He seemed to be able to look at it without any trouble.  “Do you recognise that?”

“No,” said Marie.  “Should I?”

“No,” said Jimmy.  “But I do, and it definitely shouldn’t be here.  Are you sure that you didn’t go to this website?  You didn’t click on some link without checking what it was first?  Or open an email and click on a link in that?”

“I’m not stupid!”  Marie glared at him, annoyed at the implication that she’d be caught out like that.  “I was looking at the de Havilleau site and checking their pictures of their statue against ours.  I didn’t click on anything except to enlarge the pictures, and I think I can tell the difference between that and an ancient statue!”  She pointed, her arm shaking and her finger quivering.

“Could Janet have done this?”

It took her a moment to realise what he’d asked, and then she felt a sudden chill.  Jimmy wasn’t angry with her, she realised.  He was scared of something, and this website had somehow woken that fear.  She remembered suddenly realising that nearly four hours had just disappeared, and wondered what she’d been doing in that four hours.  She remembered looking at the pictures, but losing track of four hours just looking at pictures seemed… well, very unlikely.

“No, I don’t think so,” she said slowly.  “I was either in here or in the exhibition room all morning; I don’t think she could have crept past me without me seeing her.  And I don’t see why she’s do this anyway.”

“How about lunchtime?”  There was an urgency to his voice that seemed out of place.

“I didn’t go for lunch yet,” said Marie.  “I’m on a diet,” she said to forestall his questions.

“Get rid of it,” said Jimmy, turning away, and hefting the camera.  “I’ve got pictures to take.  Oh, and don’t bookmark it either, I don’t want you going back to that site again.”

Marie bit her lip, annoyed at the implication that Jimmy thought she’d gone there and was lying about it, but she closed the browser down anyway.  It took a couple of clicks before the computer recognised the mouse, almost as though the browser were sticky somehow.  Then she went back out to the hall where Jimmy was walking round the display case like a predator stalking prey.

“The de Havilleau collection seem to have a cage of wires in their display case,” she said.

“Probably alarm wires,” said Jimmy.  He found an angle he liked and photographed the statue.  Marie nodded, wishing she’d thought of that herself.  The alarms in Jimmy’s museum were mostly pressure sensors as they were cheaper, and no-one came in, let alone tried to steal things.  He snapped another picture and then frowned.

“Were its arms like this when I brought it in?” he said.  He pointed.  Marie looked at the statue and for a moment couldn’t remember what it had looked like that morning.  Its arms were upraised as though it was trying to grab someone by reaching over them.

“Yes,” she said.  She wasn’t actually sure, but she didn’t want yet another accusation from her boss.

“Oh,” he said.  “Odd.  I could have sworn they were wider, like it was trying to embrace you.  Funny how you misremember these things, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Marie, not thinking it funny at all.  What Jimmy said resonated with her; she thought the statue had been in an embracing posture that morning now as well.

NaNoWriMo Day 24

After the puddle was cleaned up and Janet was back at the front desk in case anyone got lost and came in, Marie sat back down at the catalogue room’s computer and looked at the de Havilleau website again.  She was about to close it down and get on with her real work when it occurred to her that she didn’t know much about the museum or its purpose, and yet she was going there tomorrow.  She decided that browsing through the site and understanding the museum and why it had been set up was probably the prudent thing to do.  It would only spoil Jimmy’s attempts to gloat if she said the wrong thing and they could laugh at him back.

The site had a history link in the footer as well, so she clicked on that as somewhere to start.  A picture downloaded, with text beneath it; a large, black and white image of a striking young man with a thin black moustache, a widows’ peak that looked to be have been styled with some kind of wax, and a nose that looked as though it had been broken more than once.  The picture looked old, and Marie judged it to have been taken in the first few decades of the twentieth century.

Otto de Havilleau read the caption beneath the picture, and the text went on to describe him as a gentleman explorer born into an aristocratic family.  The text had a hint of censure as it described how he’d married, got his wife with child and then gone off on frequent expeditions to various parts of the globe, usually returning with odd artefacts and trinkets picked up from wherever he’d been.  He lavished these on his wife, and when she disliked them he sold them and used the money to buy her other, more contemporary things.  Marie found herself liking the sound of him even though the author of the piece appeared to find him objectionable.  Many of the items that he’d collected and they’d kept now formed the core of what was known as the de Havilleau collection.  A significant part of the collection was on display in the de Havilleau museum, which was open to the public at a nominal fee.  Marie noted carefully that the size of this fee wasn’t described.

Not all artefacts are on display, noted the text,  and some of the artefacts have been permanently withdrawn from public view.  If you are visiting us to see an especial item we recommend that you call ahead to confirm that the item will be available.  The museum does not accept liability for costs incurred as a result of failing this check.

Marie found a piece of paper and wrote a note to herself to call the museum before lunch.  She knew that she should probably do it right now, but she felt compelled to keep reading.  The rest of the page seemed somehow dull and uninteresting though, and she found herself clicking back to the bookmarked page, with the picture of the statue in its display case.

She stared at it, and then she leaned in closer.  She hunted for a zoom function, and finally found one, and enlarged the picture.  Unless there was a problem with the image, it looked to her as though the display case was more of a display cage – she was sure that she could see thin black wires laced through the glass to reinforce it.  To keep things out, or in, she wondered.

There was a bang, and she sat upright suddenly.  She shook her head, and wondered how her thoughts had managed to wander so far.  The webpage in front of her didn’t look right, but she was already turning away, looking to see what had made the noise that had woken her out of her thoughts.  Janet was standing next to her desk looking sheepish.

“Mouse,” she said.  “I’ve got no idea what it would be doing in here, it’s not like there’s anything for it to eat.”

“What did you do?” asked Marie.  “Stamp on it?”

“I threw a book at it,” said Janet.  There was something defensive in the way she was standing.  “I missed though.”

Marie looked round and couldn’t see a book on the floor.

“Right,” she said.  “Well, if you see it again shout for me.  I’ll have to put some traps down.”

“Do we have any?”

Marie sighed.  “I’ll have to buy some traps and then put them down.”

Janet smiled at last.  “It was a big one,” she said.  “I hope they make traps large enough.”

“Rat-traps,” said Marie.  Janet looked nervous.  “Before your time,” said Marie.  “It wasn’t fun.”

NaNoWriMo Day 23

“Marie!”  Jimmy’s voice came from the Northern Hemisphere wing, and Marie looked at Janet, who looked straight back at her and shrugged.

“Coming,” she called, and rolled her eyes.  Janet smiled, and Marie left.

Coming into the wing she saw that Jimmy was in the catalogue room, sitting at the PC.

“Marie!  What do you know about the de Havilleau collection?” he asked, not turning around.  His back was blocking the computer screen from her.

“Um, I don’t think I know anything,” said Marie trying to think why the name sounded familiar.  “Er, it sounds a bit familiar though….”

Jimmy turned around, and then adjusted the computer screen so that Marie could see it.  The web-page from yesterday was up and visible on it, and immediately she remembered.

“Oh that!” she said.  “I was researching my — our statue, and I found that there’s a similar one in the de Havilleau collection.  I don’t think it’s in as good a condition as ours though.”

Jimmy’s face, which had been stern, suddenly lit up with a wide, brilliant smile.

“Really?” he said, sounding childishly excited.  “Mine is better?”

Marie nodded.  Jimmy was prone to mood swings and being oddly excitable, but this was a little unusual even for him.

“You’re sure they still have it?  They’ve not put it away, or sold it on?”

“The website’s got a picture of it,” said Marie.  “It’s still on display I think.”

“Fantastic!”  Jimmy was almost bouncing up and down with excitement.  “Do you think we should take it down there to show them?”

“Why?”  Marie’s face was neutral, as she could guess that Jimmy really wanted her to say ‘Yes’.

“Because they’re the de Havilleau collection and we’re just Jimmy’s little museum in Oakvell,” he said.  “We could go and show them that they’re not the only ones with rare and delicate artefacts!”

“It’s not very safe though, is it?” said Marie. “If we have to transport it down to London and back it might get broken.”

“I got it all the way back from L–“ said Jimmy, and abruptly stopped himself.  “I got it all the way in one piece, didn’t I?” he concluded.  “But you’re right, if Oscar sees it and it is better he’ll only want to get it for himself, or see that I can’t have it.”

“Oscar?”

“Oscar de Havilleau, bon vivante and gentleman adventurer,” said Jimmy.  His words dripped with bitterness, and his eyes were as hard and grey as flint.  “We were at school together.  He inherited the de Havilleau collection and has been idly adding to it when he feels like it.  He’s always bragging about the value and rarity of the objects in there, but he didn’t even find most of them himself.  It was his grandfather who was the real explorer, he came back with loads of stuff from strange places.  His dad wasn’t a fraud either, not like Oscar.”

Marie nodded, careful not to say anything.  Jimmy’s face was focused and intense, and he looked unhappy.

“Well, if we can’t take the statue down there, we can still take a picture of it.  Hah, I don’t need to go at all, let’s let Mr. Bigshot de Havilleau stew over how little I care!  Go down there tomorrow, Marie, and show them pictures of what I’ve got.  I’ll pay for the ticket; actually, I’ll go and get them now.  You’ll want a return, I suppose?”  He was out of the seat and walking past her before she could murmur yes.  “Great.  You’ll go down there first thing tomorrow and show them my statue.  Make sure you show Oscar.  Twice!”  He was shouting as he left the wing, and Janet looked up from her desk to see what the commotion was about.

“We’ll show him!” called Jimmy from the front doors.

“You’ll show who what?” asked Janet when the doors had closed and Jimmy had gone.  Marie shook her head.  “Oscar de Havilleau,” she said.  “Whoever he may be.  It sounds like Jimmy’s got a bit a grudge going on.  He’s sending me down to London tomorrow to look at their statue and tell them our mine.  Ours, I mean.  And to tell them how much better it is than there’s, too.  He wanted me to take it with me at first.”

“Lucky you,” said Janet.  “You get a day in London!  Oh wait, is he making you pay for your own ticket?”

“No, he’s gone off to buy it now,” said Marie.  “It’s just London though, it’s just a bit bigger than here.”

Janet’s eyes widened and her mouth formed a little round O.  “Haven’t you been to London before?” she asked.

“Only when I was little,” said Marie.  “I think we went to Madame Tussaud’s, you know, the wax place.”

“Waxworks,” said Janet.

“Yeah.  It was a lot of walking.  I remember my feet hurting a lot.  And then it took ages to get back home again.  We were on a coach I think.”

“Oh my,” said Janet.  “Well, it’s probably not going to help you to think of London as being like here only bigger then.  It’s a lot bigger.  Much, much bigger.  And busier, and more full of people, and they’ll all know where they’re going, and they’ll know that you’re in their way.  And then they’ll trample you.”

“Don’t be silly!”  Marie looked uncomfortable.  “You’re just trying to scare me, now.”

“No,” said Janet.  She leaned forward over her desk.  “Seriously Marie, London’s big, and it’s fast, and it expects you to keep up with it.  Don’t go there thinking it’s just like here.  And don’t stand in anyone’s way, or you’re going to get shouted at or worse.”

“Or worse?”  Marie’s eyes were huge and her face was a little flushed.  “They’ll push you out of the way,” said Janet.  “And they won’t stop if you fall over.  I’ve seen it.”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes.  I went down there Christmas shopping last year, and it was madness.  You’ve never seen so many people, all in the same place, all trying to do their own thing and hating everyone else for being there.  It’s like a vision of hell.”

“It’s not Christmas,” said Marie, clutching at the only straw Janet had left for her.  “Surely it won’t be that bad!”

“Well,” Janet hesitated, a little unwilling to back down from her vision of London now.  “Well, maybe it depends where you’re going.  Where’s this museum?”

Marie thought.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I forgot to look yesterday, but then I didn’t think I’d be going down there.  Let me go check.”

She went back to the catalogue room and woke the computer from its power-save mode.  Jimmy had left the bookmarked website up, but it still took her a minute to work out that she needed to scroll the page down to the bottom and find the Contact Us link.  That took her to a page with a map, some phone numbers and email addresses, and three names of people who might respond.  None of the name, she noticed, were a de Havilleau.

“Kentish Town,” she called out to Janet.  “The biggest road nearby is called Kentish Town Road.”  She left the room to go back to the reception, but then a puddle of water caught her eye.  Surprised, she went over to check it out.  It had gathered around the pedestal on which the display case for the new statue was mounted, but nothing in or on the display case appeared to be wet.  She ran a finger across the case just to check, and it squeaked a little.

“Exhibition Road is where all the big museums are,” said Janet.  “Are you sure that’s the right place?”

“It’s not on Exhibition Road,” said Marie.  “It’s in Kentish Town.  Did you come in here already?”

“Oh right, fine,” said Janet.  “That’s just a bit rough, you know?  Not really where you’d look for a museum.  No.  Why?”

“There’ s a puddle of water here,” said Marie.  “Do you think the cleaner’s missed it?”

“Must have done.”  Janet walked in and came over to look at it.  “Huh, that’s a big one for them though.  I thought they just swept up in here.”

“I better get it dried before Jimmy sees it,” said Marie.  Janet opened her mouth to make another joke about the fridge and then thought better of it.  The look on Marie’s face convinced her that she’d made the right decision.

“Watch out for tourists,” she said instead.  “You get loads of tourists around the museums, and they’re all rude.  None of them will speak English either, and they’ll just barge into you and knock you over.”

“London sounds very rough,” said Marie.  She looked unhappy.  “Maybe I shouldn’t go,” she said.  “Jimmy will probably go by himself if I tell him I’m not feeling well.  I think he just wants to gloat over Oscar de Havilleau anyway from what he said.”

“Oh no,” said Janet.  “You have to go!  But don’t forget to do some shopping while you’re there.  You won’t believe what the shops are like compared with here.”

“I shop online a lot,” said Marie.  Janet looked at her, this time considering the slightly too-large blouse and the not-quite stylish skirt.  “Really?” she said.  “I’d never have guessed!”

NaNoWriMo Day 22

Marie woke and caught her breath.  She felt like she’d been shaken awake, and she stayed still for a moment, listening and waiting for it to happen again.  The room remained dark and quiet though, so she sat up and reached across to the window and twitched the curtain aside slightly.  The greyish light that came in showed her that it was morning and that it was raining outside.  The room was blessedly empty, but she realised with a start that she was on the other side of the bed.  Looking at the rumpled covers and the pillows on the floor she wondered how much she’d been tossing and turning to create such disarray.  She understood why she’d woken up the way she had now; clearly she’d shaken herself awake without intending to.

She checked her alarm clock, it’s dull red digits pointing up to the ceiling where she’d knocked it over in her sleep, wondering why it hadn’t gone off.  It read 5:58, an hour before she needed to get up.  She righted the clock, twitched the curtain back into place, and lay down, pulling the covers over her.  There was a pillow left on the bed, and she knew that if she got up to get the others she’d only feel obliged to straighten the covers, and then she’d be making the bed before she knew it… she made herself stop thinking that before the urge to get up and do it became any stronger.

She wasn’t sure that she’d get back to sleep, but the room seemed to just drift away from her and she jumped when the alarm clock started beeping.  She hit it with the flat of her hand, muting it, and wondered if she could stay in bed for ten minutes longer.  Then she blinked, and the clock read 7:15 and she wondered where the fifteen minutes had gone.

The room was cold when she got out of bed, and she hurried to the door where her dressing gown hung to put it on and hug it around her.  Surely May mornings weren’t supposed to be this cold?  Her breath condensed in the air in front of her, and when she drew the curtains back, to ensure that she wouldn’t just lie down on the bed, telling herself it was just for five minutes, and fall asleep again, she saw a pattern of frost on the glass.

The bathroom was just as cold, and the hot water in the shower was a real relief.  She showered for as long as she dared and then got out feeling awake and cheerful.  Wrapped in a bath sheet she wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea and noticed that the windows were frosted there as well.  She turned the tap on to fill the kettle from a little nervously, wondering the pipes would have frozen, but the water flowed freely and felt warm in comparison with the air.

With the kettle quietly heating the water she went back into the bedroom to get dressed, and opened the sliding glass doors of the Ikea wardrobe.  They seemed to stick slightly when she tugged on them, and it took another try to get them to slide open.  Inside, all of her blouses and dresses were covered in a fine filigree of ice like spiderwebs, and she stood there, staring at them with her mouth open in disbelief.

Janet nodded, checking all the bits and pieces that she needed for the front desk, listening to Marie describe the strange icy state of her flat that morning.  When she reached the bit about the clothes all covered in ice she stopped what she was doing and sat down.

“Really?” she asked, her voice deep and resonant.  “The wardrobe had iced up as well?”

“Yes!” said Marie.  “Everything in it.  The blouses clinked and crackled when I took one out.  I had to take it into the bathroom and shake the ice off it.”

“Is the wardrobe against a wall that’s at the outside of the flat?”

“No.  The only wall in my bedroom that’s an outside wall like that is the one the windows in.  The wardrobe’s on the opposite side of the room.”

“Then how could things inside it ice up?”  Janet looked quizzically at Marie, not questioning that it had happened but genuinely confused as to how it had happened.

“I don’t know!  I thought maybe I should call the landlord and tell him.”

“You could,” said Janet slowly.  “I guess he might care.”

“You don’t think he will, do you?”

“Well, it doesn’t sound like it’s his fault, really,” said Janet.  “He might think that you’re leaving all the windows open, or–“

“Morning girls!” said Jimmy, opening the main doors wide and marching in.  “You been putting any more exhibits in the fridge, darling?”  He flashed a quick smile at Marie, an even quicker one at Janet, and disappeared through to his office.  Marie grimaced, and closed and locked the main doors.

“Or ask you if you’ve been keeping your clothes in the fridge,” said Janet, her lips twisting.

“Very funny!”  Marie hadn’t meant to snap, but something about the way Jimmy had come in had upset her again.

“I’m sorry, sorry,” said Janet.  “It just seemed appropriate, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” said Marie.  “I should get rid of the fridge since you’re both so obsessed with it, then see how you cope.”

“I’m sorry,” said Janet again.  “Look, it was a silly thing to say and I won’t mention it again.  I’m just saying that I don’t think you’ve got enough there to go to the landlord with.  Maybe you just had some freak weather in your road.  Can you ask your neighbours if they had anything like that happen to them?”

“I don’t really know any of them,” said Marie.  She twisted the key in the lock of the doors until it wouldn’t turn any further.  “I suppose if I saw them in the stairwell though, maybe I could say something about it being cold for the time of year.”

“That’s a good idea.”  Janet sounded genuinely enthusiastic.  “If it’s happening to all of you then it definitely is something you can pick up with the landlord.  It’s probably a health and safety issue then.”

“Do you think so?”  Marie looked a little scared at the idea, her teeth worrying her lower lip.  “I don’t want to get anyone into trouble, I just don’t want to have to defrost my clothes in the morning.”

Janet laughed and quickly stopped.  “No,” she agreed, “that would be ridiculous.”

NaNoWriMo Day 21

Unlike room 302 the windows in here had clear glass and the light, though not as good as the electric lighting on the floor outside was adequate.  Again there was a desk in there, set facing the windows and pushed up against the wall there, behind which was a chair.  To the left of it, pushed up also against the wall were three straight-backed chairs with leather seat-cushions that looked quite old and rather fragile.  More packing crates were set against the right-hand wall, and these were all stencilled with numbers beginning 301-.  Hanging on the wall above the chairs was a map that looked as though it had been drawn on something other than paper; it was faded, and, from the corridor, impossible to do more than just make out the outline of whatever it was depicting.  Dust lay heavily on all the surfaces, and there were a pile of papers on the desk.

“So what do you want from here?” asked Lieutenant Georges.

Joshua pointed into the room, and when she followed his finger her eyes narrowed.

“Footprints?” he asked, and she nodded.  “That only go in?”  She nodded again, her lips tightening and whitening now as well.

Neither of them could see anyone in the room, but the footprints clearly led from the door to the desk, and then stopped.

“Whoever it was could have walked backwards in their own steps,” said Lieutenant Georges after a few seconds.  “It’s probably just a silly prank.”

Joshua started forward to look at what was in the room but she placed a hand on his chest, holding him back.  “That doesn’t mean that I’m not going to investigate this first, she said.  “You can’t go in there until I’m happy that I know what’s going on.”

“Oh,” said Joshua.  “Damn, but we’re here now.  Can’t I at least get the papers from the desk?”

Lieutenant Georges looked unhappy, and looked at the desk.  Then she looked at him.

“Can I trust you to stay here when I tell you to?” she asked.  Joshua nodded.  “Seriously, you’re not going into that room and disturbing anything.  You stand here, and you don’t move, or you don’t get your papers, and I go right back to my office and review your little breach of contract from earlier.  Got that?”

Joshua nodded, and then seeing that she wanted more, said, “Yes.  I stand here and do nothing until you come back.”

“Fine.”  She stepped very carefully into the room, walking on tiptoe and standing only in the footprints that were already in the dust.  Each step was slow, and she made sure that her tiptoe was down and steady before moving the next foot forwards.  A little dust plumed up with each step, but little enough that Joshua had to actually watch for it.  When she reached the desk she looked over everything on it quite carefully, and then took her gadget out of her pocket and took several pictures.  The first four were done without a flash, and then she repeated them with the flash on.  Only then did she pick up one pile of papers and carefully lay them crosswise on the second pile and pick them all up together.  Then she looked over she shoulder, and very carefully started walking backwards again.

The whole process took nearly fifteen minutes, and Joshua stood as still as he could the entire time, waiting and watching.  When Lieutenant Georges finally left the room she sank back down onto her feet and sighed.

“That hurts,” she said.  “My calves are going to ache all day now.”  She held out the pile of papers to Joshua.

“Don’t run off,” she said.  “I need to check what you’re taking, and you’ll need to return them.  We’re going back to Security in your building and they’ll all be catalogued there.  And then I need to look in to what’s being going on in this tower.”

“Right,” said Joshua, slightly astonished by how long it was taking just to get hold of some papers left behind by an ancient member of faculty.  “Thanks.”

NaNoWriMo Day 20

Joshua hadn’t been to either of the towers on the campus before.  They were at opposite ends of the same building, which was the oldest building and had originally been part of a fortification.  The taller of the two was the King Richard Tower, and the shorter the Robin Hood Tower.  The entire building was built from local stone and between the two towers were several large halls and, on the upper floor some offices.  Joshua didn’t know anyone who had an office in the building, or even who knew who did have offices in the building.  The large halls were used for graduations and other large ceremonies, and the King Richard Tower had an art studio at the top to take advantage of the views of the surrounding countryside.

“So is Robin Hood Tower just used for storage?” he asked as Lieutenant Georges unlocked a postern that led directly into the tower from the outside.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she said.  This was the first time she’d spoken as they’d walked over.  “My remit is the buildings around the Quadrangle, so I don’t usually come over here.  As far as I know the tower isn’t used much at all any more.”

The door opened and a slightly musty smell spilled out and washed over them.  Lieutenant Georges looked unimpressed, but Joshua wrinkled his nose.

“Ugh,” he said.  “I hope it doesn’t smell like that all the way in.”

“You’ll get used to it,” said Lieutenant Georges.  “I was reading the other day that oxygen smells absolutely dreadful, but because you smell it all the time you don’t notice it.”

“Really?” Joshua thought about that.  “So, if you maybe held your breath for five minutes you could smell it when you started breathing again?”

“Why don’t you try it and find out?”

She led the way in, and then took a gadget from her pocket.  Joshua recognised it as the device he’d been asked to sign when Venkat had been brought to his door.  She turned it over, revealing a second screen, and poked at something on it, then read whatever the display showed.  “Third floor,” she said.  “Room 301,” so it’ll be the first.

The staircase in the tower spiralled up around the central column; each floor was an annular hallway with rooms leading off to the rooms on the outside.  The stairs arrived on each floor, and then resumed the ascent a quarter turn around.  Light was provided by skylights at the top of the tower and electric lighting attached to the central column.  Orange cables ran from each of the lamps to the floor and disappeared to wherever the electric connections were made.  Lieutenant Georges had to insert a lever-like metal key into a socket on the wall in order to turn the power on; then all the lamps on the floors lit up simultaneously and banished the dull grey light from the top of the tower.

“Follow me and don’t touch anything,” she said, setting her foot on the first step of the staircase.

The stairs were each a single stone block, worn in the middle by the passage of feet over time, and stained here and there.  The walls were similarly constructed of large stone blocks, and the air was still, cold, and smelled musty still.  The lamps shone brightly, but were covered with a thin coating of dust, and when Joshua walked past one he could smell the dull smell of the dust baking on.  Their footsteps echoed slightly in the silent atmosphere.

The first floor was empty, and the second floor was almost empty; there was a decayed corpse of a bird pushed up against the wall between the two flights of stairs.  Lieutenant Georges paused and photographed it with her gadget, and then added a note.  When they reached the third floor she looked around and sighed.

“No numbers on the doors,” she said.  “I can’t bring up the plans on this thing,” she waved the gadget.  “They’re always doing this: they use the plans so they know where they’ve put things, but they don’t actually number the damn doors in the place where they’ve put them.  Fine, well, 301 has to be one of these two.”  She indicated the two doors that were between the stairs they’d just come up and the ones leading to the next floor.

“That one?” said Joshua, pointing to the door closest to them.  Lieutenant Georges looked at the stairs, gauging if the door looked as though it were before or after the point where the stairs emerged.

“The other one, I think,” she said.  “Not that it should matter, if you know what you’re looking for?”

Joshua shrugged.  “I think so,” he said.  “But it’s papers, so it might not be that obvious.”

“Oh great.”

Lieutenant Georges checked her keyring and selected another key from it, this one looking surprisingly thick.  She tried it in the door, and it went in but wouldn’t turn.  She pulled it out again and found the other key that was oddly thick on the ring, and tried that.  This one turned, and the door opened when she gave it a solid push with both hands.

The room on the other side had a sickly greenish tint to it, which Joshua slowly realised was because the glass in the windows was shades of green.  There were three mullioned windows, and in each lead-framed segment was a piece of glass a different shade of green to its neighbours.  The room had a desk and a chair in it; on the desk was a globe of the world and a graduated circular disk with some arms that he thought might be an astrolabe or a sextant.  Stacked against the walls opposite the desk were a number of packing crates, each stencilled with a number in black, and on the floor was a tattered rug that looked as though it might disintegrate if anyone were unwary enough to walk on it.  The wall behind the desk had a tapestry hanging on it, but the detail was impossible to make out in the horrible green light.

“Well, that helps,” said Lieutenant Georges.  She nodded at the packing cases, and Joshua realised that all of the stencilled numbers began 302-.  “Wrong room.”

She closed the door and locked it again.

“Do you think anyone ever used that as an office?” asked Joshua.  “There was the desk and everything, but the light was so bad!”

“I wouldn’t,” said Lieutenant Georges, finding the other key again and opening the door to the left of 302.  The key turned with more reluctance, and the door wouldn’t budge until she shouldered it open.  She looked at it oddly, and then at Joshua.

“That’s curious,” she said.  “Anyone would think that 302 got used from time to time.”

Joshua smiled and nodded, but was more interested in what he could see in room 301.

NaNoWriMo Day 19

Joshua looked at her face as he slipped past her and into the room, wondering if that was a joke or not.  She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look angry either.  “Thanks,” he said.

The office wasn’t quite large enough to fit a double bed in, but there was a table as long as his legs with a single chair on either side of it.  Attached to the ceiling was a black, shiny hemisphere that probably housed a camera, and on the table were some coffee-rings, a half-empty cup of black coffee, and a fresh white notepad.  Joshua sat on the side opposite the notepad, which had him facing the door.

“Right,” said Lieutenant Georges, sitting down opposite him.  She produced a pen from the breast pocket of her jacket, but didn’t appear to be about to write anything down.  She clicked it once.  “You walked off leaving your visitor alone to wander around the building.  Why didn’t you escort him out?”

“He was a crank!” said Joshua.  “A complete waste of my time, he wouldn’t tell me why he’d written that paper, or what he’d done it for.  He just kept telling me that he could help me and that I should go somewhere with him.”

Lieutenant Georges clicked her pen and looked at him.  He waited, and she waited, and then he thought about what he’d said.

“Oh!  Not like that,” he said.  “Some place called Oakwell or Oakvale or something like that.  He seemed to think that there was some mathematical stuff there.  No other reason.”

The pen clicked, and then again.

“Whatever disagreement you may have had with him,” said Lieutenant Georges, sounding as though she was choosing her words, “you still left a visitor alone in the building.  University policy is that all visitors are either escorted out of the building, or taken down to Security so that we can see to their departure.  It is a security risk to allow unknown people, who are broadly unaccountable, to roam around the building.  The university is old, and contains a lot of things whose value might not be apparent at a casual glance, but which a visitor might be able to identify, or simply be careless with.  My problem here, Mr. Greene, is that you are in breach of that policy and don’t seem to be particularly concerned about it.”

The pen clicked.

“We removed your visitor from the building, and he left the university grounds shortly afterwards, so you’ll be pleased to here, I hope, that he hasn’t done anything that would cause a particular problem.”

The pen clicked again, and Joshua felt a cold sweat break out on his skin.  Lieutenant Georges was staring at him now, and the pressure of her gaze was worrying.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and stopped.  He was sorry, but he wasn’t sure that what he was saying really conveyed that.  “I’m really sorry,” he tried.  “I didn’t think –“

“Yes, well.”  The pen clicked again.  “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”

“He upset me!”

“We all get upset, Mr. Greene.  That doesn’t excuse our behaviour afterwards though.  You are employed by the university in an academic research post, aren’t you?”  Joshua nodded.  “Then surely you are paid to be clever, and to think clearly about things, no matter how upset you are?  Or are you allowed to go home and not do your job because you’ve had an argument with a colleague, or because the weather’s upsetting you?”

Joshua shook his head.  He felt as though he were five again and his mother was sitting him down and telling him why she was so disappointed in him.  The look on Lieutenant Georges face and hers were almost identical, and he badly wanted to find something to say that would redeem himself in her eyes.

“I’m glad you understand,” said Lieutenant Georges.  “I wish we’d not had to have this conversation.  However, I now must remind you that when you were employed you signed a contract, and part of that contract said that you wouldn’t leave your visitors unattended in any of the university buildings.”

Joshua stared at her, the blood in his ears suddenly loud enough to almost drown her words out.  Little pinpricks of light sparkled on the edges of his vision, and everything but Lieutenant Georges seemed to darken.

“You are, of course, in breach of that contract.  In light of the fact that nothing actually went wrong, and given that you were upset when this happened, I suppose we can overlook it this time.  And by overlook I mean only that we won’t take any action against you.  This incident will be kept on file, and it will be taken into account if there are any further incidents of this nature.”

“Right,” said Joshua.  His words sounded quiet in his ears, but the pinpricks of light were fading and the room seemed to be coming back into focus.  “Right, thank-you.  Thank-you.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” said Lieutenant Georges, and she smiled for the first time.  “We don’t even tell your line manager about the first one unless it’s serious.  And everyone, and I mean everyone, has had this conversation at some point.”

“Even Dr. Hawne?” Joshua didn’t expect a reply, but the idea that she’d ever been down here being spoken to like this was awesome.

“Even Dr. Hawne,” said Lieutenant Georges.  “Though she is an exceptionally quick learner.”

“Oh wow.”  Joshua sat there, still feeling a little numb, wondering how much of a bullet he’d just dodged.

“Thank-you for coming to see us,” said Lieutenant Georges, putting the pen away in her pocket.  “I’ll show you out.”  There was just the tiniest emphasis on her last sentence, a hint of reproach.

“Actually,” said Joshua, not standing up.  “I came here for a different reason.”  Lieutenant Georges looked surprised.  “I didn’t know you wanted to talk to me,” he said.  “I’ve not been back to my office yet.  I wanted to ask about Robin Hood Tower.”

“What about it?”

“Well.”  Joshua opened the journal to the bookmarked page and then flicked quickly through to the end of the article.  “I asked our academic secretary about this guy,” he pointed, “and she said that his stuff all got moved into Robin Hood Tower.  I was wondering if I could see it?”

The pen reappeared from Lieutenant Georges pocket and clicked.

“Yes,” she said after a moment.  “Given our little chat just now though, you’ll need to be supervised.”

“Who by?  Dr. Hawne?”

“No.  By someone from security.  When did you have in mind to go and visit the tower?”

“Now?”  Joshua hadn’t expected such a quick decision, but it seemed like a good idea to go straight away if the offer was available.

“Hmm.  Wait here.”

Lieutenant Georges left the room and turned right.  Joshua looked around again, but the room was too small for him to have missed anything on his first inspection, and he didn’t want to look under the table in case the people watching the camera images decided that he was acting suspiciously.  He took his phone out, and noted that he got no signal down here, and opened up the e-book reader on it.  He’d read a couple of pages of a pre-print he’d been emailed a few days earlier when Lieutenant Georges came back in holding a set of keys on a keyring with a little yellow plastic fob.

“We can go now,” she said.  “I’ll be your escort.”

“Great,” said Joshua, putting his phone away.