The Devil You Know

“Jeffrey is in his office,” she said, taking her hand back at the earliest opportunity. “He’s actually busy with some month-end reports, and he won’t be able to see you. He says you should go ahead and do the job, and then you can send your bill in to him whenever it’s convenient.”

My smile took on a slightly pained tilt. We were really getting off on the wrong foot here.

“I think,” I said, picking my words with care, “that Jeffrey—Mr. Peele—may have a mistaken impression of how exorcism works. I am going to need to talk to him.”

Alice stood her ground, and her tone dropped a few degrees closer to zero.

“I’ve told you that won’t be possible. He’ll be tied up all day.”

I shrugged. “Then would you like to suggest a day that will be more convenient?”

Alice stared at me, caught between perplexity and outright annoyance.

“Is there some reason why you can’t just do the job right now?” she demanded.

“Actually,” I said, “there are a lot of reasons. Most of them are fairly technical. I’d be happy to explain them to you and then wait while you relay them to Mr. Peele. But that seems like a very roundabout way of doing things. It would be better if I could talk you both through it together—along with anyone else who needs to know.”

Alice considered this. I could see it didn’t sit well with her. Also—although this was just a guess—that her initial urge to tell me to sod off was tempered by the reluctant conclusion that she lacked the full authority to back it up.

“All right,” she said at last. “You’re the expert.” The emphasis on the last word fell a fraction of an inch this side of sarcasm.

She pointed toward the lockers opposite. “You’ll have to leave your coat here,” she said. “There’s a rule about personal effects. Frank, could you please take Mr. Castor’s coat and give him a ticket?”

“Okey-dokey.” The guard unhooked a hanger from one of the racks and laid it on the counter. I considered making an issue of it, but I could see I was going to have a bumpy enough ride with Alice as it was without going out of my way to make things difficult. I transferred my tin whistle to my belt, where it fits snugly enough, and handed the greatcoat over the counter to the guard. He’d been watching my exchange with Alice without any visible reaction, but he gave me a smile and a nod as he took the coat from me. He hung it up on the otherwise empty rack and gave me a plastic tag into which the number 022 had been die-cut. “Two little ducks,” he said. “Twenty-two.” I nodded my thanks.

Alice stood aside to let me walk up the stairs in front of her, no doubt mindful of how short her skirt was and of the consequent need to maintain the dignity of her station. I went on up with her heels clattering on the stone steps behind me all the way.

On the second floor there was a set of glass-paneled swing doors. Alice stepped past me to open them and walk through. I followed her into a large room that looked something like a public lending library, but with more sparsely furnished shelves. In the center of the space, there were about a dozen wide tables with six or eight chairs arranged around each. Most of the tables were empty, but at one of them a man was turning over the pages of what looked like an old parish register, making notes in a narrow, spiral-bound notebook as he went; at another, two women had spread a map and were laboriously copying part of it onto an A3 sheet; at a third, another, older man was reading The Times. Maybe The Times gets to jump the queue and become history straight away. Elsewhere there were shelves full of what looked to be encyclopedias and reference books, a few spinner racks loaded with magazines, a couple of large map chests, a bank of about eight slightly battered-looking PCs ranged along one wall, and at the end farthest away from us a six-sided librarians’ station, currently staffed by one bored-looking young man.

“Is this the collection?” I hazarded, prepared to be polite.

Alice gave a short, harsh laugh.

“This is the reading room,” she said with what seemed like slightly exaggerated patience. “The area that we keep open to the public. The collection is stored in the strong rooms, which are mostly in the new annex.”

She launched out across the room without bothering to look back and make sure I was still following. She was heading for an ugly steel-reinforced door that stood diagonally opposite us on the other side of the big open space. To either side of it there were two scanning brackets—the kind you get at the exits of large stores to discourage technologically challenged shoplifters.