The House of Doctor Dee Read Free Page B

about this house which demanded order. But I had no appetite now, and sat looking at the brightly coloured packets and bottles as if I did not know what they were.
*
    Now all is done; bring home the child again. There was a steady knocking, which seemed to be coming from inside the room. I arched awake, with a confused noise something like a cry, and found myself still sitting in the kitchen; but I was in a different chair, and the noise was growing louder. I was so bewildered that I looked around to make sure no one was in the room with me, knocking against the wall with a clenched fist and grimacing at me; but then, as the sound echoed around the silent and sparsely furnished house, I realized that there was someone at the front door. I hesitated still. I went over to the sink and dashed some cold water against my face; then, very slowly and cautiously, I walked down the hall. Daniel Moore was standing on the path outside, looking up at my bedroom window as if he had known where to find me.
    'You're wet,' he said.
    'I know. I was asleep.'
    He looked at me curiously for a moment. 'I couldn't reach you on the phone.'
    'That's because it's not connected.'
    How can I explain Daniel? He was a professional researcher, like me, and we had seen each other so many times in the British Library, the National Archive Centre, the newspaper collection at Colindale, and elsewhere, that we began to talk. There is a camaraderie that grows up among those who work with old books and old papers, largely, I suspect, because we understand that we are at odds with the rest of the world: we are travelling backwards, while all those around us are still moving forward. I must admit that I enjoy the sensation. One client might want me to investigate some eighteenth-century deeds, while another might need information on a nineteenth-century toolmaker, but for me the pleasure is the same; it is as if I were entering a place I had once known and then forgotten, and in the sudden light of recognition had remembered something of myself. On certain occasions this had a curious but no less pleasurable sequel: I would look up from the books or documents I was reading, and find that the immediate world around me had become both more distant and more distinct. It had become part of the continuing historical process, as mysterious and unapproachable as any other period, and I gazed around me with the same delighted attention that I would give if I suddenly found myself within a sixteenth-century scene. If my work meant that I often viewed the past as my present, so in turn the present moment became part of the past. I have always tended to keep my real feelings to myself, so I had never discussed any of this with Daniel Moore. He would have listened to me with his usual dry attention, his bright eyes resting upon my face, before moving on to some other topic. In any case he saw his work in a different light; it was for him, I suspect, simply an inconspicuous job which he could pursue in solitude. 'I presume,' he said, 'that, as usual, I'm too early?'
    I had quite forgotten that I had invited him to explore the house. 'Of course you are. Welcome to Nightmare Abbey.'
    'Thank you, Matthew. You do look a little Gothic, after all.' He was staring at my leg, and I realized with horror that I was still wearing the trousers which had been so unexpectedly torn.
    'A domestic accident.' I tried to laugh. 'Just give me a minute.'
    I left him in the hallway while I rushed upstairs to change, and when I returned he was examining the ground-floor room with his usual sharp, almost scornful, attention. He was a small man, with pale neat features, and he was on tiptoe as he put his hand against one of the walls. 'How old is this house?'
    'You tell me. You always give the impression of knowing about such things.'
    'At first I would have said eighteenth-century, but I would have been wrong. This room is older. Much older.'
    'That's what I felt.'
    'Sixteenth-century?'
    'Possibile.'