‘A home away from home, of sorts,’ I muttered.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true. A home that’s nobody’s home, yet everyone’s.’
‘And do all of them steal people’s things?’
Pierre stopped me dead in my tracks. His eyebrows were furrowed and his moustache had turned into a frown.
‘Le Petit Monde has an excellent reputation for the safety of both its guests and their property,’ he said, pointing his finger at me like a teacher telling off a pupil. ‘All of our guests are respectful of one another and know the rules of their stay. With one obvious exception,’ he added. ‘And we don’t even know if he was a guest. Not in my hotel, at least.’
They looked back up the street.
‘Oh bugger. We lost him,’ said Pierre.
We ran towards the crowd which heaved and staggered and stumbled from side to side, but could not make out the thief amongst the masses. A guy without a shirt on brushed past me, cheering, his sweat filling my nostrils until I gagged. Some sort of chant was raised but nobody was sober enough to keep it coherent.
‘There,’ I said, pointing down a narrow road that broke off from our own. Though I wasn’t sure, the silhouette of a man holding a briefcase was hurrying down its length. We sped off after him, grateful to leave behind a street that looked terrible enough in the night, let alone with its mask off come the day.
As if we’d walked through another door, the air was clearer, the people more palatable. It reminded me of the more rustic parts of Paris, all cobbled with its walls of French architecture leaning over on either side. Sunlight streamed through the other end of the street, shimmering off the stones. On one side was a quiet restaurant, selling steak-filled subs under dim lighting, a lone waitress biding her time by sweeping the floor with an old broom. On the other was an equally dim and empty shop, its windows busy with dreamcatchers, candles and raggedy voodoo dolls. Jesus looked out, sorrowful, from an ostentatious picture frame.
The silhouette turned left at the mouth of the street, and moments later so did we.
A great cathedral stood before us, its grey spires and lavish neighbouring houses coming together to resemble the Disneyland castle. Amongst the lush gardens before it was a statue of Andrew Jackson riding a rearing horse; around it couples pushed prams, old men sat and smoked, and kids in shorts ran around on the grass. The cross at the top of the highest spire shimmered in the heat and its clock read a half past three.
‘St. Louis Cathedral,’ said Pierre. He sounded almost in awe, and his smile suggested the sight had drowned whatever urgency he’d previously felt towards finding my briefcase. ‘Oldest cathedral in the US of A, you know that? Yeah, I know, it’s like a toddler compared to anywhere else. But you know what’s important about it?’
I said that I didn’t.
‘It’s a major travelling spot. Door-hopping, I mean. Has been since the first church was built here in 1718, though these days only beginners tend to use it. Why else do you think this place has such a reputation for the occult?’
I thought back to the voodoo shop, to the tales of vampires and slave-torture that have haunted New Orleans, much to its delight.
‘As I was going to say earlier, those without the ‘knack’, as it were, need to find spots where the worlds overlap a little more… overtly. I think we know where our friend is going.’ He patted me on the back. ‘Now we just need to get to him before he heads off somewhere else!’
We picked up our pace as we crossed through Jackson Square, ignoring the homeless man asking us for change. Across the old fashioned street to the right of us a jazz band played. Their trombone and trumpet and saxophone taking turns to lead their eccentric melody; a crowd of tourists and locals alike tapped their feet and tossed coins into the caps laid out on the pavement. There was nothing inherently catchy about the music they cultivated out of the air - in fact, whole sections sounded to me like a train that had skipped its rails and was ploughing its way through the countryside instead - but I found myself wanting to stop and listen all the same, lost in the beauty, in all the chaos and confusion.
Behind us rolled a carriage drawn by two horses - one white and one black. Two parents with a young daughter sat in the back, smiling as their top-hatted coachman showed them the more pleasant of the city’s sights. Beyond them a cafe boomed, a queue stretching way out into the streets, its waiters navigating a maze of tables bursting with patrons. Piled high on all of their plates were beignets so drowned in powdered sugar one could only hope there was any dough under there at all. I looked at the sign above their door.
Café du Monde. If I hadn’t been so worried about my briefcase perhaps I would have chuckled. It truly was a small world, after all.
Up ahead the thief stood out like a sore thumb; his black jacket and scarf flapped out behind him as he hurried his pace. With no entrance fee to pay he slipped through the front door of the cathedral without a hitch. Pierre and I were only about fifteen metres behind him, and closing, when we too entered the Basilica.
‘He’s going to get away,’ I said to Pierre. ‘How do we know which door he’s going to go for?’
‘Shh, quiet,’ whispered Pierre, miming for me to keep my voice down. Even his hushed words sprang up as if he was shouting down a well. ‘We don’t. This isn’t exactly a regular route for me, so your guess is as good as mine. We just have to wait for him to find the one calling out to him, and then grab the briefcase back while he’s distracted.’
‘Oh, great plan. Sounds bulletproof. Do you really have no idea what this door will look like? Surely you’ve been through enough. Are we talking a big golden thing or what?’
‘Not a big Indiana Jones fan, I take it? Look, the universe doesn’t give a damn what material something is made of. It only cares about what is.’
I couldn’t believe it. There we were, across the planet, about eight hours into the past, and my hotel concierge was paying more attention to the admittedly impressive architecture than he was to my stolen briefcase or the urgency surrounding its retrieval. He might not have been in a rush but I was most certainly anxious to get back and conclude my stay at Le Petit Monde. If my watch was anything to go by, it was considerably past midnight, and my anniversary quite ruined.
While Pierre kept his own pace, I pushed further into the cathedral. Golden light flooded the huge hall, piercing through the arches and columns that lined the balconies above and running over the ornate and extensive murals which had been painted over every inch of the domed ceiling. I walked down the centre of the two dozen or so rows of wooden benches, trailing the man in the black scarf as his pace quickened between sporadic groups of worshippers and holidaymakers. He was making his way towards the back, towards the glorified gazebo at the aisle’s end. Jesus hung from a cross in its centre. Above him stood the organ, its pipes a shining fence of brass.
I could see why Pierre was so distracted. So was I; so much so, in fact, that I didn’t even notice that the thief had stopped and was looking right at me.
We were stood about ten metres apart, eyes locked together. His pupils looked a bright shade of blue beneath his buzz-cut brown hair. I felt my skin crawl and my legs stiffen. His obviously didn’t, because he bolted towards the adjacent, columned aisle with all the urgency of a cheetah at the Olympics.
‘Stop that man!’ I shouted, attempting to give as much chase as my belly would allow. ‘He’s stolen my briefcase!’
Again, in moments of heightened anger and fear one tends not to think too hard about how ridiculous one’s words might sound.
Pierre ran parallel to me, closing in on the perp. He still had time to throw a disapproving glance over at me, however. I could already feel my lungs closing up and the thief was getting away; by the time I reached the stairs leading down to the crypt I was pretty much ready to barf. Pierre and the thief had already reached the bottom and the red ‘no entry’ rope had been left dangling to the side.
Their footsteps echoed up the narrow stairwell. I followed i
t down to the bottom, ignoring the curious eyes of tourists behind me.
I was met with silence at the foot of the stairs, joined by a hall of great stone coffins. The orange glow of lanterns swam across the beds of the dead; shadows flickered, darting from one chiseled alcove to another.
‘Pierre?’ I called out. The air smelled old and stale, and I didn’t like the way my voice carried. ‘Pierre, did you get him? Did you get my briefcase? I think it’s really important that we clarify whether or not you got my briefcase.’
I ventured further into the crypt, praying that Pierre was right - that we were still in the world I knew. I wasn’t the most creative of people, but it wasn’t much of a stretch to imagine zombies and skeletons rising from the graves all around me. I made a deliberate effort to steer clear of the ones with more decrepit lids. If I couldn’t defeat a one hundred metre sprint I didn’t fancy my chances against an army of the undead.
‘So what do you want first?’ came a voice from beside my ear. I leapt in the air and shrieked like a little girl stuck with a pin. I’d expected to see some sort of decaying freak shuffling towards me, but it was just Pierre sporting a patient and professional smile.
‘What on God’s green earth are you on about?’ I asked him, once I’d gotten another round of breath back.
‘What do you want first: the good news, or the bad?’
‘Whichever is more important.’
‘Okay. Well the bad news is that the thief got away. Sprinted right past me and got through the door. Quick with his keys, that one.’
I groaned and pushed the palms of my hands into my eyes.
‘And the good news?’
‘I know where he’s going,’ he said, happy enough to punch, ‘and I think you’re going to like it.’
I grabbed Pierre by the lapels of his jacket and shoved him against the nearest coffin.
‘Jesus wept,’ I shouted, spit flying. ‘I just wanted my goddamn briefcase back, not to go on a bloody sightseeing tour with you! Take me home, I’m done with this. I’m done with all of this.’
‘Take you home? And for you to file a complaint with Management? No sir, now that just wouldn’t do. Not when your precious briefcase is still at large - no, that’s far too important. Besides, if you hadn’t stormed ahead like a colossal idiot we’d already have it back by now. It’s not my fault you’re impatient.’
‘Excuse me?’ I asked, mouth agape. ‘How dare you speak to me like that! I’m still a guest, I’ll have you remember.’
‘Are you? Because I don’t recall this crypt being my hotel, and back in London you’ve not even checked yourself in yet.’
I thought about this for a second. Time zones were hard enough to work out at the best of moments, let alone during time travel.
‘Fine, but I don’t like your tone. So where’s this damn door?’
Pierre walked me over to a far corner where a thick oak door jutted out from a frame of elegantly sculpted stonework. Cherubs and crosses and intricate carvings of biblical scenes grew out from around its edge. Its handle was gold, as were its hinges.
‘I didn’t say that the door wouldn’t be big and golden,’ he said, tilting his head to the side. ‘Just that the universe wouldn’t care.’
He took out his set of keys and popped one into the lock.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to grab a beignet first?’ he added. ‘I’m sure we’ve got time.’
‘Let’s just get on with it, please.’
He held open the door and there we went - out from one world and into another with mere minutes in between.
Chapter Seven
We stepped out into somewhere dark, noisy and full of musk. It took a few moments of awkward fumbling and limb rearrangement before we realised we were in a utility closet. What I’d thought was Pierre’s leg had in fact turned out to be an old and splintered broom.
Pierre turned back around and opened the door from which we had stepped through, only this time there was not a scene of a crypt within its frame but a room of wood and iron.
It was also a room full of obnoxious clanging.
‘Couldn’t you have chosen a more quiet door to disembark from?’ I shouted over the din, covering my ears with my hands.
‘No can do,’ Pierre shouted back, wincing. ‘The doors will take you where you need to go, but not necessarily where you want to.’
In the centre of the room swung a giant bell of tin and copper, screaming blue murder. Each toll made my teeth quiver in their gums and my eyes shake in their sockets. Even after they stopped and silence settled around us like dust I still flinched, expecting it to start up again.
‘Is it really this quiet or have I gone deaf?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Pierre, sticking his fingers in his ears and wriggling them.
I wandered around the iron walkway, each footstep ricocheting like a bullet. I didn’t dare look between the slats in the wooden planks beneath the bell, or over the edge of the railings, for I already knew that I was at the top of a tower from the way the world tugged at my feet. That, and who ever heard of a bell ringing at ground level?
Milky white light streamed through an enormous circular window on each side of the room. A nine foot beam of black moved slightly to my right, turning counter-clockwise. All around the window’s edge were markings like on a ruler, split into millimetres and inches.
Looking out I could see boats chugging up a river crossed with a dozen bridges. Crowds lined its banks and over to my right I could make out what looked to be trains pulling out from Waterloo station. A way away and a little to my left was, of this I’m quite sure, the peeking rooftop of Le Petit Monde.
‘Wait, we’re back in London? Fantastic! So that makes this…’ I prodded the bell with a cautious finger, ‘…Big Ben, and this…’ I spun around with my arms outstretched to everything around me, ‘…the clock tower. Elizabeth Tower now, isn’t it?’
‘St Stephen’s Tower, I think you’ll find.’
‘No, it’s definitely Elizabeth’s.’
‘Just not yet. Come on,’ Pierre said, squeezing past me towards the steps, ‘it’s a long way down.’
‘You don’t have to tell me twice. Let’s wrap this up and pop back to the hotel before any of this mess even started.’
We climbed down the three hundred and thirty four limestone steps until my stomach was ready to throw up a lunch it hadn’t even had yet. I stood at the foot of the stairs for a moment, waiting for my vision to stop spinning, and then nodded to Pierre to open the door leading out towards Westminster Bridge. It was a grand old door, thick and wooden and ingrained with class, and I would have much rather we’d arrived via that door than the one a good ninety metres above it.
I stepped outside, ready for the honking horns and general hubbub of modern London.
Instead I was almost knocked over by a horse and carriage, a resplendent number with large gold wheels and deep black wood. The coachman shook his head and grumbled at me as he passed down the street, and unlike the tourists in the back of its New Orleans counterpart this carriage’s passengers were the real deal - top hat and coattails for the man and ballooning corset and parasol for the lady.
All along the Thames boats carried carcasses of whales and mountains of crates and cargo. All along the skyline chimneys spat storm clouds of smoke and dust into the air. And all along the streets people shuffled in their brown woollen waistcoats and hooded shawls, pushing their carts under street lights that would be gas-lit come sundown.
‘We’re not in the same time period, are we?’ I asked Pierre as he stepped out beside me.
‘Nah, I’d make it…’ Pierre checked the hands of his imaginary watch. ‘…about 1874. Give or take. If it makes you feel better, we’re not even in the same world, not really.’
‘How is that supposed to make me feel better? And what do you mean, not the same world? What’s different about this one? It looks pretty damn similar to the pictures in my old history textbooks, if you ask me.’
‘You know Queen Victoria?’
‘Yeah?’
‘She’s a bee.’
‘What? Really?’
‘No of course not, you idiot. Now come along, we’ve got somewhere to be.’
We walked across the bridge, away from the Houses of Parliament and towards the sprawling south. A carriage swayed from the weight of its crates as it passed us, piled high with barrels of beer. Two women, arm in arm and each in explosive blue petticoats, giggled and tittered as we approached. I guess that, in my now dishevelled suit jacket and Pierre in his concierge’s uniform, we did look somewhat peculiar.
‘When you say we have somewhere to be,’ I said, once we’d crossed the bridge, ‘do you mean that we have something to do? Because I don’t mean to sound irate, but I haven’t the foggiest where the thief is and you seem awfully relaxed about the whole situation. I trust that you haven’t let him escape again.’
Pierre smiled and picked a couple of apples from off a nearby stand. He tossed a coin to the gentleman standing behind it in a flat cap and overcoat, whose eyes became glassy and pleased. His expression continued long after a lowly street urchin had taken his own pick of the fruits and gone running back down a dark and neighbouring alley.
‘Never you worry, Mr. Webber,’ he said, taking a bite from his apple and throwing me the other. The slightest trickle of juice ran down his chin; Pierre wiped it away with the back of his hand almost instantly. ‘It became evident pretty quickly in New Orleans that, barring us entering a world where you develop an Olympic physique, there’s little point in us just following the thief from world to world. If we’re coming in behind him, we’ll always be behind him.’
‘Not the most flattering of statements, but go on.’
‘So I didn’t take us to the door he just went through. I didn’t even take us to the world he just went through. I took us to the world he entered after that - this world - and a good few hours later.’
‘Why on earth would you do that? Why didn’t you just take us to where he’d come out before he got there, so we could catch him by surprise?’
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