House of Many Doors

by Ian Richards

  *

  Martell was waiting for him when he got in. The old man sat on the stairs reading a paperback copy of The Communist Manifesto and running his fingers along the curve of Pushkin’s spine. When he saw Tony he looked up and smiled.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep, my boy?’

  Tony shook his head. He sat next to Martell and tickled Pushkin under the chin. ‘I’ve been round to Trina and Ebenezer’s shop. I wanted to find out about my dad.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I wish I hadn’t.’ Sighing, he tugged at his shoelaces. ‘I know I shouldn’t have gone. But I hoped—’ His voice fell away into nothingness. He rested his head against the old man’s arm. ‘It wasn’t because of me, was it, Martell? That he was the way he was? You were friends before I came along. And he must have got along with mum for them to have been married and all.’

  ‘Tony, my boy, no, it wasn’t because of you. Your father changed a long time before you were born.’

  ‘But why, Martell? Why did he leave me? Why didn’t he want me?’

  Martell put his hand on Tony’s shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right. No more secrets. Come the morning I’ll tell you everything.’

  *

  Back in The Gnarled Wand, the almost-extinguished candles flickered weakly as Ebenezer and Trina tried to rouse the now-sleeping mass that was Sir Roderick from his armchair.

  ‘Come on, Sir Roderick’ Ebenezer huffed, trying to lift him. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘What? Who goes there?’ Sir Roderick opened a craggy eye, scratched at his beard, and rolled back in his chair like a sulking child. ‘Oh,’ he moaned. ‘It’s you, Snout. What do you want? Leave me alone, will you?’

  Trina shook her head. Had they really thought this man to be some sort of diabolical genius?

  ‘It’s late, Sir Roderick. It’s time for you to be getting along.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘You have to, Sir Roderick. You can’t sleep in a chair in the middle of our shop.’

  ‘I can and I will.’

  ‘No, you can’t. You have to sleep in a bed—like a normal person.’

  ‘Oh, all right, all right.’

  He forced himself to his feet, swayed slightly, and steadied himself against Ebenezer’s shoulder.

  ‘Where are you staying?’ Ebenezer asked. ‘Is it far from here? Do you need us to call you a taxi?’

  ‘No,’ Sir Roderick hiccupped. ‘No need for a taxi. I’ll walk. It isn’t far.’

  With a drunken wave of his hand he clumped out of the room and ascended the spiral staircase towards the master bedroom. Trina and Ebenezer stood in baffled silence at the bottom of the stairs. They exchanged looks.

  ‘That man,’ Trina said, ‘will meet a very bad end.’

  And she was absolutely right.

  5 – Mr. Kepler & Mr. Krook

  Mr. Kepler stood on the banks of the canal, watching the rain fall in heavy sheets in front of him. It was a dismal morning. If not for the umbrella flared above him like an enormous black toadstool he would have been soaked through. That would have been unpleasant. He didn’t like getting wet. He didn’t like the effect moisture had on his skin, which was old and wrinkled and pale. His arthritis hurt when he got wet, especially on drizzling, misty mornings like this. And pain wasn’t good. Oh no. Pain made Mr. Kepler even more unpleasant than usual.

  He was a tall, lean figure. His hair was grey and dirty, and there was something of the wolf in the way it flowed down past his shoulders. He was from Eastern Europe originally, a small village in the Romanian hills that had a proud history of wood-carving, stew-making and devil-worship. Not that he had any great affection for his upbringing, of course. He had got away from there as soon as he could, hitching a ride to Bucharest with a band of gypsies while still in his teens.

  That had been a long time ago now though. A very long time.

  Sometimes rain like this reminded him of home. Those dreary childhood days imprisoned in a house that smelt of boiled cabbage and tobacco. The condensation on the windows. His parents arguing about trivial village matters.

  But sometimes the rain made him think of other things too, and this was one of those times.

  He had waited long enough. Kepler walked alongside the canal slowly, umbrella in hand. He appeared content now. There was something irresistible about a good downpour. It appealed to his sense of showmanship. All that pouring rain, those gloomy-black clouds. Could there be a more perfect stage for what lay ahead?

  Further down the bank Mr. Krook awaited him. He had captured their victim easily, as he always did, and now stood behind her, knife in hand, waiting to strike the final blow. Despite his hunched back and dwarfish stature, Mr. Krook was the most accomplished assassin in all of Europe. He had throttled lords, bludgeoned duchesses, and eviscerated politicians, all for large sums of money, and all without the slightest trace of remorse. Many assassins liked to see themselves in practical terms: as men and women doing a job and nothing more. Mr. Krook did not. He was an assassin for two reasons and two reasons only.

  He liked killing people.

  And he was very good at it.

  By the time Kepler had caught up with them—unlike his nimble companion, he preferred to take his time with his prey—the rain had become even heavier. It struck the surface of the canal violently, an onslaught of tiny knives, slashing the afternoon to pieces. A cruel smile played across his lips. ‘Hello, my dear.’ His voice was a low, gravelly hiss—the sound of fingernails scratching the insides of a coffin. ‘Whatever are you doing out in this rain? You’ll catch your death.’

  Rose shot back a look of absolute hatred. She had been forced onto her knees by the dwarf, who now stood behind her, holding her in place with a handful of wet hair.

  ‘Shall I do her now?’ From the tone of his partner’s voice Kepler could sense Mr. Krook growing impatient. His hand held the knife against her throat with a surgeon’s precision.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘Please, I—’

  The dwarf pressed the knife harder, forcing her to fall silent.

  ‘Quiet,’ he hissed. ‘You’ll speak when you’re spoken to.’

  Kepler watched this display with wry amusement. He made no move to restrain his impatient colleague, but neither did he give the order for the job to be finished. He simply stood there, umbrella in hand, watching Miss Westwood as she faced up to the crushing inevitability of it all. He liked it when that happened. The moment when the last of their hope left them. She hadn’t reached that point yet, not quite. But it was coming. Oh yes, it wouldn’t be far off now.

  ‘You’re long way from home, aren’t you, Miss Westwood? A very long way. Whatever are you doing here in London?’

  The dwarf pulled her hair back even further, offering her throat to the sky. Raindrops glistened on the blade of his knife. ‘Enough small-talk, Kepler. Let me do her. Quickly. Before someone comes.’

  Kepler smiled again. His eyes were a dull yellow in color, sulfurous and rotten, like decaying fruit. ‘You don’t need to answer. You see, I know exactly why you came back, Miss Westwood. And it wasn’t to take an open-topped bus ride past the Houses of Parliament. Nor were you particularly interested in exploring the galleries along the South Bank or the horrors of Madame Tussauds.’

  ‘Kepler …’

  A look was enough to instill silence. Almost petulantly, the dwarf released his grip and let his victim fall forwards. She gasped aloud and started coughing.

  ‘I had to try and warn him,’ she sobbed. ‘That poor old man … I thought I was doing him a favor when I came here last time …’

  ‘Of course you did …’

  ‘The master … he tricked me.’

  Kepler smirked. He tricked me. How many times had he heard that before? What did the silly girl expect? Blaming Firefox for deceiving her was like blaming a thundercloud for raining. It was in his very nature.

  She had begun shivering. He wondered whether
it was from the cold or because she feared for her life. The latter, probably. The final moment was close now. Deliciously close. He could almost taste it.

  ‘You were hired as a contractor, Miss Westwood. You did the job requested of you and were paid in kind. If only you had left the matter there. But you didn’t. What did she do instead, Mr. Krook?’

  ‘Started poking around in other people’s business,’ the dwarf grunted. ‘Started asking too many questions.’

  ‘Precisely. And in coming here to London—in actively trying to warn the Black Magician—well, that risked tipping the master’s hand early. And we can’t have that. The trap is far too intricate to allow for outside interference at this late stage. It’s simply not on, Miss Westwood.’

  She was beginning to realize now, he thought. Here, in the rain, on the banks of the canal. The next time she spoke her voice had no fight left in it whatsoever. It was a timid, trembling thing, as fragile as the raindrops that hung from the tip of Mr. Krook’s knife.

  ‘You won’t get away with this.’

  Mr. Kepler smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I rather think we will.’

  He looked to the dwarf. It was time.

  ‘Mr. Krook?’

  There. The moment arrived. That wonderful split-second of realization. The instant when what little hope that remained disappeared into nothingness. He adored it.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please …’

  As last words went, Kepler had heard better.

  ‘Kill her.’

  Miss Westwood didn’t even have a chance to scream. The dwarf’s blade sliced through the rain like lightning, a slash of silver that took her by surprise such was its ferocity. At first she didn’t feel anything: the world simply seemed to freeze. Ten thousand raindrops hung suspended in the air around her. A bloodied knife hovered nearby, its blade already ludicrously far away from her body, droplets of blood arcing away from her in an awful crimson curve.

  Then it hit. The pain. It was in her neck, a pulsing, pumping pain, a pain so deep it felt like the cut itself were screaming. She touched her trembling fingers to the wound and they came away red and sticky.

  The rain was still falling. Harder now. A rush of icy-cold raindrops that thundered against her body.

  Tired. Suddenly she was so tired, as if all of her energy were draining away, as if she had no choice but to lie down, flat on her back, here by the side of the canal. Sleepy, darkness fluttering at the edges of her vision, cawing crows. Tired. Go to sleep, she thought. Rest your head. Sleep here, on a concrete bed, wrapped up beneath a blanket of rain. Rest. Just for a moment—just until—

  She lay motionless on the path. Raindrops pooled in her open eyes. After a few moments they began running down her cheeks. Cold tears. The last she would ever shed.

  It was over.

  Kepler returned his attention to the rain. The matter of the girl’s passing meant nothing to him. It was an act of business and nothing more. A brief, bloody distraction on an otherwise grim October afternoon.

  Almost absentmindedly he reached into his pocket and removed two shiny pennies. He placed one on each of Miss Westwood’s eyes. Then he turned away and walked back along the banks of the canal, back into the rain.

  When Mr. Krook had finished cleaning his knife in the nearby grass, he returned to the body and stood over it. She was a pretty thing, this one. All that luscious red hair and snow-white skin. Thin and elegant and strangely ethereal, almost like a ghost.

  He checked her pockets for money and her fingers for rings. Nothing.

  Then he caught sight of something colorful on her wrist. A bracelet? Now then. That would do very nicely … a nice bonus, like, for a job well done …

  But it wasn’t a bracelet at all. It was a tattoo.

  A chain of red roses looped around an already-cold wrist.

  Scowling, Mr. Krook removed the pennies from her eyes, slipped them into his pocket, and rolled her into the water.

  There was a glug, and the canal swallowed her.

  6 - The Auction House

  In the days leading up to the auction Tony learnt more about his father, dark antiques, and Martell’s career as the Black Magician of Dover Street. Every day he returned home from school with questions, and every evening Martell made up a pot of tea and did his best to answer them.

  The first thing they discussed was Martell’s life as the Black Magician. As Sir Roderick had said, the nickname referred to Martell’s ability to mesmerize prospective buyers with his use of language. He was able to spin stories that could make even the most ordinary of antiques seem like historical marvels.

  ‘Antiques are just objects,’ he explained modestly. ‘Often objects which no longer serve any practical use. The wealthy dowager bidding thousands of pounds for an eighteenth-century teapot has no intention of using it to make tea, just as the millionaire horse-trainer bidding a small fortune on an antique wardrobe wouldn’t dream of filling it with his hideous clothes. People want to own the story, not the object. The object is just the vessel that gives the story form. And the best antiques come wrapped up in stories so intoxicating that otherwise sober individuals would give almost anything to own them.’

  Hints of Martell’s storytelling abilities came through whenever he spoke about some of the escapades from back in his Black Magician days. There were tales of secret criminal gatherings in London pubs—scandals at the British Library—how he had once spent a damp weekend in the catacombs of Vatican City, lending his expertise to a flock of cardinals who had found a mysterious map and were convinced it led to hidden treasure. Each new adventure seemed more wonderful than the last, so much so that Tony couldn’t help but grin as he listened to them.

  When it came to discussing his father, however, Martell portioned out the details reluctantly, as if it pained him to even think about the man. The mood always darkened at this point. The fizz and drama that had brought to life his other stories found itself replaced instead with a steady, sighing regret.

  By the time Martell had finished, Tony understood why.

  Thomas Lott had once been his best friend.

  He had lived with Emily in a nearby flat and was seen by most as a sweet, kind, intelligent man.

  But he had struggled to hold a job, never got the breaks other people seemed to get, and in time became increasingly frustrated with his life. Out of sympathy Martell had offered him a job in Martell’s Antiques, which Thomas had accepted but never loved in the way that Martell did. It was only when Martell first mentioned midnight auctions that the sparkle returned to his eyes.

  ‘It was my own fault really,’ Martell sighed. ‘I wanted to show him how exciting antiques could be. I thought it might pick him up a bit. Emily was very sick at the time. She only had a few months left and your father had the weight of the world on his shoulders. I thought a good auction might give him a bit of a boost, you know? Brighten him up a bit. I never imagined that once we got there he would do anything as silly as fall in love.’

  But he had. Poor Thomas had wandered through the halls of the midnight auction like a mooncalf, astonished by the strange new world he now found himself part of. The glamour, the mystery, the hints at great power and even greater darkness. It had been love at first sight—a reckless, dangerous love—the kind that hits hard and fast, consuming everything it touches.

  There was no room for a sickly wife or soon-to-be-born son in a relationship like that.

  Martell shook his head sadly. ‘The man I knew was lost from that point onwards. He changed. He became obsessed. One night, a couple of months after the auction, he left the shop talking about doors to other worlds and houses in the sky. Neither I nor your mother ever saw him again. For a short while I know he was in Sunderland, doing goodness knows what. I had my hands full with you and Emily. She was sick, you had just been born. When I tried to track him down I found that the address he had left me had gone cold. I have no idea where he is now or what he’s doing. I like to pretend that the real Thomas Lott died at
the same time as Emily did. To be honest, I think he actually died before her, when I first took him to that infernal auction.’

  Tony spent the following days brooding on what he had learnt. In a way, these stories simply confirmed what he had known already. His father was a villain—a selfish man who had abandoned his wife and child in search of thrills and excitement. He didn’t hate his father: it was hard to feel anything towards someone who had never seemed real to him. But he felt sorry for Martell, and for his mum, and he wondered what all that odd talk about doors to other worlds had been about. For the first time he began to consider the very real possibility that his father had suffered a breakdown. That he had gone crazy and that this was why he had taken himself away so suddenly. Tony could see now why Martell had been so reluctant to introduce him to the darker side of the business. What if the same thing happened again? What if the flaws that had consumed Thomas were in his son, too? He didn’t think they were. But how would he know?

  When the morning of the auction finally arrived, he woke early and dressed in silence. He put on his best brown suit and combed his hair in the moon-shaped mirror hanging on his bedroom wall. Downstairs, Martell was waiting for him in the kitchen. He wore a grey trenchcoat and a fedora hat. The shoebox containing Anastasia Romanov’s doll was tucked under his arm, its lid sealed with two tightly-wound elastic bands.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  Martell’s van had been parked at the front of the shop. It was an old, beaten-down thing that looked as if it had spent the last few years being used as target practice by local children with slingshots. There was rust above the wheel-arches, dents in the bodywork, and a wing-mirror held precariously in place by several loops of masking tape. How it managed to stay standing, let alone drive anywhere, had been a mystery to Tony for as long as he could remember. He buckled himself in as Martell secured the shoebox in the back. Though he hadn’t realized it until now, this would be the first time he had travelled outside of London. The thought warmed him. He felt like an explorer about to chart new territory. Everything about the moment sang with a beautiful significance. The smell of oil, rust and leather. The cassettes scattered across the floor at his feet. When the engine finally coughed into life, belching out a puff of black smoke from the exhaust as it did so, a primal thrill shivered its way down his spine.