The Better Mousetrap

by Tom Holt

  Twenty minutes. Thirty. Forty—

  If it hadn’t been for George, he’d probably have given up; walked away, reset his mind and heart to zero, made a note on the file not to fall in love again, gone home. But he needed a magician to help him save his friend, and apart from Dennis Tanner, who’d be unsympathetic and either refuse to help or charge him money, Emily was the only one he knew. Frank walked across the street and into reception.

  ‘Hello. I’d like a quick word with Emily Spitzer, if she’s free.’

  The woman behind the desk looked at him. ‘Oh,’ she said. Not on the list of reactions he’d been expecting. ‘Are you family?’ she asked.

  Oink. ‘What?’

  ‘Are you family?’

  I got all my sisters and me? No, that didn’t seem to be what she was getting at. ‘You mean, am I a relative?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And then it struck Frank that there’s only one set of circumstances where they ask you that.

  Another thing the Door had taught him was how flexible time could be. Given the right equipment, you could bypass a hundred years in a few seconds. Or, given exactly the right kind of shock, you could live a year in the time it took to blink twice.

  Something bad had happened. Yes, and if he said he wasn’t a relative, they’d tell him-politely, of course-to take a hike, and he’d have no way of knowing what had happened to Emily, and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. ‘Cousin,’ he heard himself say; then, as it occurred to him that maybe a cousin wasn’t a close enough relative, ‘First cousin. What’s going on?’

  The receptionist’s eyes told him that she wasn’t paid enough to do things like this. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘She’s dead.’

  Don’t be silly, Frank was about to say; and then he remembered. Apple tree, Better Mousetrap. He couldn’t say, ‘Don’t be silly, people her age don’t just die,’ because of course she already had.

  She already had; and afterwards, he’d asked her out to lunch. He wriggled slightly, pressing the Door’s tube gently against his ribs. It was there in his pocket. Dead, he said to himself, right. We’ll see about that.

  ‘How?’ he snapped. The receptionist looked away. ‘Maybe it’d be best if you saw Mr Gomez,’ she gabbled. ‘I’ll just ring through and see if he’s—’

  ‘How?’

  No nonsense from anybody; he was rather impressed. The receptionist wavered for a moment, and he treated her to a big stare. Apparently it worked. Frank was surprised but pleased.

  ‘She was killed. By a giant spider. It bit her head right off.’

  ‘Yes, fine, I see. Where? And when?’ he added sharply. ‘It’s important.’

  Startled, she told him.

  ‘And you’re sure about that? Twelve forty-five precisely?’

  ‘Pretty sure,’ the poor receptionist whimpered. Frank felt guilty for badgering her, but it couldn’t be helped. ‘I heard Mr Cannis - that’s the new trainee, he was there when it happened telling Mr Gomez and he said twelve forty-five, I’m sure he did. If you want, I can ask—’

  ‘No, that’s fine. What was the address again? No, write it down for me. Thanks. Sorry, is that a P or an R?’

  No time to think, because thinking would mean he’d have to address the issues raised by the words giant spider and bit her head right off. Frank had never faced physical danger before, unless you counted being driven in a beat-up old Fiat by Lucy Henderson. Giant spiders that bit off people’s heads … He found a wall, not caring if anybody saw him, spread out the Door and lunged through it.

  He came out in a corridor. The carpet underfoot was deep and springy, like spring grass, with a monogram woven into it; very corporate. There was a door a few yards down, a proper door, non-portable, with No Admittance written on it. He hesitated. If that door led to the room where the spiders were, where she’d died, was about to die, he really didn’t want to go inside; unless he’d arrived a little bit too late and she was in there already—

  Calm down, he ordered himself. If she’s in there getting decapitated, there was nothing he could do; he’d just have to reset the Door and come back again, this time five minutes earlier. No, not chicken, just sensible. He wouldn’t be in any position to save anybody if the spider got him. Headless chicken. Quite.

  Frank heard voices; one of them was hers. Relief and joy washed out his mental processes for a moment or so, and then he realised he hadn’t figured out what he was going to say. No time for that, though; she’d just walked round the corner.

  He stood up straight and smiled at her. ‘Hello,’ he said. Emily looked at him. Confused, slightly embarrassed, but not hostile - ‘Hello yourself,’ she said. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  For a moment he couldn’t speak; then he remembered that if he screwed it up this time round, he could always try again. And again, and again. Somehow that made it much easier, and he felt himself relax a little. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You remember I told you what I do for a living?’

  ‘Friend of yours?’ Frank hadn’t noticed the man with her until he spoke. Her assistant, he remembered the receptionist saying. Mr Cannis, the trainee.

  ‘Yes,’ Emily said. ‘Erskine, do me a favour.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘Right you are.’

  The trainee retreated back round the corner; quite the human sheepdog. ‘You’ve got him well trained,’ Frank said.

  Emily pulled a face. ‘Don’t blame me,’ she said, ‘I think he’s always like that. Stuck like it or something. What did you mean by what you do for a living?’

  Oh well, he thought, here goes. ‘I was round at your office just now.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Nod. ‘When I say just now,’ he went on, ‘I mean about an hour and a half in the future. You hadn’t shown up for our lunch, you see, and I was … Well, anyway, I asked if you were in your office and they said no. Actually, they said that you’d been killed.’

  She took it quite well. True, her eyes widened and her mouth fell open like the tailgate of the lorry off the back of which all good things fall, but she didn’t faint or scream or any of the things he was fairly sure that he’d have done in her shoes. ‘Oh,’ she said.

  ‘The spiders got you,’ he went on. ‘Apparently you’d done the business with the cyanide gas and the readings all showed clear, but there must’ve been a fault in the equipment or something, because one spider was still alive, and it … Look, do you want to hear the details, or shall I just skip them?’

  ‘I think I get the general idea,’ Emily said quietly. ‘Listen, are you quite sure about all this? Only, it’s a bit hard to take in, if you see what I—’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Frank said firmly. ‘It’s what your receptionist told me, anyhow, and she didn’t strike me as someone who’d make stuff up.’

  Emily dipped her head, conceding the point. ‘So basically,’ she said, nodding at the door, ‘if I go in there I’m history, is that it?’

  ‘Yes. Well, not necessarily. But in the version of events I’ve just come from, one of the spiders doesn’t get killed by the gas, that’s all I know.’ He smiled thinly. ‘I guess it’s a bit like getting a peek at the question paper the day before the exam. You know what the questions are going to be, but it’s still up to you to answer them.’ He yawned. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s been quite an interesting day, and I reckon I’ve had about as much as I can take without a sit-down and a rest.’

  ‘Well, quite.’ She frowned. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll double the gas exposure and recalibrate the Everleigh for brain activity rather than heartbeat and respiration. Will that do it, do you think?’

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Frank said, just a little sharply. ‘You’re the professional. I just save you when you die.’

  ‘Yes, quite. Sorry.’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ he said gravely. ‘Tell you what. You get on with whatever it is you’re going to do, and I’ll meet you for lunch, same as we agreed. No, b
elay that,’ he added quickly. ‘We can’t meet where we’d planned, I’d be there already.’

  She smiled. ‘Good point,’ she said. ‘All right, how about the pub on the corner? Cumberland Arms or something like that.’

  ‘Fine. And if you’re more than twenty minutes late, I’ll know you’ve been, um, held up, and I’ll come back and—’

  ‘Try again?’

  Frank nodded. If at first you don’t succeed; like Robert the Bruce and the— ‘Anyway, don’t worry about that,’ he said, rather wearily, ‘we’ll get it sorted out one way or another.’ He unrolled the Door and slapped it on the wall. ‘You don’t mind if I don’t stick around and watch,’ he said. ‘Only, I’ve got this thing about spiders.’

  For some reason that seemed to amuse Emily, but in a nice way; she smiled, and said, ‘Me too. See you later, then. And, um—’

  ‘Don’t thank me.’ He cut her off abruptly. ‘You may still be dead for all I know, I won’t know till I get back to the present.’ He thought about what he’d just said and screwed his eyes up tight for a moment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, relenting. ‘Anyhow, you’ve got spiders to kill, I’d better go home and change my shirt. Which reminds me,’ he added, ‘I’ve got a favour to ask. Tell you about it later.’

  ‘If I survive.’

  ‘Indeed.’ Frank unrolled the Door and opened it. ‘Oh, and take care, all right?’ he mumbled, and stepped through into the one bleak room of his cabin. There he changed his shirt, scrambling frantically even though being late clearly wasn’t an issue, brushed his teeth, combed his hair and hopped back through the Door, which opened inside a pub lavatory. Fortuitously, the man who saw him arrive was drunk; he shook his head, as if to say he wished he’d listened to his mother, and stumbled away up some stairs.

  Emily was waiting at a table when he reached the bar. He let out the lungful of air he’d inhaled in New Zealand forty seconds ago and walked over, rather shakily, to join her.

  ‘You’re all right, then,’ he said. She nodded cheerfully. ‘Piece of cake,’ she replied. ‘Spiders all dead. I left the waste contractors loading them onto a lorry.’

  ‘What about your sidekick?’ he asked. He hadn’t intended to use such a pejorative word. ‘Did he suspect anything?’

  She shook her head. ‘I told him you’re Mr Arkenstone from our Salt Lake City office, and you’d just popped by to borrow a pack of detonators. He gave me a sort of none-of-my-business look and we didn’t discuss it any further.’

  ‘That’s all right, then,’ Frank said. ‘In that case,’ he went on, ‘if it’s all right with you, I’m going to get myself a drink.’

  Emily stood up. ‘Stay there,’ she said, ‘I’m buying.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll have an orange and bitter lemon. No ice.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Let me guess,’ she said. ‘Alcohol in the bloodstream can turn volatile in a strong temporal field.’

  ‘No, I just don’t like the taste of it very much.’

  While she was away, he sank back into his chair, like cheese melting into bread. Now he came to reflect on it, he hadn’t actually stopped to think since the receptionist had told him she’d been killed. At that moment, he’d known exactly what he had to do, and he’d gone and done it. Better Mousetraps, screwing up the time-lines, the implications of Mr Sprague’s disappearance hadn’t even crossed his mind. Probably, he told himself, doctors act like that all the time; except, of course, that they know what they’re doing. Big except that.

  ‘Would it be OK if we just got a sandwich or something here?’ Emily said, putting down Frank’s glass and resuming her seat. ‘Only I don’t feel like a big lunch. I think it’s probably the spiders.’

  ‘Fine,’ he replied. ‘I’m not hungry either. Zipping about in time plays hell with your body clock.’

  For a moment they sat and didn’t look at each other, like two cats on a fence. Then she cleared her throat and said, ‘I’m going to thank you for saving my life now, all right?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It was very—’ Emily sighed impatiently. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what to say, it’s not like writing to your aunt on Boxing Day to thank her for the nice soap. I’d be dead right now if you hadn’t—’

  Frank shrugged. ‘It’s what I do,’ he said. ‘For money.’

  ‘The first time, maybe.’ She took her gaze off the salt and vinegar bottles in the middle of the table and looked at him. ‘The second time, though: did your insurance man call you up and tell you to come and rescue me?’

  He hesitated. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Though I expect he would’ve,’ Frank said quickly. ‘I mean, you’re still insured, so—’

  Emily nodded. ‘So,’ she went on, ‘if you were just in this for the money, when you found out I’d been killed, you’d have waited till he sent for you, and then you’d still have saved me, but you’d have got paid for it. Yes?’

  Frank hadn’t thought of that. Well, of course not. Mr Sprague was missing. But he hadn’t thought of that, either. ‘What’re you getting at?’ he said irritably.

  ‘Just that this time, you rescued me because-well, you wanted to, not just for money. So I need to thank you.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  She smiled. ‘There,’ she said, ‘all done, have a rinse away. Didn’t hurt, did it?’

  There were no arachnides grandiformae Atkinsonii in the bar of the Cumberland Arms. Even so, Frank had the distinct feeling that he was all caught up in something strong and sticky, and the more he struggled, the worse it’d get. Better, in that case, not to struggle. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just didn’t want you to-well, get the wrong impression or anything.’

  Emily frowned. ‘What, you mean like you saved me out of sheer malice, something like that?’

  ‘Not sheer malice, no.’

  ‘Got you.’ She picked the slice of lemon out of her drink, fiddled with it and flicked it on the table. ‘Shall we drop that subject and lay barbed wire and a minefield round it?’

  ‘Better had,’ he replied. ‘Let’s order some sandwiches instead.’

  Emily had cheese and pickle; Frank opted for simple ham. The bread was slightly stale, and they came with lettuce and the inevitable ring-and-a-half of onion that nobody ever eats. ‘This favour,’ he said.

  She looked up. ‘Something professional, I take it.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘All right. Fire away.’

  Frank paused for a moment to crowd his thoughts into a huddle. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘this morning, before I went to meet you, I popped into Marks to buy a shirt.’

  ‘The one you’ve got on now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Emily frowned. ‘Doesn’t suit you. Makes you look like a waiter.’

  He smiled thinly. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought so, too. Anyway, I got there and looked round, and I couldn’t decide, so I thought I’d get George Sprague-you remember, the insurance man I do the jobs for - to come and help me. But then—’

  ‘Just a moment. You took your boss along to help you choose a shirt?’

  ‘Yes. Why? Is it significant?’

  ‘Probably,’ she said, in a rather odd tone of voice. ‘Sorry, you were saying.’

  So Frank told her what had happened; and when he’d finished, she looked at him again and said, ‘And after all that, you went and bought a shirt anyway?’

  He blinked. ‘Well, yes,’ he said.

  ‘I see.’ Pause. ‘Next time you go clothes shopping,’ she said, looking closely at him, ‘maybe I’d better come with you.’

  ‘Right. To recreate the sequence of events, you mean.’

  ‘No.’ Emily shook her head, as if trying to clear dust out of it.

  ‘Right,’ she said briskly, ‘let’s just go back over that, shall we? For-well, for reasons that made sense at the time, you took this Mr Sprague with you through the Portable Door—’

  ‘
Yes.’

  ‘And he went in at his end but didn’t come out again at yours.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I see.’ She thought for a moment, then said, ‘And you’ve phoned his office to make sure he’s not turned up there?’

  Oink, he thought. ‘Well, no,’ he said.

  ‘You haven’t?’

  ‘No. I assumed—’

  Emily smiled, rather nicely. ‘I do that, too,’ she said. ‘I think it comes from being around weird stuff too long.’ She fished her phone out of her bag and turned it on. ‘What’s his number?’

  Frank told her and she keyed it in. ‘Could I speak to George Sprague, please?’ Muffled, like a mouse inside a Wellington boot, but he heard a voice saying ‘Who’s calling?’ ‘Carringtons.’

  ‘Putting you through.’ A definite smirk on her face, there was no getting away from it. But so what, she’d earned it. ‘Like I said, happens to me all the— Oh, hello, is that George Sprague?’ Frank heard a grunt; Sprague for yes. ‘My name’s Emily Spitzer, from Carringtons. I have Frank Carpenter for you.’

  ‘Who?’

  She raised her eyebrows and handed him the phone. He grabbed it and said, ‘George?’ Pause. ‘George Sprague here. I’m sorry, I don’t know you.’

  ‘Frank,’ said Frank. ‘Frank Carpenter.’ Silence. Emily shrugged at him across the table. ‘You know,’ he said feebly, ‘Frank. I was in your office just now. I asked you to come and help me choose a shirt.’