Door turned the page. She didn’t look up. “A reply.”
“What kind of a reply?” Door shrugged. “Oh. Right.” It occurred to Richard then that her skin was very white, now that some of the dirt and blood had been removed. He wondered if she were pale from illness, or from loss of blood, or if she simply didn’t get out much, or was anemic. Maybe she’d been in prison, although she looked a bit too young for that. Perhaps the big man had been telling the truth when he had said she was mad. “Listen, when those men came over . . . “
“Men?” A flash of the opal-colored eyes.
“Croup and, um, Vanderbilt.”
“Vandemar.” She mused for a moment, then nodded. “I suppose you could call them men, yes. Two legs, two arms, a head each.”
Richard kept talking. “When they came in here, before. Where were you?”
She licked her finger and turned a page. “I was here.”
“But—” He stopped talking, out of words. There wasn’t anywhere in the apartment that she could have hidden herself. But she hadn’t left the apartment. But—
There was a scratching noise, and a dark shape larger than a mouse scurried out from the mess of videotapes beneath the television. “Jesus!” said Richard, and he threw the remote control at it as hard as he could. It crashed into the videos with a bang. Of the dark shape there was no sign.
“Richard!” said Door.
“It’s okay,” he explained. “I think it was just a rat or something.”
She glared at him. “Of course it was a rat. You’ll have scared it now, poor thing.” She looked around the room, then made a low whistling noise between her front teeth. “Hello?” she called. She knelt on the floor, Mansfield Park abandoned. “Hello?”
She flashed a glance back at Richard. “If you’ve hurt it . . . ” she threatened; then, softly, to the room, “I’m sorry, he’s an idiot. Hello?”
“I’m not an idiot,” said Richard.
“Shh,” she said. “Hello?” A pink nose and two small black eyes peered out from under the sofa. The rest of the head followed, and it scrutinized its surroundings suspiciously. It was indeed much too big to be a mouse, Richard was certain of that. “Hi,” said Door, warmly. “Are you okay?” She extended her hand. The animal climbed into it, then ran up her arm, nestling in the crook of it. Door stroked its side with her finger. It was dark brown, with a long pink tail. There was something that looked like a folded piece of paper attached to its side.
“It’s a rat,” said Richard.
“Yes, it is. Are you going to apologize?”
“What?”
“Apologize.”
Maybe he hadn’t heard her properly. Maybe he was the one who was going mad. “To a rat?”
Door said nothing, fairly meaningfully. “I’m sorry,” said Richard, to the rat, with dignity, “if I startled you.”
The rat looked up at Door. “No, he really does mean it,” she said. “He’s not just saying it. So what have you got for me?” She fumbled at the rat’s side, and pulled out a much-folded piece of brown paper, which had been held on with something that looked to Richard like a vivid blue rubber band.
She opened it up: a piece of ragged-edged brown paper, with spidery black handwriting on it. She read it and nodded. “Thank you,” she said, to the rat. “I appreciate all you’ve done.” It scampered down onto the couch, glared up at Richard for a moment, and then was gone in the shadows.
The girl called Door passed the paper to Richard. “Here,” she said. “Read this.”
It was late afternoon in Central London, and, with autumn drawing on, it was getting dark. Richard had taken the Tube to Tottenham Court Road and was now walking west down Oxford Street, holding the piece of paper. Oxford Street was the retail hub of London, and even now the sidewalks were packed with shoppers and tourists.
“It’s a message,” she said, when she gave it to him. “From the marquis de Carabas.”
Richard was sure he had heard the name before. “That’s nice,” he said. “Out of postcards, was he?”
“This is quicker.”
He passed the lights and the noise of the Virgin megastore, and the shop that sold souvenir London police helmets and little red London buses, and the place next door that sold individual slices of pizza, and then he turned right.
“You have to follow the directions written on here. Try not to let anyone follow you.” Then she sighed, and said, “I really shouldn’t involve you this much.”