“Happy to,” said Susan. She stuffed her bundle of clothes into the bag as well, and swung it experimentally. The bag would make a reasonable weapon in itself, even without getting the swords out in the first place. A violent swing from the heavy bag could easily knock someone down.
“At least a Cauldron-Born rat would be easier to hack apart,” said Merlin. He opened the door and added, “Harder to spot, though. And if it tried a surprise attack . . .”
He hesitated, then said, “You know what? Though their lunchroom is as awfully provisioned as the New Bookshop’s, why don’t we go straight to the Old Bookshop and eat something there? Skip the pub. If we hurry, we can probably cadge motorbike rides with Una’s lot. Always fun. Provided you don’t fall off the back.”
“And strength in numbers,” said Vivien. “You really do think a Cauldron-Born of some kind was here, don’t you?”
Merlin didn’t answer, instead hurrying to the lift. Susan and Vivien hadn’t waited for his reply, and all three moved swiftly down the hallway. When they got a few paces away, they all rushed to press the call button, Merlin’s left forefinger getting there first.
Chapter Eleven
Be a writer, if you will
Or don’t, no one will care
Order your shelves, or not
Kill or kiss your darlings
Simply write
RIDING PILLION ON A HONDA CB400N SUPERDREAM BEHIND AN evidently deranged left-handed bookseller-cum-courier—whose idea of getting through traffic owed a lot to embroidery, threading in and out and around slower or stopped vehicles, always at high speed—was fun, as Merlin had promised. Made slightly scarier because it was still drizzling and the road was wet, and Susan found falling off the back rather more likely than expected, since she was holding the cricket bag under her left arm and so could only hold on with her right.
Susan, Merlin, and Vivien made it to the Old Bookshop in a three-minute sprint up Charing Cross Road. Sabah chirped “Off you get” to Susan at the curb out the front, allowing about five seconds for her to dismount before roaring away with Una and the others down a side alley to some unseen garage or loading dock around the back of the building.
The Old Bookshop was another six-story Georgian edifice, with the addition of what looked to be a Victorian-era turret on one end, but it was entirely different from the New Bookshop in Mayfair. The ground floor facing the street was all floor-to-ceiling high windows, with a wonderful display of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose complete with a cardboard castle to the left of the central revolving door, and a selection of new release thrillers and mysteries built up in series of pyramids in the window to the right, including John Le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl, Jeffrey Archer’s First Among Equals, and Ken Follett’s On Wings of Eagles. Smaller displays at the far end of each window showcased some nonfiction, as if to ballast the made-up stuff in-between, including A. N. Wilson’s The Life of John Milton, a biography of Frida Kahlo, and Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman, which caught Susan’s eye because as far as she could tell she was one of the few people in the world to have read The Princess Bride. No one she talked to had ever heard of it. Her mother had bought the book because William Goldman had written her favorite film, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Unlike the New Bookshop’s discreet brass plate, the Old Bookshop sported a three-foot-high green neon sign proclaiming “The Old Bookshop, All New Books Today” and beneath that a smaller neon sign that announced in brilliant orange “Complete Penguin Bookshop.”
Also unlike the other bookshop, it was busy with customers, and there was a steady column of people moving in and out through the central revolving door and the smaller door to its side, both watched over by two small, middle-aged women who had to be twins. They were cheerfully checking bags and casting the eye of disapproving shame on a student in an enormous greatcoat stuffed with stolen books who’d made the mistake of thinking he was in Foyles and was now suddenly intent on returning all the books to their correct shelves without a word spoken, somehow sensing the inherent threat in the twins’ single- gloved left hands and their smiling good humor.
Susan, Merlin, and Vivien got nods and smiles from the twins—Aunts Kristen and Kersten, Vivien muttered—as they were flung out of the revolving door into a large, brightly lit acme of bookshops, with well-ordered and well-labeled shelves in all directions, pleasant staff asking “Can I help you?” and comfortable chairs in strategic corners, all occupied by readers.
“This way,” said Vivien, heading past the central payment desk, where a trio of right-handed cotton-gloved assistants were selling books to a steady line of customers queuing with innate British ease alongside a rack of current magazines and newspapers. The afternoon papers were being put out, all with similar headlines, again catching Susan’s eye.
The Sun said “Gangsters Gunning to Kill!”; the Daily Mirror “Gangland Death Spree!”; The Times “Organised Crime Violence Peaks”; and the Guardian “Several Underworld Murders.”
None of the staff spoke to them, but Susan noted Merlin got smiles from everyone, and Vivien serious head inclinations that could not be described as simply nodding. Susan thought some glances of curiosity were directed her way as well, but that was all. Being with Vivien and Merlin and clearly on a mission from their rapid movement, no one paid her any other attention.
Vivien turned left at the “New Fiction” shelves, along an aisle for “New Nonfiction,” and continued towards the rear of the ground floor, where a broad fake marble staircase with bronze banister rails was visible going up and down, and an old wooden-stepped escalator clanked up next to it, beside a sign pointing right “To the Lifts.”
An illuminated sign with the Penguin logo in black and a red arrow pointing down flickered above the stairs. Vivien and Merlin followed this direction, clattering down the stairs for a few steps before, as if by second nature, they both sat up on the smooth bronze banister and slid down.
Susan had paused momentarily to look at the directory board by the escalator, noting there were three floors above, including a children’s department, Maps & Atlases, and Technical Books. There were two floors below, first the Complete Penguin Bookshop on Lower Ground One and then Bargains, Remainders & Records on Lower Ground Two.
When Susan looked away from the board, Merlin and Vivien were sliding down the banister, already going faster than she could take the steps, so she followed suit. But she had to hold the cricket bag across her body, which made it much harder to balance, and she almost fell twice as she wobbled down to the next floor and sprang off the end to land with a stagger in a large, extremely orange room, narrowly avoiding a collision with an oversized cutout penguin of the bird variety, which was holding a sign proclaiming “The Complete Penguin Bookshop Stocks All Penguins in Print.”
Even though many Penguin books now had pictorial covers, their spines were still mostly orange, and the sheer quantity of books on the shelves here meant few were face out, explaining the extraordinarily dominant color, though there were also a few sections of green-spined mysteries, blue-spined nonfiction, and so on.
This part of the bookshop was busy, too, though the active shoppers were outnumbered by browsers and a few dedicated readers who were obviously intent on reading entire books in the shop. The right-handed bookseller here raised his eyebrows and mouthed something to Vivien that Susan couldn’t catch as they breezed past, towards a door at the rear of the shop marked “Strictly Staff Only.”