Chapter 4
“—done it.”
The group now stood on a cobbled street, their faces centimeters away, or less, from the outer wall of a large and shabby building.
“Dear gods! A hair to the left with that brooch and I’d’ve lost my sniffer!
” Mrs. Chrysler reeled back, rubbing her chafed nose and looking around to gain her bearings.
They’d arrived in the midst of a sizeable estate, still quite unable to hide the fact that it sat on a flat, featureless, and smelly bog.
“These buildings weren’t on the map!” she accused the world in general.
“Well, the map’s over forty years old. Pardon me if it doesn’t have everything on it anymore,” Katherine said.
She checked to make sure that her pets were all right and accounted for, then swiftly fastened her brooch back in its place and tucked the map in its wrappings back in her pack.
“That trip wasn’t so bad, was it, my dears?
” she said, gathering up her scarf from the rigid paws still clinging to it.
Each tail was a bottlebrush. “Where are we, anyway?”
Mrs. Chrysler wandered away from the wall she’d found herself suddenly facing, looked up at the two large stone pillars marking the entryway, and read the large sign over it. “Eagle Heights Active Adult Living Community,” came her nasal voice, as she was indeed holding her nose.
Katherine surveyed their drab, and quite deserted, environs. “So this is it.”
“This is what?”
“The rest home Splint was going to build, after the buyout from the nuns.”
“Oh dear.”
“The Eagle Heights Active Adult Living Community.”
Mrs. Chrysler glanced around, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. “So, where are they all?” She’d stopped holding her nose and instead wafted her hand in front of her face.
“The eagles, Imogene?”
“The active adults, Katty. I don’t think eagles have ever lived here.”
Tilly sniffed the sulfurous air. Not unless they were hopelessly lost, she muttered.
Ooh, agreed, Ember said. Not a good place for birds. She coughed and a tiny burst of flame erupted in front of her. Dragons, on the other hand. Just the kind of place I’d expect to find dragons… Good climate for them.
“Hm. They’re probably all inside, I imagine,” Katherine said to her friend.
Oh, the dragons are inside? Mr. Scruffles asked. Let’s go meet them!
No, dear, Ember said. People.
Oh.
Mrs. Chrysler and Katherine examined the small, dismal buildings, all similar and set apart at angles by small, mismatched brown lawns crisscrossed by gravel walks and sad beds of faded mulch, devoid of flowers.
The smell could be tolerated, if one grew used to it, or if there were a steady breeze from a favorable direction.
But there wasn’t anyone taking a stroll, or playing croquet, or sitting on a bench, or walking a dog…
or anything, even though the day was quite fine.
The building in front of them appeared to be the main one, considerably larger and more imposing than the others, with large wooden doors meeting a carriage drive, complete with portico to keep off the rain.
“Well, shall we go in?” Mrs. Chrysler suggested.
“In?”
“Sure, why not? Let’s investigate a bit before heading to the convent and finding Todd. Get a sense of things. Perhaps this is actually a nicer place than Saint Percival’s Home for Moribund Old People.”
“That’s an optimistic appraisal of the situation, Imogene. You sure you’re not just delaying a visit to the nuns?”
“No, no. That’s not it.”
Katherine shuddered knowingly. “You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Sister Agatha really had daggers in her eyes the last time she saw us.”
“I know… I’d’ve preferred daggers in her hands, really. Easier to manage.”
“Yes.” The two women lost themselves in thought a moment. “She was an old woman, then, though…”
“Right, she couldn’t possibly still be… around.” They were both silent again. “But let’s be in full possession of the facts anyway,” Mrs. Chrysler finally declared.
“All right. If you’d like to do a scouting mission, I’m on board.”
“Excellent. Now, how shall we breach the building? And what’s our cover?”
Katherine took a moment before replying. “Well, I think we should start by trying that door. And, I imagine we’ll simply blend, Imogene.”
“Right.”
The trio of cats had been milling about the women’s feet all this time, trying not to breathe too deeply. Ember was testing some experimental little coughs, which sprouted small conflagrations in the greasy air.
Not too nice a place, this, Mr. Scruffles said. Makes me want to give myself a bath.
I agree, said Tilly. She held a paw over her nose. Although it looks as if they’re going inside now. Maybe the air is a bit fresher inside. She blinked out of sight, except for her tail, and Ember and Mr. Scruffles trotted after her and the two women now approaching the door.
The handle, as it turned out, was locked.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Katherine said. “Maybe it’s abandoned. Nobody here.” She looked around at the insistent lack of activity.
“All the more reason to poke around, then,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “And nobody to catch us neither. C’mon, Katty. Never knew a locked door that a bracelet couldn’t fix.” She nudged her friend, eyeing the lockpicks dangling elegantly from Katherine’s wrist.
Katherine nodded and set to work. A few moments passed. “I don’t remember… these things being so… fiddly,” she finally grumbled. Her knuckles ached with the effort, unused to the delicacies of her decades-old art. Ember gave her hands a gentle rub, and they felt better.
“Thank you, darling.”
Mrs. Chrysler lowered her glasses down her nose to examine the lock over Katherine’s shoulder. “Looks to be a standard multi-bolter with quick-release bobbins,” she said.
“Slow-release bobbins, if I’m any judge,” said Katherine. “So maybe just a little more to the left. And a quarter-then-half turn to the right…” Then, just like that: pop. The knob turned in Katherine’s hand as if it had been open all the time.
“You’ve still got it,” Mrs. Chrysler whispered giddily, poking her friend in the ribs.
Katherine allowed herself a small smile. “Yes, yes,” she said. “Keep an eye out now.”
Their vision soon adjusted to the darkness of a small, enclosed foyer, blocked at the other end by another locked door.
“I think I’ve got the hang of it now,” Katherine whispered, working more swiftly this time.
She cracked the second door a fraction to reveal a wide entryway.
A large staircase arched over a corridor to their right, and to their left there seemed to be a formal reception area.
Oddly, though, the receptionist’s counter faced away from the doors. And there was someone seated at it.
“Huh. It is occupied, then,” Katherine murmured.
The seated woman had her back to them and was shuffling papers in an aggressively fastidious sort of way.
Her dark, pin-studded hair was piled high in a complicated, braided updo that brought to mind the fashionable young people at the Giddy Horseman, but also, and probably not intentionally, an over-baked loaf of plaited bread with currants in it.
A tight white blouse clung to her angular shoulders as she hunched over her paperwork, and her cuffs ended in red bangles that complemented a tight red skirt and heels, the ruby pins in her hair, and long, flawlessly painted scarlet nails.
“Not inclined to introduce myself,” Mrs. Chrysler whispered. “Hi, howdoyado? Don’t mind me, I just broke into your establishment.”
Katherine frowned. “Corridor, then?”
“Corridor, yes.”
She, Katherine, and the cats began to quietly edge themselves along the wall toward the corridor on their right, and they were making good progress, until a shrill, suspicious shout rang out, freezing them in their tracks.
“Hey! You!” As one, the quintet turned their heads to face the woman, but she wasn’t looking their way.
“When did I say I wanted the monthly expense report on my desk this morning?”
The object of her harangue was invisible, but it sounded flustered and harassed. “I-I was just doing the final tallies,” came a voice from the other side of the staircase. “You’ll have it right away.”
“I’d better! Honestly, why must I be surrounded by such incompetent nincompoops?
” The woman leaned forward menacingly and glowered at the staircase, but Katherine noticed that a smug and unnerving smile also soon pulled her lips, as the sound of rapid footsteps rattled up the stairs.
The woman settled back in her chair and returned to her paperwork.
“Well, she seems nice,” Katherine said.
“Yes, a real peach. C’mon, let’s go.” The party resumed their wall-hugging procession and presently slipped round the corner under the staircase, without the woman’s notice.
“I wonder whether getting back out will be as easy as getting in,” Mrs. Chrysler murmured after they’d made it several paces down the corridor. “We were lucky she was so distracted, you know.”
Katherine felt her confidence sink into her boots a moment, then dared look round the corner again at the back of the young woman. She still seemed rather preoccupied. “We’ll just have to be careful, Imogene.”
“Righto. And if she spots us, we’ll give ’er a taste of what we’re capable of.”
Katherine raised her eyebrows. What they were capable of anymore, she wasn’t exactly sure, and if she were being honest with herself, she didn’t really want to find out.
The two companions continued their shuffle down the dimly lit hallway, drawn by a low hum of voices at the other end. “More people,” Mrs. Chrysler said. “Perhaps the place is still a rest home after all.”