checked the wooden wardrobe and found that in the ladies’ half there was room for two dresses with their voluminous bustles, while the men’s side held a selection of suits and hunting wear. Chevie chose a pair of jodhpurs, probably tailored for a teenage boy, tucked them into knee-high riding boots, and topped the lot off with a crisp white shirt.
We need to get out of here, she thought. I don’t trust this guy: he is being too nice to us. And he knows far too much about the future to be from the past. I do not buy this spiritualist story for a minute.
She placed her ear to the door and could hear sounds of conversation from downstairs.
No doubt Riley the fan-boy is asking any question he can think of.
The conversation drifted up to her with the aroma of coffee and fresh bread. Chevie realized that she was starving, in spite of the feast Tibor Charismo had served up the previous night.
Chicken, guinea fowl, turkey, pheasant. How many birds can a person eat in one sitting?
She twisted the painted knob and found the door locked.
Odd. Why would our supposed benefactor lock me in?
As far as Chevie was concerned, this was simply another tick on the evidence sheet against Charismo.
This guy has some kind of link to the future. He is connected to this case, and with any luck he can show us the way home.
But before she confronted him with her suspicions, Chevie decided that it would be wise to snoop around and gather some evidence.
I’m a federal agent, she thought. Snooping is what we do best.
The window was also locked, which slowed Chevie down. She discovered a cushion that had been embroidered with Charismo’s own face and thought of ramming her elbow through Charismo’s nose to crack the pane beyond.
But the glass breaking was not a clever idea. The noise would still be heard in the mews, and there were people on the flagstones in the yard. As soon as she smashed the window there would be a hundred eyes on her.
There’s something about this guy Charismo. Either he’s from the future or he knows someone who is, but it’s not just that. I have a bad feeling about him. And it’s not just the circumstantial evidence and that creepy mask.
Not a hunch; more than that. An un-remembered memory. Come on, subconscious; where are you when I need you? There must be another way out besides the window. Chevie spent a minute knocking on the walls, searching for the secret passage that all Victorian houses had in the movies, but there was no hollow echo, just the flat rap of solid brick. Then she noticed a silk screen, again embroidered with Charismo’s face. In petty annoyance she put the toe of her riding boot through the screen, only to feel a draft. It was a fireplace with a driedflower arrangement in the grate.
The chimney. Garrick came down the chimney in the Garden Hotel. I never thought I would steal one of his tricks.
Chevie knelt and poked her head into the flue. It led to a redbrick chimney. Chevie saw the bricks were red, even through a scaly skin of soot, because a splash of light fell across them from above.
Light, thought Chevie. That means there’s another fireplace one floor up.
She wriggled her shoulders into the flue—while there was enough space for a wriggle, there certainly was no room for a shrug.
I had better not shrug, then, thought Agent Savano, and twisted herself completely into the fireplace.
While Chevie was scraping her nose along the redbrick of a chimney, Riley was being interviewed in the writing room by society darling Tibor Charismo. Riley was an adoring fan of Charismo’s work, and Tibor seemed extremely satisfied to take this as the starting point of their relationship.
They sat at an extraordinary mahogany writing desk fashioned in the shape of a stylized gryphon, with a lion’s body and the head of an eagle, covered in gold leaf, protruding from one side. The lion’s flat back was upholstered in pale orange leather, with cubbyholes for bottles, pens, and blotter.
And even though Riley had visited the twenty-first century, he believed this desk to be the most fantastic single object he had ever seen.
“You are admiring my desk, I see,” said Charismo. On this morning he wore an old-fashioned powdered wig over his dark curls, his mask was painted in garish orange and red to give him a slightly demonic appearance, and his dressing gown was