The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

Author:Garth Nix
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Published: 2020-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

In the spring green shoots

Small signs of renewed triumph

Death’s grip is broken

VIVIEN ARRIVED AT THE MILNER SQUARE HOUSE FIVE MINUTES AFTER the response teams from both bookshops and, it seemed, every possible other emergency vehicle. The entire length of the square in front of the safe house was jammed with two police Rovers, a police armored Land Rover, a police van, two police motorbikes, two ambulances, a paramedic motorbike, and two fire engines, one a ladder truck, its turntable ladder being extended to the rooftop of the third town house in the row along from Mrs. London’s. There were uniformed police officers outside almost every house, sending people back inside, who kept ducking out to see what on earth was going on. The short stretch of cross street on the northern end of the square’s garden was blocked by two of the bookshops’ taxis and a dozen motorbikes from the Old Bookshop response team.

Vivien was in the third taxi, driven by Audrey, who said, “Lord love a duck” and parked up on the curb at the southern corner of the garden. Vivien was out of the cab even before Audrey had turned the engine off.

Two edgy armed police officers in the street outside the safe house raised their H & K MP5s but lowered them as Vivien held up her warrant card, and they let her proceed to the unarmed constable by the front door, who was recording names of personnel as they arrived. He looked at her card for a few seconds, made a face, and waved her in without writing anything down.

As she went up the front steps, a group of paramedics came out with a body on a stretcher and she had to stand aside. A green blanket was pulled over his or her face, but Vivien noticed the shoes, and stopped, shocked into stillness.

Mrs. London’s sensible square-toed shoes, from some nursing supplier that had somehow survived into the twentieth century. Florence Nightingale shoes.

“Goodbye, Mrs. L,” whispered Vivien, and went inside.

Greene was on the hall phone, standing almost at attention and listening to someone who liked the sound of their own voice. Vivien—who, as with all the right-handed, had extraordinarily acute hearing—could make out most of it, particularly as the one word deniability was vehemently repeated. The inspector cupped her hand over the receiver and said, “Merlin’s out back.”

Vivien rushed past. Merlin, his left hand in a paisley oven mitt rather than a glove, was standing on the floodlit back lawn, talking earnestly to Una, who for once was listening intently. The younger bookseller had his foot on a cooking pot, which was rattling and thudding. The other left-handed members of the response team were picking up . . . wriggling bits of meat . . . from the lawn and garden, using forks and barbecue tongs and dropping them into half a dozen smaller saucepans, sorting them in some fashion because they didn’t drop them into the closest pot. Three of the right-handed booksellers from

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