Free The Doorkeepers by Graham Masterton

figurines, like chess pieces, all with their heads covered with hoods.
    â€œWhen was the last time you saw Julia?” Josh asked Ella.
    â€œI can tell you the exact date.” She went across to a bookshelfcrowded with an odd assortment of paperbacks and old leather-bound volumes, and brought down a dog-eared exercise book marked DiArY in multicolored pens. She thumbed through it for a while, and then she said, “Here it is. May tenth last year. It was a Sunday. We took Abraxas for a walk in the morning, in Holland Park. Then we had lunch with Wally and Kim in Philbeach Gardens, which is just across the road from here. Daisy was in a really good mood, because she’d found herself a new job. In fact she was almost in too much of a good mood. She kept talking all the time and flapping her hands around. I remember one of my friends asking if she was on something.”
    â€œMaybe she was just excited,” Nancy suggested.
    â€œNo, no, it was more than just excitement. I mean, what are we talking about here, it was only a secretarial job for some electrical company out on the Great West Road. But she was bubbling, you know? And saying that she couldn’t wait to start. You’d have thought that she was going off somewhere really exotic.”
    Josh said, “I don’t know the Great West Road. Is that someplace you might get excited about?”
    â€œYou’re joking, I hope. It’s just one boring factory after another. Hotpoint washing machines. Smith’s Crisps.”
    â€œShe didn’t leave you her new address?”
    â€œShe kept saying that she was going to, but we all got a bit pissed that afternoon and I forgot to ask her for it.
But
…” Ella returned to the bookcase and took out a folded letter that was tucked between two books. “I found this under her futon after she’d gone.”
    Josh angled the letter toward the nearest lamp. It had a black and white illustration of a 1930s factory on the top, with pennants flying from the roof, and the name
Wheatstone Electrics C° Ltd
in elegant, dated lettering. The address was Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, and the telephone number EALing 6181.
    The letter was addressed to Julia here, at 37 Trebovir Road. It was dated May 6, 2000, and it was signed by somebody called F.G. Mordant, Sales Director. It said: “We are pleased to beable to offer you a secretarial position, commencing on May 11, at a salary of £7.13s.6d a week. Please be at Star Yard as before at 8:15 a.m.”
    â€œThis was written on a manual typewriter,” said Josh. “You don’t often see that these days.”
    â€œYou don’t often see somebody being offered £7.13s.6d a week, either,” put in Ella. “That’s old money, before Britain went decimal, and that was over twenty-five years ago. Apart from the fact that a secretary gets seven pounds an hour these days, not seven pounds a week.”
    â€œDid you try calling this number?”
    â€œNo point. They haven’t had an EALing exchange since 1966. It’s all numbers these days. I tried directory enquiries, too, but they didn’t have any record of a company called Wheatstone Electrics.”
    â€œWhat about Star Yard?”
    â€œI looked that up in the A-Z. It’s just a little pedestrian cut-through off Carey Street, near the Law Courts. Right in the city – nowhere near the Great West Road.”
    Josh turned the letter over. There was another address, written in blue ballpoint pen, on the other side. He recognized Julia’s writing immediately.
53b Kaiser Gardens, Lavender Hill.
And the name
Mrs Marguerite Marmion.
    Ella poured boiling water into a large brown teapot and swirled it around. “Before you ask, there
is
no Kaiser Gardens in Lavender Hill, nor anywhere else in London, and there’s no Mrs Marguerite Marmion in the London telephone directory.”
    â€œYou’re sure about