THE BEFORE
The day Marion had been recruited as a Miss Brickett’s apprentice had been a Sunday, four days after Christmas, four months ago. It was a particularly cold morning, the skies thick with gray and the ground outside Number Sixteen Willow Street covered in sleet.
Dolores was downstairs decorating the lounge with streamers and newly dusted plastic flowers, drawn out from storage for this most special of occasions. A tray of scones was brought from the oven and a fresh bowl of cream beaten to a perfect peak. It would be an afternoon like no other—Mr. Smithers, proprietor of Smithers Furniture and Supplies was on his way. As arranged, he would propose, offering Marion not only an escape from her lackluster existence but a purpose, too. She would be a wife, a mother, a useful human being at last—or so Dolores assured her. Not a single piece of Marion wanted what Mr. Smithers was offering, yet it was safe to assume that the life she was about to step into would not be any worse than the one she was leaving behind.
But from somewhere deep beneath the grimy streets of London, conjured miles below the world of the ordinary and mundane, another life, another chance, was about to arrive.
Marion watched from her window as a man in a bowler hat and Chester coat wandered down Willow Street toward her, something that appeared to be a pocket watch in his right hand. She knew immediately who it was and the sight lit a spark of hope inside her. Somehow, Frank Stone always seemed to materialize when she needed him most.
“You’re home. How wonderful,” he said as Marion opened the door. He smiled and tipped his hat, his gray eyes gleaming at her.
She stared at him in silence, assembling the series of memories in her mind: the first time they’d met—a cold and smoggy night in February 1948 when Frank had walked Alice home from the factory she worked at fourteen hours a day, six days a week. Alice had introduced him as a friend, someone she’d known since childhood. But Marion could tell from the glow in her mother’s eyes that perhaps once before, if not still, they’d been more than friends. Then again at Marion’s fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, and shortly after at Alice’s funeral. He’d placed a hand on Marion’s shoulder then and promised that one day things would get better. He promised her she wasn’t alone and that whenever she needed him, he’d be there.
She thought of him frequently after that, and every time she did she was overwhelmed with a sense of longing, one she could not quite make sense of. She wondered if it were because he was the closest thing she’d ever had to a father, or rather because seeing him reminded her of happier times. Of the days Alice had seemed full of life, hopeful.
True to his word and for the next seven years of Marion’s life, Frank appeared at Number Sixteen Willow Street whenever things became difficult or desperate, a welcome interruption to her troubles. And so, when he arrived at her front door that day in December, Marion couldn’t help but feel the visit had to do with Mr. Smithers’s imminent proposal, and the sense of dread she felt along with it.
“Excuse the intrusion,” Frank said, peering over her shoulder at the vase of plastic flowers in the hallway. “But I have something I thought you might like to see.” He handed her a crisp white envelope. He went on to explain that the envelope contained an offer of employment at a local London bookshop, a position Marion had been highly recommended for, though by whom he did not say. Further details of the offer were scarce, though Frank assured her more would be explained in the letter and at an interview, which would take place at the bookshop that very afternoon, one-thirty exactly. “Ah, and Marion,” he added just before he left, “do bring your tools, just in case.”
“Tools?” Marion frowned.
“Yes, my dear. The leather roll Felix gave you.” He smiled, tipped his hat and was gone.
Despite their short and perplexing encounter, Marion was able to think of little else and she’d waited only until Frank had disappeared into the gathering fog before slipping a butter knife through the envelope’s paper sheath. But the letter inside was blank.
For nearly an hour she examined the bare piece of paper, confused and anxious. She knew Frank had a flair for the mysterious. But never without meaning or purpose. Even if the letter appeared to be blank, it couldn’t be. Not completely.
She studied the letter more closely, more intensely. And then she saw it—a tiny line of script on the letter’s bottom right corner: a little heat will do the trick.
Marion read the line several times over, trying to understand. And then it hit her. She swept clear her bedside table and switched on the old reading lamp nearby. She held the letter directly beneath the bulb and waited.
Nothing happened.
The heat of the lamp’s rays penetrated the parchment, warming the blood pounding through her fingertips. One minute passed. Two. The parchment was now so hot it might very well burst into flame. Five minutes elapsed before the edges of a nearly invisible layer of translucent film wrinkled inward. She plucked and scraped at the edges until she had some purchase, then, like dead skin from a blister, peeled it free from the parchment beneath.
She cast the peculiar material aside. Just as she’d hoped, beneath it was a letter.
Dear Miss Lane,
Congratulations on your selection.
Please follow the directions to your interview at Miss Brickett’s Secondhand Books and Curiosities (as listed below).
We will meet you inside the bookshop at exactly 1:30 p.m.
Late arrivals will not be rescheduled.
Without hesitation, Marion threw the letter inside her handbag, along with the leather roll Frank had suggested she bring. She tidied her hair, pulled on a coat and slipped down the staircase to the front door.
Dolores would have a conniption once she realized Marion had left just before Mr. Smithers arrived, but something inside her knew without doubt or reason that this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. One she could not miss.
She arrived at the bookshop well ahead of time. It was a curious building—somewhat dilapidated, black paint peeling from the window frames—yet alluring at the same time. She tried to peer through the windows, but their frosted glass gave nothing away. She knocked several times on the wrought-iron door. No one answered. She then tried the doorknob and, as she did, noticed its ostentatious (and certainly out of place) brass padlock. According to the letter, she was to enter the bookshop at one-thirty exactly, or forfeit the interview altogether. She looked again at the padlock, more closely this time. It was more like a puzzle, really. A collection of symbols and buttons that could be rearranged in a multitude of sequences, one of which would obviously unlatch the lock and allow her to open the bookshop door.
She drew a wavering breath. Time was slipping away. She was missing something, clearly. There must be a way to figure out the sequence, but she was hopeless at puzzles. And what if she got it wrong? Would she get another chance? She considered her only other option—the one Frank had, in a sense, suggested.
She threw her purse open on the pavement, then flipped the padlock over in her hand, tilting it sideways, studying its structure against the thin light filtering through the bookshop window. And there it was. A crease, a near-invisible joint on the back of the padlock. She traced her finger along its edge until she felt what she’d been hoping for. A divot. And secured inside, a pentagon head bolt, one on each end of the joint line. Designed to be tamperproof, the bolts were exceptionally challenging to remove. Unless, of course, you had the right tool.
She knelt down on the cobblestone street and extracted, from the rubble of lipstick, hairpins, handkerchiefs and coins, a small leather roll containing an arrangement of compact tools. She removed a spanner fit for the job and, as quickly as she could despite the unsteadiness of her hands, coerced the bolt from its moorings. She repeated the process with the second bolt and the brass padlock was reduced to the sum of its parts.
Something moved inside the bookshop. She ignored the prickling on the back of her neck and removed the key that had fallen from the padlock to the pavement and, finally, opened the bookshop door. A soft bell chimed as she stepped inside.
“What the—” A tall, reedlike figure appeared from the darkest back corner of the bookshop. He couldn’t have been any older than Marion herself, though several heads taller and barely any wider. “Who are you?”
“I’m...here for an interview,” she stammered, realizing how strange this might sound. “Frank Stone sent me.” Her heart thumped unsteadily, the beat palpable in her throat. Had it all been a mistake? Was she about to be arrested for breaking and entering? Oh, what Dolores would say about that!
The reedy man stirred. Someone else was approaching from the depths the shop.
“Bloody hell,” he said with a spark of recognition. “You’re the new recruit, aren’t you?”
“Well, I suppose so,” Marion said uncertainly. Recruit was an unusual term for a bookshop assistant.
The reedy man looked at his watch, then at the door now swinging open in the wind. His hands began to tremor. “Oh, Christ! You broke it!”
Marion frowned, then peered at the disassembled padlock in her hand. “The lock? No, I didn’t. I just dismantled it.”
The sound of a third presence was now clearer than ever. It seemed they were just feet away, behind the butler’s desk, perhaps.
“Listen,” the reedy man said with a note of urgency, “you better put that lock back together before he comes up here or you won’t be hired, and God knows, I’ll probably be fired—”
“Who? Comes up from where?”
“Just do it!” he pleaded. “You’re supposed to figure out the code, not break the lock. They won’t hire you if they see it’s broken.” The reedy man turned to the back of the shop. “Christ, he’s here. Hurry!”
All at once, he dashed to the back of the shop and disappeared into the shadows behind the butler’s desk. A muffled voice called angrily from beyond—Hobb? Is that you? What’s going on? Open up! There was a rattle of wood and the crashing of something falling to the floor and, at last delivered from her trance, Marion began to fumble with the padlock, her sweaty, trembling fingers desperately attempting to reassemble the dismantled device.
She’d not quite tightened the second bolt into place when an almighty crash and some muted protests came from the back of the shop, followed by the reappearance of the reedy man and another, more rotund, flustered middle-aged man in a thick checkered waistcoat and corduroy trousers.
He absorbed the scene before him: the bookshop door swinging in the wind, Marion on the threshold, the brass padlock open in her hand and a spillage of feminine effects strewn across the pavement outside. “I see...” he said after some time. “Miss Lane, is it?” He took several steps forward. “You’re just in time.”
“Afternoon, sir,” Marion said, the only words she could manage to say.
“You deciphered the puzzle?” he asked.
“Yes, quite simple,” Marion lied. She handed the rotund man the padlock, inwardly hoping he wouldn’t notice the second bolt, the one she’d only half managed to secure.
He inspected it in silence, then turned again to the reedy man behind him, who smiled unconvincingly and confirmed, “She was very quick. Brilliant actually.”
To this, the rotund man’s inquisitive expression at last dissolved. “Very good. Well, then,” he said, his tone now a fraction brighter, “Welcome, Miss Lane.” He extended his hand. “Rupert Nicholas, head of security. And this—” the rotund man ushered the pale, reedy figure to his side “—is William Hobb, first-year apprentice.” He gave Hobb one last cautionary glance. “I expect you two will get on rather well. Now, collect your things, Miss Lane, your interview will take place in my office. Follow me,” he concluded, disappearing into the dim back corner of the bookshop once more.
Marion beamed. Her heart rapped steadily against her chest, though no longer with anxiety and fear but with excitement. As she followed Rupert Nicholas and William Hobb around the butler’s desk and through the trapdoor, she realized that at last the tide was turning on her tedious, mundane existence. Her entire body tingled with anticipation as she entered the Grand Corridor, taking in her glistening new surroundings—the towering columns of marble, the vast library and its gilded shelves, the Workshop teeming with wondrous inventions—all hidden right here, beneath the gray and cold of ordinary London. She couldn’t believe how she, someone who’d never considered herself unique or special in any sense, could be chosen to be a part of such an extraordinary new reality. It was like a dream, only one she hoped never to end.
And of course she knew it was no coincidence that Frank had handed her the recruitment letter the very same day Mr. Smithers was to propose. Indeed, Frank had kept the promise he’d made at Alice’s funeral and been there for Marion whenever she’d needed him. Now it was time for Marion to return the favor.