The Conjuror

Henry Burgess-Thompson stepped eagerly onto the Woodside quay the moment the ferry came to a stop. He took one glance back across the metallic river toward the façade of the Liver Building, stately amid a nest of cranes, and looked forward once more as a ship's smoke-puffing funnels chugged steadily across his field of view on the way out into Liverpool Bay. He put his hand inside his jacket, fumbled for a second or so, pulled his hand back out, took off his glove, and reached back in. In the end, he was successful in producing a crumpled sheet of paper and unfolding it to reveal an address written in clumsy capitals at the top, and then directions that only he could read. He looked round, peering at each street's name in turn, before eventually glancing back at his paper, looking up again, satisfied, and striding forwards.

He went left, then left again, then right, then chose the rightmost of three almost parallel streets, at each junction holding his scrap of paper close to his face to read it through the coaly haze of industry. At one point he stepped out into a street and had to leap back sharply as a carriage hurtled past, with the driver's obscenity quickly lost into the distance. Eventually, he stopped in front of a door with peeling green paint, beside a panel of nine old, uneven windowpanes set in bricks as black and red as smouldering coals. He knocked three times, waited a few seconds, and then knocked three times again, evidently relieved to hear footsteps approaching.

The door opened to the maximum extent that the chain allowed, and a face appeared in the crack.

"Afternoon, Sir." She said. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, good afternoon, madam. I'm looking for Miss Helen Price. Am I in the right place?" Henry Burgess-Thompson looked at his bit of paper once more, and looked again at the number on the door.

"Miss Price? Yeah, this is the right place. Hold on there a moment, will you?" The woman half-heartedly pushed the door, hard enough that it swung towards the visitor, but not hard enough that it actually closed, and her feet could be heard blundering up the stairs.

"Miss Price?" she said. "There's a bloke at the door wants to see you."

"Tell him I'll be down in a minute."

The woman's footsteps came down the stairs, and she pulled the door back to the position she had left it in.

"She says she'll just be a minute."

"Thank you, madam."

The woman hummed an indistinct melody as she walked back through the hall and turned a corner into the kitchen. Henry turned his hat over repeatedly in his hands, fumbled his fingers along his watch chain like a rosary, and smoothed his moustache against his lips. When he heard Helen's footsteps on the stairs, he stopped put his hands by his sides and tried to avoid looking like he was trying too hard to stand to attention.

"Afternoon, sir." Helen said, pulling the chain off and opening the door more fully.

"Good Afternoon. Miss Price, I presume?"

"That's right. And you must be Mr Bur..."

"Mr Burgess-Thompson. From the British Institute for Spiritual Science."

"That's it. You want to interview me for your magazine or summat, right?"

"I certainly do. And I cannot overstate how delighted I am to make the acquaintance of one of the foremost media of our generation."

"Sure. Can we do it in the pub? My place isn't in the best shape."

"Of course, Miss Price."

"Come on, then."

Helen stepped outside and let the door swing shut behind her, leading the way to the end of the street and turning right beneath a wall with "W. Rigby and Sons – Drapers" painted on it in stark white lettering against a black background. She wore all black – a black dress, black clogs, a black ribbon holding her hair in a straightforward bun. Nondescript, nobody would guess she could conjure the dead.