In the Company of Ghosts Read Online Free Page A

the cars crawling past outside. The tranquillity of calling the Tower home when it was shut to tourists during the evening. Before five-thirty when the gates closed, Agatha Witchley would drift among the crowds of tourists. A single snowflake lost among a storm. Nobody would dream of asking the unimposing old lady the way to the Queen’s Stairs or to explain the history of the Lieutenant’s Lodgings . She was indistinguishable from one of them. A visiting American, German, Australian. After the gates shut, a deep silence fell upon the Inner Ward and galleries and gardens and keeps. A quiet broken only by the rare scarlet and blue flash of a passing yeoman warder or one of their family living inside the fortress. Agatha’s house was nestled in among theirs. A tiny, snug terraced dwelling at the end of the Outer Ward, running along the moat-facing side of Tower Green . Theirs was a small colony living inside the historic confines of the ancient prison; a community to which Mrs Witchley was always destined to be an outsider. The staff never had much to say to Agatha. Not a non-com, not one of the members of the Sovereign’s Bodyguard of the Yeoman Guard Extraordinary – the only people who should have been allowed to claim service and shelter inside the Tower. But if their shunning of Agatha was an attempt at ostracism, it was one that she was glad of. Swapping war stories and tales of soldiers’ comraderies in third world policing actions held little interest for her. Living in the Tower was secure and tranquil, and that was everything that mattered to Agatha. North of the river was the City of London, quiet and empty after the office workers had departed for their houses in the Shires and their flats in the Docklands. Their glass palaces – Gherkins and Shards and Pinnacles – haunted by poorly paid Australians sitting behind the security desks of expensive atriums, wearing starched blue uniforms designed to resemble police tunics, fingers tracing over phone screens. Waiting for timers to rouse them every few hours for a quick walkthrough of empty floor after empty floor. For Agatha, their atriums were illuminated tableaus for her late-night strolls across the Square Mile’s empty streets. Overtaken only by black cabs heading away from the throb of entertainment around Leicester Square, bringing home late night lawyers and consultants and IT staff – all the bottomfeeders that feasted on the dead flesh of the derivative traders’ billions. How pleasant it would be to work as a night watchman in one of those steel and glass pyramids, Agatha marvelled. Striding their vigil through the empty arteries of power. Devoid of all the human passions that surged through such offices during the day. The tedious triviality of minding trillions in hot-flows stripped of any stress and meaning by the emptiness of its stage. A ghost among the living. It must be how the phantoms that came to me feel.
    Agatha knocked on the front door of her small terraced house, snugly nestling against the Tower’s outer wall, her tapping as much a matter of practicality as courtesy. She didn’t have her keys with her. The other person inside her house knew she was coming. Agatha’s two liberators from the office had called ahead. She had insisted on it, otherwise Bouche might not believe it was really her . While many might disapprove of the Frenchman’s caution, Agatha gently cultivated it. Frequently, Vincent Bouche’s suspicious nature was all that had separated them from joining the company of ghosts. Bouche opened the door, a bear-built man of late middle age with suspicious yet vulnerable eyes, a beard that was more stubble than whiskers. He ran a hand through his dark unwashed hair. ‘It is you, madame?’
    ‘So it seems. It hasn’t been that long, has it, Vincent?’ asked Agatha, stepping over the threshold.
    An excited snorting sounded from behind the living room door. Saucisses had recognized her voice, the so-called miniature pig