The pathologist had been thorough, both in his examination and in writing it up: middle-aged male, lack of muscle tone, no scars, mole on left shoulder, no wounds save those to his wrists, and so on. Then, in the third paragraph, it caught my eye: one-half-inch patch behind left ear where the hair was cut away. Had Fiona Cartwright's autopsy report been less perfunctory, I was certain that we would have seen a similar notation there.
I handed the file back to Kursall. “You need to talk to Chief Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard. Read him the third paragraph.”
It was the least I could do, for a man who hadn't arrested me on sight.
I caught a train that would get me back into London by early evening, and spent the whole journey thinking about the full moon and murder.
The sky grew darker as we travelled south, and when we reached our terminus in King's Cross, the close, restless atmosphere presaged a storm's approach. I flung myself and my valise into a taxi and offered him double if he would get me to Angel Court in half his usual time. The man tried his hardest, and I was inside Mycroft's flat before the first raindrops hit the window.
My brother-in-law looked up, surprised, at my hurried entrance.
“I'm going to the Children of Lights services,” I explained as I passed through the room. “I don't suppose you'd care to join me?”
I glanced back to see one raised eyebrow: Habits die hard, and apart from the self-imposed discipline of walking Hyde Park, his lifelong disinclination to bestir himself was not about to change.
“Anything from Holmes?” I called.
“Not yet. The prints on the biscuit wrapper do not include any of those found thus far in the walled house. And your suspicions concerning the mushrooms found in the drink were justified: Amanita, not Agaricus.”
“Hallucinogenic, then.”
“If a person consumed several glasses of the drink you found, yes, mildly so.”
“More to underscore the hashish, you would say?”
“Indeed. And you-were you successful?”
“Brothers definitely uses employment agencies to locate his victims,” I said, and threw snatches of my findings at him as I rummaged through the wardrobe for suitable clothing-something more orthodox than last week's costume, but still idiosyncratic. Despite the weather, I ended up with a shirtwaist topped with a bright, hand-woven belt from South America, an equally bright neck-scarf from India, and an almost-matching ribbon around the summer-weight cloche hat.
Mycroft had long ceased to comment on the clothing I wore in and out of his flat, no doubt determining that I was incessantly in one disguise or another. This evening he merely glanced at the garish accessories, without so much as a remark at the clashing colours, and wished me a good hunt.
33
Power (1): If all things are joined, if God has linked all
creatures by ethereal threads, then Power is there to be
absorbed. Primitive peoples see the shadow of this idea,
when they eat the hearts of conquered enemies.
Testimony, III:7
I STOOD ACROSS THE ROAD FROM THE MEETING HALL until I was certain there was no police watch on the entrance. The rain was light, a harbinger of autumn and endings, but it was still enough to dampen me in the time it took to scurry across the evening traffic.
At the door, I again hesitated, and climbed the stairs with all my senses tuned for a figure at the top. The vestibule was deserted, but for the table of pamphlets, and I eased the door open a crack to see within.
The service was nearly over, and nearly empty: Last week's 120 attendees were three times that of tonight's. I did not think that due to the rain.
Millicent Dunworthy was reading again, in her white robe between two black candles. Her text described a sin-soaked yet peculiarly free city in the East where the author had come into his knowledge of the interrelatedness of Light and Dark and the Truth That Lies Between Them, but I thought she was paying little attention to the meaning of the words. She read fast, the words tumbling out with no attempt at meaning, and she stopped occasionally as if her throat had closed. She was bent over the book, not looking up, her hands gripping hard.
She was frightened, or angry. Or both.
When the chapter ended, her eyes came up for the first time, a quick hot glance at a large figure in the back, hunched in a pale overcoat. I looked more closely, noticed the empty chairs all around him, and let the door ease shut: Lestrade had sent a presence. And the Children knew who he was.
The hallway leading to the meeting room also continued in the other direction. I loosened the furthest light-bulb, and sat on some steps, waiting for the service to end. Before long, the doors opened and people made immediately for the stairs: no chatter, and no tea and biscuits. After a pause, the plainclothes policeman came out, followed a few minutes later by the brother and sister of the Inner Circle.
When the hallway was empty, I walked down to the meeting room and found Millicent Dunworthy, packing the pamphlets into their boxes with sharp motions. She looked up, startled, when I came near.
“I'm sorry, I missed the service,” I told her.
“There was no service. There may never be,” she said, and slapped some cards on top of the pamphlets.
“I heard. About Yolanda, I mean. I know it must be very disturbing.”
“That's the least of it. No,” she said, “I don't mean that, it's terrible, of course, but the police have been all over, asking questions, insinuating-”
She broke off, and picked up the box to carry it to the storage cabinet. I followed with the folding table. When we had the doors shut and the padlocks on, she turned to me.
“What do you want?”
“I'd like to talk about the Children,” I said.
“You and everyone else!”
“I'm not with the police. Or the newspapers. I'm just a friend.”
“Not of mine.”
“I could be. Look,” I said reasonably. “I noticed a café next door but one. We could have a bowl of soup, or a coffee, maybe?”
She hesitated, but just then the heavens contributed their opinion, and a growl of thunder accompanied by a thrust of drops against the window warned her how wet she would be if she walked home now. She agreed, grudgingly, and we scurried through the rain to the café. I moved with my arm across my face, holding my hat against the wind, but the police watcher appeared to have waited only to be certain that Brothers did not appear, then gone home.
Millicent-we soon graduated to the intimacy of first names-unblushingly ordered cocoa; I did so as well, although I had not downed a cup of the cloying liquid since my undergraduate days, and frankly I would have preferred strong drink for both of us. And when I pressed upon her the necessity for keeping her energy up, she added a request for a slice of sponge cake, “although I shouldn't.”
“Make that two,” I told the waitress, joining Millicent in her naughtiness. When the tired woman had taken herself away to fetch our drinks, I said, “Oh, I haven't had a slice of Victoria Sponge in yonks.”
“It has rather passed out of popularity, hasn't it?”
I pounced, before she could redirect the conversation. “Even the name Victoria has gone out of fashion. What does that remind me of? Oh, I know-I've been thinking about the Adler child, Estelle, this week, another uncommon name. So sad, isn't it? And what do you imagine has become of Damian?”
She picked at the bundle that contained her robe and shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.
“I can't believe he had anything to do with her death, as the newspapers would have us think,” I persisted. “I mean to say, he's odd, but not like that.”