“Mycroft!” he shouted.
With a crash of feet on the floor, Mycroft Holmes woke to his brother's need. Within minutes, the telephone was summoning help from near and far. The voices of the Holmes brothers were soon joined by others, and I listened through the open study door as the complex machinery of Mycroft's department was seized and turned towards finding a pair of men, the younger of whom could possibly appear ill or intoxicated, with a child, age three to eight. Borders; ferries; telegrams: By seven-thirty, the sitting room sounded like a general headquarters on the eve of battle.
All the while, I sat at Mycroft's oversized desk, trying to order my thoughts. A part of my mind was occupied with drawing up a list of possible sites Brothers might choose that were within striking distance of Bergen: Viking country, whence the raiders had set off to conquer the British Isles; home of Woden, the Viking's chief god and a figure who occupied much of Brothers' image of himself.
But when I had made the list, I then pulled out a small-scale map of the United Kingdom and studied that, chin on hands. After a while, I put on some proper clothes and went down to ask the building's concierge for his copy of Bradshaw's time-table. I came back up and passed through the room, unnoticed by nine urgently occupied men, to settle again at the desk.
An hour later, I saw Mycroft, still in his dressing-gown, go into his room. Holmes was speaking on the sitting room telephone, but a minute later, silence fell for the first time since he had called his brother out of sleep. I heard the click of his cigarette lighter, and the puffing noise of pillows being arranged on the divan.
I went out and found Holmes sitting before the fireplace, staring intently at the cold stones. While the water was boiling for coffee, I went through the sitting room and gathered half a dozen empty cups, piling them up for washing. Absently, I toasted bread, and had managed to scrape half their burnt substance into the sink when Mrs Cowper arrived for the day. She looked in astonishment at the signs of turmoil and dishevelment where normally she would find a cup and one sullied ash-tray, then snatched open the oven door, releasing yet another cloud of smoke. I hastily retreated with my own ravaged toast to where Holmes sat.
He looked startled when I held a cup under his nose, and the long ash from his forgotten cigarette dropped to the carpet. “Russell, there you are. Ah, coffee, good. Did you see your letter?”
The morning post lay on the table near the door. A cream-coloured envelope bore my name, in an antique and slightly shaky hand. I carried it back to the divan and thumbed it open. It was from Professor Ledger, to whom I had given my address in London.
“Mycroft has arranged that all border crossings be watched,” Holmes was saying. “All international ferries and steamers will be searched, and all ports in northern Europe sent photographs of the two men, in case they've already crossed over. The same with aeroplanes-and harbour masters, in case he tries to hire a small boat. I fear we are closing the stable door on the horse's tail, and that they left the country immediately you saw them drive away from the walled house, but perhaps we can at least track where he has broken out.”
The housekeeper came in with a more recognisable breakfast tray, moving a table in front of Holmes' eccentric choice of seating. “Have something to eat, Holmes,” I urged.
He seemed not to hear me, so I took a slice of pristine toast, smeared it with butter and marmalade, and folded it in two, placing it into his hand. Absently, he took a bite, but kept talking.
“Steamers to Bergen leave from Hull, and Mycroft has two men on their way, with photographs. It shouldn't require delaying the boat, which is scheduled-”
“Holmes, may I say something?”
His grey eyes came up, and he looked at me for the first time. “Of course, Russell. What is it?” He took a bite of the toast, his body feeding itself while his mind was elsewhere.
“We may be on the wrong track.”
He swallowed impatiently, dropping the remains of his breakfast in the ash-tray. “Explain.”
“When we believed Estelle to be three years old, you thought it unlikely that a solitary man-Brothers-would risk burdening himself with an infant. And as you said, disposing of a small body is lamentably easy. However, we know that the child was alive as of Wednesday night. Which makes this important.” I handed him the letter.
Monday, 25 August
Dear Miss Russell,
The infirmities of age are sufficiently vexing upon one's body, but the effects on the mind I find particularly troublesome. This note is by way of being a second thought, which in better times would have come to me while you were still in my presence. I can only trust that there is an element of truth in the saying, better late than never.
As I thought over the situation with which you presented me yesterday, I came to realise that I had neglected to mention one aspect of necromancy, perhaps because it is one of the things so abhorrent, it causes the healthy mind to shudder away. I speak of the relative potency of the blood of an innocent.
Throughout the ages and across the world, the sacrifice of a virgin is regarded as being the most efficacious. When I lay down to sleep last night, I found my rest disturbed by the thought that your suspected necromancer might be in the vicinity of young innocents.
If there are young women near him, or a child of either sex, warn them away, I beg you.
Yours,
Clarissa Ledger
When his eyes had reached the bottom of the page, I asked, “What if his intended sacrificial victim isn't Damian? What if it's the child? Who could be his own child. As he sacrificed his own wife?”
Hope and horror warred in his face, but without a word he carried the letter out of the room. Two minutes later, Mycroft came in, his braces down and dots of shaving cream under his chin, and picked up the telephone. When he had reached his second in command, he said, “Morton? We need to change the search description. The two men and a child may be one man and a child. Yes.”
In twenty minutes, the orders made previously had been amended, and the phone was set back into its hooks. Mycroft left us, and came back clean of shaving cream, tie knotted, waistcoat buttoned. We moved to the dining table, where Mrs Cowper set a bowl of freshly boiled eggs in a napkin before Mycroft. Holmes and I had coffee; he supplemented his beverage with another cigarette. A number of times over the years, I had cause to regret that I did not use tobacco: This was one of those. Instead, I dropped my head in my hands and rubbed my scalp, as if to massage my thoughts into order.
“It would help,” I complained, “if we knew just what Brothers had in mind. His is not a random striking-out. He has a plan. What is it?”
“Human sacrifice at a point of solar eclipse to bring about the end of times?” Holmes asked. It sounded truly mad, when put that way. I scratched my head some more, and a thought surfaced.
“Why kill Yolanda? Was it entirely in service of the ritual, and she was convenient? Or was it revenge, that she left him and married Damian?”
“We don't know that she left him,” Mycroft objected. “Granted, she brought proceedings against him, but that is the way of amicable divorces.”
“Testimony reveals Brothers to be a man eager to embrace coincidence,” Holmes remarked. “He could have seen the two impulses as driving him to the same point.”
“And a third,” I added as something came back to me. “Remember Damian told us that Yolanda was troubled about something in the middle of June? What if she found out that her former husband and head of her church had killed Fiona Cartwright at Cerne Abbas? If Brothers thought she was about to turn him in, that would have been a further reason.”