“We received it,” Holmes said. “What did Yolanda's letter say?”
“It was just one of Yolanda's…” But with the voicing of her name, the truth hit him. He clenched his hand around the ring. “She was always going on about spiritual experiments, always wanting to drag me in on them. And I did. I never minded, it kept her happy. She was always so happy, those times. Oh, God. So when she wrote that she had a really vital adventure-that's what she called them, adventures- and that she knew it was asking a lot of me, but that she wanted me to go with Hayden and Estelle for a few days while she was getting ready, and then Hayden would bring us together and this would be the very last one.” He was weeping now, choking on his words. “She said that it would be a lot of bother for me, and that she was sorry, but that it would be worth it and if I wanted her never to do it again, she wouldn't, after this one.”
He couldn't talk any more, just dropped his head back against the wall and wept. Holmes eased him gently onto the cushions, then pulled me out into the hotel bar.
By the trickle of lamp-light from the half-open door, Holmes searched around behind the smoke-covered bar. He found a bottle, threw the first glass down his throat and poured a second; I took a generous swallow of mine.
“The boat will be there until the tide changes in the morning,” he said.
“The trip might kill him.”
“And it might not.”
“Holmes, it's four miles to Stromness. It would take the both of us to carry him, and what would we do with the child?”
“We could drape her on top of him.”
“And when she wakes up from this drug, in a dark place, cold air, strange movement? You think she'll be silent?”
“What about a motor-car-there must be one here?”
“An old lorry, yes. And there's a cart, if we want to borrow a horse from the paddock across the way. But don't you suppose that farmer with the lamp has already rung the police?”
I saw his dim shape walk over to the window, and manoeuvre his way down until he located a viewing hole between the boards. By the way he came back, I knew what he had seen.
“They're already here, aren't they?” I asked. “They'd catch you up long before you got Damian on board.”
“We could give the child another dose of-”
“Absolutely not. I won't be party to drugging a child.”
“Then you propose we leave her here?”
We looked at each other for a moment, and I gave in. “She was very limp. I'd expect she'll sleep until dawn. Plenty of time for me to help you get Damian to the boat, and get back before she wakes.”
“Are you sure?” He was not asking about the timing.
“No,” I said. “But I saw a stretcher in the shed.”
So we carried him.
He nearly refused to go without his child. Only when I promised to guard her with my life did he agree, and even then he demanded to see her himself first. It took both of us to convince him that waking the child by moving her downstairs to say good-bye would put her in danger.
“Almost as much danger as the delay you're causing puts her in,” Holmes finally pointed out. We carried him. Two and a half miles to the end of the bay near Stromness; only once did we have to flatten ourselves to the verge to avoid head-lamps. The dinghy was there, hidden among reeds, and was big enough for two. Holmes and I got Damian upright, and Holmes started to lead him to the small boat.
Damian shook him off and grabbed my hand. “You promise you'll protect my Estelle? Tell her that her mother and I have to be away, but we'll be together very soon? You promise?”
“I promise to do everything I can to make her safe and comfortable.”
“And loved?”
“Yes. And loved.”
Holmes helped him into the boat, wrapping the blankets around him. Then he came to stand beside me. The water surged and ebbed gently at our boots; the few lights of Stromness sparkled across the ever-shifting surface.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You're going to find my services as nanny come expensive,” I told him, the threat both playful and real. But baby-sitting was not what he had in mind.
“I knew you would persist,” he said abruptly. “I knew that, were there evidence against Damian, you would find it.”
“Holmes,” I said, startled.
“Thank you for not forcing me to investigate my son.”
“I… yes. Get him to a doctor.”
“Soon.”
“And stay in touch-through Mycroft.”
“If he isn't also under arrest,” he said wryly, climbing into the dinghy.
“I'd almost forgot. You don't suppose he is?”
“If he is, you can always reach me through The Times agony column.” He sounded unworried about his brother's fate, and I agreed: Mycroft Holmes could look after himself.
“Holmes, don't-” I caught myself, and changed it to, “Just, take care.” Too melodramatic, to say, Don't make me tell the bees that their keeper has gone.
And so it ended as it had begun: Holmes vanished into the night with his son, leaving me with his other responsibilities.
I waited on the shore until he had reached the off-lying fishing boat and raised its captain. I heard the sounds as they pulled Damian on board, and the noise of the engine reached me half a mile down the road; after that I moved at a fast jog, all the way to the burnt-out hotel. I could see lights at the Stones, as the police puzzled out what had taken place there, but they did not seem to have discovered the violated hotel.
I let myself in and went upstairs. The candle was burning low in its saucer. Estelle was still asleep, although I thought the sound of her breathing was less profoundly drugged. I crept forward and eased my arms into the warm bed-clothes, moving so cautiously one might have thought I was handling nitroglycerine. She smelt of milk and almonds, and as I pulled the tangle of cotton and wool towards me, her breath caught. I froze. After a moment, she sighed, then nestled into my chest like a kitten in the sun.
An extraordinary sensation.
I stood slowly, and with exquisite care picked my way down the stairs to the inner room. There I reversed the process, letting her weight settle onto the pads where her father had rested earlier. Cautiously, I slipped my hands out from under her: Her breathing continued, uninterrupted, and I felt as if I had won some sort of a trophy.
I left the lamp burning, in case she woke, and returned upstairs to see what had been left behind.
I took anything that would identify Damian or Brothers, including Damian's sketch-book and passport. I put a few of Estelle's warm garments and an old doll into a pillow-case, then shut everything else that might shout Child! into her small hard-sided suitcase. I carried it out of the back door, weighted it with rocks, and hurled it far into the loch.
The night was clearing, the wind gentle: Holmes and his Thurso fisherman would have no problems crossing the strait. I walked to where I could see the Stones, and found them dark, which seemed odd. Perhaps rural police were less equipped with search-lights? Or less concerned about the dead, and satisfied with taking the body away and delaying an examination of the site until daylight?
I went inside, took some food from the hotel's pantries, and returned to where my young charge gently snored.
I chewed on dry biscuits and drank a bottled beer, studying her. She was, I saw, the three-and-a-half-year-old Damian had led us to believe, not the eight-or nine-year-old I had hypothesised: Reading or not, friends with an older child or not, that sleeping face had the soft and unformed features of a near-infant.
So it was no surprise, when she stirred and woke half an hour later, to feel myself looked upon by a pair of eerily familiar grey eyes, imperious as a newly hatched hawk.