Moon did not reply.
“I don’t understand. You’ve been longing for something like this. Something knotty, you said, something complex, like the old days. Something with the stamp of real criminal ability about it. By rights, this ought to be a dream for you.”
“Dream?” Moon repeated absently and began to shift the glass shards about the floor, rearranging them in a fresh pattern free of any discernible order.
“Will you take the case?”
Moon gave a distracted nod. “Against my better judgment.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that there is something wrong here, Inspector. It means that this is no ordinary crime, that is has some larger meaning. That we’re only on the edge of something terrible.”
Merryweather laughed. “Good God, do you always have to be so gloomy?”
Moon gazed unblinkingly back, silent and solemn, shaming the inspector into silence.
The Somnambulist pulled a childish face and wrote another message.
FRIGHTENED
Moon did not smile. “You should be,” he murmured. “We all should be.”
Chapter 6
The murder of Cyril Honeyman was the sixty-third criminal case to be investigated by Edward Moon. It was the nineteenth in which he had enjoyed the assistance of the Somnambulist and the thirty-fourth sanctioned by Merryweather and the Yard.
It was also to be the last of his career.
He began, as was his custom, by immersing himself in the minutiae of the killing, by haunting the murder scene and trawling the streets for clues, interviewing witnesses, speaking to the most tangential of bystanders. But despite his diligence these efforts bore little fruit. It was as though the evidence had been somehow erased from existence, the ground of his inquiries swept clean, become a blank slate, a tabula rasa. He spent long days in the Stacks but could find no trace, not a shred of a clue on the Honeyman affair, nothing to shed light on the man’s demise.
At the end of the first week, more out of courtesy than any real belief it would materially aid his investigation, he and the Somnambulist visited the parents of the deceased. They lived in a large country house, miles beyond the furthest reaches of the city and isolated by several acres of green and pleasant land.
An hour after their arrival, during which time they had been left to wait in the hallway as though they were little more than common tradesmen, a retainer shuffled out to inform them that his master and mistress — already severely inconvenienced by their presence — felt able to receive only one guest. The Somnambulist was happy to forgo the pleasure and so, shortly after, Moon was ushered into a draughty office.
The Honeymans sat at the far end of the room, enthroned behind a great oak table. Neither of them got to their feet when he entered but gestured silently for Moon to sit several feet away. When he explained the purpose of his visit (having to speak more loudly than was natural because of the distance between them) they reacted without any visible sympathy. Mr. Honeyman, a gray-faced, harassed-looking man trussed up in pinstripe, explained that they had already told the police everything they knew and that this kind of intrusion was certainly unwarranted and probably illegal. Moon retorted that he did not represent the police, going on to remark (somewhat immodestly) that he had a better chance than anyone of bringing the case to a successful conclusion. The man blustered and harrumphed in reply until his wife intervened, fixing Moon with a basilisk gaze.
“My son is dead. We have answered all these questions before. My husband and I are satisfied that the police are doing everything in their power to settle the matter. And we most certainly do not require the services of an amateur.” She spat out that last word with some vigor, as if trying to dislodge an awkward piece of gristle trapped between her teeth.
“My wife is a devout woman,” Mr. Honeyman added mildly, as if that explained everything.
They rose to their feet and filed silently from the room. Evidently, Moon’s audience was at an end.
The Somnambulist was waiting outside, standing by the fish pond and engaged in a conversation with a gardener about the finer points of tree surgery. The giant turned away and wrote Moon a message.
CLOOS
Moon shook his head morosely. “Nothing,” he said, and stalked away into the foliage.
Later, aboard the train, he sounded almost angry. “Could it just have been random? Motiveless malignancy?”
The Somnambulist shrugged in response.
“But it seems so premeditated. There’s something planned about it. A sense of… theatre. Grand Guignol. This is not the work of a common hoodlum.” He fell silent, brought out his cigarette case and, to the exasperation of his fellow travelers, proceeded to fill the carriage with thick, acrid smoke.
The following evening, Moon and the Somnambulist were invited to a party.
Their hostess was Lady Glyde, a valuable patron in the early days of the theatre and the woman largely responsible for introducing Moon to high society. Her house in Pall Mall was an ugly, ostentatious place, a shrine to wealth and vulgarity, a warren of interlinking rooms and chambers which, despite their considerable size, tonight brimmed almost full.
A manservant took their coats and hats and led them through the teeming throng into the drawing room. A string quartet were plucking their way through some baroque sonata or other but were all but drowned out by the babble of conversation, the tinkle of polite laughter, the chink and clink of glasses, the sounds of insincerity. The servant stood at the doorway and announced, with the po-faced solemnity of a pastor reading the last rites: “Mr. Edward Moon and the Somnambulist.”
The volume dropped momentarily as heads swiveled and turned to ogle these new arrivals. Moon — once the toast of the best soirees in London — offered his most dazzling smile, only to watch his fellow guests glance at him briefly with glazed indifference before returning to their conversations as though nothing of any significance had taken place. A decade ago, dozens would have dashed forward, jostling to the front to be the first to greet him, to shake his hand or fetch him a drink. Many would have asked for autographs. Today, there was only the barest flicker of interest before he was dismissed by the herd.
The servant thrust drinks into their hands and vanished, abandoning them to the uncertain mercy of the mob. The Somnambulist gave Moon a warning nudge as a dumpy, pugnacious-chinned woman pushed her way toward them.
“Mr. Moon!”
The conjuror raised his voice in order to be heard above the tumult. “Lady Glyde.”
She reached them at last, clasping Moon’s hand with all the feverish pertinacity of a drowning woman. “Edward,” she gasped. “I’m quite sure I don’t know who half these people are.”
The conjuror laughed politely and even the Somnambulist’s face cracked a dutiful grin.
“You have drinks?”
“Thank you, ma’am, yes.”
She looked curiously at the Somnambulist. “You always choose milk?”
He nodded.
“Come with me,” she said, “there’s someone you simply have to meet.” And she thrust her way back into the scrum, her new companion trailing reluctantly behind. “Are you engaged on a case at present?” she called back.
Moon told her.
“Really?” She seemed genuinely fascinated. “I gather the papers speak of little else. It must be quite a challenge, even for you. Are you very close to a solution?”
“I’m quite lost at present,” Moon admitted. “I’ve yet to find a suspect.”
