“Now’s the time to use the memory-training techniques Mrs Mandeville taught you.”
Bryant thought long and hard. “It’s no good,” he said finally. “I need to smoke a pipe.”
“All the windows are closed,” said Meera. “Do you have to?”
“It always helped Sherlock Holmes.”
“He was a fictional character.”
Bryant decided to light up anyway, and produced some matches. He squinted at the yellow label on the box, then donned his reading glasses. “I say, has anyone noticed this?” He held up the matchbox, studying the logo in amazement. “That’s us. ‘Bryant and May – England’s Glory.’ I don’t know why I never thought of that before.”
After three pipes the room was filled with fragrant smoke.
“Can we open a window now?” asked Meera. “It smells like burning tulips.” She didn’t explain to anyone how she knew. “Can you really remember nothing you discussed with her?” asked May.
“All I’m sure of is that Jackie didn’t know about the deaths when I bumped into her at the Yorkshire Grey,” said Bryant, thinking the matter through. “And the time I saw her before that, we talked mainly about the first law of behavioural genetics; I have no idea why. We discussed map-making, too. She runs the local history society. Told me a lot about London’s geography.”
“She might not have been meeting anyone,” said Longbright.
“She might simply have become frightened and gone away until everything has blown over.”
“No, she was definitely seeing a friend; she told me so herself.”
Everyone looked dumbfounded. “What do you mean?” asked May.
“When I saw her in the pub she said something about going out on Saturday to meet one of her gentleman academics.” It was typical of Bryant to leave out a piece of information anyone else would have felt compelled to pass on, but in this case he had only just remembered.
“You might have told us earlier,” said Longbright. “You don’t suppose she killed them, do you? And somehow blamed Pellew?”
“That makes no sense at all,” May told her.
“The DNA matches were perfect on both blood and sweat,”
Kershaw reminded them, “and the thumbprint matched Pellew’s. We know it was him.
“But he was the symptom, not the cause,” Bryant insisted.
“The most dangerous element in this case was not Pellew at all, but the person who impelled his actions. I don’t think we have a way of dealing with the matter now. We’re simply not equipped.”
He needed to give the others some air. Clambering up and heading for the back door, he stepped outside, breathing deeply, standing beneath the eaves as rain fell in sheets before him.
And then he remembered, something small, no more than a single sentence.
He shot back to the lounge much lighter in his step. “Arthur, we’ve been talking this round in circles,” said Longbright, “and we’re convinced that you must be able to remember something more about Jackie Quinten. Do you have any idea who it was she went to see?”
“Oh, I think I know now, I just don’t understand why, or what her connection is with him.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Arthur, spit it out!” cried May finally. Bryant widened his eyes. “She went to find Dr Harold Masters.”
“Wait a minute, your old friend Masters, the lecturer, the one I met in that odd little tavern?”
“I’m afraid so. Anyone will tell you that academics have a tendency toward sociopathic behaviour, and I think my old friend has finally overstepped the line.”
“I don’t understand,” May admitted. “What has Masters got to do with Jackie Quinten?”
“That I’m not sure of yet. But I think he’s got a lot to do with this,” Bryant told the others, dragging on his overcoat. “And I can guess where to find Mrs Quinten. There’s no time to waste. I’ve known Harold for years, if only in a sort of distant way, but I’m familiar with his habits. He’s likely to be in one of three places. Colin and Meera, I need you to go to his house in Spitalfields. John and I will try the pub he told us he frequents. Janice, I’d like you and Sergeant Renfield to head for his office at the British Museum. And be careful. By now he may well be ready to kill in order to protect his secret.”
? The Victoria Vanishes ?
41
The Path of Hope
“He told me himself where he spends his evenings.” Bryant hurried his partner through the fine soaking rain toward the car. “He’s a creature of habit, and he doesn’t know we’re looking for him.”
May’s immaculate BMW wound its way down through the fading light toward Smithfields, and the welcoming lights of the Hope tavern in Cowcross Street. The roads around them were deserted. They would not come to life until the clubs started up later in the evening.
“The pub usually opens early for the market’s meat porters, and apparently derived its name from the Path of Hope,” Bryant told him, “a section of the route taken by condemned prisoners from Newgate on their way to execution. The market didn’t appear until around 1855, but the pub’s curved-glass bay windows date it from an earlier time. Look at the etched windows, mythical birds surrounding twined
“This is no time for one of your guided tours, Arthur.”
“Many years ago I took it upon myself to educate you, and I have not yet given up hope. Don’t feel bad; it’s been a reciprocal process. You showed me how to use my cell phone correctly. Those calls I was accidentally making to Kuala Lumpur were costing me a fortune. Why have you got a tennis ball in your glove compartment?”
“Leave that alone,” warned May. “It’s there in case I lose my keys again.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Something Renfield taught me. You make a small hole in the ball, stick it over the lock and punch it. The air pressure pops the lock open.”
“That man has a touch of the tea leaf about him,” said Bryant with a look of disapproval.
“What do you expect? He was dealing with thieves on the street all day before he came to us. Anyway, you could learn a bit from him.” Like other members of the unit, May had begun to grudgingly reassess the sergeant.
As they locked the vehicle and alighted, Bryant started examining the pub’s woodwork until May pulled him inside.
“I think Jackie Quinten did discover that some of her colleagues were dead, and at that point she must have realised what connected them all,” Bryant declared, heading straight for the bar. “She needed to confide in someone, to visit a person in a position of trust. The Official Secrets Act remains in place after you leave a government establishment. She couldn’t unburden herself to an outsider. It had to be someone she had known through the company she had worked for.”
“And you think she came here?”
“I’m convinced of it. I tried a couple of Kiskaya Mandeville’s memory techniques and remembered something Masters said to me when I went to see him about Christ’s blood going missing in Clerkenwell.”
“Christ’s blood?” repeated May, more confused than ever. Bryant irritably waved the thought aside. “He said something very odd, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Masters thinks aloud; it’s not always easy to follow what he’s on about. With people like that, you let a certain amount of what they say slip by you. He said, ‘I lecture on mythology these days, I’m not in haematology anymore, unless you count the Athenian.’ I knew he studied
