carve him like a Christmas goose. He had seen these things: fat women floating on air, heart-stopping black shadows, red-eyed creatures in phantom looking glasses, that poor wretch lying back there in the weeds. The brother as he fell, already lifeless. Lady Nicholson's little boy, alone in that dark wood. The look on her face as the blade was drawn across....
He shuddered, drew his coat more closely around his shoulders, and glanced around the room. No one was looking his way.
Yes, all right, I was already half in love with her, he admitted. Maybe they are after me, but what they've done to that poor woman and her family in springing the trap makes my blood boil, thought Doyle. They think they have me routed, on the run, well, revenge is a dish the Irish have been serving cold for countless generations. And whoever these godless devils might be, they are about to discover how severely they have underestimated this particular Irishman.
Sacker. The encounter in the cab, all the attendant shocks, there had hardly been time to summon a coherent question. Doyle took out Sacker's calling card. He needed to confront the man while he had his wits about him. Cambridge was less than two hours by train. Tim, their driver, told him Lady Nicholson's brother had been at university there, a possible connection. At last, an occasion to be grateful for his lack of success as a physician; there were no critically ill patients for whom his sudden absence would prove a hardship. He'd make for Liverpool Street Station, straightaway.
As he replaced the card in his bag, his eye caught the cover of the altered book. Isis Unveiled. He'd been in such a state he hadn't even noticed. He lifted it, shielding its deformity from the rest of the room. Blavatsky: an appropriate companion for the journey he had embarked upon. Her photograph was still discernible through the rippling layer of ...
Good Christ. No, it couldn't be. He looked closer. Yes. The woman he'd seen with Petrovitch on the stairs of his building last night. It was her: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky!
The cab pulled up outside. He ran into the building.
'Mrs. Petrovitch!'
Dashing by his apartment, Doyle was told by a quick glance inside that nothing had changed^ since last night. He took the stairs three at a time to Petrovitch's floor and knocked vigorously on her door.
'It's Dr. Doyle, Mrs. Petrovitch!'
He noticed smoke seeping out from under the jamb.
'Mrs. Petrovitch!'
He threw a shoulder to the door, once, twice, stepped back, and with a heavy thrust kicked the door open.
Petrovitch lay on the floor, in the center of the room, unconscious. Smoke grew thick, but the room was not yet involved in flame; heavy brocaded curtains smoldered, lace curtains had already combusted.
Doyle ripped down the curtains, furiously beating back the fire so he could reach the fallen woman. He touched her and instantly knew she was dead. Redoubling his effort with the curtains, some anxious moments later he had the blaze dampened. Doyle closed the woman's eyes and sat down to try to reconstruct what had happened.
Petrovitch's dachshund wiggled out from under a sofa and nuzzled pathetically at its mistress's ear.
Doyle studied the room: An open decanter of wine stood on a table, the stopper beside it, next to an open tin of digitalis pills and some drops of candle wax. A small crystal goblet lay on the floor near the body; trailing away from it, in the rug, a crimson stain. The table from where the candle had fallen lay between her and the window. The window was open.
She'd lit a candle. Felt a chest pain—she had heart trouble; that much he knew. She poured a glass of wine, opened the pill tin. The pain grew stronger, alarmingly so. Feeling claustrophobic, she opened the window to let in some air, and in doing so toppled the candle. When the curtains caught fire, she panicked. Her heart gave out. She fell.
Two objections. First, there was a fresh watermark on the table. The wineglass had been set down—it should have
fallen toward the curtains, along with the candlestick. Second, there were a number of pills on the floor near the body. Even now, the little rat dog was gobbling one up off the rug. Perhaps she had dropped the tin and was in the process of replacing them when ... no, there were no pills in her hand.
He examined the tin. Lint and other detritus were mixed in with the pellets themselves. So the pills had been spilled and then replaced—
At the sound of a whine and a cough, he turned in time to see Petrovitch's dog keel over, spasm, and then lie still. Dead—better off, in a way, thought Doyle: It wasn't a dog anyone else was likely to love—foam bubbling at the corner of its mouth. Poisoned.
So someone had poisoned Petrovitch and perhaps not surreptitiously. Doyle lifted her slightly; there were pills under the body as well. Livid bruises on either side of her jaw. She had struggled, knocking the tin away, scattering the pills. Her assailant forced the poison on her, then quickly tried to replace the pills in the tin before fleeing out the open window. Yes: There was a scuff mark on the windowsill. The candlestick knocked over during the struggle or perhaps more deliberately by the killer to obscure the deed. The body was still warm. The killer had left this room within the last ten minutes.
Another death to lay at his crowded doorstep. Poor Petrovitch. Impossible to imagine the woman could have herself inspired an enmity that would result in murder.
Careful not to touch the pills themselves, Doyle closed the :in and placed it in his bag and was at the door when he no-:iced a spot of white peeking out from behind a small mirror on the wall.
He pulled out a piece of paper and read:
Doctor Doyle,
Urgent we speak. I am off to Cambridge. Petrovitch will tell you where to meet me. Trust no one. Nothing is as it seems.
HPB
Dated that morning. Blavatsky in Cambridge. The killer had stilled Petrovitch but missed this note. He left Petrovitch to heaven, with no doubt now as to his own destination.
Doyle detected no one following him to the station, nor was he aware of anyone watching him purchase his ticket or board the train. After he took a corner seat with an unobstructed view of the door, no one entered the car who took even passing notice of him.
As the train chugged away, Doyle scanned a stack of discarded tabloids, searching vainly for mention of Lady Nicholson's disappearance. The engine's tail of exhaust folded indistinguishably into the city's morning mantle of soot and smoke. As he watched the street life flit by outside his window, Doyle's envy for the plain uneventfulness of those ordinary lives gave way to an edgy excitement. However fraught with danger, a mission beckoned, and mission signified purpose, the lodestone of his internal compass. In spite of fatigue, his senses felt sharply attuned: the sweet pungency of the sandwich he'd bought for the journey, the agreeably warm froth of the bottled beer, the ripe mundungus of Moorish tobacco in the air.
A bulky Indian woman took the seat opposite Doyle, her brown face obscured by a veil that revealed only her almond eyes and a daub of decorative scarlet on the forehead between them. An external representation of the mystical third eye, recalled Doyle from his Hindi dabbling, the window to the soul and the unfolding of the thousand-petaled lotus. He caught himself staring at her when the rustle as she rearranged the armful of parcels she carried brought him back to himself. He doffed his hat and smiled agreeably. The woman's response was inscrutable. High caste, he decided, assessing her clothes and comportment. He wondered idly why she wasn't traveling first-class, accompanied by family or chaperon.
The rhythmic rattle and roll of the tracks abetted the postprandial drowsiness of the alcohol, and as the train left the London environs, Doyle drifted toward sleep. He awoke sporadically, for moments at a time, and dimly remembered seeing his subcontinental traveling companion hunched over a small book, running her finger along lines of the page. Sleep finally overtook him. His dreams were hot and swift, a phan-
tasmagoric amalgam of flight, pursuit, dark faces, and white light.
With the jolt of the car coming to a sudden stop, he awoke to full consciousness, aware of some commotion. Along with the rest of the car's occupants, the Indian woman was looking out the window to Doyle's left.
They were in farming country. A rough road ran alongside the tracks, bisecting a vast tract of fallow land,
