somewhere that I know about.”
“Of that I would not be so certain.”
“Why not?”
“The three do not run in precise parallel. The first two have powerful emotional overtones, yet the third is emotionally neutral, or even mildly reassuring. Of the first pair, the only element that changes is the description of the flying objects, but with the third, change itself is the constant factor—the details of the rooms are different each time; the only similarity in them is that only you know where the hidden apartment is to be found, only you have the key.”
“Which I don't,” she retorted angrily. “Holmes, I tore that place apart today, attic to cellar, and didn't find so much as an out-of-the-way broom closet. I'd have to take a wrecking hammer to it to find any more.”
He nodded: Having measured the rooms scrupulously on Wednesday morning, he would have been astonished had she found any hidden spaces larger than a few inches wide. “When you discover the dream's message,” he told her, “I believe it will be, as it were, out of the corner of your eye, not through use of a sledge hammer and crow-bar. Ah, here comes Mr Long.”
The bookseller was being led through the room by the entrance crone, but his progress was uneven, as one table after another called its greeting and caused him to detour to shake a hand here and exchange a word there. Half the people in the restaurant seemed to know him; all greeted the small man with affection and respect. Even the elderly door-guard seemed to be smiling when they finally reached the table.
He shook hands with the only two Caucasians in the place, then turned to the old woman and began a vigorous conversation. They were joined after a minute by the waiter and, shortly afterwards, by one of the cooks from the kitchen. The discussion escalated into an apparent argument, voices climbing and gestures becoming ever wilder—Long ticking off points on his fingers, the cook's face twisting in incredulity. Then it ended as abruptly as it had begun. Waiter, woman, and cook all turned on their heels and set off in separate directions, leaving Long to sit down, looking pleased.
“What did that concern?” Holmes asked.
“That? Just dinner.”
“Dinner? They weren't asking that you remove us?”
“My goodness, why would they want that? No, we just had to settle the menu. I needed to reassure them that you did not require a slab of beef and boiled potatoes, but to assert that you did not eat pork or shellfish. I recall hearing of this religious peculiarity of your mother's, Miss Russell, and thought perhaps it was yours as well.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” she said.
“Not at all,” he responded, but he looked pleased as he shook out his linen table napkin and draped it across his lap. “So, have you two been busy since we met? I don't suppose you've had a chance to look at the feng shui book?”
“I have, actually,” she replied, dredging up intellect from the muddying effects of drink. “It presents an interesting theory of geomancy, but I have to say, it leaves out a great deal of the
“That is true,” Long said, “although its precepts are used not only for architecture, but for investments, farming, planning battles, and a thousand other activities. Here, let me show you.” He patted through his pockets until he found a mechanical pencil and a scrap of paper, smoothing it out on the table-cloth and sketching an octagon. He then connected each angle with the centre, and ascribed to each of the eight resulting triangles an area of influence: family, wealth, knowledge, and so on, with the all-important health at the confluence. After a few minutes, the minutiae of detail became more than even a sober Russell might have asked for, and she interrupted his explanation of the
“What I would really like to know is, why would someone put a mirror, a bowl of water, and a pot-plant in a kitchen?”
He unfolded another piece of paper and pushed it across to her, laying his pencil on top. “To answer that, you will have to draw the room for me.”
“It's the kitchen in the house here. I would assume that your parents were responsible for the items.”
“My mother. Although she would have called in an expert. Yes, I see. However, it has been some years since I was inside that room.”
She took up the pencil and sketched the kitchen's outlines, locating the sink, scullery, cook-stove, and entrances. At his direction she indicated the lights and windows, as well as the locations of the small mirror, the water bowl, and the dead plant. Then she pushed it back across the table at him.
Soup arrived, and he moved the sketch to one side, keeping his hand on the edge of the paper. “As I remember, the kitchen faces the back of the house, its windows to the west, is that correct?”
“Yes, it is.”
He picked up both sheets and laid them in front of her, next to each other. “The objects you name would have been intended to correct the
“Of course,” she murmured.
He heard the irony. “I apologise, I know it is complex, and with little logic for the literalist Western mind.”
“Perhaps I should ask, is it possible to analyse how these . . . additions were intended? Can you tell what was wrong with the
Long looked down at the two pieces of paper, his lips pursed in consideration. “That is an interesting question,” he said at last. “I am by no means an expert, but it looks to me as if there was a perceived external threat to the internal harmony. The items were placed to strengthen the internal harmony—the family.”
But “harmony” was not the word that caught Russell's attention. “A threat? Of what kind?”
“That I cannot know. Some force that threatened to pull the family off-centre into disharmony. Which, I agree, is so general as to be considered witchcraft, or mumbo-jumbo.” With an apologetic smile he turned to his soup; after a minute, the others did the same.
“Apart from the articles of feng shui,” he said when the bowls had been removed and fragrant plates were beginning to appear, “I hope you have found the house in satisfying condition?”
“I found it run-down, dreary, and most uninformative,” Russell replied.
“I am sorry.” Long scooped shreds of vegetables in some dark, piquant-smelling sauce on top of his rice, then ventured, “You had hoped to learn something from the building?”
“Oh, not really. But it would have been nice.” The bookseller's face wore a look of confusion, although he was too polite to persist with his questions. But to Holmes' surprise, Russell relented.
“I've had a series of peculiar dreams. Two of them served to remind me about the earthquake and the period afterwards, events I had forgotten entirely, but the third is still puzzling. It involves a secret compartment in a house—nothing particular happens, I just pass by and know that it's there. I don't know what the imagery means. Probably nothing, but it would have been satisfying to have discovered a hidden vault under the house or something.”
Long nodded impassively and the conversation turned to the collection of furniture the cellar contained, some of which was going to have to come out through the coal-cellar doors. They ate the food and drank wine and pale tea, and when they were replete, Long patted his lips with his table napkin and spoke hesitantly.
“I wonder, about your hidden room. Do you know of the writings of Father Matteo Ricci?”
Russell shook her head, but Holmes got a faraway look on his face.
“Ricci was a Jesuit in the sixteenth century who went to China, as a missionary of course, although as was the habit of the Jesuits, he learnt as much as he taught. Many of his writings are in Chinese, which somewhat limits his fame in the West. But one of the things he tried to teach the Mandarins concerned the mnemonic arts. I believe Western philosophers have something of a tradition of memory training.”
“Ignatius of Loyola,” Holmes supplied, his own memory having performed its retrieval, “founder of the Jesuit order. And Pliny has a section on memory experts, I believe, as do several Mediaeval works on oration.”
“What does this have to do with locked rooms?” Russell asked.
“Ricci's technique involves the construction of memory palaces,” Long told them. “One visualises a large