contained a number of packets with Chinese labels, some corked bottles containing unlabelled herbs, and a few modern nostrums that suggested Damian had suffered from a chest cold and Yolanda occasionally required a pill against female aches. Then another bedroom, this one fitted out as a nursery.
Dolls, books-a lot of books-and a basket of brightly coloured toys. A diminutive enamel-ware tray with a miniature tea-set for four, missing one cup but otherwise perfect, and perfectly exquisite. A neatly made bed, a diminutive wardrobe. But the walls were the reason the room pulled me in: Damian had painted them.
Even under the fitful gaze of my torch, the walls were incredible. The room seemed to be atop a hill, with a blue sky broken by the occasional puffy cloud overhead, a changing landscape stretching out in all directions, and a green carpet underfoot to remind one of grass: One half expected a fresh breeze on one's face. To the north stood a city on a bay, its boats suggesting a location considerably farther east than London: Shanghai, perhaps? Then came a tropical beach, with coconut palms and birds too exotic even for Nature. Farmland came to the south, more French than English, with a small, Tuscan-looking hill town in the distance. That gave way to jungle, with monkeys and a sharp-eyed parrot watching over the child's cot. Everything there looked real enough to walk to.
It must have taken him weeks.
I would happily have stood there for an hour-would very happily have curled up to sleep in that tiny bed-had I not heard the third and final ring of the doorbell. Reluctantly, I pulled myself out of the room and padded down the hallway to the sound of loud constabulary curses from downstairs.
I waited until he had yanked open the front door and was shouting at Holmes before I trotted down the stairs and through the kitchen. Holmes was apologising loudly, sounding for all the world like a sobering drunk. “The wife says I should bring you these, she baked them this afternoon, and tell you I'm sorry to disturb you. She's right, I don't know what I was thinking, I ought to know my own front door and this surely isn't it.”
In the face of open apology accompanied by a tray of biscuits (brought for the purpose, freshly baked by Mycroft's invisible kitchen) the constable's righteous anger deflated. I passed out of the kitchen door and let the latch lock behind me, scaling the wall and dropping the block of rope-bound wood into the nearest ash can before the PC had dunked his first biscuit.
Holmes was waiting at the agreed-to spot; the tension left his shoulders when I rounded the corner.
“The constable was in the kitchen when I got there,” I explained. “I didn't think it a good idea to pick the lock with him drinking tea ten feet away.”
“I should have expected that he would settle there,” he said.
“In any case, I have the book, and a couple of others. And I found a white robe like the one Miss Dunworthy wore the other night, far too short for Damian. But-when you were there, did you see the child's room?”
“Briefly.”
“Extraordinary, isn't it?”
“My… son.” He hesitated; this was the second time, in all these years, that I had heard him say that phrase. Now he repeated it, saying quietly, “My son loves his daughter.”
27
scarcely aware of good and evil. Those who are born
anew-spiritual birth-take their first step outside
of the Garden when they perceive the difference
between good and evil
Testimony, III:1
HALFWAY THROUGH TUESDAY AFTERNOON, I LOOKED up from the final page of Testimony and noticed how very empty Mycroft's flat was. I had slept late and came out of the guest room to find both Holmes and Mycroft away, Mycroft to the office where he had worked for most of his life, and Holmes, as a terse note on the dining table informed me, “Gone to Cerne Abbas.” Mycroft's housekeeper, Mrs Cowper (whose odd hours I never could predict), made me breakfast and then left me to my work. Since one or the other of the men had taken with them the list of forty-seven names from Millicent Dunworthy's ledger, my work consisted of the book I had stolen the night before.
My formal training, the field in which I had spent much of the past seven years, was in the analysis of theological texts. Thus I approached
Six hours and a whole lot of words later, I closed the cover and my attempt at scholarly detachment faltered. I looked at the symbol on the book's cover, and saw a tattoo on a dead woman's belly. I went to make myself a cup of tea, and thought I heard something move in the back of the apartment. When I looked into Mycroft's study to see, I then thought I heard the front door open and close. I checked that it was locked, and started to go through the entire flat. When I caught myself stooping to look under a bed, I loudly said a rude word and left, taking with me nothing but the key.
I marched along Pall Mall and through Cleveland Row to Green Park, turning up the Queen's Walk and continuing down the other two sides. Then it dawned on me that I had just described a triangle, the shape that figured so prominently in everything to do with the Children of Lights. Impatiently, I crossed over to St James's, making myself slow down and pay attention to my surroundings: up the Mall, down Horse Guards Road, then back along the Birdcage Walk-where it struck me that not only was St James's Park laid out as a sort of triangle itself, it even had a circle-the Victoria memorial-at its peak.
I abandoned the parks entirely, and made for the Embankment.
Testimony was nonsensical, even silly in places-I had found myself chuckling aloud at the thought of Millicent Dunworthy declaiming some of its fairly blatant sexual imagery, all about energies bursting forth and enveloping. Much of the writing employed tired heresies and re-worked exotica, leavened by the occasional flash of imagination and insight, and I had found the author overly fond of ornate language and self-aggrandisement.
So why had it left me feeling as if I had read someone's pornographic journal?
As soon as I asked myself the question, my inner eye provided the answer: Yolanda Adler, dressed in new clothing, sacrificed at the foot of an ancient monument, probably with the weapon the author called the Tool.
I walked, and walked. Eventually, I burnt off the worst of the crawling sensation along my spine, and made my way to a nearby reading library to track down some of the Norse and Hindu references. At half past five, I walked back to Pall Mall and let myself into Mycroft's flat. He came in as I was pouring myself a cup of tea.
“Good afternoon, Mary.”
“Hello, Mycroft. Do you know if Holmes planned to return to night?”
“I believe he anticipated having to stay the night in Poole.”
“He's going to talk to Fiona Cartwright's employment agency?”
“Depending on what he found in Cerne Abbas. He borrowed my small camera, although I do not know what he expects to record with it.”
“He doubts it was suicide?”
“My brother accepts nothing he has not judged with his own eyes.”
True: An unexplained cut on the hand of a gun-death was enough to make him question the official verdict. “Was it you who took the list of names from the table?”
“I put a man on it. He should have a complete report tomorrow.”
“What about Shanghai; anything from there?”
“It is not yet a week since I wired,” he protested gently.
“It's been a busy week,” I said, by way of apology, although I was thinking, How long does it take someone to hunt down a few records anyway? “Here, have a cup of tea, Mrs Cowper's made plenty.”
“I was thinking to change for my afternoon perambulation.”
