I walked up the high street to a likely-looking inn, where I ate a surprisingly interesting meal while staring out of the tiny leaded windows facing the street. Four cars entered the gates through the brick wall, just before eight o'clock, followed by a group of three women on foot who disembarked at the bus stop. I paid and asked the way to the inn's facilities, where I changed into the dark clothing I had brought.
When dusk was drawing in, I walked through the field alongside the wall. When I was certain no eyes followed, I clambered over it, to drop down silently into the garden beyond.
As I let go, I was struck by the oddest feeling, that Holmes, somewhere, was doing precisely the same thing.
The Gods (2): The Power of a story lies in the extremes:
Hero Odysseus can be cruel and low-handed; the cowardly
cheat Loki is brother to Woden and brings Thor the great
hammer The lessons of myths are not on the surface, but
there for those willing to sit at the Gods' feet and learn.
Thus this Testimony of one man's voyage to Power.
Testimony, III:3
THE GARDEN WAS AS UNTENDED AS IT HAD APPEARED from without, an unremitting tangle of decades-old rhododendrons against the near-dark sky. I listened, for guards or dogs, then cautiously pressed forward: As I did so, I recalled the eyes of the Green Man glittering from Damian's canvas, and had to push away the sensation that crept down the back of my neck.
Eventually, the wall of branches parted, opening onto what had once been the lawns. Still no dogs or protesting shouts, so I walked in the direction of the lights.
The walls might have described an idiosyncratic shape across the countryside, but the house they contained was one of those sturdy boxes beloved of the Victorian nouveau-riche, wanting an impressive lump of brick in which to display their large paintings and simpering daughters to others in their class. The windows in what I supposed was the drawing room, on the ground floor near the front door, were brightly lit, and I could hear a low murmur of voices. The room above it was not only lit, the windows were open. They were the up-and-down, double-hung sort, rather than shutter-style, which might halve the sound that could pass through, but I should have to take care to walk softly, and not step into the light cast below.
Forty feet from the house, my shoes touched gravel; off to the left I caught the reflection off polished metal and window-glass: Several motor-cars were parked there. I circled the house in the other direction until the grass resumed underfoot, allowing me to get close to its walls.
The drawing room windows, also open to the night but behind curtains, had been well off the ground. I took a detour into the outhouses in the yard at the back, and found what I had hoped in the second one: a large bucket with sturdy sides, although its bottom was a bit dubious.
Bucket in hand, I walked soft-footed back up the neglected garden-beds to the lighted rooms at the front. Long before I came near, I could hear voices, overlapping chatter from a mixed group of men and women. I settled the bucket top into the baked earth, let my kit slide to the ground beside it, and cautiously balanced myself on the metal rims.
If I went onto my toes, I could see a narrow slice of the room through a space in the centre of curtains so old, their lining showed cracks and tears. What I saw amounted to little more than movement and sparkle: the back of a head here, a hand with a glass half-full of greenish liquid there. It was not worth the leg-strain, so I lowered myself back to the rims and listened to what sounded like a group of ten or twelve, more than half of them women. The murmur I heard earlier had begun to pick up, in volume and in speed.
I bent my head, concentrating on the sounds. With an effort I could unpick the threads of conversation to reveal that they were talking about a person:
“—think she would have known that—”
“—charming, really, but I always wondered about—”
“—can't have had anything to do with it, can he?”
“—know artists, there's no telling—”
They were talking about Yolanda's death, and Damian's involvement. Considering that they had all been here by eight o'clock and it was now half past, they were past the first stage of discussing their shock and sadness and well into the I-told-you-so and she-brought-it-on-herself stage. It was, I decided, a process furthered by the liquid in their glasses, which was not the fruit punch it looked like—or if it was, then someone had spiked it. Laughter rose, was cut off, and then started again a few minutes later; this time it was not stifled. Soon, the talk had left Yolanda entirely and was about handbags, school tuition, a sister's baby, and horse-racing; soon, twelve people were sounding like twice that number.
Nine o'clock approached; the voices grew ever merrier; my ankles grew ever tireder. I stepped down from the bucket to ease the strain of the unnatural pose, and rested my shoulders against the brick under the window, hearing not one thing of any interest.
Then the village clock struck nine, and in moments, the noise from within grew to a crescendo that I feared meant they were about to take their leave, until I realised that to the contrary, they were greeting a newcomer.
No-one had come down the gravel drive, on foot or wheel, which meant that the new arrival had entered from the house itself. I craned to peer through the slit, but the man who belonged to the voice that was now dominating the room had his back to me. All I could see were three individuals with identical rapt expressions.
I bent to my bag and took out the sheer silk mottled scarf, tying it loosely around my entire head. With the danger of reflection off my spectacles thus lessened, I patted around until I found a twig, then climbed back up on the bucket and stretched out as far as I could reach. The twig caught in the soft lining, allowing me to cautiously ease the curtain a fraction of an inch to one side.
There were now nearly two inches of crack between the fabric, and the speaker's back came into view.
Or, partly into view. He was a stocky man with a few grey threads in his dark hair, wearing an expensively cut black suit. When he turned to the right a little, I caught a glimpse of English skin darkened by the tropics. His voice was low and compelling, a perfect blend of friendship and authority. He was from the north originally, a touch of Scots buried under English and overlaid by a stronger version of the clipped tones I had heard in Damian's voice.
Who are you? I asked. And what are you doing in Damian Adler's life?
I had no doubt at all: This was The Master.
He greeted his followers, thanked them for their work during the past weeks, and apologised for his recent absences. He singled out “our sister Millicent,” for her especial efforts, and I stretched around until she came into view, pink and pleased. He then spoke about Yolanda, another “sister,” expressing his grief over her death and his hope that the Circle, and the Children as a whole, would only be strengthened by having known her.
He sounded insincere to me, but then, I was prepared for insincerity: Religion has proved the refuge of so many scoundrels, one begins by doubting, and waits to be proven wrong.
The Master spoke for ten or twelve minutes, most of it touching lightly on phrases and images from Testimony, causing his admirers to nod their heads in appreciation.
Nothing that he said could be in the least construed as information. All his ideas, and many of his phrases, reflected the book that I could see lying open on an altar between two candelabra set with black candles. It might as well have been Millicent Dunworthy reading aloud, but for his compelling presence.
Even that, I found hard to understand. Perhaps I was simply outside his gaze and immune to the timbre of his voice, but the people in the room were not. They hung on every syllable, their pupils dark as if aroused, smiling obediently at any faint touch of cleverness or humour in his words. From my perch, I watched his effects on five congregants: Millicent Dunworthy was one, wearing a dull green linen dress that did nothing for her complexion, and with her two women in their fifties, one thin, one stout, both in f
lowered frocks—the stout one, I realised, was the woman whom I'd imagined as a nurse, who with her brother had set up the altar on Saturday night. Slightly apart from them stood the sharp-nosed woman I had spoken with, wearing a skirt and tailored blouse, her hair waved in a fashion that had been popular ten years earlier. Beside her was a stout, red-faced man in his fifties wearing a suit and waistcoat far too warm for the room. Millicent, the nurse, and the sharp-nosed woman all wore the gold rings on their right hands.
I wondered if any of them also had tattoos on their stomachs.
Then I saw a sixth listener, in the dim back corner, and wondered that I had taken so long to pick him out—this man did not belong in the same room as the others. He was big all over in a grey summer-weight suit that was slightly loose in the body but snug over his wide shoulders and heavy thighs; his face would have looked more at home above a convict's checks.
He may have imagined that his thoughts were invisible, hidden from the believers behind a straight face. But one did not need a bright light to know that there would be scorn in his eyes and a curl to his lips as he surveyed the backs of these people worshipping the man in the black suit. His very stance, leaning against the glass-fronted bookshelves, shouted his superiority and contempt. He looked like the bodyguard of a mobster; he looked the very definition of shady character.
Marcus Gunderson?
My leg muscles were quivering, and now the meeting began to break up—or no, merely changing. The group deposited their empty glasses on nearby tables, then moved towards the chairs that had been set up to face the altar. The black back walked away, but I stretched a fraction higher, because in a moment, he would turn to face them, and me.
“YAPYAPYAP!” exploded through the night, and my heart leapt along with my body. My shoes lost their precarious hold on the bucket rims and I fell, onto the shrubs with one foot inside the rotten bucket. My fall set off an even louder volley of yelps from somewhere in the vicinity of my heels.
“Bubbles!” came a woman's cry from within. I ripped the bucket from my foot and kicked soil over its tell-tale imprint, then snatched up bucket and bag and sprinted for the back of the house, Bubbles roaring hysterically along behind me.
At the out-houses, I kicked open the shed door, grabbed the madly shrieking handful of fur, and tossed it in, drawing the door shut behind it. With luck they would think that Bubbles had been chasing a rat and been trapped inside.
Then I disappeared into the night, moving at a fast limp.
Some investigator: routed by a lap-dog named Bubbles.
My ankle felt as if I'd stepped into a bear trap, but a thorough feel around my nearly-dry trouser leg reassured me that I might die of tetanus, but not from blood loss.
From deep in the rhododendrons, I watched people begin to stream out of the door and around the house. The stout woman in the flowered dress pressed to the fore, attracted by the sounds of distress from the back; eventually a light went on over the yard; the barking stopped. They were back there for some time, no doubt debating the puzzle, before returning to the house.
I was not surprised when a short time later, three people came out of the front door, including the woman, her dog Bubbles, and the man who looked like her brother. They climbed into a car and drove away, veering onto the grassy verge and over-correcting again. Others followed, two and three at a time.
I stayed where I was. Sure enough, when everyone else had gone, two men, The Master and his muscle, came out with a torch to examine the ground under the window. My brief kick was not enough to cover the signs completely by daylight, although I hoped the torch might not pick them out, and indeed, there seemed no consensus of opinion that there had been a spy outside.
They went in the house. I sat down beside my bag, to see what developed.
Nothing happened for some time, except that the upstairs room drew its curtains against the night. I wanted badly to creep back up to the house, but something about the big man's attitude suggested that he was not misled by a scatter of kicked soil, and that he would be expecting a second approach.
So until the lights went out and stayed out for a long time, I would stay where I was.
The village church bells ceased ringing at ten o'clock. Half an hour later, with no warning, light spilt out of the front door and three men came down the steps, carrying luggage.
Except that one of them, a tall, slim man with a full beard who had not been with the others earlier, turned, as if to cast a last look at a beloved home. He faced the house and its light for five long seconds, plenty of time for me to identify him, and to see that what he held to his chest was not a suit-case, but a sleeping child. Plenty of time to change everything.
Before I could react, the man in the black suit spoke, and Damian climbed into the car; The Master got behind the wheel.
I was on my feet, the shout in my throat strangling as I noticed the stance of the man in the grey suit: The reason his suit-coat had been cut loosely was because it concealed a hand-gun.
I waited until he, too, got inside the motor, and then I sprinted along the grass towards the drive to intercept them. The engine turned over and caught, and the driver put it into gear, spewing gravel behind him with the speed of his start. I ran, but reached the drive too late to catch anything but the last two digits of his number plate.
With no motor-car, not even so much as a bicycle, there was little point in charging after them. Instead, I turned back to the house, used my pick-locks, and slipped inside. Then, I listened.
How is one convinced that a house is empty? From the lack of sound, or vibration? Smell, perhaps, that most subtle of the senses? How is one convinced of a man's innocence—against all fact and rationality—from a man's arms around his child, and five seconds of his face turned to the lamp-light?
The language of bees is not the only great mystery of communication.
Certainly this house felt empty: I caught no vibration of motion, and the only noise was my own heart. I found the telephone, and rang Mycroft: If any man in England could instigate a hunt for a car, it would be he.
I gave him the numbers, description, the information that the man in the front passenger seat had a pistol, and a quick synopsis of what I had discovered that day; then I went to search the house.
A quick survey downstairs confirmed the emptiness of the rooms, all of which except the drawing room were filled with dull, dusty furniture that looked as if no-one had used it for years. The kitchen had a new-looking ice-box and food on its shelves, with the sorts of biscuits and juices that men might stock when catering for a small child.
Upstairs, I went directly to the corner room with the open windows, and stood looking in at where Damian Adler had been hidden for the past five days: two iron bedsteads, wardrobe with a time-speckled mirror, a chest of drawers missing several handles, and an armchair draped with a throw-rug. The carpet on the floor was so worn, one could no longer discern its original pattern, or even colour. Out of place amidst the ancient furniture was a work-table fashioned from a door on trestles, now littered with personal items and art supplies. I recognised Damian's cravat, tossed over the back of an old dining-room chair, and there could be no doubt whose tumble of new brushes and nearly full paint-tubes those were, or who had done those drawings—although some were by the hand of a child, in bright wax crayon. The same child who had been taken from that smaller, still-rumpled bed, whose new-looking teddy bear lay abandoned among the bed-clothes, whose bright red Chinese slipper lay beside my foot—fallen off as she was carried through the door by her fleeing father.
I bent to pick up the slipper, then froze.
Air had brushed my skin, the briefest of touches. The air currents in the house had altered, just for an instant; had I not been standing in the doorway with an open window across from me, I should not have noticed it.
I strained to hear movement from below. Nothing: four minutes, five—and then a faint creak from the direction of the old, dry staircase, instantly stifled.
/> I eased the knife from my boot scabbard and straightened slowly; he and I both waited for the other to betray ourselves.
I cast a glance at the window: How many creaks in the fifteen feet of floorboard between me and it? How long would it take the big man to sprint up the stairs—or, back down the hallway and out of the front door—and take aim at my fleeing back?
The knife hilt grew warm in my hand, then damp. I moved it briefly to my right hand to wipe my palm, then took it back, my fingers kneading it nervously.
It is such an easy thing, to become prey. Especially for a woman, for whom biology and nurture conspire to encourage a sense of victim-hood. When terror sweeps through the veins, we become rabbits, cowering in a corner with our eyes closed, hoping for invisibility. And a large man with a gun is a truly terrifying thing. I regretted coming, berated myself for not bringing someone with me; stood helpless, waiting for my death to come up the stairs. Bad judgment yet again, to face a gun with nothing but a sweaty-handled throwing knife.
I felt a ghostly slap on the back of my head, and Holmes' voice exhorting me, Use your brain, Russell, it's the only weapon that counts.
With a lurch, my mind dragged itself out of the spin into panic, my eyes casting about wildly for alternatives to a bullet.
Knife, yes, but this was an entire house full of deadly objects, from that neck-tie across the back of the chair to the electric lamp to the sharp pencil by my foot, and all manner of heavy objects with which to pound, pummel, and gouge a nice large target like my stalker. Heavens, if I could get him down, I could smother him with the teddy bear.
A pencil. I looked at the light-switch on the wall beside me, and stooped for the drawing implement, sliding the knife almost absently into its scabbard.
The switch was one of those with double push-plugs, currently in the ON position. I shifted around to face it (thankfully, the floor made no remark) and put my right thumb on the OFF button. Resting the pencil-point in the space between the button and its casing, I took a breath, and in one quick motion pushed the switch and snapped the lead point off in the space, effectively locking it down. The light from the hallway streamed through the door onto the window opposite.