Locked rooms - Laurie R. King [90]
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 chi, the energy patterns, within the room. And thus, of course, within the lives of the residents.”
“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 chi in the room?”
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 building—real or imagined, palace or basilica—and furnishes it with items that