The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [121]
It made sense, that a man searching for the most downtrodden of the unemployed, men and women of whom suicide would not be unexpected, should troll the streets for a store-front like this one, dingy and dispiriting.
I thanked the man, shook his thin, damp hand, and left the musty office.
On the street, it hit me: An eye with a long triangle of scar beside it might resemble that symbol on the books, in the rings, and tattooed on Yolanda Adler's body.
But what did it mean?
I got to my appointment early, but Inspector Kursall was waiting. He welcomed me into his office and handed me a thin file. “Not much there,” he said.
But they had done an autopsy, and determined that Albert Seaforth had died late Tuesday or early Wednesday, 12 or 13 August, of exsanguination from wounds to his wrists. His cause of death was of secondary importance, however, for the in situ photograph of his hand with the knife beside it told me all I needed to know: The blade was covered with blood; the fingers were all but clean.
The pathologist had been thorough, both in his examination and in writing it up: middle-aged male, lack of muscle tone, no scars, mole on left shoulder, no wounds save those to his wrists, and so on. Then, in the third paragraph, it caught my eye: one-half-inch patch behind left ear where the hair was cut away. Had Fiona Cartwright's autopsy report been less perfunctory, I was certain that we would have seen a similar notation there.
I handed the file back to Kursall. “You need to talk to Chief Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard. Read him the third paragraph.”
It was the least I could do, for a man who hadn't arrested me on sight.
I caught a train that would get me back into London by early evening, and spent the whole journey thinking about the full moon and murder.
The sky grew darker as we travelled south, and when we reached our terminus in King's Cross, the close, restless atmosphere presaged a storm's approach. I flung myself and my valise into a taxi and offered him double if he would get me to Angel Court in half his usual time. The man tried his hardest, and I was inside Mycroft's flat before the first raindrops hit the window.
My brother-in-law looked up, surprised, at my hurried entrance.
“I'm going to the Children of Lights services,” I explained as I passed through the room. “I don't suppose you'd care to join me?”
I glanced back to see one raised eyebrow: Habits die hard, and apart from the self-imposed discipline of walking Hyde Park, his lifelong disinclination to bestir himself was not about to change.
“Anything from Holmes?” I called.
“Not yet. The prints on the biscuit wrapper do not include any of those found thus far in the walled house. And your suspicions concerning the mushrooms found in the drink were justified: Amanita, not Agaricus.”
“Hallucinogenic, then.”
“If a person consumed several glasses of the drink you found, yes, mildly so.”
“More to underscore the hashish, you would say?”
“Indeed. And you—were you successful?”
“Brothers definitely uses employment agencies to locate his victims,” I said, and threw snatches of my findings at him as I rummaged through the wardrobe for suitable clothing—something more orthodox than last week's costume, but still idiosyncratic. Despite the weather, I ended up with a shirtwaist topped with a bright, hand-woven belt from South America, an equally bright neck-scarf from India, and an almost-matching ribbon around the summer-weight cloche hat.
Mycroft had long ceased to comment on the clothing I wore in and out of his flat, no doubt determining that I was incessantly in one disguise or another. This evening he merely glanced at the garish accessories, without so much as a remark at the clashing colours, and wished me a good hunt.
Power (1): If all things are joined, if God has linked all
creatures by ethereal threads, then Power is there to be
absorbed. Primitive peoples see the shadow of this idea,
when they eat the hearts of conquered enemies.
Testimony, III:7
I STOOD ACROSS