The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [130]
When I did, I snapped away from the tiny brown scrap, a cold finger trickling down my spine. “A pen? My God, do you mean he …”
I couldn't finish the sentence, so Holmes did. “Dipped a quill pen in his victim's blood and wrote with it? So it would appear.”
“Extraordinary,” Mycroft rumbled.
“But… I mean to say, I can understand—intellectually, I suppose, although not… I can just understand that a mad-man might want to write a message with a victim's blood, but then and there? Trimming his pen while the body lies at his feet, blood still…”
I gulped, unable to finish the sentence.
“Blood remains liquid but a short time,” Holmes said. “I ought to have known six days ago: Sand on chalk soil means something.”
“What, it meant that someone had been to the beach before visiting the Giant?”
“This is not beach sand, Russell. It is blotting sand.”
“Oh,” I said. “God.” I stared in disgust at the minuscule scraps of quill until Holmes had replaced them in their concealing paper, then I picked up his glass and tossed back a dose of brandy. It made me cough and caused my eyes to water, but Mycroft did not even rebuke me for my ill treatment of his precious liquid.
“Where are these from?” he asked, gesturing at the envelopes.
“The first, with the two foot-prints, was from Cerne Abbas. The second comes from a large stone circle in Cumbria called Long Meg and her Daughters; the farmer heard his dog barking on the first of May, and when he looked out, he saw what appeared to be a candle burning in the field where the circle was. Going to investigate, he found a ram belonging to the next neighbour but one, lying on the centre-stone with its throat cut. The third envelope, that with all the cigarettes, is from High Bridestones—the site, unfortunately, was the focal point of a motor-coach full of lady water-colourists, two days before Albert Seaforth died there. And the fourth, as you know, was from the Wilmington Giant.”
“Same boots, same matches,” I said.
“Identical candle-wax,” he added.
“Is that what those soft pebbles are? Dirty wax?”
“Not dirty: dark.”
“Dark? You mean black? Like those used by the Children of Lights. Or in a Black Mass.”
“Is there actually such a thing as a Black Mass?” Mycroft asked. “One has heard about it, of course, but it always seemed to me one of those tales the righteous build to convince themselves of their enemies' depravity.”
“Crowley practices it,” Holmes told him. “Don't you remember, last year, the death of young Loveday?”
“Raoul Loveday died of an infection down at Crowley's villa in Italy, although his wife claimed Crowley's magic killed him.”
“Yes, but he died after a Black Mass at which they drank the blood of a sacrificed cat,” I said. “We met Loveday's wife, and although it wouldn't surprise me if she'd shared in the drugs side of the experience, what she has to say about the ceremony seemed real enough.” A still more awful thought struck me. “Holmes, there's a line in Testimony about primitive people eating their enemies' hearts. You don't suppose that Brothers…”
“Drank his victims' blood as well?” Holmes considered for a moment, then shook his head. “I saw nothing to indicate that, no place where, for example, smears suggested a cup wiped clean. And if the blood was meant as a communal partaking, would he have done so when he worked alone?”
I hoped not. I truly hoped not.
I went to our room a short time later. As I was brushing my teeth, Holmes came in, looking for his pipe.
“You're staying up?” I asked, unnecessarily: The pipe meant meditation.
“I need to read Testimony.”
“What did you make of Lofte's information?”
“Which part of it?”
Very well; if Holmes was going to be obtuse, I could be blunt. “The part of it where Damian's wife was married to a murder suspect, Holmes. Did Damian know that she was married before? That she had a child by Hayden? That she's been attending his church? That the illustrations were for the man's book?”
“I believe he knew, yes.”
“But why would he go along with it? And why not tell you?”
“I should imagine that he did not tell me for the same