The Language of Bees - Laurie R. King [90]
“How soon before we can go back there?” I asked.
“Oh, she's liable to be in residence for hours. Still, I'm glad you heard her story.”
“Why on earth would you want me to hear that dreadful tale?”
“I admit, I hadn't considered its effects when delivered over a dining table. However, I thought it a worthy illumination of the extremes to be found in modern belief.”
“Crowley's been called the wickedest man in England.”
“By himself, certainly.”
“You think it an act?”
“Not entirely. He's like a petulant boy who searches out the most offensive phrases and ideas he can find, to prove his cleverness and his superiority. You know that his so-called church takes its motto from the Hellfire Club.”
“Fait ce que vouldras,” I murmured. “Do as you like. Which, if you are rich enough, covers any sin and perversion you can invent.”
“Crowley is not wealthy, but he manages very well, in part because he is deeply charismatic, with eyes some find compelling. No doubt he has brains, and ability—he was at one time a highly competent mountaineer. At seventeen, he climbed Beachy Head to the Coast Guard outpost in under ten minutes. If one can believe his claim.”
“Have you any reason to think that Yolanda was involved with this Crowley nonsense?”
“Were he in the country, I should wish to take a closer look at him, but he has not been here for some time. I shouldn't think Crowley is your group's ‘Master.’”
I resolutely turned my mind from the image of slaughtered cats. “Did you discover anything of interest before I came?”
“Damian has not been seen there since he passed by on Friday morning.”
“Where can he be?” I wondered aloud.
“And you: Have you found anything?” he asked, ignoring my plaintive remark.
“Yes, a great deal.”
As we threaded our way along the once-noble colonnades of Regent Street, surrounded by the irritable shouts and klaxons of a city in summer, I told him what I had found in Miss Dunworthy's flat: the ledger for the Children of Lights; the receipts for the clothing Yolanda Adler had worn to her death; the overheard weeping.
“However, Holmes,” I said at the end of it, “I cannot envision the woman with a knife at Yolanda's throat.”
“She lacks the independent spirit?”
“I should have said, she lacks that degree of madness.”
“It amounts to the same thing,” he said. “She is a follower.”
“Definitely. And of a man, not a woman.”
“The spinster true-believer is a species I have met before, generally in the rôle of victim. They beg to be fleeced of all they possess.”
“I shouldn't say Miss Dunworthy possesses much.”
“Her wits, her energy, her palpable innocence and good will.”
“Those, yes. But, Holmes, about that book, Testimony. She had a copy, in a drawer she's lined with velvet as a sort of shrine. I didn't get much of a chance to look at it.”
“You wish to return to Damian's house.”
“I need to see that book. You don't suppose Lestrade took it?”
“I shouldn't have thought so, although he will have left a presence there, on the chance Damian returns.”
“Several constables, do you think?”
“Unlikely. Shall we toss a coin for who creates the distraction this time?”
“You know—” I stopped, reconsidering what I was about to say. “You know where the book is, so it would make sense for you to fetch it. On the other hand, I should be interested to see what else the Adlers own in their collection.”
“Religion being your field, not mine,” Holmes noted.
“Not if you consider Crowley's practise a religion. My expertise is about twenty-five hundred years out of date. But still, you're