Marble steps led to glass double doors revealing a foyer lined by sofas and pot-plants.  I shook the door handles but the doors appeared to be locked.

'Riff raff,' Brother Zebediah said. 'Keeps out.' He was looking at a sort of grid in the marble wall composed of small boxes with buttons and little illuminated labels.  There was a grille to one side. 'Number?' he asked.

'Thirty-five,' I told him.  He ran his finger down the little plastic windows.  His fingernails were long and soiled.  However, I thought the better of saying anything.

'Here,' he said. 'Thirty.  Five.  Says.  Mr. Mrs. Coyle.' He pressed the button.

'… Yes?' a female voice said from the grille after a short delay.

'Excuse me, Brother,' I said to Zeb, taking his place. 'Good morning, madam,' I said into the grille. 'I am sorry to disturb you but I am looking for Ms Morag Whit, the internationally renowned baryton soloist.'

'…Excuse me?'

'Morag Whit, the internationally renowned baryton soloist' I repeated. 'She is my cousin.  Does she still live here?  This is the last address we have for her.'

'No.  I'm sorry.  The lady who used to live here left a couple of months ago.'

'I see.  It's just that I'm her cousin, you see, and my family are rather anxious to trace her.  Did she leave a forwarding address?'

'Not really.  Might I ask who that other gentleman is there with you?'

I straightened and looked, with a degree of consternation, I'll admit, at Zeb.  He nodded over our heads to a small box just inside glass doors.

'Camera,' he said.

'Good grief!' I said. 'Are we on television?'

'Closed circuit,' Zeb said.

'Lordy!' I gulped. 'Is that a much-watched show?' My mouth had gone a little dry.('… Hello?' said the small voice from the grille.)

Zeb stared at me, frowning with incomprehension.  Then he grimaced. 'Not broadcast,' he said, sounding exasperated. 'Security.  For flats.  Private.'

I thought I understood and quickly turned back to the grille, blushing and flustered. 'I do beg your pardon, madam.  I misunderstood.  This is my half-brother, Brother Zebediah, another Luskentyrian.'

'I'm sorry?' said the female voice.  Zeb sighed behind me and I caught him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. 'Another what?

'Another Luskentyrian,' I replied, feeling my face colour again.  Explaining these things to Blands could be time-consuming. 'It's complicated.'

'I'm sure.  Well,' the voice said with an unmistakable note of finality, 'I'm very sorry I can't help you.'

'She left no forwarding address?' I said desperately. 'We just want to make sure she's all right.'

'Well…'

'Please.'

'…  She did leave the address of her agent, or… manager or something, for anything urgent.  But just the address, not phone or fax.'

'That would be wonderful!' I said. 'Oh, thank you!'

'Well, just hold on; I'll go get it.' There was a click.

I turned, feeling relieved, to Zeb, who was looking vaguely out at the trees between us and the road. 'There we are!' I said, and clapped him enthusiastically on the back.  He stumbled forward, coughing, and had to jump down a couple of steps before he could regain his balance.  He glared back at me.

'… Hello?' said the metallic voice from the wall.

Our journey from Finchley was relatively simple, taking the Northern Line south to Tottenham Court Road and then walking along Oxford Street and down Dean Street to Brewer Street.

The premises corresponding to the address we had been given for Cousin Morag's agent - a Mr Francis Leopold - did not look very encouraging.

'Dirty books?' Zeb said, and made another forlorn attempt to pull his hand through the topological - and trichological - nightmare that was his hair.  We stood on the pavement looking at the oddly blank window of something calling itself an Adult Book Shop.

'Well,' I said, looking to one side. 'The number may refer to this establishment.'

Zeb glanced. 'Porn cinema.'

'Or here?'

Zeb stuck his head into the doorway. 'Peep show.  Downstairs.  Upstairs.  Models.  Girls.'

I must have looked blank.

'Prostitutes,' he said, sighing.

'Ah,' I said. 'Well, where shall we inquire first?'

Zeb's narrow face managed to display a breadth of dubiety. 'Inquire?  Really?  Wise?'

'Brother Zebediah,' I said, shocked. 'You're not embarrassed, are you?' I waved at the varied sexual emporia in front of us.  'Such places are stigmatised by a hypocritical society which is still frightened by the power of sexuality; nevertheless in their own admittedly somewhat sordid and avaricious way such places celebrate the physical communion of souls.'

(Actually, even as I was saying all this, I was feeling a bit dubious about it, but I was more or less quoting a certain Brother Jamie, a convert from Inverness who'd gone to Stirling University, the campus of which was only a few miles from the Community; for some reason this had all sounded more plausible when he'd said it.  Now that I was actually confronted with the establishments he had been talking about, they didn't look celebratory at all.  However, I'd launched into this mini-sermon so I supposed I'd better round it off, false signal or not.)

'Why,' I exclaimed, 'by our doctrine they ought to be accorded the status of churches!'

Brother Zebediah looked levelly at me through hooded eyes for a moment.  He took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. 'Churches.  Right.  Yeah.  Way.  Go.  Okay.  Cool.  Uh.' He nodded at the nearest door. 'After.'

Our inquiries at the various facilities of dubious repute met with no success. 'What's this abaht?', 'Who're you from?', 'Never 'erd of 'im.', 'Never 'erd of 'ur, neevir.', 'Look, I got a business to run, inn-I?' and 'Fack orf'. comprised the more helpful of the various replies we received.  My attempts in the cramped foyer of the erotic picture house to explain that - despite the obvious squalidness of the surroundings and the primarily financial motive behind the pornographic concerns we found ourselves in the midst of - there was still a degree of common cause between such grubbily commercial exploitations of humanity's most holy instinct and the pure, sanctified expression of that urge to be discovered through our Holy Order was met initially with glazed incomprehension.

Then, quickly thereafter, the back of my jacket and shirt collar were gripped extremely firmly by the heavily ringed hand of a very large crop-haired gentleman in a suit - pushing my hat down over my eyes so that I could hardly see where I was going - and Zeb and I were given an undignifiedly rough escort past a variety of lurid posters to the doors, where we were ejected into the street outside with such force that I almost lost my footing and came within inches of colliding with a person on a motorcycle.  This person then skidded to a stop, pushed up his helmet visor and informed me in no uncertain terms of my sexual activity, mental acuity and physical size, characterised me correctly by my genitals, then changed tack and insinuated that my hat was supported by a - presumably grossly enlarged - male sexual organ, and finally that my parents' union had not been sanctioned either by the state or an established church.

I tipped my hat and begged his pardon.  He roared away, shaking his crash helmet.

Zeb joined me on the far pavement; his collar had been in the other fist of the man who had seen us off (who was now standing with his arms massively crossed, filling the doorway to the cinema).  A few people in the crowded street were looking at us.

'Okay?' Zeb asked.

'Dignity a little tarnished,' I told him, adjusting the lapels of my jacket. 'Otherwise, uninjured.  And you?'

'Fine,' Zeb said, shrugging his shoulders forward and pulling down on his jumper.