Heavens, my life was dull. “So that was when you met Damian and Yolanda?”

“Yolanda wasn't there, was she, Ronnie?”

“Wasn't she?”

“No, I remember because Damian couldn't come out with us to the country after the party, he had to be home because Yolanda would murder him if she heard he'd left the child by itself. It must have been when they first got here-that's right, there was some nonsense about finding a nanny. Children are so tedious, aren't they? Why can't one just leave them to their own devices?”

“Was Yolanda away, then?”

“Something religious, wasn't it?” he said, remembering.

“Probably,” she agreed.

“I do remember now. You wanted him to come along because you hoped you could get him into bed.”

Alice laughed and shot me a glance; I braced myself for further naughtiness. “Really, it was Ronnie who wanted to have a fling with him, and was hoping I'd join in. I would have, too.”

“I don't blame you,” I said evenly. “Damian is very attractive.”

“Have you-”

“No,” I said, my response a shade too quick. “No, I have not. Nor with Yolanda,” I added, to restore my Bohemian bona fides.

“Neither have we. He turned us down, first one, then the other. Not that I've given up on him-he has a dark side one can practically taste.”

“Er, what do you mean by dark side, exactly?”

“Oh, Damian comes across as the wholesome boy, married to one woman, a daddy even, but when one comes to know him, the darker impulses are there. I mean to say, just look at his paintings.”

I had to agree that wholesome was not the first word one would choose to describe The Addler's paintings, but I couldn't tell if Alice actually knew something about Damian's “dark” side, or if this was merely romantic twaddle from a spurned woman.

“He keeps his temper under control,” I ventured.

“One would hardly know he has one, most of the time,” she agreed, which exchange got me no further.

I had taken but a single sip from the glass in my hand, but either the alcohol was strong or the conversation itself was dizzying. I put the glass down, caught it as it tipped, and moved it to a flatter place on the edge of a sheet of gravy-smeared newspaper, the remains of someone's lunch. Perhaps several days' lunches. Ronnie stretched out a hand and absently broke off a bit of crust from a dried-up stub of beef pie, ignoring the mouse droppings scattered around it. I shuddered, and would have averted my eyes except they were caught by a word on the gravy-smeared newsprint: Sussex.

Alice asked if Ronnie had picked up the eggs and bread she'd asked him to get, and he declared that it wasn't his job, causing her to retort that she was hungry, and they fell to wrangling about whose responsibility it had been to stock the pantry. Since I had no intention of putting any morsel of this household's food into my mouth, I idly nudged the wad of crust to one side, the better to see what event in the nation's placid southland had caught the attention of the afternoon paper. I read:

MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN SUSSEX

The body of a young Oriental woman in city dress has been found at the feet of the Wilmington Giant on the South Downs, near the busy seaside resort of Eastbourne.

Although the Giant is a popular landmark for country ramblers, Police say that the woman was wearing a summer frock and light shoes, inadequate for the footpaths that lead into the prehistoric si

This is the second death to

following the suicide at Cerne A

The rest of the article was glued to obscurity by brown gravy.

I ripped the page from the table and held it out to my companions. They fell silent.

“I must go,” I said. “May I have this?”

Alice looked at the torn, grease-spotted sheet in my hand and made a gesture to indicate I should help myself.

I turned for the door, felt as much as heard the beams creak from below, and hastily veered back to the walls. At the doorway I paused to look at the two, staring after me in bewilderment and, perhaps, disappointment.

“You really mustn't put any more weight onto those floorboards,” I urged them. “It's an awfully long way to the ground.”

Silence followed me all the way down the stairs.

20

The Spark (1): The ancients spoke of a divine spark

within every individual, no matter how mean, a spark

that might be nurtured, fed, and coaxed into open flame.

Testimony, II:3

BY DINT OF PLANTING MYSELF IN FRONT OF A PASSING taxicab with another of Holmes' guinea coins gleaming in my outstretched palm, I reached Victoria and was sprinting across the platform-folding up the sagging waist of Holmes' trousers as I ran-just as the last southbound train of the night was gathering itself for departure. The conductor glared in disapproval, but I was hardly the first dishevelled latecomer to crash through his doors on a Saturday night, and since my lip colour had long since worn off, he no doubt thought I was just another young man in fancy dress.

I subsided into my seat, plucking sadly at my costume, and remembered the parcel of nondescript ladies' wear in which I had begun this extraordinarily long day. Would I ever see it again, I wondered, or would it be buried under a mountain of rubble and brick? Or become nesting material for the mice?

And with that profound thought, I fell asleep. However, twenty minutes later, I was wide awake again, staring out of the window as I considered the implications of this southward flight.

I was being absurd. I had no reason to think what I was thinking. On Friday night I had been visited by an irrational, groundless fear born of solitude and dark thoughts and-yes, admit it-envy. My husband's son, that handsome, magnetic, hugely talented, and utterly fascinating young man, had walked into our lives and effortlessly spirited Holmes away. I had read his dossier and pictured him as a killer; my mind was too ready to build a gallows out of smoke.

But this was Holmes, after all. Sherlock Holmes did not fall for the easy patter of a confidence man. He did not mistake plausibility for truth, loyalty for moral rectitude, or need for necessity. He would see that we had to question Damian, and we would do so, and when we had established that he had an acceptable alibi, we would proceed with the investigation.

Assuming, that is, that this dead woman at the Wilmington Giant proved to be Yolanda. Which no doubt it would not.

I stared at the passing countryside as the train covered the slow miles south, pausing at every small town before jerking back into life. I thought about getting off in Polegate, the station nearest the Giant, but there would be little benefit to shivering out the hours until dawn in the open instead of in my own bed. So I stayed on the train to its terminus of Eastbourne, where I was fortunate enough to find a taxi-cab with the driver snoring behind the wheel. Two other passengers and I looked at each other, and in the end, the driver looped through the suburban villas to drop them at their doors before turning for the Downs, and home.

I had him leave me at the end of the drive, not wanting to wake Mrs Hudson with the sound of wheels on gravel in the wee hours of the morning. I walked along the verge in the bright moonlight, listening to the engine noise fade and the ceaseless downland breeze rise to take its place.

The house was locked, as I expected. I used my key and stepped inside-then my head came up in surprise: The odour of tobacco was considerably fresher than five days old. A small creak of descending weight on the stairs confirmed it: Holmes was home.

He stood on the landing, his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown; the touch of his eyes, running with amusement across my person, was an almost physical thing.