“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 reason he attempted to conceal his wife's unsavoury past: He feared that if I knew who she had been, I should assume her to be a gold-digger of the worst stripe and wash my hands promptly of the business. It is, after all, more or less what I assumed when I first encountered Damian's mother.”

“But isn't that precisely what this woman is-was?”

“You do not admit to the possibility of reform?”

I started to retort, then closed my mouth. Yolanda Chin had been a child when she was forced into a life of prostitution; she was not yet an adult when she married a middle-aged Englishman, who turned out to be a crook, and perhaps much worse. Did I have any reason to think that Yolanda herself was a criminal? I did not. Did I have any reason to believe she was betraying Damian, in any way but attending her first husband's church? I did not.

Holmes saw the internal debate on my face. “It is easier to picture the boy as a victim of an unscrupulous adventuress, but I see no evidence of that, Russell. He loved her. Still does, if you are correct and he does not know she is dead. My son loves his wife,” he said simply. “That is the point at which I must begin.”

“And yet you think he knows. About her continuing attachment to Brothers?”

“He knows. One must remember, the Bohemian way of life is not a surface dressing with Damian.”

I thought about that, and about the denizens of the Café Royal: two couples, leaving arm in arm with the other's spouse; Alice, Ronnie, and their Bunny; the Epstein household of husband, wife, husband's lovers, and their various children; the manifold permutations of the Bloomsbury Group, with lovers, husbands, wives' lovers become husbands' lovers and vice-versa; all of it determinedly natural and open, all of it aimed at a greater definition of humanity.

Yes, Damian could well know, and knowing, permit-even approve of-his wife's continued liaison with a man to whom she had once been married.

I had to laugh, a little sadly. “I'm a twenty-four-year-old prude.”

“And thank God for it.”

“Still,” I said, “I'd have thought that if Damian knew about Yolanda's links to Brothers, he'd have looked to Brothers when she disappeared.”

“Yes, well, I believe he may have done so. On the Wednesday night, he left the hotel for a time. It appeared to be an attack of claustrophobia.”

“He's claustrophobic?” I pictured the room Damian and Estelle had shared at the walled house, its two large windows wide open to the night. “Did he leave for long enough to get up to the walled house and back?”

“By taxi, yes.”

I woke early the following morning, saw the vague pre-dawn shape of Mycroft's guest room, and turned over again. Then I noticed how quiet it was. In London. Drat: Sunday again.

I was on my third cup of coffee when first Holmes, then his brother emerged. Mycroft was cheerful, or at least, as cheerful as Mycroft got, but Holmes shot a dark look at the windows in just the way I had earlier.

Sundays were most inconvenient, when it came to investigation.

Still, it was not a total loss. For one thing, at ten after eight, interrupting our toast and marmalade, a set of discreet knuckles brushed at the door. I went to answer, and found “Mr Jones,” a thick packet in his hand. He peered around me to check that Mycroft was in before he handed it over.

I took it to Mycroft. He tore it open, removing a note; as he read it, his face went enigmatic, and I braced myself for bad news.

“The pathologists for Fiona Cartwright and Albert Seaforth report that there was no indication of Veronal grains in the stomachs of the two victims.”

“They missed it,” I declared.

“Perhaps with Miss Cartwright, but the Seaforth examination appears to have been quite thorough. He was not given powdered Veronal to render him unconscious.”

He handed me the reports, which indicated that Fiona Cartwright had drunk a cup of tea at some point before she shot herself, and Albert Seaforth had taken a quantity of beer. I had to agree, if powdered Veronal had been there, the pathologist would have found it. Which meant that as far as the drugs Brother used, we were back to square one.

“Still,” I said, “he must have drugged Seaforth in some manner. I can't see a man this size just sitting down and permitting his wrists to be slit.”

“Veronal comes in liquid form as well,” Holmes commented. “I imagine he required the powdered form for Yolanda because he could stir it before-hand into the nut pâté. It would be a simple matter to dribble some from a bottle into a cup of tea in a busy café or a pint in a pub, but it would require sleight-of-hand to do so on an open hillside.”

A truly macabre image: a man casually handing a pâté-laden biscuit and glass of wine to the woman who had once been his wife, sitting on the grass with a picnic basket at their feet, the Long Man at their backs, and a waiting knife on his person.