Mrs. Needling shivered, shaken from her haze.

“If you’ll excuse me, Dr. Doyle,” she said. “I must attend to a supper goose.” And with that, she left Arthur alone. He felt like a grave robber. Or a ghoul. Lord, where was Bram when you needed him?

His search was methodical. He read the letters carefully. A handful were from Sally’s brothers, who’d been away in the Transvaal the year before. Good lads. Two were from an uncle in Paris. Three from a grandmother in Swansea. Arthur learned much about the weather on the Continent and the Atlantic tides at the Swansea beaches, but little about the secret life of Sally Needling. Who were these girls, Janet and Emily? Exactly what organization had they been a part of? And who was this man who had surreptitiously married Sally without even her parents knowing?

Arthur went through the top drawers one by one until he came to the fifth one in his search. He pulled at the bronze knob. Yet the drawer held firm against his pull. It was locked. He bent over and noticed a small keyhole below the knob. It looked like a purely decorative feature, like the tiny locks affixed to the front of leather-bound diaries. He couldn’t imagine that it provided much in the way of security. Arthur pulled again on the knob, harder. The drawer didn’t budge.

This was promising.

He went to the bedroom door and closed it quietly. He didn’t want the family to hear him at work. He walked back to the dresser and bent over the keyhole once again. He didn’t know much about picking locks, but once, over a tall carafe of brandy, Wilde had explained to him how the job was done. How Wilde knew, Arthur could not be certain, but then again, the man was ever a mystery to all his friends. As Arthur took up a pen from the desk, he became sad, thinking of his old friend. What had happened there?

After the arrest, the trial, prison, Wilde had vanished. Where was he now? Arthur hadn’t the foggiest. Such a great man, such a warm and broad-smiling soul, brought low by mere vice. Every man knew the dangerous pull of sin. Yes, in honesty, every man experienced certain… urges. It was not the feeling them which had brought kind Wilde so low. It was the giving in. The failure born of weakness. To be a man, a good man, was to overcome the natural iniquities of one’s manhood. Wilde had succumbed to sin, but Arthur did not hate him for it. He was only saddened. He wanted Wilde back-the old Wilde, the good Wilde, the witty and buoyant Wilde who lit up every dinner table at which he sat.

Arthur banished the thought from his head as he jabbed the tip of the pen into the keyhole. Best not to think upon it.

But the pen didn’t fit. The keyhole was too small. Arthur tried the other pens at the desk, but none would do the trick. He had to look elsewhere.

The jewelry box next to the mirror was an obvious choice. As he opened it, he blinked at the flare of light that escaped from the glittering jewels inside. Diamonds, opals, golden bracelets and rings of every color. Arthur found three pearl necklaces, and yet the clasps on all of them were U-shaped, and so useless for his purposes. After only a few moments of digging, he found an item with a long, thin clasp. It was perfect for lock picking. He removed it from the pile, clasp first, and stepped toward the desk. He was halfway there when he looked down and saw what he held in his hand: a shimmering, ruby-red hair clip.

Arthur stopped, staring down at it. It was so small in his palm. Two metal bands stretched from end to end, onto which colored stones had been laid. It was ecstatically colorful in the way of all children’s jewelry. He could imagine the thrill inside eight-year-old Sally over opening up a wrapped box to find this on the morning of her birthday. He could imagine her crying inconsolably when she rolled to the bottom of the hill and found pieces of the broken clip buried in her hair. He knew why her father had consented to purchasing an identical replacement- the one that Arthur now held-at once.

Arthur inserted the long metal clasp into the keyhole. It fit perfectly. He flicked it up, then down, then side to side, twisting it to find the tumbler. He remembered what Wilde had described to him, how you had to find the tumblers, however many there were, sequentially. You had to press them one by one. Arthur pressed harder into the lock, jabbing for a deeper tumbler, when the hair clip broke. The miniature screws connecting the clasp to the central two bands popped out, and the clip split into two halves. The bands with the colored stones on them fell to the floor, while his push forward threw him slightly off balance. He removed the end he still held, the clasp, from the keyhole, and looked down.

Heavens! He had stepped on the fallen clip while regaining his balance. The bands were shattered into four or five pieces now, and a few stones had broken loose from their holds. A cloud passed outside the tall windows, and beams of light blanketed the room. The stones glimmered on the floor, islands in a wood-brown sea.

Arthur left the wreckage where it lay. The milk, so to speak, was spilt. No use crying now. He turned back to the desk, again inserting the clasp into the keyhole.

Within another minute he’d gotten it open.

Arthur opened the drawer hungrily. He laid it on the desktop and peered down. Inside, there was nothing but a quarter-inch stack of identical white papers. He lifted a handful of them up, and held them to the window light.

The papers were devoid of writing. He flipped through each one and found them all equally blank.

There was no mark on the pages, save one. At the top of each paper, there was the image, printed in black ink, of a three-headed crow. Arthur gave a start. It was the same image that had been found tattooed on Morgan Nemain’s leg!

But what did it mean?

He folded the papers and committed them to his coat pocket. He replaced the drawer as he’d found it.

He knelt to the floor and swept the bits of shattered hair clip into his hand before gently depositing them back into the jewelry box and leaving.

There remained no sign, after he left, of his ever having been there.

CHAPTER 20 The Chase

January 9, 2010, cont.

“The police are on their way,” said Jennifer Peters as she clapped her cell phone shut. Harold and Sarah were looking through the piles of books and papers in the writing office, while Jennifer remained close to the doorway. In the five minutes since Harold had run downstairs and been unable to find any trace of the goateed man, Jennifer had managed to step only a few feet into the apartment. She remained motionless, arms crossed above her belly, as if giving herself a deep hug.

“Look, this is awkward,” said Harold, “but I’d rather not speak to the police, if that’s okay. I’ve been at the scenes of two crimes in the last seventy-two hours, and I’d kind of like to avoid another grilling about that. If you don’t mind.”

Jennifer hugged herself tighter, and spoke curtly. “Fine. Go. I won’t tell them you were here.”

Harold gave Alex Cale’s bookshelves a quick once-over and then motioned to Sarah that they should leave. She closed the drawer of Alex’s desk that she’d been rifling through and followed Harold to the door. She gave Jennifer a warm look and placed a hand on the older woman’s shoulder as she passed by.

“Thank you,” said Harold as they exited into the hallway.

“I’d rather not see either of you ever again, please,” said Jennifer.

Harold nodded, and without another word he and Sarah left the building.