Disappointment.
Entry Date: 11 June
Disappointment is the saddest of all emotions. M agrees, but she says regret is the one that will eat away at your soul.
We finished the chamber of Toth last night. I am satisfied with it but I also feel emptiness. Like M, I long to find someone new to play with. And I have no doubt that there will be someone new. It is just a matter of time.
I wonder who he'll be. R was a seeker and an innocent. But maybe M is right. Maybe we need a man who carries more fire in his veins.
Someone who is not only a dreamer but also a warrior.
I wonder where he is now-our future playmate. What is he thinking of right this minute?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Monk House was the only Victorian house on an entire street of elegant Georgian facades. It sat bulkily on the corner; square, brooding and defiant in its otherness. The brickwork was deep orange and there was more than a hint of Gothic in the pointed gable and the oriel bulging from the house's flank. It was late afternoon, and the sun glinted redly off the tiny leaded panes, creating an impression that inside a fire was burning.
The front of the house was flush with its neighbor, and the front door was overlooked by houses on the opposite side of the street. The door had two locks and Gabriel had already ascertained that one of them was a Bramah. This would not be his point of access. It would be far easier to negotiate the back garden and enter through the French doors leading to the living room. He had Frankie to thank for this piece of information, as the back of the house was hidden from view. A wall that was all of sixty feet long and at least twelve feet in height ensured not only complete privacy but also good security. It would be difficult to scale.
But there was an alley round the back, and set into the wall was an access door. Gabriel suspected that this was used when the garbage cans were put out for collection. He had already traversed the alley earlier this week, checking out the small timber door. As he expected, the lock was a standard one. He did not foresee any problems.
He tapped his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel of the Jaguar. He wanted out of the car. Even though the sun was losing much of its sting, it was still hellishly hot. His shirt was sticking to his back where it pressed against the leather upholstery. He was parked about half a block away and had a good side view of the house. Nothing stirred.
He glanced at his watch. They were cutting it close. It was already ten minutes to the hour, and Frankie had told him the sisters had agreed to drinks at seven followed by dinner after. That should give him more than enough time to look around. He was also carrying his mobile phone. Frankie promised to call him as soon as the sisters had finished dinner and were leaving for home. He didn't want to be caught in the act-although he expected to be finished long before then.
A black taxicab came to a halt in front of the house. Gabriel watched as the cabdriver walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds, the cabbie turned his head and spoke into the intercom unit set into the wall. He listened for a moment or two before walking back to the cab and settling himself behind the steering wheel. He kept the car idling.
Gabriel waited. The front door remained shut.
Earlier today he had stopped off at Robert Whittington's flat. Frankie had given him the key. He spent almost an hour opening cupboards, rifling through drawers and boxes. A sad little exercise. Not only did the flat have the forlorn feel of an unoccupied place, but Gabriel had the feeling that everything in that apartment belonged to someone who was searching.
Books on self-improvement rubbed shoulders with tomes on Buddhism, astrology and tarot card reading. Against the wall were two framed posters: an X-Files poster with its slogan "I want to believe" and the iconic features of Che Guevara, improbably handsome and debonair. Candles, crystals and a number of different Buddhas-some of them jolly and potbellied, others intimidatingly ascetic-lined the shelves.
Above the bed hung a wooden mask. It looked to be African in origin, thick eyelids surrounding hollow eye sockets and the mouth pulled back into a stylized grimace. The furniture was modest, the apartment small. It was difficult to believe the heir to a vast fortune had lived there.
On the bedside table was a framed picture. It showed Robert Whittington as a teenager, all outsized nose and feet, with his arm around the waist of a thickset blond woman. There was a definite family resemblance-the mother, at a guess. Frankie had told him she had died in a skiing accident when the boy was only fourteen. The first Mrs. Whittington was no beauty, but she had soft eyes. As he looked at the two faces, Gabriel felt a sudden pang of sympathy. The loss of his mother must have been a tremendous blow, especially if relations with the father had been strained since childhood.
The only thing of real interest in the apartment was a pencil sketch pinned to a discolored bulletin board. The sketch was extraordinarily well executed and almost architectural in detail. It showed a circular space with a domed ceiling and walls composed of wheels densely covered with symbols. Some were easy to identify: a star, a candle, a book. Others were more obscure: squiggles and doodlelike icons impossible to interpret. At the bottom of the sketch, written in a slanted hand, was Portal, and underneath it a simple signature: Robert, followed by a date. Robert Whittington, it seemed, had a real talent for drawing.
But it wasn't the skill of the artist that made him pause and that caused his heart to beat faster. It was the fact that the penciled lines on the paper replicated a place he had visited only a few days before. A fantastical space he had entered shortly before being sucked into a nightmarish whirlwind of images and sounds that had sent his mind crashing into insanity. This vast chamber with its turning, symbol-clad wheels had been the gateway to madness and death. Just thinking back on it gave him a chill.
Portal.
As he looked at the drawing so finely rendered, he found himself shivering. Thought given substance. Proof that he had indeed managed to cross the slippery borders of Robert Whittington's mind.
The door to Monk House opened. Gabriel blinked, brought back to the present. The occupants of the house were finally about to leave. A woman with red hair reaching to her shoulders stepped out.
She turned sideways, and he was able to see the tip of a delicate nose and chin behind a gleaming veil of hair. She was obviously talking to someone who was still inside the house.
Red hair. So this will be Minnaloushe. Frankie had told him Mor-righan was the brunette. Someone, another woman who was not yet in his line of vision, was pointing toward the taxi: a slim bare arm was reaching out from behind the front door. The redhead nodded and walked down the steps, adjusting a long, floaty scarf around her neck. Before he had time to have a proper look at her face, she had ducked into the interior of the cab.
A second woman walked through the front door, pulling it shut behind her. He saw a flash of keys. She was slightly taller than the redhead. Her hair was black as coal and pulled back in a sophisticated chignon. After locking the door, she looked up and down the street. For a moment he had a full view of her face: heart-shaped with cheekbones that could cut glass. V-e-e-ry nice indeed. Then she too stepped inside the cab. The taxi pulled away and accelerated down the street.
He waited for a few minutes after the taxi had disappeared around the corner. No harm in making sure they were really gone. Then he got out of the Jaguar and headed for the alley, taking care to walk briskly and confidently. The alley was overlooked by the back windows of a number of storied houses, but he wasn't too fussed. If one walked with enough assurance, people usually didn't pay attention. Furtive skulking, on the other hand, would get you noticed every time. The only glitch might be the lock on. the garden door. He would have to work quickly.