He didn't have to worry. He was just about to take out his tools when his shoulder pushed against the door and it clicked open under his weight. It had been left unlocked. Quickly he stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
He was standing at the foot-end of a long, narrow garden, which had a wonderful feel of manicured wildness to it. A cascade of mauves, purples and pinks-lavender, lilac, love-in-a-mist-grew among the silken tassels and feathery plumes of softly swaying grasses. Rambling roses with pale petals covered the walls of the garden. But even though the overall feel of the garden was one of delightful randomness, if one looked closely, it was obvious that some real thought had gone into the planning of all this luxurious herbage. This might be botanical anarchy, but it was a controlled disorder. The mind that had created this floral fantasy was a meticulous one.
To his right was the swimming pool, shaded by a humpbacked tree with bright red flowers. He walked over and knelt down on the brick apron, trailing his hand through the sun-warm water. As Frankie had said, the pool wasn't big, but it seemed quite deep. The surface of the water was flecked with stray petals. He could see the delicate bodies of dead insects bobbing near the edges of the filter.
He wiped his mind clean of emotion and waited. Concentrated. He kept his hand submerged in the water.
Nothing. If Robert Whittington had died here, the echo of his passing had already disappeared. Gabriel could sense nothing at all.
He got to his feet and wiped his hand against his shirtfront. Maybe he'd have better luck inside the house.
The windows on the ground floor were shut, as was a pair of tall French doors. But as he started to walk toward the doors, he experienced a flash of recognition. The stained-glass panels set into the doors showed the coat of arms he had seen during his ride. The Monas. Astrological symbols, according to Frankie.
They didn't look like any astrology symbols he'd ever seen, but to be fair, he wasn't exactly au fait with the wonderful world of the zodiac. Isidore, on the other hand, was meticulous about checking his horoscope every day, and a negative forecast could make him fall into depression faster than you could say "Saturn in retrograde." Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to have Isidore check out the Monas. It had to be important if Robert Whittington had the design tattooed onto his arm.
He stopped and tried the doors. They were locked, but the lock itself was basic. There was also no indication of an alarm. Except for the higher than normal garden wall, the sisters did not seem to worry unduly about security. Which might mean they had nothing to hide.
Or not. It could also be a sign of arrogance.
If he had been a real burglar, he would have tapped out one of the glass insets in the door and simply put his hand through and let himself in that way. As it was, he did not want to leave behind traces of his visit, so a little more effort was required. From the inside pocket of his jacket he extracted the chamois pouch with his picks and removed one of the pronged instruments. As he started to work on the lock, he smiled. This was going to be easy. And indeed, after only a few seconds, he felt the lock give. He eased himself in and closed the door behind him.
For a few moments he stood without moving, giving his eyes a chance to become accustomed to the inside gloom. The windows were shuttered, allowing only filtered shafts of sunlight to shine through the slats. The air was heavy, the shutters not so much screening the house from the heat as trapping it and keeping it prisoner. A ceiling fan whirled lazily above his head. It hardly stirred the air, and the whisper of the slowly turning blades only accentuated the quietness of the room.
Every house has its own peculiar smell. Whenever he visited a house, this was always the first thing he noticed. Not the decor, the smell. It may vary from day to day. Cooking, cleaning, working-all these activities left their olfactory imprint, but the underlying essence of a house stayed the same. The scent of this house was powerfully feminine. And surprisingly old-fashioned. Talcum. Roses of the old, fragrant variety. Spices such as cinnamon and cloves. Tangerines? Also something else. Something he couldn't quite place but which bit into his palate, slightly bitter and acrid. And then, of course, the olfactory ingredient, which made the smell of any house as unique as a fingerprint. The occupants. The sisters themselves. He could smell them as well.
The room itself had a plantation-like feel to it. The cream-colored walls, dark oiled floorboards and shutters, rattan furniture and ghostly ceiling fan were reminiscent of an interior more likely to be found in some colonial outpost than a house in central London.
A peacock chair with a very deep seat was flanked by a rickety-looking wicker screen. One wall held a large number of carved African masks. They reminded him of the mask he had seen in Robert Whittington's apartment. It wouldn't surprise him if it had originated from this room.
Two dark green wingback chairs, the leather split and creased, faced each other on either side of a zebra skin going bald. A rattan coffee table and several rattan chests covered with magazines flanked an enormous sofa covered in velvet. On the far side of the room were two metal workbenches covered with a variety of objects.
There were roses everywhere. On top of the chest, on side tables, on the windowsills. Silky bloodred roses, deep apricot-hued ones and waxy, pink-veined blooms drooping over the rims of alabaster bowls. But no photographs, which was interesting. In his experience women living alone always surrounded themselves with images of their own likeness and those of loved ones. But except for a crucifixion print of Salvador Dali's-a beautiful long-limbed Christ hanging eerily suspended in space-there were no other pictures in the room.
It was an exceptionally large room and obviously used not only as a living room but also as a library and workroom. One wall was completely covered in shelves filled to capacity with books, the shelves dipping dangerously in the middle from the weight of so many volumes. There were even books stacked up higgledy-piggledy behind the books in the front rows.
He turned his head sideways to read some of the titles: De Imag-inum, De umbris idearum, Ars notoria, De occulta philosophia, Book of Dzyan, The Hermetic Secret. Not exactly the kind of reading material with which to relax in the bathtub, you might say. Not that all the books were arcana. There were also many volumes bearing the imprimatur of university presses, written by luminaries in the more austere halls of academia. Stephen Jay Gould. David Gelernter. Daniel Dennet. Freeman Dyson. Roger Penrose. Eclectic didn't even begin to describe this collection.
But the sisters had obviously kept pace with the electronic age. The bottom two shelves were taken up by stacks of DVDs. He made a quick calculation: ten DVDs to a stack, twenty stacks-there were more than two hundred DVDs all told. He pulled out one of the disks. The sticker on the front held a neat inscription: Human Genome Project. The second disk said Encyclopaedia Britannica. 1.2 gigs.
He lifted his eyebrows in surprise. If all these DVDs were full, then they contained a massive amount of information. It looked as though the sisters had the contents of the entire British Library stored in their living room.
He turned away from the shelves. He wanted to take a closer look at those two metal workbenches. They were home to some delightfully weird and wonderful things. There were gleaming brass compasses. An astrolabe. The skeletons of birds bleached white, startlingly ethereal, as if the slightest touch would cause the bones to crumble to dust. Bell jars. Dried herbs. Sheets of handmade marbled paper. Real ink pots and fussy nibbed pens.