They were Holmes' eyes. Estelle was Damian's child.
The grey gaze travelled around the room, registering the absence of her father and the man she knew as Hayden. Unafraid, she sat upright.
“Who are you?” Her voice that of a small child: The intelligence behind it was something more.
“I'm…” I smiled at the thought, and at her. “I suppose you could say that I'm your grandmother.”
“Where's my Papa?”
“I'm afraid your Papa's hurt, Estelle. His own Papa came to help him, and is taking him to a doctor.”
“My Mama hasn't come yet, has she?”
“I… no.”
“Are you a friend of Mr Brothers?”
“No, I'm not.”
“I don't like him very much.”
“I can see why.”
“His other name is Mr Hayden. He got angry, when I tried to colour in his book.”
“Did he?”
“I thought it was a book for colouring,” she explained. “My Papa has books for his colouring, and my Mama has books for her writing, and they don't mind when I colour in theirs, but Mr Brothers didn't want me to use his.”
“It sounds reasonable-” I stopped, feeling a cold trickle up my spine. My God, how could I have overlooked it? “This book of Mr Brothers'. It had blank pages?”
“Some. It had writing, too, but I couldn't read it. I don't read cursive yet. And it had some of Papa's drawings.”
The Book of Truth, Tolliver's other binding project. It hadn't been in London, it wasn't in his room here. Which could only mean that Brothers had it with him-but of course he did, along with the quill and the blotting sand. And even if he hadn't dared risk writing then and there, and been forced to bring some of the blood away in a flask, the book was the culmination of his ritual. He would carry it with him.
He would carry it always…
There had been blood, on Brothers' overcoat, where Damian shot him: That I had seen. Granted, the blood had been slightly to one side of the hole-surely that was because the garments shifted when he fell? And the relatively small amount of bleeding was because he'd died immediately the bullet entered his heart. Wasn't it?
Fifty blank pages, six drawings, two covers-heavy covers, knowing Tolliver's work. If his Book of Truth had been in Brothers' inner breast pocket-worn over his heart, as it were-when the bullet hit him, would it have been heavy enough to deflect a bullet upward, so it lodged in a shoulder rather than the heart?
I was on my feet before I realised I had moved. The child drew back in alarm; I tried to think. My impulse was to snatch her and sprint for the door, but I told myself that, if Brothers hadn't found her in the three hours since we had left him for dead, the chances were that I had a few more minutes. And I did have a gun.
“Honey, we have to leave,” I told her. “Can you get dressed for me, and put on your shoes and your coat?”
I helped her slow fingers, stuffed the remaining biscuits in my pocket and turned off the light. I took her hand in my free one, and whispered, “We have to be very quiet. We're going out of this place and down the road a little, and after that we can talk again. All right?”
She said nothing, and it took me a moment to realise that she had responded by nodding: No, not older, just preternaturally clever. I squeezed her hand, and opened the door.
The hotel was nothing but shadow. Estelle tried her best, but her shoes made noise against the grit on the floor, and in a few steps I bent and picked her up. Which was better, but now she was breathing in my ear and I could hear nothing else.
I crept with her across the room. Brothers had used the back door, so I went to the front, putting her down to work the lock.
Once the door was open, I caught her up and ran: no following footsteps, no shout or motion behind us.
We made it to the road, and across, then up a small lane to a barn before at last I accepted that we were safe. I put the child down and sat beside her, my head dropping onto my knees as I caught my relieved breath.
After a minute, I felt a small hand touch my leg, and I wrapped my own around it.
“Shall I call you my Grandmama?” she asked.
I choked down a laugh. “Maybe you ought to just call me Mary, until we decide.”
“Very well,” she said, which made me laugh again.
“Mary?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
I lifted my head to the sky, and saw the stars.
The sensible thing would be to go to the police and trust them to accept my explanation. True, they would take Estelle away, and in the lack of other family they would put her into care, but they were not ogres. Surely they would return her to me, or to her father, as soon as things were settled. The sensible thing would be to send Mycroft a wire and hope that he was in a position to get me out of this.
But then, were I a sensible person, would I have been sitting on an Orcadian hillside at five in the morning with an unknown step-granddaughter's hand in mine? I looked at her, and squeezed her tiny, trusting hand.
“Estelle, how would you like to go up in an aeroplane?”
Post Script
Many days later, lodged in the hidden depths of Scotland, I read an out-of-date newspaper article concerning a farmer who lived beside the Stones of Stenness, wakened that Friday night by gunshots and the sight of flames amidst the stones. When he reached the spot, with shotgun and paraffin lamp to hand, he found only a broken lamp, the burnt edge of a blanket, and signs of a bloody struggle.
No sign of a hand-bound book written in blood; no knife crafted from a meteor's iron.
Police investigations the following day turned up no body, and no injured person had been seen by the doctor's surgery. The police were puzzled, and suggested that a youthful prank at the Stones had gone awry.
Some of us knew otherwise.
… to be continued.
Acknowledgments
This book owes much to the extraordinary willingness of a lot of people to put up with peculiar questions and offer expertise in exchange.
Anthony and Anna Tomasso, Clare Claydon and Win Westerhof, and Susan Rice, ASH, BSI, all tried to educate me about bees; where I resisted their tutoring, I apologize for the demands of the fictional process. Zoe Elkaim brought me books and researched a myriad of weird factoids. Glen Miranker, a most dependable gentleman, traded a donation to the Baker Street Irregulars for the chance to be turned into a broken reed of a Sussex beekeeper. Alice Wright did the same, permitting herself to be re-shaped into a Soho sculptress of questionable virtue in exchange for a donation to the Enoch Pratt library and Viva House.
John Mallinson, North West, and Burt Gabriel at the Hiller Air Museum; Francis King and Keith Jillings helped me get a 1924 Bristol Tourer into the air, on paper anyway. Cara Black nudged my French, Doug P. Lyle, MD gave me all kinds of problems when he corrected my forensic history, and Vicki Van Valkenburgh and Kathy Long helped keep my electronic identity in order.
As always, I owe the librarians of UCSC's McHenry Library a hive's-worth of blessings, for their boundless energy and creativity.
A portion of the proceeds from this book go to the beehive project of Heifer International. For details, see my website at www.LaurieRKing.com.
About the Author
Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of nine Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and the acclaimed novels A Darker Place, Folly, Keeping Watch, and Touchstone. She is one of only two novelists to win the Best First Crime Novel awards on both sides of the Atlantic, from MWA and CWA. She lives in northern California where she is at work on her next Russell and Holmes mystery.
