You will get news by to-morrow, Miss Dunbar, and meanwhile take my assurance that the clouds are lifting and that I have every hope that the light of truth is breaking through. -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes
The head groom wasn't in his room. Yo-han stopped in the doorway. He looked around suspiciously. The wardrobe door was ajar and the room had a generally disordered appearance. A chair sat at an odd angle, as if someone had bumped into it and hadn't bothered to right it. A pillow had fallen off the bed and was still on the floor.
Yo-han opened the wardrobe fully. As he expected, it was empty.
He searched the room anyway. In the fireplace he found what he was looking for: the ashes of recently-burnt paper. Only one was still partly legible. It was a list of racehorses.
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Phil had searched everywhere that she thought Yo-han might have wanted her to: the housemaids' rooms, Mrs. Lennox's room, the rooms that had been set aside for female guests, the kitchen, even the empty room formerly occupied by the housekeeper. The only surprising thing she'd discovered was that one of the housemaids was an aspiring author. She had a manuscript in progress hidden in her cupboard.
Phil glanced at the first page. The first words her eyes landed on were "His blueblack hair like a raven's wing and his violet eyes...".
It looked as if Miss Meadows had a promising career ahead of her as a writer of ridiculous romance novels.
While she was in the kitchen, going through the cupboards and pretending she knew what she was looking for, Mr. Eames walked in. He looked haggard, like a man who had just been through a nerve-wracking ordeal. Phil deduced that Yo-han had just questioned him.
He muttered something that was probably a greeting. Then he resolutely ignored her presence as he filled the kettle. Phil returned the favour and pretended he wasn't there. By the time he made the tea she'd gone through every cupboard in the kitchen, and all she had learnt was that the cook needed to wash her pots more thoroughly.
Eames loaded the teapot and two cups onto a tray. He paused and looked at Phil. "Do you want tea?"
I might as well, she thought. I've nowhere left to search. "Yes."
"And the detective will probably want some too," Eames said, more to himself than her. He added two more cups to the tray. "This way, then."
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After searching the rest of the downstairs rooms, Yo-han found himself outside Lennox's study. The door was closed but he could hear muffled voices inside. He knocked. No one answered, so he opened the door anyway.
The room was empty. A conservatory adjoined it, and the voices were coming from there. Well, it was actually just one voice. Miss Patton's— Phil's voice, unless he was mistaken.
He had a quick look around the study. It was crowded with books, mainly on Christian theological points and church leaders he'd never heard of. An open notebook on the desk listed the main dates of the English Civil War.
A strange scene met his eyes when he opened the conservatory door. Lennox, Eames, Phil, and the twins were there. The adults were having tea and biscuits. The twins were asleep. Lennox held one and Eames held the other. Phil was in the middle of a lecture on, apparently, when babies started teething.
"...And if they don't start teething in the next month it doesn't mean there's something wrong. My nephew didn't get his first teeth until he was nine months." She noticed Yo-han's presence. "Oh, hello, Yo-han. Come and have a cup of tea."
Yo-han sat down and took the teacup Eames handed him. "I have some news you might find interesting. The head groom has run away."
"So he's the murderer?" Phil asked, at the same time as Lennox said, "He killed them?"
"No," Yo-han said. "I don't believe your wife's necklace was stolen at all. I found a list of racehorses in the groom's room, and a reference to another horse in Mrs. Lennox's notebook. What did that page say, Mr. Eames?"
Eames blinked. "Something grim, or was it gramme? And a fraction that didn't make sense."
"The fraction — nine thirds — was actually either a stable number or, more likely, the odds on a horse. Baron was the horse's name, and it is listed on the paper the groom tried to destroy. Half gramme is, I believe, the amount of a mixture that the horse was given. The groom knew someone who was involved in drugging racehorses, and he shared his knowledge with Mrs. Lennox. But it didn't always work."
Yo-han took a bag out of his pocket. Very carefully he extracted the unburnt sheet of paper. "This was written by the groom. You see there, Baron nine/three. And other names with numbers beside them. But see what he wrote beside Harmony thirteen/two? Dose didn't work. Race lost. If Mrs. Lennox put a considerable sum of money on that horse or any other that lost a race, she would have been in an awkward position. Miss Gilchrist never saw the pearls. She had only Mrs. Lennox's word that they were ever in the safe at all. I believe Mrs. Lennox pawned them to cover her debts."
Lennox looked utterly furious. "Those were my grandmother's!"
"I'm sure you'll be able to retrieve them once the groom is caught. I believe events happened like this: the groom heard about the murders. He knew incriminating evidence was in Mrs. Lennox's room. He tore sheets out of the notebook and opened the safe with a spare key to make it look like a robbery. Then he tried to destroy his own incriminating evidence before he ran away."
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"But what about the murders?" Phil asked.
"They were unrelated. Mr. Lennox, I must have a word with you in private. Would you step out to the garden for a moment?"
Lennox gingerly handed the baby to Eames and got up. He followed Yo-han through the door that opened into the garden. Yo-han closed it behind them and led him out onto the lawn so they couldn't be overheard.
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Phil and Eames watched through the windows in silence. Yo-han appeared to be giving a lecture. He couldn't be revealing the murderer's identity, because Lennox looked confused but not alarmed. The conference ended with Lennox nodding. He said something that must have been an agreement. Yo-han looked relieved. Then they returned to the conservatory.
Neither explained what that had all been about.
"Miss Patton, do you mind if I invite Mr. Lennox and Mr. Eames to your house tomorrow afternoon?" Yo-han asked.
"Go ahead," Phil said, and tried to figure out why it was important for them to come to her house instead of Yo-han going to theirs.
Yo-han was saying, "If you come at two, I believe I can explain everything then."
Was it Phil's imagination or did Lennox look alarmed at that?
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Yo-han said very little on the walk back to Phil's house. He went over everything he knew. It was like a jigsaw with a few pieces missing: the picture was still recognisable, but the gaps were obvious. Worst of all was how he knew he had the missing pieces. Someone had said something or he had seen something and his brain had registered its significance, but he simply couldn't remember it.
Phil's front door was a short distance from the road. It was reached by a cobblestone path. Yo-han opened the gate and stepped onto the path. A memory suddenly came back to him. He froze.
Phil almost walked into him. She yelped in surprise. "What's wrong?"
Yo-han was staring at the front door. Of course! It solved everything! The accomplice's identity, how they had known each other, why they had worked together... How could he have forgotten?
He turned and grinned at an astonished Phil. "Thank you, Miss Patton. You've helped me solve an important part of the mystery."
She blinked. "I have? How?"
"Something you said a few days ago," he said, and refused to elaborate.
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That evening Yo-han also had a few words with Király in the living room. He was much less cooperative than Lennox had been.
"You must be joking!" was his first reaction when he heard what Yo-han was planning.
"Do you think this is a time for play-acting and putting on such a... a ridiculous pantomime?" was what he said next.
"It's to expose a murderer," Yo-han said.
Király began to speak, stopped, and took a deep breath. "Just confront the murderer and hand him over to the police!"
"I can't."
Király facepalmed. "Why not?"
Because in this case Yo-han really didn't believe that justice was best served by publicly revealing the murderer's identity. Because sometimes murder victims weren't really victims at all. Because there were some criminals who the law couldn't or wouldn't touch, and the only way their victims could get justice was to take matters into their own hands.
"I'll explain tomorrow," he said.
Király threw his hands up in despair. "Oh, all right. But I still think this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Vi will never let me live it down."
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Evenings in Lennox House had followed a predictable pattern for over a year. If Gwladys was at home and had no friends to distract her, she would start an argument with Alec. If Gwladys wasn't at home or was distracted, Alec would work until nine or ten. David would bring him his supper and set his pyjamas out for him. They would eat together, with the door open so Gwladys couldn't accuse them of anything improper, and then Alec would change in the bathroom with the door closed. David would hang up his clothes and choose his outfit for tomorrow.
Then they would say goodnight, and pretend it didn't feel like a wound being reopened every time they had to pretend they were nothing important to each other.
David had lain awake more nights that he could count, wishing Alec was beside him. He hadn't been entirely honest to the detective. When he said Alec had never touched him, he had meant since his marriage. The memory of their one night together was all he had to keep warm when his bed felt so empty and cold.
Alec had slept in a small bedroom since his marriage, partly because it was near his study and mainly because it was far away from his wife's room. It had a single bed. The adjoining bathroom was very small.
It didn't escape David's notice that he had a larger, more luxurious room than Alec.
Tonight they went through their routine as if nothing had happened. David was doing his best to forget Gwladys had ever existed. It didn't work very well when he saw her corpse every time he closed his eyes.
Dying was the best thing she ever did, he repeated over and over. It didn't convince him.
He refused to think about the detective or tomorrow.
Alec, thank god, actually finished his supper for the first time in weeks. His fears of being poisoned had obviously been put to rest. Instead it was David who couldn't eat.
Supper was rabbit stew left over from dinner. David stared at the lumps of meat and felt sick.
"What's wrong?" Alec asked.
David jumped, startled out of his thoughts. "Nothing. I'm just not hungry."
Alec looked at him thoughtfully. Did he know what David was thinking? Could he guess?
"Do you want to stay tonight?" Alec asked softly.
David looked at the bed. Maybe they could both fit, but he didn't feel like trying right now. Especially when this wasn't the time to do anything more than sleep. "It'd be more comfortable if you stay with me."
Alec smiled. For a minute David could almost forget the last year had ever happened. He could imagine he and Alec were both exactly the same as when they had met back in Cambridge. "All right."
Yesterday, this morning and tomorrow all weighed on his mind. He couldn't stop thinking about the murders. He dreaded what the detective might have to say tomorrow. But with Alec beside him he could almost forget all those things.
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Yo-han stared up at the ceiling. He turned onto his side and stared at the curtains. When he still couldn't fall asleep, he turned to the other side and stared at the indistinct shape that was his alarm clock.
His brain refused to let him sleep. Those five letters explained everything. If he could only recognise them...
Disjointed thoughts and images filled his mind. Leopold Colman aiming a gun through a window. Yo-han's arrival in Tbilisi weeks later. Colman long gone...
Why was he thinking of Tbilisi? Colman had slipped through his fingers that time.
Sentences from a guidebook: The Georgian alphabet's origin is unknown. It may have been inspired by ancient Greek. But those letters weren't Georgian. It is similar to but unrelated to—
Yo-han sat bolt upright. 1909. Of course it had looked like Qnwuw; he'd tried to read it as if it was the Latin alphabet. It should be Ադանա. How could he have forgotten? It had been spoken of constantly when it happened...
...And the world had forgotten within months.
He wasn't tired at all now. He turned on the lamp, opened his notebook, and began to write.
When he was finished he knew everything.