“Looks like the new site wasn’t as secret as he’d thought,” I said.
“Wonder whether he was an opener or a closer?” Quicklime said.
“I’d’ve guessed ‘opener,'” I said, “but I suppose we’ll never know.”
“Who do you think nailed him?”
“I’ve no idea, yet,” I said, lowering myself and turning away. I squinted into nooks and fissures then. “See Needle anywhere about?” I asked.
“No. You think they got him, too?”
“Could be. If he turns up, though, he’ll certainly bear questioning.”
I climbed the stair and emerged into light. I started walking back.
“What happens now?” Quicklime asked.
“I have to make my rounds,” I said.
“Do we just go on and wait for it to happen again?”
“No. We exercise caution.”
We slithered and trotted back to our own area.
Jack was out, and I took care of business about the house and went looking for Graymalk to fill her in on the latest. Was surprised to encounter Jack engaged in conversation with Crazy Jill on her back step. He had in his hand a cup of sugar which he had presumably just borrowed. He ended the conversation and turned away as I approached. Graymalk was nowhere about. Jack told me as I walked him home that we might ride into town for supplies of a mundane nature sometime soon.
Later, I was out front, still looking for Graymalk, when the Great Detective’s coach passed, him still in his Linda Enderby guise. Our eyes met and held for several long seconds. Then he was gone.
I went back inside and took a long nap.
I awoke near dusk and made the rounds again. The Things in the Mirror were still clustered, and pulsing lightly. The flaw appeared slightly larger, though this could have been a trick of memory and imagination. I resolved to call it to Jack’s attention soon, however.
Eating and drinking and passing outside then, I sought Graymalk once more. I found her in her front yard doing catnappery on the steps.
“Hello. Looked for you earlier,” I said. “Missed you.”
She yawned and stretched, cleaned her shoulders.
“I was out,” she responded, “checking around the church and the vicarage.”
“Did you get inside?”
“No. Looked into every opening I could, though.”
“Learn anything interesting?”
“The vicar keeps a skull on the desk in his study.”
“_Memento mori_,” I remarked. “Churchmen are sometimes big on that sort of thing. Maybe it came with the place as a part of the furnishings.”
“It’s resting in the bowl.”
“The bowl?”
“_The bowl_. The old pentacle bowl they talk about.”
“Oh.” So I’d been wrong in assigning that tool to the Good Doctor. “That accounts for an item.” Then, disingenuously, “Now, if you can tell me where the two wands are . . .” I said.
She gave me a strange look and continued grooming herself.
“. . . And I had to climb the outside of the place,” she said.
“Why?”
“I heard someone crying upstairs. So I made my way up the siding and looked in what seemed the proper window. I saw a girl on a bed. She had on a blue dress, and there was a long chain around her ankle. The other end was attached to the bed frame.”
“Who was it?”
“Well, I met Tekela a little later,” she went on. “I don’t think she was too eager to talk to a cat. Still, I persuaded her to tell me that the girl is Lynette, the daughter of the vicar’s late wife Janet by a previous marriage.”
“Why was she chained up?”
“Tekela said that she was being disciplined for attempting to run away.”
“Very suspicious. How old is she?”
“Thirteen.”
“Yes. Just right. Sacrifice, of course.”
“Of course.”
“What did you give her for the information?”
“I told her the story of our encounter with the big man the other night, and the possibility that the Gipsies may be associated with the Count.”
“I’d better tell you something about the Count,” I said, and I detailed my investigations with Quicklime.
“No matter whose side he was on, I can’t say I’m sorry to see him out of the picture,” she said. “He was extremely frightening.”