Holmes ran an analytic eye over the signs of her passage through her parents' home: The drawer in the small inlaid table near the front door was ajar; the various decorative jars and boxes inhabiting the shelves in the morning room had all been disturbed, as well as the cubby-holes and drawers of her mother's writing desk in the front window. The blotting-paper there had even been turned over, although the stack of glass plates containing the ashes he had found and mounted looked to be untouched. She'd even shifted the furniture, with every wooden foot resting to one side of its decade long dust shadow.

He raised an eyebrow of disapproval at her haphazard methods, and followed her to the library. There his eyebrow climbed again: The room was scrubbed clean and clear of dust-cloths; the rolled-up carpets were now more or less flat on the floor. On the low table across from the fireplace, between the two leather chairs, a rough fistful of flowers from the garden had been dropped into a graceful crystal vase. The chairs had been rubbed into a gleam, and a fire laid, but not lit; probably just as well, he was thinking when she noticed the direction of his gaze.

“I was going to warm it up in here, but then it occurred to me that I ought to have the chimneys looked to first. I wouldn't want to smoke up the place.”

“Or burn it down.”

She looked ill at the thought, although Holmes was beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be for the best: The polished chairs and laid fire, the child's gift of flowers, suggested that she was becoming more interested in re-creating her past than she was in recalling it. He held the door for her until, reluctantly, she pulled herself away from her father's laden desk and joined him in the hall-way. He helped her into her coat, handed her the hat and gloves from the stand, and waited while she locked the door behind them.

“You want to go to your Italian friend again, Holmes?”

“No, I've spent rather enough time there. I suggest we investigate the culinary exotica of Chinatown.”

Wordlessly, she turned towards Grant Avenue. They walked the evening pavements, out of the heights and across the busy thoroughfare of Van Ness, climbing again and then dropping down into the bright lights and lurid colours of the Chinese district, where the gathering mist pulled like gauze across the street-lamps and coloured lanterns.