“Ah, I’m looking at a picture of this man right now.”

“Explain.”

“He was confined briefly in a London hospital for the criminally insane. Mother an Anglo-Indian, which may explain the exceptionally beautiful complexion you’re describing, and which I can see here plainly enough. Father a London cabbie who died in jail. The fellow himself worked in a garage in London, specializing in extremely expensive cars. Dealt in drugs as a sideline so that he could afford the cars himself. One night he murdered his entire family—wife, two children, brother-in-law and mother—and then gave himself up to the police. A frightening mix of hallucinogenic drugs was found in his blood, along with a great deal of alcohol. These were the very same drugs he often sold to the neighborhood youths.”

“Derangement of the senses but nothing wrong with the brain.”

“Precisely, the entire murderous tantrum was drug induced as far as the authorities could see. The man himself never spoke a word after the incident. He remained steadfastly immune to any stimulus until three weeks after his commitment to hospital, at which time he mysteriously escaped, leaving the body of a slain orderly in his room. Can you guess who this slain orderly turned out to be?”

“James.”

“Exactly. Positive identification made postmortem through fingerprints, and confirmed through Interpol and Scotland Yard. James had been working in the hospital under an assumed name for a month before the incident, no doubt waiting for just such a body to arrive!”

“And then he cheerfully murdered his own body. Steely little son of a bitch to do that.”

“Well, it was a very sick body—dying of cancer to be precise. The autopsy revealed he wouldn’t have survived another six months. Lestat, for all we know, James may have contributed to the commission of the crimes which placed the young man’s body at his disposal. If he hadn’t stolen this body, he would have hit upon another in a similar state. And once he’d dealt the death blow to his old body, it went into the grave, don’t you see, carrying James’s entire criminal record with it.”

“Why did he give me his real name, David? Why did he tell me he’d belonged to the Talamasca?”

“So I could verify his story, Lestat. Everything he does is calculated. You don’t understand how clever this creature is. He wants you to know that he can do what he says he can do! And that the former owner of that young body is quite unable to interfere.”

“But, David, there are still aspects to this which are baffling. The soul of the other man. Did it die in that old body? Why didn’t it … get out!”

“Lestat, the poor being probably never knew such a thing was possible. Undoubtedly James manipulated the switch. Look, I have a file here of testimony from other members of the order pertaining to how this character jolted them right out of the physical and took possession of their bodies for short periods of time.