“You should have stayed there.”

“Oh, no!” he said, taking another quick sip of the Scotch. “Well, to continue. I developed a passion, shall we say, for this boy, Carlos, the very first week. I was absolutely swept away; all we did was drink and make love for days and nights on end in my suite in the Palace Hotel. Quite truly obscene.”

“Your friends waited?”

“No, laid down the law. Come with us now, or we leave you. But it was perfectly fine with them if Carlos came along.” He made a little gesture with his right hand. “Ah, these were all sophisticated gentlemen, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But the decision to take Carlos proved to be a dreadful mistake. His mother was a Candomble priestess, though I hadn’t the slightest idea of it. She didn’t want her boy going off into the Amazon jungles. She wanted him going to school. She sent the spirits after me.”

He paused, looking at me, perhaps trying to gauge my reaction.

“That must have been wonderful fun,” I said.

“They pummeled me in the darkness. They picked up the bed off the floor and dumped me out! They turned the taps in the shower so that I was nearly scalded. They filled my teacups with urine. After a full seven days, I thought I was going out of my mind. I’d gone from annoyance and incredulity to sheer terror. Dishes flew off the table in front of me. Bells rang in my ears. Bottles went crashing from the shelves. Wherever I went, I saw dark-faced individuals watching me.”

“You knew it was this woman?”

“Not at first. But Carlos finally broke down and confessed everything. His mother didn’t intend to remove the curse until I left. Well, I left that very night.

“I came back to London, exhausted and half mad. But it didn’t do any good. They came with me. Same things started to happen right here in Talbot Manor. Doors slamming, furniture moving, the bells ringing all the time in the servants’ pantry belowstairs. Everyone was going mad. And my mother—my mother had been more or less of a spiritualist, always running to various mediums all over London. She brought in the Talamasca. I told them the whole story, and they started explaining Candomble and spiritism to me.”

“They exorcised the demons?”

“No. But after about a week’s intense study in the library of the Motherhouse and extensive interviews with the few members who had been to Rio, I was able to get the demons under control myself. Everyone was quite surprised. Then when I decided to go back to Brazil, I astonished them. They warned me this priestess was plenty powerful enough to kill me.

“ ‘That’s exactly it,’ I said to them. ‘I want that sort of power myself. I’m going to become her pupil. She’s going to teach me.’ They begged me not to go. I told them I’d give them a written report on my return. You can understand how I felt. I’d seen the work of these invisible entities. I’d felt them touch me. I’d seen objects hurtling through the air. I thought the great world of the invisible was opening up to me. I had to go there. Why, nothing could have discouraged me from it. Nothing at all.”