“Hm, well … That is what I’m going to find out right now. An oblique note in the anthology said the ballad was connected with a work by none other than the greatest of ghost story writers, M. R. James. So I am going to see Mrs. Ponsonby. And if she can supply me with another link in the chain, and if young Richard can work his way through Miss Endering’s defenses … who can say?”

With some effort, Bernard had recovered his best languorous manner and was tilted back, stretched out in his chair again, his long lashes veiling his eyes.

“So what do you suppose it is, this secret?” he drawled as Harper turned to go. “This thing that Iago wants, is it some sort of weapony business, you reckon? The key to world domination and suchlike? Has he got some political agenda or something? One of those blueprints for the greater good that are bound in actual practice to make the world a living hell? Because, I mean, if that’s all he wants, he may as well break out the champagne: we’re already there.”

Harper paused long enough on her way to the door to cock an eyebrow at him. “You are too young to be so cynical,” she said. “And I am too old and wise. No, I’m certain we’re beyond politics now. There are only two things Iago and I have in common. And one is a richly sustaining indifference to the question of personal philosophy. It is completely irrelevant to either of us whether one tortures and kills in the name of racism or brotherhood, oppression or liberty, the devil or God. History is not written by the hand of intent. It’s the deeds alone that matter.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I believe nothing.”

“Oh.”

“Well, then. I’m off.”

“A trifle peculiar, perhaps.”

“Ha-ha.”

“What’s the other thing you and Iago have in common?” Bernard murmured wryly—but by the time he murmured it wryly, he had already heard the front door shut, and her stick rapping away over the pavement into the night.

5

Shortly thereafter, Harper grew terribly afraid.

She was in a cab. Squeezing up Drayton Gardens from Fulham Road. Lost in thought. Rubbing her wrinkled chin with a wrinkled hand. Gazing vacantly out past the driver’s head through the windscreen, at the headlamps coming towards her through the dark.

Gradually, a phenomenon began to work its way into her consciousness. The taxi was stopping and stitching along the narrow strip of road between parked cars, dodging in slow motion through the oncoming traffic. And it occurred to Harper that a disproportionate amount of that traffic bore weirdly similar license plates. Some combination of the numerals one, three and three kept recurring: 133, 313, 331—two digits, three permutations, over and over.