“The others,” said the old man with a shrug. “That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? That’s why he was at the auction, out in the open like that. Whoever has the others, he wanted them to see. To see who they were dealing with. A man who would pay enormous prices for their panels—or who would come and take them by other means.” He gave a particularly unpleasant little giggle. “And it’s worked, hasn’t it,” he said. “They’re already beginning to nose their way out of the woodwork. Oh yes, they are. They’ll all come to Dr. Mormo in the long run, you’ll see.”

Harper answered nothing, mulling this over. The puppy continued to fidget on her shoulder, started whimpering. It would mess on her cape soon, she thought distantly. And the little girl who’d lost it was probably still awake, still sobbing. No doubt the police would know who she was …

“And you say it’s all one thing,” she said. “Even the cult in Argentina was part of it. Are you suggesting that Iago was searching for these paintings even then?”

“No, no, no,” said the warlock sharply. “But it was all part of it, just the same. Part of the secret. Part of the Grail.”

The fire clicked and cackled. Jervis, unexpectedly, cackled too. Brought his knuckle to his forehead and rattled it against his skull. “Oh, if you could see your face, Harper. If you could only see your face. You don’t think. You don’t know. You don’t understand what you’re dealing with, still. It’s not the triptych, or Argentina, or this murder or that. It’s not even the Nazis or the war or the Iron Curtain. It’s none of it. It’s all of it.” He leaned towards her. The orange flame-glow washed up over his puffy features, his crazy eyes.

“It’s the whole clockwork of history,” he told her, whispered to her under the moaning of the wind. “That’s what you’re missing, you blind old woman. The clockwork of history. Tick-tick. Tick-tick!”

2

From time to time, Sophia woke to find like muted, slow, subaqueous. Whatever the doctors were giving her, it had sent her to Atlantis, submerged her in a world beneath the waves. Through this element, reality passed like a dream and dreams like reality. She traced her own footsteps down corridors of Belham Grange, corridors extending into an ominous infinity. She passed her father’s portrait on the wall—the eyes followed her—and she passed another portrait, and that was her father too, as was the next and the next …