Live and Let Drood

office and murder my filing system.”
    I looked thoughtfully at the door behind her desk. The very heavily reinforced steel door with no handle or electronic lock on this side that led into the boss’s office. I didn’t have to raise my Sight to know it was crawling with powerful protections. I grinned at Heather.
    “Get out your camera phone. I think I’m about to make history.”
    “Yeah!” Molly said happily. “Someone phone Guinness! Go, Drood. Go!”
    And then we all stopped and looked round as the intercom lying beside Heather’s desk buzzed loudly. A cold, calm voice sounded clearly in the office.
    “Heather, if Edwin Drood and Molly Metcalf have quite finished striking dramatic poses, ask them if they’d like to come through. I can give them ten minutes.”
    “Yes, boss,” said Heather.
    “How did she know we were here?” Molly said suspiciously. “How did she know it was us? I don’t see any surveillance cameras here.”
    “The boss knows everything,” Heather said scornfully. “In fact, that’s probably part of her job description.”
    The highly impressive door swung smoothly and silently open on its own. I nodded briskly to Heather and strode into Catherine Latimer’s very private office. Molly hurried after me, determined not to be left out of anything, her shillelagh still slung casually over one shoulder.
    The grand old boss of the Carnacki Institute, Catherine Latimer, her own very bad and intimidating self, sat stiff-backed behind what Iimmediately recognised as a genuine Hepplewhite desk. Latimer had to be in her late seventies, but she still burnt with severe nervous energy, even while sitting still. She was medium height, medium weight and handsome in a way that suggested she had never been pretty because she’d always had too much character for that. She had a grim mouth and cold grey eyes and looked like she’d never been pleased to see anyone in her life. She wore a smartly tailored grey suit and was smoking a black Turkish cigarette in a long ivory holder, supposedly an affection that went all the way back to her student days.
    While I was busy looking her over and working on my best opening gambit, Molly just sauntered round the office, displaying a keen avaricious interest in everything on display. There was a lot to look at. She made a series of loud ooh! and aah! noises as she cooed over the various intriguing objects in their display cases, many of which I remembered from my last time in the office. Catherine Latimer wasn’t much for change for the sake of change.
    There were reminders of past triumphs, famous cases ancient and modern, and souvenirs of people and places best not discussed in polite company. Molly ignored the many valuable books and folios crammed onto shelves all over the office, and had no time at all for the endless locked and sealed case files in their colour-coded folders. She bent over a goldfish bowl full of murky ectoplasm in which the ghost of a goldfish swam slowly, solemnly backwards, flickering on and off like a faulty lightbulb. Next to that a crimson metal gauntlet with two broken fingers, twitching unhappily inside a brass birdcage, was labelled THE SATAN CLAW . Farther along, a badly stuffed phoenix posed awkwardly inside a hermetically sealed glass case, to keep it from smouldering. And finally, on open display on a black velvet cushion, the Twilight Teardrop. Molly actually crouched down before it so she could set her face on the same level and study it better. The fabled ruby stone was actually composed of fossilised vampire blood made into a polished gem in the shape of an elongated teardrop, some four inches long and two wide, set in an ancient gold clasp and chain, supposedly taken from a dragon’s hoard. I say supposedly ; there’s a whole lot said about theTwilight Teardrop, most of it contradictory and all of it upsetting. All anyone knows for sure is that it’s a major magical depository for unnatural energies, mad, bad and dangerous to own.
    Molly snatched it up and held it dangling before her eyes before flipping the gold chain over her head and round her neck, so that the glowing bloodred gem hung over her bosom.
    “Mine!” she said loudly. “I’m taking it.”
    “Put it back!” I said.
    “Shan’t!”
    “Molly, I don’t want that nasty thing anywhere near me, never mind you. And need I remind you, we’re trying to make a good impression here?”
    “Don’t care. I want it. Pretty, pretty.”
    “I’ll