Voodoo Holmes Stories

pattern:
     
    X!!
    X.
    1!
    (Pause)
    X!
    (Pause)
    3..
    (Death).
    I was at the back door of the establishment where Bridget was appearing at 2 o'clock in the morning and when she had not appeared by the half hour, went up to see her. She sat in her dressing room in front of the mirror all by herself and seemed to be in good spirits, at least in a quiet way. She was a young woman with a lean body, as I may have mentioned, and delicate, straight facial features, a beauty as to her appearance, but also in manners. Never had I seen her so radiant, however. Her face was infused with an extraordinary liveliness at this late hour, she seemed wide awake and excited, almost gloating. She looked at me strangely, half-mocking, when she said: "There you are! I thought you would never come!"
    "I have been waiting downstairs, as agreed."
    "Well, you should come upstairs some time and watch me."
    And I did watch her likeness in the mirror, as she did.
    "You are very beautiful", I said.
    "I am, when I am like this. Oh, Vood, I have so much to be grateful for."
    "You do?"
    "Yes. So many people out there doing their best. So many men."
    "How many men are there doing their best for you, darling?"
    She looked at me, grabbing my hand. "You, especially. Especially you."
    This night, as I cuddled up to her warm body after an astonishing round of love-making (which made me think afterwards that our body had been possessed during the course of it) I felt something. At first, I didn't know what it was. Eventually, I realized that what I was feeling was the absence of something. And then, finally, I was wide awake with my heart pounding: It was the absence of Bridget's jerks and convulsions I had so got accustomed to. The jerks and convulsions I had mapped and classified. Instead, she had gone limp and now slept soundly and quietly as a baby.
    At first, I tried going to sleep. An hour later, I gave up frustrated and left her abode quietly, walking the streets pondering the change, and observing the breaking dawn. Was there a connection between her satisfaction and and the earlier occurrence where I had witnessed a Death? In my mind, there had been something in the air that had felled him, initiated by a tumble of signs coinciding with Bridget's silent markings when she fell asleep five nights ago. So there was a connection. Or was I, intrigued by these patterns, seeing something that didn't exist - except in my mind? But even then: If it existed in my mind, then it must have come from somewhere and could also take root in reality. Even an illusion had a link to tangible things.
    I recalled the dread I had been feeling after leaving the Shay Club. A dread which would have been there regardless, the signs running parallel to it, creating a warning which I had heeded and thereby averted disaster. Ducking into the doorway instead of continuing my way. Death had been swooping down from nowhere, keen on a walking figure, nothing more. Once it had picked life from out of it, Death had continued on, sending a hearse in its arrear as a sort of joke, apparently. Funny because of the swiftness of its appearance and the sang froid of its driver. Death had a humour, I would have to remember that.
    But where did Bridget enter into this? What was the meaning of her words when she said that so many men were doing „their best“ for her?
     
    ¥
     
     
    When my amblings took me by Euston station, I entered it and went on the early morning train north, hoping to find Baker among its passengers. And she was, except that she had changed her appearance. I knew it was her when I saw that she had two huge milk bottles by her side, filled to the brim with milk. The milk she transported at a time when real milk still rested in the cows' udders ought to be a special kind of milk. She was the only alert person on that train, but otherwise looked like an overgrown child, a boy too young for shaving. I sat next to her and without any formalities asked: "So what was that last night with Death swooping down on me?"
    The boy looked at me briefly and replied: "Excuse me?"
    "You ought to stop that, Baker."
    "Stop what?"
    "Pretending not to recognize me."
    His freckled face seemed confused and his long eyelashes flickered, and then he looked away.
    "Tell me what it was, Baker. Was I meant to die last night?"
    He had blushed and kept his silence.
    "There was a pattern", I continued. "A distinctive pattern of body movements, as exemplified by the second night I had recorded