Sublime

Marlowe stands close and lights it for him, smelling of hair cream and something else as well. The faintest whiff of brimstone. Marlowe enjoys a different kind of immortality, achieved by different means. No magic acorns or slumbering under trees. He sold his soul on the dotted line, joined an exclusive members’ club. Eternal life. But not eternal

‘You’re our longest-serving contributor,’ said Carleton, flinching at the bang. ‘Our most admired. Indeed I should say our most popular.’ I’m beginning to speak like him, he thought: Thomas Hart is catching, that’s the trouble. ‘I’ve often heard it said that it’s a consolation – that’s the general feeling, as I said to the board – to wake on

Then the master went, and Quint was alone.’ I followed, but halting a little. ‘Alone?’ ‘Alone with us.’ Then as from a deeper depth, ‘In charge,’ she added. ‘And what became of him?’ She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified. ‘He went too,’ she brought out at last.

And sitting cross-legged in the throne is Herne. He wears a long tunic of rotten pelts, home to whole dynasties of moth and maggot. In this aspect he has an empty deer skull for a head, but he can take any aspect that he wants: a huntsman with his bow, or a warrior with holly leaves for flesh. He is Cernunnos, the Horned God of beasts and trees and

when Mortimer pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Frankland's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Sherlock Holmes for nothing.

unmoored,