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how you might easily slip inside and become lost in those stories.
Of course, he was mad.”
“Stories. You mean, the novel McDermott was working on
when he escaped?”
“Indeed.” Kramer busied himself with tearing a lemon slice
into quarters. “The title was absurd. An imaginary novelist with
imaginary works in possession of a magical mirror and assorted
other fantastical devices—glass pendants, all-seeing spectacles?”
Snorting, Kramer slid juicy bits into that fissure of a mouth.
“Ridiculous.”
Spectacles.
Doyle felt a tiny start of recognition. His eyes
jumped to Kramer’s breast pocket.
Those purple glasses.
And hadn’t
the doctor confiscated Elizabeth’s glass bauble, that pendant on its
queer chain?
If it’s all so absurd, then why?
“And yet McDermott was
absolutely
convinced that this nov-
elist actually existed. He always said the name as if we should all
know it. But I ask you, Inspector, really,” Kramer said, around
lemon, “who the bloody hell was Charles Dickens?”
