Mercia Borthwick, Alex Campbell and Ivo Gilmour were standing beside the Arch pointing their wands at the Veil and muttering something. Some pearly white spectres emanated from the heavy cloth.
When Gwen entered the Death Chamber, wearing her black wool cardigan, they did not break off, as they had done before. Alex even gave a short nod in her direction, then continued his work. She realised with some delight that they obviously trusted her.
Gwen tried to be polite and not look at them, even though she nearly burst with curiosity.
"Enter," drawled Crow when Gwen had knocked at his door, which she was by now able to find on her own.
He put down his quill, got up behind his desk and went to the table where the tank was standing.
"Good morning, Miss Bale."
"Good morning." She didn't dare to ask him how he was. "Are you making progress?"
He nodded shortly, a frown appearing between his brows.
"Then let me see. I suggest we go on practising and then refining the spell, and afterwards…" – she remembered the attack on Firmin this morning – "…I'd like to show you some emergency spells in case a brain attacks you."
Crow nodded again silently, even a bit absent-minded. His wand movements were still a bit cautious and slow.
"You need all your determination and concentration," she warned him.
He scowled at her, his frown getting deeper. Gwen sighed inwardly. She'd really be happy to terminate this cooperation after she'd shown him everything he needed to know.
Suddenly they heard a boom, and loud voices next door. They looked at each other for the fragment of a second, then hurried out of the room, Crow taking the lead.
Pete and Gasparus were leading off Jacobus Mayfield. Jon and Mrs Beresford were present, too, Jon holding two wands, Mrs Beresford supervising the whole procedure. Mayfield was struggling. He looked angry and shouted: "What do you think you're doing? What will everyone think of me?"
"If you had come quietly, no one would have noticed," Mrs Beresford said coolly.
They left the Death Chamber. Mercia, Alex and Ivo stared after them, Alex stroking his short white beard. Evelyn Anderson and Manisha Cullen stood in the doorway of an office, Evelyn holding a vial containing a smoking white liquid, while Gwen and Crow looked at each other dumbfounded. Crow recovered first.
"No need to interrupt our work any further," he grumbled.
He returned to his office, Gwen glanced at Manisha and Evelyn who had started whispering, then followed Crow back into his office.
~ooOOoo~
How can he be so calm? Gwen thought, shaking her head slightly, while she watched Crow extracting a tiny gossamer strand from the brain.
He was really getting better at this. The nonverbal spells to identify and isolate memories from a dead brain were extremely difficult. Then he muttered the spell to preserve the strand in a vial containing a violet-coloured liquid. This spell was needed since the thoughts and images were much more unstable than those from a living person.
Why did they lead off Mayfield? Was it possible that he had murdered his team colleague?
Gwen had brought the pensieve from the Brain Room to examine the memories. Bob didn't like the device being carried from "his" room, but Gwen had managed to reassure him.
In order to look at memories from a conserved brain it was not enough to simply put them into a pensieve. Gwen added five drops of a pale pink liquid to the whitish cloudy contents. The silvery light emanating from the basin grew even brighter, then shone as usual. The colour of the whirling mists was still silvery. Then she opened the vial, extracted the strand with the help of her wand, and added it into the pensieve.
She plunged into the pensieve. A fragile old woman with thin white hair was lying in her bed, staring at her lined and spotted hands. Sunlight was flooding into the small silent room and onto the gleaming white ironed sheets. Nothing stirred.
When Gwen resurfaced she saw Crow looking at her. "What did you see?"
"An old woman lying in her bed. It was a very clear image. Good work!" she answered.
He didn't even smile. "I'd suggest we make a short break before you show me those emergency spells you mentioned."
Gwen nodded, still thinking of the memory she had just seen. She had felt like an intruder. She often did, and it was part of the Brain Room staff's job, but this time the feeling had been more pronounced. Another idea had struck her. She still couldn't put her finger on it, but there it was. Why do we most often see people alone when we extract memories from a dead brain?
Crow brewed an espresso by pointing his wand at a percolator standing on a small table in the corner of his office and, to Gwen's surprise, even offered her one. She accepted. They sipped their espressi from two black cups.
"Have you told anyone about the … incident that happened here yesterday," Crow suddenly asked her, looking as usual not directly at her, but somewhere over her shoulder.
"No," said Gwen, defensively. "Well, I told Ad … Mr Hutton, of course, since I had to accompany Mrs Dusk." She didn't mention Isabelle and Vivi, and started shutting down her brain, fingering her amethysts nervously.
He did not pursue the matter, yet looked again a bit absent-minded.
When they had finished their espresso break Gwen started teaching him the Dissertio spell. They first practised the wand movement. She wanted to procure some fake training brains (used for Brain Room trainees) after the lunch break.
~ooOOooOOooOOooOOoo~
When they left Crow's office at lunchtime to go to the Cenaculum, Gwen noticed that the door of the adjacent room, which was Mayfield's and Archie's office, was slightly ajar. She heard a soft singing inside.
She reacted quickly: "I'd like to have a word with … Manisha," she told Crow, who nodded with a slight trace of a sneer. "Could you tell me which office is hers?"
He pointed at one of the doors in the background, which was still on their side, and turned around to leave the Death Chamber.
He obviously has not noticed the gap or he would have kept an eye on me, Gwen thought hopefully, when she headed towards Manisha's office. She looked around. The Veil fluttered slightly, and the faint voices could be heard as usual. She moved slowly.
When she heard the door closing behind Crow, she tiptoed back to get to Mayfield's and Archie's office. The silence in the Death Chamber was almost palpable. She felt the cold air on her face.
All of a sudden she heard a voice saying: "Heya, Gwendolyn, what are you doing here?"
Her heart almost missed a beat, but she managed to take a deep breath and turn around slowly to look at Evelyn Anderson, who was leaving an office through a door next to Manisha's.
"I was looking for Manisha, but I think she's already gone to the Cenaculum." She hoped that Manisha really wasn't there anymore.
"Yes, she has," Evelyn said brightly. "Have you already had lunch? Do you want to join me to the Cenaculum? You'll surely meet her there."
"Oh, thanks, that'd be nice," Gwen tried to sound enthusiastically.
"Just give me a moment. Whoo, I am so scatterbrained – I am not sure whether I extinguished the burner."
Gwen accompanied her back to her office while Evelyn kept on chatting: "I saw you when they lead away Mayfield."
"I am still working with Crow."
They entered Evelyn's office. The dingy cramped laboratory contained large shelves full of bottles and vials, two sinks, several burners, and two tables, on which were spread out heaps of parchment, several cauldrons and other equipment.
"Now, be careful," Evelyn warned, looking important. "A lot of things in here are highly poisonous."
Gwen smiled while Evelyn checked a burner and rolled her eyes: "I turned it off all right, oh, I just didn't remember."
Gwen glanced at a magazine lying opened on one of the tables. It was an article about antidotes. Evelyn corked up a vial and looked at her.
"Professor Severus Snape's an excellent potioneer. He's the current Potions Master at Hogwarts. His writing is rather dull, but he's got some brains!"
"I know him. Well, I've seen him. He started at Hogwarts when I was in sixth year."
"Now, that's interesting! One of these days you must tell me about him. I am a huge admirer of him, as a potioneer, I mean. And he's still so young!"
Gwen did not know what to say.
Yet Evelyn was never at a loss for words: "Did you know that the wand they found on the scene of the crime was Mayfield's wand?"
Gwen gulped. Evelyn telling her that openly proved that she was not a permanently employed DoM staff member.
"No, I didn't. How do you know?"
"I … happened to overhear them when they came here today to lead him off. They… they did not exactly whisper." She blushed furiously.
Gwen frowned at her, sighing inwardly. Is that the whole truth? she wondered.
"Did you overhear anything else," she asked, trying to sound uninterested.
"No, no, of course not," mumbled Evelyn. She obviously had noticed that something had gone wrong.
~ooOOooOOooOOooOOoo~
On their way to the Cenaculum Evelyn chatted about the weather, her two daughters, and her beautiful home in Bath, while Gwen, who only listened with half an ear, was trying to invent a pretence for her alleged search for Manisha.
The Cenaculum was all decorated in green today, the windows showing a beautiful green forest, blue skies, songbirds, squirrels and an occasional deer.
Gwen's stomach gave a funny lurch. It couldn't have been worse: Manisha was sitting at a table with Timothy, Alex, Ivo and – Crow, who threw her a look of deep distrust.
"There she is," Evelyn pointed out happily. Gwen accompanied her to the table where the three Death Chamber employees were sitting. She looked nervously at Manisha: "I tried to find you…"
"I know," she laughed, her white teeth glittering. "Suplinius told me. What did you want?"
"I…," Gwen stammered, "just wanted to ask whether you wanted to go with me to the Smoking Room after lunch," she finished lamely.
Crow's eyebrows shot upwards. Manisha chuckled and nodded: "With pleasure!"
Evelyn went to the counter. Gwen looked around and saw Isabelle waving at her frantically.
"Sorry," she said with relief. "It seems that my colleague needs me."
~ooOOooOOooOOooOOoo~
"You just saved my life, you know," she whispered to Isabelle, who grinned back at her conspiratorially. "I'll tell you later."
Gwen nodded at Roberta and Honoria, who were both eating a baked potato with a huge mountain of salad. Roberta wore a beautiful royal blue tunic over black leather trousers and looked rather tired. Honoria was telling Roberta about muggle time travel movies, but Roberta didn't say a word. Gwen wondered why she wasn't sitting with Timothy as usual, and would have liked to hear something about Roberta's work in the Time Room. Timothy was nowhere to be seen.
"D'accord, ma chère. But I wanted to show you this," Isabelle handed her the Daily Prophet and pointed on an article at the bottom of the front page.
Mysterious Murder in the Death Chamber
By Special Correspondent Rita Skeeter
A cold-blooded murder in the depths of the Department of Mysteries shocks the Ministry of Magic. According to well-informed sources, Archibald Dusk, an Unspeakable working in the Death Chamber, was murdered at his workplace on the morning of 21 April, presumably by the Killing curse.
Aurors are investigating the wizard's death, but up to now have not found any other clues that point to the murderer (see page 3 for the still fruitless hunt on Sirius Black).
How is it possible that an outsider broke into the high-security area, which is the Department of Mysteries? Are the Ministry and its security specialists, too, losing their grip? Unsurprisingly, Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic, was not available for comments. Is that due to the possibility that the murder might be an insider job? (see page 23 for further details on the Ministry of Magic's doubtable recruiting procedures)
Mediwizards pronounced the man dead at the scene.
The victim, aged 54, leaves behind his young wife, and an ex-wife.
"How… but that's impossible," Gwen gasped, while Isabelle was shushing her. "Who are those 'well-informed' sources?"
"J'sais pas,"Isabelle shrugged. "But we all know Rita Skeeter."
At least she doesn't know about the Dark Mark, Gwen thought, so her sources don't know either. What does this mean? Yet she knows that Aurors are involved, not Hit Wizards…I wonder…
"What's the matter, girls?" asked Honoria, who never read a newspaper, but lived in her own little universe. While Isabelle handed her the article, Gwen went to the counter to get a steak-and-kidney pie with chips. She needed something savoury today.
On her way back to the table she noticed Mabel Tancock, Vivi Gregorius and Amelia Robson sitting together. The latter worked in the Illness and Healing Room. Gwen considered for a moment, then went to talk to them.
"Hi Vivi," she sat beside the platinum blonde witch and whispered: "Do we still have some of those fake training brains?"
Vivi grinned and nodded: "Of course, my dear. I'm nearly finished. Want to come with me?"
"I am only starting."
"Oh, I see. You know what? Why don't you join me in the Hall of Prophecies, when you're finished? I'll be there with Bode."
Gwen smiled. "All right. See you later then." Then she returned to the table where Isabelle, Honoria and Roberta were sitting.
~ooOOooOOooOOooOOoo~