12 October 2017 (Carnage in Great Queen Street)
The day is drawing on, and the group starts to think about tracing the body: with that much shine, it might be possible to see where it was taken. They return to Queen Mary’s Hospital for the East End, and search around the outside; although there wasn’t a trail of shine going in, there does seem to be one coming out, quite broad and faint, but Gertrude’s able to pick it up clearly. They walk for some time towards central London, and end up at Great Queen Street, where the new Freemasons’ Hall is being built; the trail goes through a side door.
It’s getting dark by now, so they wait for a bit and observe the site; there’s one night watchman, who’s making the rounds in a predictable manner. Bessie gets the side door open and the group goes inside, following the trail and using torches cautiously where necessary.
The inside is in a much less finished state than the façade, but it’s easy to follow the cast-off shine; they end up going down a flight of stairs and along a concrete-floored corridor to a changing room of some sort, with narrow wardrobes along the walls and a central bench on which a temporary plywood coffin is lying (and glowing, to their perceptions). A bit of quick prying of nails reveals that the body’s inside. Bessie blocks the doors to avoid any light spilling, and they look at the body: it’s in much the same state as before, slightly damaged by the trip but it appears that someone took reasonable care over it.
There’s no gradation of shine over the body to indicate any sort of spread of an effect; if anything, it seems to have started everywhere on the surface of the body at the same time and radiated inwards. There’s a melted gold watch and some sign of clothing remnants, but the posture seems to indicate a much more rapid heating and carbonisation than is usual in cases of death by fire.
Bessie takes a look through the room’s other door, and sees what must be some kind of chamber for ritual working (though whether it’s normal Masonic or something else she can’t tell). There are some regalia in glass cases, a random-seeming selection of which have shine on them.
The group reattaches the lid of the coffin and moves on; the basement passage continues to another stairway near the other side door, but there’s nothing else of note. After much theorising, they decide to leave.
It’s around nine pm by now, and they decide to keep an eye on the place at least in the short term. Lin Tan and Bessie scale buildings nearby to keep an eye on the two side doors, while Audrey and Gertrude retire for the night.
The first arrival is at about 11, a well-dressed man with no shine on him who waits for the guard to be out of sight and unlocks the northern door (the one the body was taken through earlier). Starting at about 11.30, others turn up, knocking in a particular pattern and being admitted; there’s a total of twelve of them.