"I Am Quite Lonely at Times"
- When Will Henry gets back from posting the letter to Dr. Kearns he can't find the doctor anywhere. But he does find the article that sparked the doc's memory lying on the table, so he reads it.
- It turns out the person they are going to visit at Motley Hill Sanatorium is one Captain Varner, a man incarcerated for blockade running and dereliction of duty. He went to Motley Hill instead of jail because when questioned upon his rescue he testified that his entire cargo and crew were overcome at sea by "creatures not of this Earth but from the very Bowels of Hell." Okay then…
- So the doctor thinks that "V" from his father's diary is Captain Varner, and that the captain had an unfortunate encounter with Anthropophagi twenty-three years ago. Got it.
- The doctor returned to the cemetery (so that's where he was) to clean up and count the prints to calculate the size of the pack. He's guessing thirty to thirty-five. Not good.
- Will Henry hasn't been able to find his hat since their mad dash to safety, and he's worried he left it at the cemetery.
- So the doc is trying to cover up the fact that anything happened. Will Henry thinks this is more about self-preservation (and the protection of his reputation) than the public good, though.
- He has Will Henry burn Erasmus's hat, a bloody scrap of cloth left from the girl's dress, and his father's diary.
- While cleaning up, Will Henry discovers that the trunk with the shrunken head also holds fifteen unopened letters from a younger Dr. Warthrop to his father. Despite the obvious invasion of privacy, he decides to open one and read it (after all, he knows next to nothing about the doc's personal life—he just can't help himself).
- The letter is quite possibly one of the saddest requests for love and attention we've ever read. It's basically Pellinore begging his father for a letter—he's lonely in London at school, and despite several previous missives he hasn't gotten a single response.
- He hastily puts the letter back in the trunk and tosses the shrunken head in as well. When he does, he sees that something's been wedged into the poor thing. He pulls out a key. The doc is summoning him with urgency, though, so he puts the key in his pocket to show the doctor later.
- He makes the doc and himself some soup for dinner. When the doc sees that he's prepared him food he gets angry, because he isn't hungry and he'd told Will Henry to make himself food… you know, like ya do. #weirdo.