Down in that London with some unexpected free time, so I did a teeny tiny Strike Walk.
The Hallmarked Man
Chapter 14
Around Freemasons' Hall
Early in the investigation, Robin parks the Landy close to Freemasons' Hall, notes that it has a museum and coffee shop open to the public and finds Cormoran a few yards away at the front of the building.
Just to explain, the impressive entrance that's on the cover of the book is not where you go in. The doors you use as a member of the public are a few yards down the left of the building in Great Queen Street.
Strike is standing here:
The entrance is about here, but today it was swamped with men in suits and I couldn't get freemason-free photo.
They set off to scope out the area, walking down Great Queen Street with "the massive stone hall to their right." Like this:
They scan for CCTV and convenient lay-bys and conclude the area is far too well-lit and populous for the killer or killers to have escaped without notice.
From that point of view, round the corner in Kingsway is even worse.
So they turn right again into Wild Court, "an unlovely lane, which had a line of plastic bins on one side."
Can confirm it is very, very unlovely and almost unbearably pungent in that "I've had a skinful and no-one can see me , so ..." sort of a way.
The shop premises at the centre of the investigation doesn't exist in reality. It's supposed to be "at the join of the red brick Connaught Rooms and the pale grey stone of Freemasons’ Hall" but in reality the two buildings meet each other without fanfare and certainly without shop.
After speaking with the shop staff they continue up Wild Court, which ends at Wild Street, where they turn right again.
This is the view looking back down Wild Street the way they came, after they get back to where they started.
Strike spots a pub, and the rest is history.
The Prince of Wales on the corner of Great Queen Street and Drury Lane, with Freemasons' Hall in the background.
Ian Visits has done a little description of Wild Court through the ages.
This is a slip of a passage near Holborn that provides little today other than back doors and rubbish bins, but once lead to a grand mansion
