(Their mantelpiece was crowded with the silver trophies of her prowess.)
The plain-clothes man looked impatient. He had obviously read every word of his paper because it was still open at the same place. The clock said five past ten. Rowe closed his catalogue, after marking a few lots at random, and walked out into the street. The plain-clothes man said, âExcuse me,â and Roweâs heart missed a beat.
âYes?â
âIâve come out without a match.â
âYou can keep the box,â Rowe said.
âI couldnât do that, not in these days.â He looked over Roweâs shoulder, up the street to the ruins of the Safe Deposit, where safes stood about like the above-ground tombs in Latin cemeteries, then followed with his eye a middle-aged clerk trailing his umbrella past Rennitâs door.
âWaiting for someone?â Rowe asked.
âOh, just a friend,â the detective said clumsily. âHeâs late.â
âGood morning.â
âGood morning, sir.â The âsirâ was an error in tactics, like the soft hat at too official an angle and the unchanging page of the Daily Mirror . They donât trouble to send their best men for mere murder, Rowe thought, touching the little sore again with his tongue.
What next? He found himself, not for the first time, regretting Henry Wilcox. There were men who lived voluntarily in deserts, but they had their God to commune with. For nearly ten years he had felt no need of friends â one woman could include any number of friends. He wondered where Henry was in wartime. Perry would have joined up and so would Curtis. He imagined Henry as an air-raid warden, fussy and laughed at when all was quiet, a bit scared now during the long exposed vigils on the deserted pavements, but carrying on in dungarees that didnât suit him and a helmet a size too large. God damn it, he thought, coming out on the ruined corner of High Holborn, Iâve done my best to take part too. Itâs not my fault Iâm not fit enough for the army, and as for the damned heroes of civil defence â the little clerks and prudes and what-have-yous â they didnât want me: not when they found I had done time â even time in an asylum wasnât respectable enough for Post Four or Post Two or Post any number. And now theyâve thrown me out of their war altogether; they want me for a murder I didnât do. What chance would they give me with my record?
He thought: Why should I bother about that cake any more? Itâs nothing to do with me: itâs their war, not mine. Why shouldnât I just go into hiding until everythingâs blown over (surely in wartime a murder does blow over). Itâs not my war; I seem to have stumbled into the firing-line, thatâs all. Iâll get out of London and let the fools scrap it out, and the fools die. . . . There may have been nothing important in the cake; it may have contained only a paper cap, a motto, a lucky sixpence. Perhaps that hunchback hadnât meant a thing: perhaps the taste was imagination: perhaps the whole scene never happened at all as I remember it. Blast often did odd things, and it certainly wasnât beyond its power to shake a brain that had too much to brood about already . . .
As if he were escaping from some bore who walked beside him explaining things he had no interest in, he dived suddenly into a telephone-box and rang a number. A stern dowager voice admonished him down the phone as though he had no right on the line at all, âThis is the Free Mothers. Who is that, please?â
âI want to speak to Miss Hilfe.â
âWho is that?â
âA friend of hers.â A disapproving grunt twanged the wires. He said sharply, âPut me through, please,â and almost at once he heard the voice which if he had shut his eyes and eliminated the telephone-box and ruined Holborn he could have believed was
The plain-clothes man looked impatient. He had obviously read every word of his paper because it was still open at the same place. The clock said five past ten. Rowe closed his catalogue, after marking a few lots at random, and walked out into the street. The plain-clothes man said, âExcuse me,â and Roweâs heart missed a beat.
âYes?â
âIâve come out without a match.â
âYou can keep the box,â Rowe said.
âI couldnât do that, not in these days.â He looked over Roweâs shoulder, up the street to the ruins of the Safe Deposit, where safes stood about like the above-ground tombs in Latin cemeteries, then followed with his eye a middle-aged clerk trailing his umbrella past Rennitâs door.
âWaiting for someone?â Rowe asked.
âOh, just a friend,â the detective said clumsily. âHeâs late.â
âGood morning.â
âGood morning, sir.â The âsirâ was an error in tactics, like the soft hat at too official an angle and the unchanging page of the Daily Mirror . They donât trouble to send their best men for mere murder, Rowe thought, touching the little sore again with his tongue.
What next? He found himself, not for the first time, regretting Henry Wilcox. There were men who lived voluntarily in deserts, but they had their God to commune with. For nearly ten years he had felt no need of friends â one woman could include any number of friends. He wondered where Henry was in wartime. Perry would have joined up and so would Curtis. He imagined Henry as an air-raid warden, fussy and laughed at when all was quiet, a bit scared now during the long exposed vigils on the deserted pavements, but carrying on in dungarees that didnât suit him and a helmet a size too large. God damn it, he thought, coming out on the ruined corner of High Holborn, Iâve done my best to take part too. Itâs not my fault Iâm not fit enough for the army, and as for the damned heroes of civil defence â the little clerks and prudes and what-have-yous â they didnât want me: not when they found I had done time â even time in an asylum wasnât respectable enough for Post Four or Post Two or Post any number. And now theyâve thrown me out of their war altogether; they want me for a murder I didnât do. What chance would they give me with my record?
He thought: Why should I bother about that cake any more? Itâs nothing to do with me: itâs their war, not mine. Why shouldnât I just go into hiding until everythingâs blown over (surely in wartime a murder does blow over). Itâs not my war; I seem to have stumbled into the firing-line, thatâs all. Iâll get out of London and let the fools scrap it out, and the fools die. . . . There may have been nothing important in the cake; it may have contained only a paper cap, a motto, a lucky sixpence. Perhaps that hunchback hadnât meant a thing: perhaps the taste was imagination: perhaps the whole scene never happened at all as I remember it. Blast often did odd things, and it certainly wasnât beyond its power to shake a brain that had too much to brood about already . . .
As if he were escaping from some bore who walked beside him explaining things he had no interest in, he dived suddenly into a telephone-box and rang a number. A stern dowager voice admonished him down the phone as though he had no right on the line at all, âThis is the Free Mothers. Who is that, please?â
âI want to speak to Miss Hilfe.â
âWho is that?â
âA friend of hers.â A disapproving grunt twanged the wires. He said sharply, âPut me through, please,â and almost at once he heard the voice which if he had shut his eyes and eliminated the telephone-box and ruined Holborn he could have believed was
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