He now realized that it was his duty as a policeman to settle the question of her whereabouts once and for all.
‘Mr Quinn?’
Quinn pulled the door to hurriedly and spun away from it. He held his head bowed, eyes averted from Miss Dillard’s. For it was Miss Dillard, coming up the stairs to return to her own room, who now challenged him, her voice edged with confusion and fear.
No, he could not bring himself to look into those eyes. Not now. Not after this.
‘I was just … I … I couldn’t help noticing that Miss Ibbott had left her door open. I thought it wise to close it for her.’
‘I see.’ But her voice was reproachful, as well as hurt. And no, he still wouldn’t look at her. He refused to face the same reproach, the same hurt, in her eyes.
‘One cannot be too careful. Even in a respectable house such as this.’
‘Of course.’
And then Quinn remembered that he maintained the fiction that none of his fellow lodgers knew the nature of his work. ‘Well, no, not that. But … you never know. Mr Appleby and Mr Timberley.’
‘What about them?’ There was genuine alarm in her voice now, panic almost.
Quinn realized that he had made a tactical mistake. ‘Nothing! I say nothing against them. I know of nothing against them. Fine fellows, they are, I’m sure. We can all agree on that. But young. Youth, you see. Mischief and youth. You cannot rule it out. Young men such as them … not them, no … quite explicitly not them. But young men such as them might see her open door as …’
‘As what?’
He could not say an invitation; that would seem to put Miss Ibbott at fault. ‘A provocation,’ he settled for.
Miss Dillard let out a little shriek. It was an unfortunate word to choose.
‘You must understand,’ protested Quinn. ‘I know of nothing specific against them. Nothing at all, in fact. But you cannot blame me for taking precautions.’
At that moment, the controversial door opened and Miss Ibbott herself peered out. From what he saw of her shoulders, Quinn conjectured that she was in a state of deshabille.
‘What do you want? What’s going on? Did you shut my door?’
‘Ah, good morning to you, Miss Ibbott. Yes, indeed, as I was explaining to Miss Dillard, I did indeed shut your door. A mere precaution, you understand. For your own safety. One can never be too careful. Did you, in fact, realize that it was open, I wonder?’
‘Betsy must have left it like that when she fetched me my hot water.’
‘Ah, there you are! Mystery solved! Betsy left it open. Careless girl. But good-natured. A careless but good-natured girl, I think we can all agree on that. Or perhaps not, as regards carelessness, at least. Not careless, no. Too harsh. Just overworked perhaps? No, that won’t do, implying as it does criticism of your good mother, the irreproachable Mrs Ibbott. I will not hear the word overworked used in this house. Worked to just the right, proper and above all proportionate extent of her capabilities and … and duties. As your maid. As maid to us all. An onerous but worthy calling, no doubt. So, what are we to make of the door being left ajar? A simple mistake, it turns out, which I, in my foolish, fond – one might even say innocent … In my solicitude, at any rate … closed. On your behalf. For you. But no harm done, I’m glad to say.’
Miss Ibbott offered no comment on Quinn’s outburst, unless shutting the door in his face is to be considered a comment.
He could not look at Miss Dillard. He wondered if the consolation of her pewter-grey eyes was denied him forever now, their startling beauty an unreliable memory he struggled to conjure.
FOUR
The lights in the carriage flickered in time with the clatter and sway of the Tube train, the darkness reasserting its presence.
Quinn had entered its realm voluntarily, lowering himself into it in a shuddering cage. Today he was shunning the daylight. Dipping his face away from its intrusive glare. Something to do with the awkward episode on the landing, no doubt. He had wanted the ground to open up and swallow him. Taking the Tube was a practicable alternative.
Under normal circumstances, Quinn rarely took the Tube. But at least on the Tube he didn’t have to meet anyone’s eye. Most of his fellow travellers hid themselves away behind their newspapers. If they did not, they stared fixedly at a chosen point. A spot on the carriage wall. An arbitrary word in an advertisement. A cigarette stub caught between the wooden slats of the floor. Occasionally they might look away to catch the eye of one of the pale ghosts riding the darkness outside, mournful, perplexed, perpetually excluded. In that moment they understood: how incomprehensible we are to our own reflections. To ourselves.
Quinn could not say when he had first been aware of the man looking at him. But his sense was that the whole reason the man was there was to look at him. There was a purpose to his staring. Being a policeman, Quinn might have said it was premeditated.
The fellow must have followed him on to the platform and into the train carriage. That meant that he must have been waiting outside the lodging house for Quinn to leave that morning.
Yes, he had registered something out of the corner of his eye, or at least in hindsight he believed he had. A blur of movement configured by intent. Resolving itself into a human form shadowing him. Footsteps moving in time with his own.
He had thought nothing of it. Or very little. He had registered the sensation and dismissed it. No, not quite dismissed it. He was a policeman, after all. Over the years he had put away more than his fair share of villains, and dispatched another quota to face a higher justice. The former would have grudges of their own against him, which they would nurture and fatten as they served out their sentences (if they had not paid the ultimate price); many of the latter would have left behind associates who might be presumed to have sworn oaths of vengeance on their behalf.
It was a plain fact that there were people in the world who were out for Quinn’s blood.
He accepted this, but the thing was not to become obsessed by it. No doubt the day would come when he would find himself face to face with a man who would calmly aim a revolver between his eyes and fire. In the meantime, he couldn’t go around jumping at shadows.
And so, he had registered the sensation of being followed and pushed it to the back of his mind. It was most likely a coincidence. Someone else on their way to Brompton Road Tube Station, whose footsteps would naturally follow Quinn’s.
It occurred to him that this sensation of being followed was simply a fact of modern life. This is how it feels to live in a crowded metropolis at the beginning of the twentieth century, he realized. To notice it, to become preoccupied with it, disturbed by it, was perhaps the sign of a man at odds with his existence. There was danger in that. The danger of alienation, and madness. Quinn knew enough about that to recognize the signs. It was something he in particular needed to be on his guard against.
On the platform, he had felt sufficiently invisible to put the sensation from his mind. The brown and green tiles seemed to suck the life out of the feeble electric lights. It was a space that fell away at its soft dark edges. He had instinctively sought out a place on the periphery, slipping away into the welcoming gloom.
A tide of bobbing bowler hats had closed behind him. He had found a spot at the end of the platform, peering expectantly into the black abyss of the tunnel. He was in fact at the closest point to that abyss that it was possible for him to be without falling into it. A spot of light appeared, signalling the approach of the next train. Almost simultaneously came the first stirring of the air. And then the distant rattle that grew into a scream. The light expanded as it hurtled towards him.
He had entered the train by the gate at the rear of the last car. And – or so he thought – he had been the only one to do so. Was it possible that he had missed the entrance of this other man, who had somehow slipped on after Quinn but before the gateman closed the gate and rang his bell?