“Mr. Cornwallis?” There was a lift of concern in her voice.
“Yes!” he said too quickly. He felt a slight warmth in his cheeks. “I’m sorry, my thoughts were wandering. Shall we move to the next picture? I always find pastoral scenes most agreeable.” How stilted he sounded, as if they were strangers forcing a meaningless conversation, and how cold.
What is love without trust, forgiveness, patience, and gentleness? Mere hunger and need, joy in another’s company, shared pleasures, even laughter and perceptions, are merely the things of good acquaintance. To be more than that must be giving as well as taking, cost as well as gain.
“You look a little concerned, Mr. Cornwallis,” she said gently. “Have you a troublesome case?”
He made a decision. “Yes, but I intend to leave it behind for half an hour.” He forced himself to smile and linked his arm through hers, something he had never done before. “I shall look at this perfect loveliness which nothing shall fade or destroy, and it will be doubled from now because I shall share it with you. The rest of the world can wait. I shall return to it soon enough.”
She smiled back at him, as if she had understood far more than he had said. “How very wise of you. I shall do exactly the same.” And she walked close to his side, keeping her arm through his.
6
Tellman needed to know more about Albert Cole, most particularly his comings and goings in the last few days of his life. So far every additional fact had only added to the confusion. He must go back to the beginning and start again. The best place for that was Cole’s lodgings in Theobald’s Road.
The house was shabby, more so in the clear morning sunlight than it had seemed the first time he had been there. But it was clean, and there were neat rag rugs on the board floors and the landlady was busy with pail and scrubbing brush. Her faded blond hair was tied up in a cloth cap to keep it off her face, and her red-knuckled hands were covered in suds.
“Good morning, Mrs. Hampson,” he said pleasantly. “Sorry to bother you again when you’re busy.” He glanced at the half-scrubbed floor of the passage. The smell of lye and vinegar reminded him of the rooms where he had grown up, of his mother kneeling just like this with a brush in her hand, her sleeves rolled high. He could have been a small boy again with bare knees and holes in his boots.
Mrs. Hampson stood up stiffly, smoothing her apron. “S’you again, is it? I dunno any more ’bout your Mr. Cole now than I did w’en yer first come. ’e were a quiet, decent sort o’ man. Always got a civil word. I dunno w’y anybody’d wanter go an’ kill ’im for.”
“Can you think back to the last few days of his life, Mrs. Hampson?” he asked patiently. “What time of the morning did he get up? Did he have breakfast? When did he go out? When did he come back? Did he have anybody call on him here?”
“Nob’dy I ever seen,” she answered, shaking her head. “Don’t encourage callers. In’t room, an’ yer never knows wot they’ll get up ter. Anyway, decent man, ’e were. If ’e ever did anythink like … natural … ’e din’t do it ’ere.”
Tellman did not think Cole’s death had had anything to do with women. He did not bother to pursue that path.
“When did he come and go during the last few days of his life, Mrs. Hampson?”
She thought for a moment. “Well, the last day I saw ’im, which were the Tuesday, like, ’e went out abaht seven in the mornin’. Catch them as would buy laces on their way ter work. Can’t afford ter miss ’em.” She pursed her lips. “Next lot’d be later, more nine or ten, so ’e said ter me. The lawyers start later, bein’ gents, like. An’ o’ course there’s casuals all the time.”
“And the day before? Can you remember?”
“Some.” She ignored the brush in her hand, still dripping water onto the floor. “Can’t remember partic’lar, but I’d a’ remembered if it a’ bin different. Same every day. Gruel fer breakfast, an’ a piece o’ bread. Look, mister, I got work ter do. If yer wants more’n this, yer’ll ’ave ter come inside an’ let me get on.” She knelt and wiped up the drips and then the last few inches of soap and water and he picked up the pail to carry it for her, their palms meeting on the wooden spool of the handle.
She was so startled she nearly dropped it, but she said nothing.
In the kitchen she left the pail in the corner and began to mix white brick dust into a paste with linseed oil to scour the tabletops. She mixed some more with water to polish the knife blades and the large brass-handled poker by the stove.
Tellman sat in the corner out of her way. He watched her work. He asked her everything he could think of about Albert Cole. An hour later she had finished cleaning the kitchen, and he followed her as she took the besom brush made of coarse twigs to sweep the landing floor and give the mats a hefty beating and return them. By the time Tellman left he had a fairly good idea of Cole’s domestic life, ordinary, decent, and comfortably monotonous. As far as she knew, he spent every night alone in his bed, presumably asleep.
Tellman’s next stop was the corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, to ask passersby and local tradesmen if they remembered seeing Cole in his usual spot. It was hard to disentangle memory of one day from that of another.
The flower seller diagonally across leading to New Square was a little more help.
“ ’e weren’t there Sunday, ’cos folks don’t buy on Sunday any’ow. Most of ’em in’t ’ere,” she said, scratching her head and pushing her bonnet a trifle crooked. “ ’e were ’ere Monday, ’cos I seen ’im. ’Ad a word wif ’im. ’e said summink abaht gettin’ a bit o’ money soon. I laughed at ’im, ’cos I thought as ’e were ‘avin’ me on, like. But ’e said as ’e were serious. ’e wouldn’t say as ’ow ’e were gonner get it. An’ I never see’d ’im again.”
“That would be Tuesday,” he corrected.
“No, Monday,” she assured him. “I always know me days, ’cos o’ wot’s ’appenin’ in the
“So where was he on Tuesday?” Tellman asked, puzzled.
“Dunno. I took it as ’e were sick or summink.”
Tellman learned nothing more in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, nor with close questioning at the Bull and Gate either.
In the afternoon he returned again to the mortuary. He loathed the place. On a warm day like this the smells seemed to be heavier, more claustrophobic, sticking in the back of his throat. It was a strange mixture of sharp and sour. But on a cold day the damp seemed to run from the walls and the chill of it ate into his bones, as if the whole place were like some scrubbed and artificial sort of public grave, only waiting to be closed over. He always half expected to find himself locked in.
“Nobody new for you,” the attendant said with surprise.
“I want to see Albert Cole again.” Tellman forced himself to say the words. It was the last thing on earth he really wanted, but where Cole had been on the day before he was killed could be the only clue as to what had happened to him. “Please.”
“ ’Course,” the attendant agreed. “We got ’im in the ice ’ouse, all tucked up safe. Be with you in a trice.”
Tellman’s footsteps echoed as he followed obediently to the small, bitterly cold room where corpses were kept when the police still needed to be able to examine them in connection with crime.
Tellman felt his stomach clench, but he lifted back the sheet with an almost steady hand. The body was naked, and he felt intrusive. He knew so much and so little about this man when he had been alive. His skin was very pale over his torso and upper legs, but there was an ingrained grayness of dirt as well, and the stale odor was not entirely due to carbolic and dead flesh.
“What are you looking for?” the attendant asked helpfully.
Tellman was not sure. “Wounds, for a start,” he answered. “He was a soldier in the 33rd. He saw a lot of action. He was invalided out. Shot in the leg.”
