much neatness, then, as inevitability.”
“I go this way,” he said, pointing up towards Holborn Tube station.
“That’s all right. I’ll come with you.” She had to walk briskly to keep up with him.
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me all this, Miss Leigh. The person you should have gone to is Olive’s solicitor, Mr Crew She avoided a direct answer.
“You think I’ve got a case, then?”
He smiled good-humouredly, his teeth very white in his dark face.
“No, you’re a long way off that.
You may have the beginnings of a case. Take it to Mr. Crew.”
“You’re the barrister,” she persisted doggedly.
“If you were fighting Olive’s corner, what would you need to convince a court she’s innocent?”
“Proof that she could not have been in the house during the period of time that the murders happened.”
“Or the real murderer?”
“Or the real murderer,” he agreed, ‘but I can’t see you producing him very easily.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no evidence against him. Your argument, presumably, is that Olive obscured all the evidence in order to take the blame on herself. She did it very successfully.
Everything confirmed her as the guilty party.” He slowed down as they approached the Underground.
“So, unless your hypothetical murderer confesses voluntarily and persuades the police that he knew things that only the murderer could know, there’s no way you can overturn Olive’s conviction.” He smiled apologetically.
“And I can’t see him doing that now, for the simple reason that he didn’t do it at the time.”
She telephoned the prison from Holborn Tube station and asked them to tell Olive she wouldn’t be in that evening. She had a feeling that things were about to blow up in her face, and the feeling centred on Olive.
It was late by the time she let herself in through the main door of her block. Unusually, the hall was in total darkness. She pressed the time switch to light the stairs and first-floor landing, and sighed when nothing happened. Another power cut, she thought.
She could have predicted it. Black was in tune with her mood.
She sorted out the key to her flat, by touch, and groped her way up the stairs, trying to remember if she had any candles left over from the last time. With luck there was one in her kitchen drawer, otherwise this was going to be a long and tedious night.
She was fumbling blindly across her door with both hands, searching for the lock, when something rose up from the floor at her feet and brushed against her.
“Aa-agh!” she screamed, beating at it furiously.
Next second she was lifted bodily off the floor while a great palm damped itself across her mouth.
“Ssh,” hissed Hal in her ear, shaking with laughter.
“It’s me.” He kissed her on the nose.
“Ow!” he roared, letting her go and bending over to clutch himself.
“Serves you right,” she said, scrabbling on the floor for her keys.
“You’re lucky I didn’t have my hat pin. Ah, got them.” She renewed her search for the lock and found it.
“There.” She tried the lights inside the door but the blackness remained impenetrable.
“Come on,” she said, catching his jacket and pulling him inside.
“I think there’s a candle in the kitchen.”
“Everything all right?” called a quavering female voice from the floor upstairs.
“Yes, thank you,” Roz called back.
“I trod on something. How long has the power been off?”
“Half an hour. I’ve telephoned. There’s a fuse gone in a box somewhere. Three hours they said. I told them I wouldn’t pay my bill if it was any longer. We should take a stand. Don’t you agree?”
“Absolutely,” said Roz, wondering who she was talking to.
Mrs. Barrett, perhaps. She knew their names from their mail but she rarely saw anyone.
“Bye now.” She closed her door.
“I’ll try and find the candle,” she whispered.
“Why are we whispering?” Hal whispered back.
She giggled.
“Because one always does in the dark.”
He stumbled into something.
