Just as she had watched Will, she now watched Mrs. and Dr. Burrows, as if she were trying to divine their thoughts. After several minutes, though, Rebecca had seen enough, and picked up Mrs. Burrows's empty mug from the bedside table, giving it an exploratory sniff. Ovaltine again, with a hint of brandy. With mug in hand, Rebecca tiptoed out of the room and went downstairs into the kitchen, navigating her way easily through the darkness. Placing the mug in the sink, she turned and left the kitchen to return to the hallway. Here she stopped again, her head inclined slightly to one side, her eyes closed, listening.
There was a muffled cough from upstairs. Rebecca glared resentfully in the direction of the staircase. Her moment had been broken, her thoughts disrupted.
'I'm so tired of all this,' she said bitterly.
She padded over to the front door, unlatched the safety chain, and then made her way into the living room. The curtains were fully open, giving her a clear view of the back garden, which was dappled in shifting patches of silvery moonlight. Her eyes never once left the scene as she lowered herself into Mrs. Burrows's armchair, settling back as she continued to watch the garden and the hedge that divided it from the Common. And there she remained, relishing the solitude of the night and enshrouded in the chocolatey darkness, until the early hours. Watching.
7
The next day in the museum, Dr. Burrows was growing weary of his task of arranging a display of some old military buttons. He exhaled loudly with sheer frustration and, hearing a car horn on the road outside, happened to glance up.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of a man walking on the opposite side of the street. He wore a flat cap, a long coat, and, although the day was distinctly overcast with only intermittent glimpses of the sun, a pair of dark glasses. It might easily have been the man he had bumped into outside the newsstand, but he couldn't be sure, because they all looked so similar.
What was it that was so compelling about these people? Dr. Burrows felt in his bones that there was something special about them, something decidedly incongruous. It was as if they had stepped straight out of another time — perhaps from the Georgian era, given the style of their clothing. For him, this was on a par with finding a piece of living history, like those reports he'd read of Asian fishermen netting coelacanths, or maybe something even more tantalizing than that…
Never a man to rein in his obsessions, Dr. Burrows was well and truly hooked. There had to be a rational explanation for the hated-man phenomenon, and he was determined to find out what it was.
'Right,' he decided on the spot, 'now's as good a time as any.'
He put down the box of buttons and hurried through the museum to the main door, locking it behind him. As he stepped outside onto the street, he located the man up ahead and, keeping a respectable distance, he followed him down Main Street.
Dr. Burrows kept pace with the man as he left Main Street, turned onto Disraeli Street, and then crossed the road to take the first right onto Gladstone Street, just past the old convent. He was about fifty feet behind him when the man drew to a sudden halt and turned to look directly at him.
Dr. Burrows felt a tremor of fear as he saw the sky reflecting off the man's glasses and, sure the game was up, immediately spun around to face the opposite direction. At a loss to know what else to do, he squatted down and pretended to tie an imaginary shoelace on his slip-on shoe. Without getting up he peered furtively over his shoulder, but the man had completely vanished.
His eyes frantically scanning the street, Dr. Burrows began to walk briskly, then broke into a run as he approached the spot where he had last sighted his quarry. Coming to it, he discovered that there was a narrow entrance between two small buildings. He was slightly surprised that in all the times he'd been this way before he'd never once noticed it. It had an arched opening and ran like a narrow tunnel until it passed beyond the back of the houses and then continued for a short distance as an uncovered alleyway. Dr. Burrows peered in, but the lack of daylight in the passage made it difficult to see very much. Beyond the stretch of darkness, he could make out something at the far end. It was a wall, cutting off the alleyway altogether. A dead end.
Checking the street one last time, he shook his head in disbelief. He couldn't see anywhere else the man might have gone, vanishing as abruptly as he had, so he took a deep breath and started down the passage. He picked his way cautiously, wary that the man might by lying in wait in an unseen doorway. As his eyes adjusted to the shadows, he could see that there were soggy cardboard boxes and milk bottles, mostly broken, scattered across the cobblestones.
He was relieved when he emerged back into the light again, and paused to survey they scene. The alleyway was formed by garden walls to the left and right and was blocked at its far end by the wall of a three-story factory. The old building had no windows until its uppermost story and couldn't possibly have provided the man with any means of escape.
Dr. Burrows gazed helplessly into the private wasteland and was about to forget the whole thing when he had a sudden change of heart. He slung his briefcase over the wall and rather awkwardly clambered after it. The drop was greater than he'd expected, and he landed badly, his outstretched hand managing to flip over one of the dishes, splattering its contents up his arm and neck. He rose to his feet, swore silently, and brushed off as much as he could.
'Blast! Blast! And blast!' he said through clenched teeth as he heard a door open behind him.
'Hello? Who's there? What's going on?' came an apprehensive voice.
Dr. Burrows wheeled around to face an old woman who was standing not five feet away, with three cats around her ankles observing him with feline indifference. The old woman's sight was apparently not good, judging from the way she was moving her head from side to side. She had wispy white hair and wore a floral housecoat. Dr. Burrows guessed she was at least in her eighties.
'Er… Roger Burrows, pleased to meet you,' Dr. Burrows said, not able to think of anything to explain why or how he had come to be there. The expression on the old woman's face was suddenly transformed.
'Oh, Dr. Burrows, how very kind of you to drop by. What a nice surprise.'
Dr. Burrows was himself surprised and not a little confused. 'Um… not at all,' he replied hesitantly. 'My pleasure entirely.'
'Gets a bit lonely with just my pussycats for company. Would you care for some tea? The kettle's on the boil.'
Lost for words, Dr. Burrows simply nodded.
The old woman turned, her entourage of cats darting before her into the kitchen. 'Milk and sugar?'
'Please,' Dr. Burrows said, standing outside the kitchen door as she bustled around, getting a teacup down from a shelf.
'I'm sorry to turn up unannounced like this,' Dr. Burrows said, in an attempt to fill the silence. 'This is all so very kind of you.'
'No, it's you who is very kind. I should be thanking you.'
