piece of paper and she could see only the corner. It was pale blue in colour and someone was pushing it slowly beneath the door. It was an envelope—and suddenly it shot across the polished boards and struck the edge of a large rug. She stared, incredulously; and then suddenly rushed across the room and opened the door. She heard footsteps.
On the landing she looked over and saw a man running down the last flight of stairs. He had a bald patch in the middle of a dark, oily head of hair. He didn’t glance up. He reached the front door, opened it and disappeared; and before she was halfway down the first flight of stairs the door banged again.
When she reached the porch he was out of sight; the house was near a corner which he had rounded. No one else was in the short street with the tall, terraced houses on either side.
A car turned into the street and she would not have taken much notice of it, except for the fact that it was a Rolls-Bentley—Jim’s idea of what a car should be. He had planned to buy one, in that wonderful world of make- believe, when he was thirty-seven—eleven years hence. It would be green and they would call it the Queen. This was green. The man at the wheel was glancing right and left, as if searching for a particular house. She noticed that he was good-looking—the kind of man one might expect to find at the wheel of a Rolls-Bentley. Then she went inside, carrying a picture in her mind of the dark oily hair and the bald spot.
She went back to her flat, closed the door and picked up the letter. It was addressed to her in pencilled handwriting.
She tore the letter open, heart thumping now, because whenever he was in a hurry, Jim wrote in an almost indecipherable scrawl like this. She unfolded the single sheet of pale blue paper and read:
“Sorry I’ve messed things up, Judy. There’s nothing I can do now. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just felt I had to let you know.”
CHAPTER TWO
The note was signed with a scrawl which might have been “Jim”, might have been almost any short name. The handwriting was shaky—not Jim’s usual swift and confident scribble; but it wasn’t that alone which made her sure he had not written it.
She read the message again, then looked up at the photograph which was turned towards her.
“Judy,” she said, in an odd, squeaky voice. “Judy!” She gave a laugh which sounded as odd as her voice and read the note again. “Judy!” she cried aloud—then started violently as the flat doorbell rang.
She backed away.
Jim had never called her Judy but always—
The doorbell rang again.
She folded the letter, put it back in the envelope and opened the door. She had no idea whom it might be; she felt breathless from the discovery, sensing a significance which she couldn’t yet understand—and then a tall man appeared in front of her, smiling, vaguely familiar, hatless, wearing a dark grey suit of faultless cut. His eyes held the look that had so often been in Jim’s. She felt, not realising what she felt, that she had much in common with this man; they could get along.
“Miss Lome?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Rollison. I do hope you can spare me a few minutes.”
She had the letter in her hand and wanted desperately to read it again and think about it and try to understand the significance of that “Judy”. She didn’t know this man; for all she knew he had come to sell her something she didn’t want. And yet—
He stepped past her while she hesitated.
“Thank you very much.”
His smile faded and his face became grave as he looked at her. She felt that he was assessing every feature of her face in his calm appraisal. Then he moved, easily and swiftly but without fuss and, before she had started to close the door, he was at the window, looking out. She had a feeling that he had forgotten her—put her out of his mind because he wanted to give his attention to something else. She never got over that feeling with him; she never forgot the way he looked while standing close to the wall. If ever she wanted a model for a gay, gallant adventurer, this was the man. The features were finely chiselled, the preoccupation in his gaze was something quite new to her. His eyebrows were dark and clearly marked, the corner of his mouth that she could see was turned down.
She felt instinctively that it would be a mistake to disturb him. The pause seemed unbearably long, although it could have been only two or three minutes, perhaps not even that. Then he relaxed and turned from the window, taking out his cigarette-case as he approached her again.
“Are the police still watching you?” he asked.
The question shattered the atmosphere of calm which he himself had created and her hand poised motionlessly above the cigarettes in the gold case. He stared into her questioning eyes and this time he was smiling.
“They were, weren’t they?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Are they doing so now?”
“I don’t think so.” She took a cigarette and he lit it for her. “Why?”
“I wanted to be sure whether you were being watched or I was being followed. Now I think I know.”
