by R. N. Morris
Heat came to Sir Edward’s cheeks. He was evidently embarrassed by the reminder of the biblical quote.
‘You forget, I was there,’ continued Quinn. ‘I saw the baby separated from its mother. I saw the perambulator tip up. I saw the mother’s face as the crowd surged over the spot where her mite had fallen. If I thought for one moment that I was in any way responsible for that, if I believed that any act of mine had led to that child’s death, do you not think that I would take my revolver and blow out my brains? Straight away. Do you think I would be able to live with myself?’
‘I am quite aware of your morbid inclinations, Quinn. And have often thought that your antics can be explained by a desire to draw the angel of death towards yourself. You rather mope after death, like . . . well, like an unrequited lover. So, yes, I do believe you. It would take far less provocation than this to have you . . . do something regrettable.’ Sir Edward shook his head impatiently. ‘It is just so confoundedly inconvenient, Quinn.’
‘You don’t need to tell me that, sir.’
‘I am thankful to you for reminding me of the verse.’
Quinn bowed his head. He could risk a gesture of meekness and surrender now; he had the sense that the crisis had passed.
He was wrong.
‘Unfortunately there are those above us both who do not seem capable of following that lesson. It has again been suggested to me, Quinn, that you should be removed from your command. There is no logic to it, of course. But we both know that the powers that be are not always guided by logic. I myself accept that you cannot be blamed for this terrible tragedy. My masters are keen to blame someone. And I am afraid that your previous behaviour has not done you any favours here. Your handling of the last case in particular is being held against you.’
‘Sir Michael Esslyn is behind this, is he not?’
‘What? Eh? Let’s leave the Home Office out of this, shall we? I’m afraid the general feeling is that you can no longer be trusted to run the department. However, I have managed to persuade them that you should be kept on the case, for the time being at least.’
‘Thank you, Sir Edward.’
Sir Edward waved a hand in demurral. ‘However, you will conduct the case under supervision from now on.’
‘I see. Who, sir?’
‘Who?’
‘Who will you be placing over me?’
‘I need to think about that, Quinn. You shall know my decision in the morning.’
‘Very well, sir. Will that be all?’
‘The important thing now is that you solve the case. As quickly as possible, and without further mishap. Is that understood?’
‘Yes.’
‘You will share everything, all your discoveries, and any theories you have been pursuing, with the officer I appoint to oversee the case – whoever that may be. And you will follow his direction in terms of the future conduct of the case.’
Sir Edward pursed his lips and gave a terse nod to dismiss Quinn. But he had one more thing to say. ‘What lesson have we learnt from all this, Quinn?’
‘Lesson?’ Quinn’s voice betrayed his apprehension that Sir Edward was about to subject him to another biblical homily.
‘Events, Quinn. We are all the victims of events.’
For once, he did not want her to look at him. He knew she was there, at her desk. He could hear the clatter of her typewriter. He recognized her angry energy in the rapid tap-tap-tap. More than that, he could sense her awareness of him.
He did not flatter himself. Her interest was wholly hostile.
What he wanted most from a human being now was a sympathetic glance. An encouraging word, even. But these were things he knew he could not expect from her. She hated him; it was as simple as that.
No, he did not want her to look at him. And he would not be so weak as to look at her.
Except, how could he prevent himself?
He stood over Miss Latterly’s desk until she stopped typing and looked up at him. ‘Yes?’ Her voice was charged with its usual antagonism.
A stab of disappointment twisted itself into Quinn’s misery. He shook his head and moved on.
‘I heard what happened,’ she called after him.
He stopped and half-turned back. Something in her voice, not quite softness, but a relenting, delayed him.
‘At the House of Blackley.’
Quinn waited for the words of bitterness and accusation that would inevitably follow.
They did not come. Only: ‘You were there, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘It must have been terrible.’
Quinn nodded acknowledgement of her concern.
‘I heard a baby died.’ Her voice was suddenly very fragile and then, in almost the same moment, broken. Her face all at once tear-soaked. Quinn was shocked by the convulsive force rippling in her throat, shaking out bawling sobs of pain.
He rushed to her, knelt and put a comforting arm around her shoulder. He pulled her hot face into his chest.
She pulled away from him abruptly with a stifled cry of repugnance. Quinn backed away too, averting his eyes from her distress, allowing her to compose herself.
He thought he sensed her usual stiffness return, as she struggled to regain control of her emotions. ‘I am sorry.’
His nervous glance caught her dabbing at her eyes. Her face was flushed with colour. He was taken aback by the sudden realization of her beauty.
‘I don’t know how you bear it,’ she continued. ‘You must have to confront so much tragedy.’
‘We all have our own ways of dealing with it,’ said Quinn automatically.
‘And what is yours?’
Quinn hesitated, forced to consider the pat formula he had uttered without thought. He was not sure he knew the answer to her question. ‘In truth, I have never had to deal with anything like this before. I would say, usually, I deal with . . . tragedy . . . with death, violent death . . . I deal with it by setting myself against those responsible, and not resting until I have brought them to book. In this case, however, it is impossible to say who was responsible. There is no one for me to set myself against. I cannot round up everyone who was in the House of Blackley today.’
‘It was an accident, a terrible accident.’
‘Was it? Something took over the crowd – something malevolent, unruly, evil. It was almost as if those who died were sacrificed to it. And the spirit that possessed them seemed to exult.’
‘You’re frightening me.’
‘I’m sorry. Forgive me. I didn’t mean it. They were just people. People panicking.’
‘But people can do these things. People can do such horrible things.’
‘And it is my job – the job of men like me – to stop them.’ Quinn smiled and nodded reassuringly. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ Miss Latterly smiled bravely. ‘And here was I, trying to . . .’ She broke off and dipped her head shyly.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I was trying to . . . I hoped I might . . .’ Miss Latterly looked up, her eyes wide and unblinking as she stared into his. ‘I could see your unhappiness. How miserable you were. How upset you really were by this. I thought it might help you if you were able to talk about it. But I can’t . . . I’m not strong enough . . . I don’t want to know about these things.’
‘There’s no reason why you should.’
‘But it’s cruel of me. I realize that I have been cruel to you.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, yes. And the worst of it is I can’t help it. I can’t be any other way. I can’t help you.’
‘You have helped me.’
‘I want you to know the pain, the horror, the suffering . . . And I want you to keep it a long way away from me!’ It was almost a command. Her words were steeled with a forbidding despair.
Quinn rose to his feet and bowed. He had glimpsed the depth of feeling of which she was capable, only to have it snatched away from him.
Miss Latterly pushed
out both hands, as if he was still in front of her and she was driving him away. ‘I can’t ever, ever love you!’
What was most extraordinary – and most devastating – about this statement was the acknowledgement that she had considered the possibility.
The Eyes of Miss Dillard
The sun was setting as Quinn darted out of New Scotland Yard. He had his head down, scanning the pavement of Victoria Embankment as if for scraps of comfort, shunning the mindless beauty of the evening. As he came out he had carelessly caught a glimpse of it: the sky igniting in streaks of copper fire. It stirred him to revulsion. Mindless, yes, that was the word for it. Mindless and heartless and mocking. An empty spectacle. Gaudy and in poor taste. If this was Sir Edward’s God attempting to make amends for the horror of the afternoon, then Quinn rejected Him with contempt.
He could not be bought off, like a child with a treat.
He fled north towards Piccadilly, half in a trance, numbed by the day’s events.
A different contempt drove him to avoid the faces of the pedestrians who crossed his path. They were the guilty ones. And their God, who had allowed it, was complicit.
But there was something unacknowledged at the heart of his misery. Oh, it was true enough – as he had avowed to Sir Edward – that he could not be held responsible for what had happened. But there was more to it than that. There was something he had to confront. And it was harder to face than the easy glory above his head.
Quinn passed the newspaper vendor outside Piccadilly Circus tube station without buying a paper. The placard the man was wearing put him off: THREE MORE DEAD AT BLACKLEY’S.
He entered the booking hall. The tube was not his preferred mode of transport. Normally he liked to sit on the open deck of an omnibus, looking down on the streets it was his duty to protect. Occasionally he would extend his journey, taking circuitous routes so that he could take in more of the city. He’d even do so in the rain, exulting in the privilege of isolation while other passengers huddled inside. On such days it was possible to believe that the city belonged to him alone.
This evening some instinct drove him underground. He had had all privileges revoked, he felt. Even that of sitting on the upper deck of an omnibus.
Was he mad? To go into the bowels of the underground railway system, into a crowded and confined place, after what he had experienced at Blackley’s?
Or was he simply punishing himself? It couldn’t be discounted.
He showed his warrant card to the guard at the ticket barrier.
The stairs descended in a dizzying spiral. With each step he felt himself coming closer to the confrontation he dreaded. The weight of an unacknowledged guilt pulled him down. If this turned out to be the stairway to hell he would not have complained.
He had shared their excitement. He had understood their glee. If he had not been there to investigate Amélie’s murder, he could well have gone out of the same ghoulish curiosity as everyone else; out of the same primitive urge to place himself close to death, in order to prove himself stronger than it.
And if he had been there as a member of the crowd it was perfectly conceivable, when the mood had changed and panic had taken hold, that he could have been the one who trampled the baby.
There but for the grace of God . . .
Was that the point of God, then? As a recipient of our pathetic gratitude for having once again escaped the fate of some other pitiable wretch?
And if we choose not to give thanks? If we choose instead to rage against the humiliation of it all, to wrest back some power to ourselves; to declare that it is not through God’s grace but through our own bloody-mindedness that we survive: where does that leave us?
Quinn articulated the conclusion to which he had been led: it leaves us in a place where we have no one to answer to but ourselves.
He came out on to the westbound platform of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway. The platform was crowded but Quinn had never felt more alone. The isolation that had once seemed a privilege was suddenly a curse.
Quinn inserted his front door key with a frown. He had no memory of making the short walk from Brompton Road tube station to his lodging house, and he was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he made no effort to suppress the creak of the front door as he opened it.
The door to the dining room opened almost immediately and his landlady, Mrs Ibbott, bounded out. Her eyes looked upon him with solicitude; her gentle smile beamed a good-hearted welcome. It seemed almost as if she was about to throw open her arms and pull him into her spreading bosom.
At that moment it struck him that the sun setting over the Thames was not nearly as beautiful as this kindly, middle-aged woman.
‘Ah, Mr Quinn, it is you! This is fortuitous. We are just about to serve dinner. Would you care to join us? I know you normally prefer to eat in your room, but after what happened today we thought it would be nice if we all sat down together.’
‘How do you mean? What happened?’
‘The disaster at Blackley’s. Did you not hear about it?’
‘Oh, yes. I do beg your pardon. I thought you were perhaps referring to something else. Something to do with you, or Miss Ibbott, perhaps.’
‘I think it is at times like this that we must come together and . . .’ Mrs Ibbott broke off while she sought the right word. ‘Appreciate what we have.’
‘What we have?’
‘One another, I mean.’
Quinn was astonished. It had never occurred to him to think of his relationship to the other occupants of the house in such a way. ‘We have one another?’
Mrs Ibbott missed the interrogative tone in Quinn’s words. ‘Very well put, Mr Quinn. We have one another.’
Quinn stared at her in amazement.
‘So you will join us?’
‘I must take off my hat.’ Quinn put this forward as if it represented an insurmountable hurdle.
‘And after that, you will join us.’ Mrs Ibbott returned to the dining room. As far as she was concerned, the matter was settled.
Whether it was Quinn’s unwonted presence or some other influence, the mood in the dining room was muted. Invariably the voluble banter of the two youngest male residents of the house, Messrs Appleby and Timberley, could be heard through the wall. The braying sound was usually enough to send Quinn tiptoeing upstairs; the only reason he might welcome it was because it distracted attention from his entrance.
Appleby and Timberley both worked in some capacity at the Natural History Museum. The two men shared a room on the first floor of the house. They took delight in baiting some of the other lodgers, especially the older ones. In this, they were vying for the appreciation of Miss Mary Ibbott.
Miss Ibbott pretended to a degree of daintiness and even elegance in her demeanour, which the two young wags constantly set themselves to undo. The weapon they used against her was her own frivolity, the true nature of which had a touch of coarseness to it. If they could provoke her to fits of uncontrollable guffawing, they considered their work well done. An unladylike snort was their most sought-after prize or, failing that, a mock expostulation such as ‘You’re wicked!’ (When they all knew that Miss Ibbott was the wicked one, a willing accomplice in their mischief and her own downfall.)
But it was all done in the most good-natured way. And the high spirits of ‘the young people’ were tolerated, and even enjoyed, by those who sensed themselves to be the butt of the jocularity but had the wisdom not to be offended by it, even when they did not understand it.
Tonight, however, Messrs Appleby and Timberley were subdued, as was their audience, Miss Ibbott.
As Quinn entered the room all eyes turned towards him; he sensed a kind of desperation in the eagerness of this communal glance – not for his presence in particular, but for any kind of relief from the tedium of their own company. In that moment he thought he understood the forced exuberance of the two young men. It was to hide from them all the emptiness of their existences.
It was n
ot quite true to say that all eyes had turned towards him. One pair remained steadfastly averted. A pair of eyes that he had only recently looked into. And although these eyes were hidden from him now, the memory of their colour – the unexpected richness of those pewter-grey discs – still startled him.
The eyes of Miss Dillard.
It had to be said that her eyes were the only impressive thing about Miss Dillard. And because most people never took the trouble to look into them, they never saw the strength and the humanity that resided there. To the other residents, she was a pitiable figure. Poor Miss Dillard, were words that often went together. A woman of a certain age. Her looks, never much to speak of, now on the verge of collapse. Her clothes, long out of fashion and visibly repaired, hung loosely with a wan, threadbare shapelessness. Her breath, stale and possibly sickly – and these days too often tinged with a whiff of sherry.
The smell of alcohol and the looseness of her clothes were connected. The small annuity that had come to her after her parents’ deaths did not always allow her to do all that she wished to do. Once the rent was paid and other expenses taken care of, it was sometimes a choice between regular meals and the occasional consolation of fortified wine.
It was small wonder that no one looked into her eyes. Doubtless they were afraid of what they might see there.
But Quinn had once dared to. At that moment, he had ceased to pity her; he had begun to understand her. For her part, it seemed her gaze was not one of simple neediness, as he might have expected. He saw compassion there, compassion that was directed towards him. It was strangely humbling.
The only spare place at the table was the one next to Miss Dillard. At one time, the prospect of sitting next to her would have filled him with dread. Not so long ago there had been a rumour circulating that she had set her cap for him, after she had been disappointed in love by one of the other male lodgers, since departed.
