CHAPTER 1

       Colin Lamb’s Narrative

      To use police terms: at 2.59 p.m. on September 9th, I was proceeding along Wilbraham Crescent in a westerly direction. It was my first introduction to Wilbraham Crescent, and frankly Wilbraham Crescent had me baffled.

      I had been following a hunch with a persistence becoming more dogged day by day as the hunch seemed less and less likely to pay off. I’m like that.

      The number I wanted was 61, and could I find it? No, I could not. Having studiously followed the numbers from 1 to 35, Wilbraham Crescent then appeared to end. A thoroughfare uncompromisingly labelled Albany Road barred my way. I turned back. On the north side there were no houses, only a wall. Behind the wall, blocks of modern flats soared upwards, the entrance of them being obviously in another road. No help there.

      I looked up at the numbers I was passing. 24, 23, 22, 21. Diana Lodge (presumably 20, with an orange cat on the gate post washing its face), 19—

      The door of 19 opened and a girl came out of it and down the path with what seemed to be the speed of a bomb. The likeness to a bomb was intensified by the screaming that accompanied her progress. It was high and thin and singularly inhuman. Through the gate the girl came and collided with me with a force that nearly knocked me off the pavement. She did not only collide. She clutched—a frenzied desperate clutching.

      ‘Steady,’ I said, as I recovered my balance. I shook her slightly. ‘Steady now.’

      The girl steadied. She still clutched, but she stopped screaming. Instead she gasped—deep sobbing gasps.

      I can’t say that I reacted to the situation with any brilliance. I asked her if anything was the matter. Recognizing that my question was singularly feeble I amended it.

      ‘What’s the matter?’

      The girl took a deep breath.

      ‘In there!’ she gestured behind her.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘There’s a man on the floor…dead… She was going to step on him.’

      ‘Who was? Why?’

      ‘I think—because she’s blind. And there’s blood on him.’ She looked down and loosened one of her clutching hands. ‘And on me. There’s blood on me.’

      ‘So there is,’ I said. I looked at the stains on my coat sleeve. ‘And on me as well now,’ I pointed out. I sighed and considered the situation. ‘You’d better take me in and show me,’ I said.

      But she began to shake violently.

      ‘I can’t—I can’t… I won’t go in there again.’

      ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ I looked round. There seemed nowhere very suitable to deposit a half-fainting girl. I lowered her gently to the pavement and sat her with her back against the iron railings.

      ‘You stay there,’ I said, ‘until I come back. I shan’t be long. You’ll be all right. Lean forward and put your head between your knees if you feel queer.’

      ‘I—I think I’m all right now.’

      She was a little doubtful about it, but I didn’t wait to parley. I gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and strode off briskly up the path. I went in through the door, hesitated a moment in the hallway, looked into the door on the left, found an empty dining-room, crossed the hall and entered the sitting-room opposite.

      The first thing I saw was an elderly woman with grey hair sitting in a chair. She turned her head sharply as I entered and said:

      ‘Who’s that?’

      I realized at once that the woman was blind. Her eyes which looked directly towards me were focused on a spot behind my left ear.

      I spoke abruptly and to the point.

      ‘A young woman rushed out into the street saying there was a dead man in here.’

      I felt a sense of absurdity as I said the words. It did not seem possible that there should be a dead man in this tidy room with this calm woman sitting in her chair with her hands folded.

      But her answer came at once.

      ‘Behind the sofa,’ she said.

      I moved round the angle of the sofa. I saw it then—the outflung arms—the glazed eyes—the congealing patch of blood.

      ‘How did this happen?’ I asked abruptly.

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘But—surely. Who is he?’

      ‘I have no idea.’

      ‘We must get the police.’ I looked round. ‘Where’s the telephone?’

      ‘I have not got a telephone.’

      I concentrated upon her more closely.

      ‘You live here? This is your house?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

      ‘Certainly. I came in from shopping—’ I noted the shopping bag flung on a chair near the door. ‘I came in here. I realized at once there was someone in the room. One does very easily when one is blind. I asked who was there. There was no answer—only the sound of someone breathing rather quickly. I went towards the sound—and then whoever it was cried out—something about someone being dead and that I was going to tread on him. And then whoever it was rushed past me out of the room screaming.’

      I nodded. Their stories clicked.

      ‘And what did you do?’

      ‘I felt my way very carefully until my foot touched an obstacle.’

      ‘And then?’

      ‘I knelt down. I touched something—a man’s hand. It was cold—there was no pulse… I got up and came over here and sat down—to wait. Someone was bound to come in due course. The young woman, whoever she was, would give the alarm. I thought I had better not leave the house.’

      I was impressed with the calm of this woman. She had not screamed, or stumbled panic-stricken from the house. She had sat down calmly to wait. It was the sensible thing to do, but it must have taken some doing.

      Her voice inquired:

      ‘Who exactly are you?’