'That's the Mayoress,' the porter said.
Anne went back. But something had happened. The bottle of wine was almost empty and the paper lay on the floor at Mr Davis's feet. Two sundaes had been laid in place, but Mr Davis hadn't touched his. It wasn't politeness; something had put him out. He growled at her, 'Where have you been?' She tried to see what he had been reading; it wasn't the financial page any more, but she could make out only the main headlines: 'Decree Nisi for Lady—' the name was too complicated to read upside down; 'Manslaughter Verdict on Motorist'. Mr Davis said, 'I don't know what's wrong with the place. They've put salt or something in the sundaes.' He turned his furious dewlapped face at the passing waiter. 'Call this a Knickerbocker Glory?'
'I'll bring you another, sir.'
'You won't. My bill.'
'So we call it a day,' Anne said.
Mr Davis looked up from the bill with something very like fear. 'No, no,' he said, 'I didn't mean that. You won't go and leave me flat now?'
'Well, what do you want to do, the flickers?'
'I thought,' Mr Davis said, 'you might come back with me to my place and have a tune on the radio and a glass of something good. We might foot it together a bit, eh?' He wasn't looking at her; he was hardly thinking of what he was saying. He didn't look dangerous. Anne thought she knew his type, you could pass them off with a kiss or two, and when they were drunk tell them a sentimental story until they began to think you were their sister. This would be the last: soon she would be Mather's; she would be safe. But first she was going to learn where Mr Davis lived.
As they came out into the square the carol singers broke on them, six small boys without an idea of a tune between them. They wore wool gloves and mufflers and they stood across Mr Davis's path chanting: 'Mark my footsteps well, my page.'
'Taxi, sir?' the porter asked.
'No.' Mr Davis explained to Anne, 'It saves threepence to take one from the rank in the Tanneries.' But the boys got in his way, holding out their caps for money.' Get out of the way,' Mr Davis said. With the intuition of children they recognized his uneasiness and baited him, pursuing him along the kerb, singing: 'Follow in them boldly.' The loungers outside the Crown turned to look. Somebody clapped. Mr Davis suddenly rounded and seized the hair of the boy nearest him; he pulled it till the boy screamed; pulled it till a tuft came out between his fingers. He said, 'That will teach you,' and sinking back a moment later in the taxi from the rank in the Tanneries, he said with pleasure, 'They can't play with me.' His mouth was open and his lip was wet with saliva; he brooded over his victory in the same way as he had brooded over the lobster; he didn't look to Anne as safe as she had thought. She reminded herself that he was only an agent. He knew the murderer, Raven said; he hadn't committed it himself.
'What's that building?' she asked, seeing a great black glass-front stand out from the Victorian street of sober offices where once the leather-workers had tanned their skins.
'Midland Steel,' Mr Davis said.
'Do you work there?'
Mr Davis for the first time returned look for look. 'What made you think that?'
'I don't know,' Anne said and recognized with uneasiness that Mr Davis was only simple when the wind stood one way.
'Do you think you could like me?' Mr Davis said, fingering her knee.
'I dare say I might.'
The taxi had left the Tanneries. It heaved over a net of tramlines and came out into the Station Approach. 'Do you live out of town?'
'Just at the edge,' Mr Davis said.
'They ought to spend more on lighting in this place.'
'You're a cute little girl,' Mr Davis said. 'I bet you know what's what.'
'It's no good looking for eggshell if that's what you mean,' Anne said, as they drove under the great steel bridge that carried the line on to York. There were only two lamps on the whole of the long steep gradient to the station. Over a wooden fence you could see the shunted trucks on the side line, the stacked coal ready for entrainment. An old taxi and a bus waited for passengers outside the small dingy station entrance. Built in 1860 it hadn't kept pace with Nottwich.
'You've got a long way to go to work,' Anne said.
'We are nearly there.'
The taxi turned to the left. Anne read the name of the road: Khyber Avenue, a long row of mean villas showing apartment cards. The taxi stopped at the end of the road. Anne said, 'You don't mean you live here?' Mr Davis was paying off the driver. 'Number sixty-one,' he said (Anne noticed there was no card in this window between the pane and the thick lace curtains). He smiled in a soft ingratiating way and said, 'It's really nice inside, dear.' He put a key in the lock and thrust her firmly forward into a little dimly lit hall with a hatstand. He hung up his hat and walked softly towards the stairs on his toes. There was a smell of gas and greens. A blue fan of flame lit up a dusty plant.
'We'll turn on the wireless,' Mr Davis said, 'and have a tune.'
A door opened in the passage and a woman's voice said, 'Who's that?'
'Just Mr Cholmondeley.'
'Don't forget to pay before you go up.'
'The first floor,' Mr Davis said. 'The room straight ahead of you. I won't be a moment,' and he waited on the stairs till she passed him. The coins clinked in his pocket as his hand groped for them.
There was a wireless in the room, standing on a marble washstand, but there was certainly no space to dance in, for the big double bed filled the room. There was nothing to show the place was ever lived in: there was dust on the wardrobe mirror and the ewer beside the loud speaker was dry. Anne looked out of the window behind the bedposts on a little dark yard. Her hand trembled against the sash: this was more than she had bargained for. Mr Davis opened the door.
She was badly frightened. It made her take the offensive. She said at once, 'So you call yourself Mr Cholmondeley?'
He blinked at her, closing the door softly behind him: 'What if I do?'
'And you said you were taking me home. This isn't your home.'
Mr Davis sat down on the bed and took off his shoes. He said, 'We mustn't make a noise, dear. The old woman doesn't like it.' He opened the door of the washstand and took out a cardboard box; it spilt soft icing sugar out of its cracks all over the bed and the floor as he came towards her. 'Have a piece of Turkish Delight.'
'This isn't your home,' she persisted.
Mr Davis, with his fingers half-way to his mouth, said, 'Of course it isn't. You don't think I'd take you to my home, do you? You aren't as green as that. I'm not going to lose my reputation.' He said, 'We'll have a tune, shall we, first?' And turning the dials he set the instrument squealing and moaning. 'Lot of atmospherics about,' Mr Davis said, twisting and turning the dials until very far away you could hear a dance band playing, a dreamy rhythm underneath the shrieking in the air; you could just discern the tune: 'Night light, Love light.'
'It's our own Nottwich programme,' Mr Davis said. 'There isn't a better band on the Midland Regional. From the Grand. Let's do a step or two,' and grasping her round the waist he began to shake up and down between the bed and the wall.
'I've known better floors,' Anne said, trying to keep up her spirits with her own hopeless form of humour,' but I've never known a worse crush,' and Mr Davis said, 'That's good. I'll remember that.' Quite suddenly, blowing off relics of icing sugar which clung round his mouth, he grew passionate. He fastened his lips on her neck. She pushed him away and laughed at him at the same time. She had to keep her head. 'Now I know what a rock feels like,' she said, 'when the sea amen—anem—damn, I can never say that word.'