The door was opened and the women pushed in; almost at once he was alone on the pavement beside the slot machine and the jumble-sale poster: 'Entrance 6d.' It couldn't be her bag, he told himself, there must be hundreds like it, but nevertheless he pursued it through the pitch-pine door. 'And lead us not into temptation,' the vicar was saying from a dais at one end of the hall above the old hats and the chipped vases and the stacks of women's underwear. When the prayer was finished he was flung by the pressure of the crowd against a stall of fancy goods: little framed amateur water-colours of lakeland scenery, gaudy cigarette boxes from Italian holidays, brass ashtrays and a row of discarded novels. Then the crowd lifted him and pushed on towards the favourite stall. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn't seek for any individual in the crowd, but that didn't matter, for he found himself pressed against a stall, on the other side of which the old woman stood. He leant across and stared at the bag; he remembered how the girl had said, 'My name's Anne,' and there, impressed on the leather, was a faint initial A, where a chromium letter had been removed. He looked up, he didn't notice that there was another man beside the stall, his eyes were rilled with the image of a dusty wicked face.
He was shocked by it just as he had been shocked by Mr Cholmondeley's duplicity. He felt no guilt about the old War Minister, he was one of the great ones of the world, one of those who 'sat', he knew all the right words, he was educated, 'in the chief seats at the synagogues', and if he was sometimes a little worried by the memory of the secretary's whisper through the imperfectly shut door, he could always tell himself that he had shot her in self-defence. But this was eviclass="underline" that people of the same class should prey on each other. He thrust himself along the edge of the stall until he was by her side. He bent down. He whispered, 'How did you get that bag?' but an arrowhead of predatory women forced themselves between; she couldn't even have seen who had whispered to her. As far as she knew it might have been a woman mistaking it for a bargain on one of the stalls, but nevertheless the question had scared her. He saw her elbowing her way to the door and he fought to follow her.
When he got out of the hall she was just in sight, trailing her long old-fashioned skirt round a corner. He walked fast. He didn't notice in his hurry that he in his turn was followed by a man whose clothes he would immediately have recognized, the soft hat and overcoat worn like a uniform. Very soon he began to remember the road they took; he had been this way with the girl. It was like retracing in mind an old experience. A newspaper shop would come in sight next moment, a policeman had stood just there, he had intended to kill her, to take her out somewhere beyond the houses and shoot her quite painlessly in the back. The wrinkled deep malice in the face he had seen across the stall seemed to nod at him: 'You needn't worry, we have seen to all that for you.'
It was incredible how quickly the old woman scuttled. She held the bag in one hand, lifted the absurd long skirt with the other; she was like a female Rip Van Winkle who had emerged from her sleep in the clothes of fifty years ago. He thought: they've done something to her, but who are 'they'? She hadn't been to the police; she'd believed his story; it was only to Cholmondeley's advantage that she should disappear. For the first time since his mother died he was afraid for someone else, because he knew too well that Cholmondeley had no scruples.
Past the station she turned to the left up Khyber Avenue, a line of dingy apartment houses. Coarse grey lace quite hid the interior of little rooms save when a plant in a jardiniere pressed glossy green palms against the glass between the lace. There were no bright geraniums lapping up the air behind closed panes: those scarlet flowers belong to a poorer class than the occupants of Khyber Avenue, to the exploited. In Khyber Avenue they had progressed to the aspidistra of the small exploiters. They were all Cholmondeleys on a tiny scale. Outside No .61 the old woman had to wait and fumble for her key; it gave Raven time to catch her up. He put his foot against the closing door and said, 'I want to ask you some questions.'
'Get out,' the old woman said. 'We don't 'ave anything to do with your sort.'
He pressed the door steadily open. 'You'd better listen,' he said. 'It'd be good for you.' She stumbled backwards amongst the crowded litter of the little dark halclass="underline" he noted it all with hatred: the glass case with a stuffed pheasant, the moth-eaten head of a stag picked up at a country auction to act as a hat-stand, the black metal umbrella-holder painted with gold stars, the little pink glass shade over the gas-jet. He said, 'Where did you get that bag? Oh,' he said, 'it wouldn't take much to make me squeeze your old neck.'
'Acky!' the old woman screamed. 'Acky!'
'What do you do here, eh?' He opened one of the two doors at random off the hall and saw a long cheap couch with the ticking coming through the cover, a large gilt mirror, a picture of a naked girl knee-deep in the sea; the place reeked of scent and stale gas.
'Acky!' the old woman screamed again. 'Acky!'
He said, 'So that's it, eh? You old bawd,' and turned back into the hall. But she was supported now. She had Acky with her; he had come through to her side from the back of the house on rubber-soled shoes, making no sound. Tall and bald, with a shifty pious look, he faced Raven. 'What d'you want, my man?' He belonged to a different class altogether: a good school and a theological college had formed his accent; something else had broken his nose.
'What names!' the old woman said, turning on Raven from under Acky's protecting arm.
Raven said, 'I'm in a hurry. I don't want to break up this place. Tell me where you got that bag.'
'If you refer to my wife's reticule,' the bald man said, 'it was given her—was it not, Tiny?—by a lodger.'
'When?'
'A few nights ago.'
'Where is she now?'
'She only stayed one night.'
'Why did she give her bag to you?'
'We only pass this way once,' Acky said, 'and therefore—you know the quotation?'
'Was she alone?'
'Of course she wasn't alone,' the old woman said. Acky coughed, put his hand over her face and pushed her gently behind him. 'Her betrothed,' he said, 'was with her.' He advanced towards Raven. 'That face,' he said, 'is somehow familiar. Tiny, my dear, fetch me a copy of the Journal.'
'No need,' Raven said. 'It's me all right.' He said, 'You've lied about that bag. If the girl was here, it was last night. I'm going to search this bawdy house of yours.'
'Tiny,' her husband said, 'go out at the back and call the police.' Raven's hand was on his gun, but he didn't move, he didn't draw it, his eyes were on the old woman as she trailed indeterminately through the kitchen door. 'Hurry, Tiny, my dear.'
Raven said, 'If I thought she was going, I'd shoot you straight, but she's not going to any police. You're more afraid of them than I am. She's in the kitchen now hiding in a corner.' Acky said, 'Oh no, I assure you she's gone; I heard the door; you can see for yourself,' and as Raven passed him he raised his hand and struck with a knuckle-duster at a spot behind Raven's ear.