After all, you couldn’t very well just walk through the front door and march up to the admittance desk and demand to see the girl who had had her eye gouged out.
If she was there, every member of the staff would know about it. Equally, they would do everything in their power to keep you away from her.
He carried on walking past the hospital, the railings of the hospital’s courtyard to his right. The courtyard was quiet and badly illuminated: a shadowed expanse on the other side of which the hospital lights twinkled and glowed, beacons to the infirm.
Of course! That was it! The one sure way to gain admittance to where she was.
He saw ahead of him the lights of a public house. If his memory served him right, it was The George, a popular haunt of the musical and literary sets of Fitzrovia. There was a chance he might bump into someone he knew, which would be inconvenient, but not disastrous. He didn’t see any way of achieving his goal without calling in. For one thing, he needed a fair dosing of Dutch courage for what he had in mind.
The George was heaving. He could only imagine that the performance had just finished at the nearby Queen’s Hall and the place was packed with concert-goers and musicians. He believed he could discern a musical lilt to the laughter, an exuberant delight that he felt was in keeping with an evening of symphonic appreciation.
When he eventually got served, he ordered a large whisky from the barmaid. She was a young chit of a girl, dead on her feet, with dark smudges of exhaustion under her eyes. He held the glass up to the light. It was clean enough to the naked eye, and no doubt the alcohol would prove beneficial on that score. He downed the contents in one gulp and pushed through the crowd, sheltering his empty glass against his chest like a fairground prize.
He took the glass outside.
Very well. The easy part was done. He had formed the intention. He had acquired the means. Now he had to carry it through.
He held the glass up to his face and ran the rim of it along his forehead.
Yes, somewhere there. Above his eyes.
But not the forehead. No.
He was going for immediate spectacle, rather than permanent disfigurement. No story was worth that.
He dashed the glass against the wall. The distinctive brittle explosion of sound interrupted the flow of joviality inside the pub. There were noises of mock solicitude and then laughter. The smashing of a glass was a trivial catastrophe after all.
In the glow from the pub windows, Bittlestone could see the jagged edge of the broken glass in his hand. He felt suddenly nauseous. A familiar, safe, useful object – a vessel for containing liquid – had been transformed into a dangerous weapon.
He stood and swayed on his feet. Either the alcohol was beginning to kick in, or he was about to faint. He knew that he would have to act quickly, and decisively, or not at all.
He felt with a finger around his eye, probing the loose skin beneath the bony ridge of his forehead.
Yes, there. Dangerous. But convincing.
He raised the glass and touched one point – the longest, most savage-looking – delicately to the place he had just explored. If he pushed it upwards he would avoid the eye. He would not need to go deep to produce the effect he wanted.
He felt the tip of the point bite his skin. His hand shook. The whole of his arm ached from the tension of holding that glass against his face.
The door of the pub creaked and sprang open. Bittlestone moved his hand away from his face and waited for the group which had emerged to make its way down Great Portland Street.
There was no more time for hesitation. That departure no doubt presaged a more general exodus.
It was now or never.
He brought the glass up briskly. Every vein in his body pulsed as his heart pounded and pumped the blood into and away from itself, in a fierce, vital roar of protest. As his hand went up, he felt a soaring exhilaration fill him. This was the most alive he had ever been. Even when he allowed himself to be pierced by lovers, he did not experience this intensity of being.
The moment the point broke through his skin was one of exquisite pleasure. His hand was no longer shaking. And so he was able to control the depth and angle of the intrusion.
He moved the glass slightly to one side, increasing the first shallow nip to a gash of – he judged – a quarter of an inch in extent.
He felt the hot liquid begin to trickle over his eye and down his face. He pulled the glass sharply out and let it drop, smashing to pieces on the pavement.
He held out a hand to fend off the wall. For some reason, the left hand side of his body went icy cold for a moment. His legs felt as if the bones had been removed from them and replaced with particularly elastic springs.
There were more people coming out of the pub. He turned his back on them. And began to grope his way back towards the dark quadrangle of the Middlesex Hospital.
TWENTY-FIVE
The following day, Saturday, the weather was dreary again.
Quinn woke from a dissatisfying dream which was understandably coloured by the events of the previous night. Something troubling, a residue of horror lingered. He drew back the edge of his curtain to escape it, confronting the meagre gleam of the day.
He could hear raised voices coming from outside his door; high, anxious cries of female agitation. It was this altercation that had woken him.
He could make out Mrs Ibbott’s voice, though not what she was saying. The other voice, well, it was a while since he had heard that other voice. It was not recognizable as belonging to any of the other residents in the lodging house, but it did.
Quinn felt a dreadful sinking feeling as he put on his dressing gown and went out on to the landing.
He found Mrs Ibbott on the landing below, outside Miss Dillard’s room. There was a ferocious, oath-littered stream of invective coming from the other side of the door.
‘She’s drunk,’ said Mrs Ibbott bluntly.
‘But …’
‘Yes, I know. It’s not even eight o’clock yet. I do believe she has been drinking through the night.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘Mr Quinn, I am not a hard-hearted woman. I hope that I am not.’
‘Of course not, Mrs Ibbott.’
‘I have made allowances over the years. Considerable allowances. You would not know.’
‘Oh, but I do know, Mrs Ibbott.’
‘Well, I don’t mean to bring that up, but yes, there were months, when – because of her weakness – she had insufficient money for both rent and food, and I … I …’
‘You made allowances.’
‘I could not see a lady lodger of mine starve to death in my own house. Neither could I see her turned out on to the street to die in a gutter somewhere.’
‘It speaks volumes for your humanity, Mrs Ibbott.’
‘Mr Quinn, I ask you … do you hear … do you hear what she calls me?’
‘I do. I’m very much afraid I do. Would you like me to … would you like me to see if she will speak to me?’
‘Oh, Mr Quinn, I am not sure that is a good idea. You know, do you not, that Miss Dillard is rather … soft on you?’
‘I … I didn’t …’
‘Oh, come now, Mr Quinn. Surely you realized?’
Quinn felt himself blush. Thankfully, he noticed that it had gone quiet inside Miss Dillard’s room, so was able to change the subject. ‘Perhaps she’s gone to sleep?’
But it was not entirely silent within. A small regular throb of weeping came to them.
Quinn rapped gently on the door. ‘Miss Dillard? May I come in? It is I, Mr Quinn. Silas.’
Mrs Ibbott shook her head dubiously. ‘She will not want to see you, Mr Quinn,’ she whispered. ‘She will not want to see you like this.’
But as if solely to contradict Mrs Ibbott, the door to Miss Dillard’s room began to open.
Quinn had never been in any of the other residents’ rooms before. What shocked him most about Miss Dillard’s room was how small it was. The dimensions of his room seemed palatial in comparison. But, of course, he was a lodger who always paid his rent on time, and could afford the greater rent required for a larger room. He was a working man, in fact, a solidly respectable officer of the law. He may have fallen from the social class of his parents, but in so doing he had become his own man. He wasn’t dependent on the crumbs of a tiny private income, from a pitiful inheritance divided by God knows how many sisters.