"If there's anything in your idea," Mr Rennit said, "the cake was given to the wrong man. We've only got to find the right one. It's a simple matter of tracing. Jones and I know all about tracing. We start from Mrs Bellairs. She told you the weight, but why did she tell you the weight? Because she mistook you in the dark for the other man. There must be some resemblance. . ." Mr Rennit exchanged a look with Jones. "It all boils down to finding Mrs Bellairs. That's not very difficult. Jones will do that."
"It would be easiest of all for me to ask for her -- at the Free Mothers."
"I'd advise you to let Jones see to it."
"They'd think he was a tout."
"It wouldn't do at all for a client to make his own investigations, not at all."
"If there's nothing in my story," Rowe said, "they'll give me Mrs Bellairs' address. If I'm right they'll try to kill me, because, though the cake's gone, I know there was a cake, and that there are people who want the cake. There's the work for Jones, to keep his eye on me."
Jones shifted his hat uneasily and tried to catch his employer's eye. He cleared his throat and Mr Rennit asked, "What is it, A.2?"
"Won't do, sir," Jones said.
"No?"
"Unprofessional, sir."
"I agree with Jones," Mr Rennit said.
All the same, in spite of Jones, Rowe had his way. He came out into the shattered street and made his sombre way between the ruins of Holborn. In his lonely state to have confessed his identity to someone was almost like making a friend. Always before it had been discovered, even at the warden's post; it came out sooner or later, like cowardice. They were extraordinary the tricks and turns of fate, the way conversations came round, the long memories some people had for names. Now in the strange torn landscape where London shops were reduced to a stone ground-plan like those of Pompeii he moved with familiarity; he was part of this destruction as he was no longer part of the past -- the long weekends in the country, the laughter up lanes in the evening, the swallows gathering on telegraph wires, peace.
Peace had come to an end quite suddenly on an August the thirty-first -- the world waited another year. He moved like a bit of stone among the other stones -- he was protectively coloured, and he felt at times, breaking the surface of his remorse, a kind of evil pride like that a leopard might feel moving in harmony with all the other spots on the world's surface, only with greater power. He had not been a criminal when he murdered; it was afterwards that he began to grow into criminality like a habit of thought. That these men should have tried to kill him who had succeeded at one blow in destroying beauty, goodness, peace -- it was a form of impertinence. There were times when he felt the whole world's criminality was his; and then suddenly at some trivial sight -- a woman's bag, a face on an elevator going up as he went down, a picture in a paper -- all the pride seeped out of him. He was aware only of the stupidity of his act; he wanted to creep out of sight and weep; he wanted to forget that he had ever been happy. A voice would whisper, "You say you killed for pity; why don't you have pity on yourself?" Why not indeed? except that it is easier to kill someone you love than to kill yourself.
2
The Free Mothers had taken over an empty office in a huge white modern block off the Strand. It was like going into a mechanised mortuary with a separate lift for every slab. Rowe moved steadily upwards in silence for five floors: a long passage, frosted glass, somebody in pince-nez stepped into the lift carrying a file marked "Most Immediate" and they moved on smoothly upwards. A door on the seventh floor was marked "Comforts for Mothers of the Free Nations. Inquiries."
He began to believe that after all Mr Rennit was right. The stark efficient middle-class woman who sat at a typewriter was so obviously incorruptible and unpaid. She wore a little button to show she was honorary. "Yes?" she asked sharply and all his anger and pride drained away. He tried to remember what the stranger had said -- about the cake not being intended for him. There was really nothing sinister in the phrase so far as he could now remember it, and as for the taste, hadn't he often woken at night with that upon his tongue?
"Yes? " the woman repeated briskly.
"I came," Rowe said, "to try and find out the address of a Mrs Bellairs."
"No lady of that name works here."
"It was in connection with the fête."
"Oh, they were all voluntary helpers. We can't possibly disclose addresses of voluntary helpers."
"Apparently," Rowe said, "a mistake was made. I was given a cake which didn't belong to me. . ."
"I'll inquire," the stark lady said and went into an inner room. He had just long enough to wonder whether after all he had been wise. He should have brought A.2 up with him. But then the normality of everything came back; he was the only abnormal thing there. The honorary helper stood in the doorway and said, "Will you come through, please?" He took a quick glance at her typewriter as he went by; he could read "The Dowager Lady Cradbrooke thanks Mrs J. A. Smythe-Philipps for her kind gift of tea and flour. . ." Then he went in.
He had never become accustomed to chance stabs: only when the loved person is out of reach does love become complete. The colour of the hair and the size of the body -- something very small and neat and incapable, you would say, of inflicting pain -- this was enough to make him hesitate just inside the room. There were no other resemblances, but when the girl spoke -- in the slightest of foreign accents -- he felt the kind of astonishment one feels at a party hearing the woman one loves talking in a stranger's tone to a stranger. It was not an uncommon occurrence; he would follow people into shops, he would wait at street corners because of a small resemblance, just as though the woman he loved was only lost and might be discovered any day in a crowd.
She said, "You came about a cake?"
He watched her closely: they had so little in common compared with the great difference, that one was alive and the other dead. He said, "A man came to see me last night -- I suppose from this office."
He fumbled for words because it was just as absurd to think that this girl might be mixed up in a crime as to think of Alice -- except as a victim. "I had won a cake in a raffle at your fête -- but there seemed to be some mistake."
"I don't understand."
"A bomb fell before I could make out what it was he wanted to tell me."
"But no one could have come from here," she said. "What did he look like?"
"Very small and dark with twisted shoulders -- practically a cripple."
"There is no one like that here."
"I thought perhaps that if I found Mrs Bellairs. . ." The name seemed to convey nothing. "One of the helpers at the fête."
"They were all volunteers," the girl explained. "I dare say we could find the address for you through the organizers, but is it so -- important?"
A screen divided the room in two; he had imagined they were alone, but as the girl spoke a young man came round the screen. He had the same fine features as the girl; she introduced him, "This is my brother, Mr. . ."