The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 Read Online Free Page A

was he seemed little inclined to share it with the passengers, and carried on a gloomy exchange with his colleague.
    One of the pushier examples of the City type demanded to know what was going on.
    The gateman turned to him with a sour, almost insubordinate eye. Weighing up his options, which for a moment seemed to sit between personal insult and social revolution, the gateman at last remembered the uniform he was wearing and touched the peak of his cap in deference. He sniffed noisily, deeply, as if the shifting of snot in his nose would imbue his words with more authority. ‘We’re being held at a signal.’
    From another quarter came the question, ‘Why did the lights go out?’ To which he merely replied, ‘They’re back on now, in’t they?’
    How easy it was for him to say that, thought Quinn. He had not nearly killed a man in the darkness.
    To forestall any further interrogation, the gateman took himself back out on to his platform.
    At last, the train lurched back into motion. Before long it was pulling into the next station. After the darkness of the tunnel, even the subdued platform lights appeared dazzling. Quinn rose to his feet. It was not his stop. But he could not bear the thought of sitting in the same carriage as that face for a moment longer.

FIVE
    Q uinn switched carriages at Knightsbridge. At Piccadilly Circus, he took the Bakerloo Railway south. He was not aware of anyone following him.
    When he emerged into the daylight at Charing Cross Embankment station, the sensation of being followed returned.
    Quinn paused at the entrance to the station. The man emerged from the lift after the one Quinn had taken. If he was following Quinn, he was doing so in a manner that was both haphazard and conspicuous. It was far more likely that there was nothing to it.
    Quinn waited for the man to pass him. If the man betrayed no sign of emotion or interest as he did so, and went purposefully on his way, it would show that Quinn had been mistaken. He would be able to dismiss the stranger’s earlier fixed stare as mere eccentricity. Perhaps the man had stared at Quinn as he might stare into space. The bitterness of his expression was entirely unconnected to Quinn. And how did he know, really, that it was bitterness that was written in those features? He could not look inside the man’s heart. Perhaps that was simply the expression his face assumed when in repose.
    But as the man reached the threshold of the Tube station, he turned decisively towards Quinn. His face was lit up in the cold glare of the sun. That same bitter expression was in place, as if it had been sculpted into his features. There was no mistaking it. This was a deliberate provocation. Quinn felt the heat rise in his face. Who was this man? What did he want with him?
    He noticed the man was wearing brown leather gloves. For some reason the detail struck him as sinister. It was not a particularly cold day. To his policeman’s mind, the only reason a man might don gloves on a day like today was to commit a crime.
    He watched the man cross the Embankment and then lost sight of him behind a London plane tree. The only possible conclusion was that he was hiding – waiting for Quinn to make a move before following him.
    Quinn conjured up an image of the man’s face and mentally ran through the archive of his memories to see if he could find a match. He could only think that the man had some connection to one of his old cases. His age would suggest a case from the distant past. The bitterness was consistent with long years wasting away behind bars.
    Quinn tried to deduce his way to the man’s identity. He had obviously not received a capital sentence, which meant he was not a murderer. Some lesser but still serious crime. Manslaughter, perhaps. The gloves, perhaps, were worn from habit: the habit of the professional housebreaker. And yet the peculiar ravage of his face suggested a ruined reputation. Was he,