The doorman saluted him again on his way out. What was the name of the man who had been loitering around when he entered the hotel? Niven liked to have a name to put on a man. There were enough nameless men in the soil of Flanders.
The usual gavotte followed. The doorman set his features into a picture of blandness and said, “What man would that be, sir?” and Niven withdrew the customary shilling from his pocket and with great theatricality the doorman suddenly remembered.
“Oh, you must mean Mr. Landor, sir,” he said. “A gentleman from Hungary, I believe.”
The transaction was paused as a police sergeant in uniform strolled past the top of the little street in that annoyingly slow way that a policeman on the beat adopts. He stared at Niven and then raised his forefinger to his helmet in a gesture of acknowledgement to the doorman. The doorman gave an almost imperceptible salute back and waited until the sergeant was well on his way down the Strand before resuming business with Niven. “They call that bloke the Laughing Policeman,” the doorman said. “After that song, you know?” Niven ignored this unrequested information.
Another shilling secured the answer to the question of why Landor had been scouting at the hotel.
“Enquiring about one of our guests,” the doorman said. “Naturally, I gave him no information. The privacy of our guests is sacred.”
How sacred?, Niven wondered. He grubbed up another coin. “And what was it exactly that he was asking?”
“He wanted a name.”
Niven had run out of change. Reluctantly he produced a five-shilling note. “And did you give it to him?”
The doorman was indignant with denial. Another note dampened his affront. Ten shillings secured the name of the guest. Niven would be bankrupt at this rate and the doorman would be able to retire.
“A Miss Kelling,” he finally admitted, replete with wealth. “He was asking about a Miss Gwendolen Kelling.”
* * *
—
Niven caught a taxi, the charm of the day having worn off. He frowned all the way to Hanover Terrace. Why on earth was this man Landor spying on Gwendolen Kelling? Was “Miss Kelling” not in fact a provincial librarian—which would be an excellent disguise—but someone employed to infiltrate the Cokers? By Azzopardi, perhaps? Or Maddox? In which case, she certainly appeared to have succeeded, duping even his astute mother. But then that still didn’t answer the question of Landor’s interest in her. Was Gwendolen Kelling in danger? Niven was surprised at how disturbed he was by this possibility.
Another Gentleman Caller
Sunday was turning out to be a particularly difficult day in Ealing, as it would have been the birthday of the child Lottie lost during the war. Frobisher had forgotten until reminded. He supposed it explained the morphine.
“Elle aurait eu douze ans,” Lottie kept saying, wandering from room to room as if she would eventually find the girl in the house. Lottie had nothing, not a lock of hair nor a photograph, not a scrap of christening gown or shawl. Sometimes Frobisher wondered if the child had really existed. The child, imaginary or otherwise, had been called Manon and had, Lottie said, been obliterated along with the village they lived in during the war.
He had been woken early this morning by the sound of a distracted Lottie roaming through the house calling Manon’s name, convinced somehow that the child was hiding in a cupboard or behind a piece of furniture. “Can’t you hear her calling for me? Maman, maman. It’s breaking my heart.” These hallucinations—this was not the first time—frightened him. What if one day they took over completely?
Eventually he persuaded her back into bed and fetched her Luminal and spoon-fed her the tincture. It would be easy when she was in this state to encourage her to drink the entire bottle. Better, surely, than the slow death she seemed intent on. Of the soul, if not the body. Both her soul and his. He replaced the stopper in the bottle and put it back on the high shelf in the kitchen where it lived, as if his wife were a child or a dog who wouldn’t be able to reach it when all she had to do was stand on a chair to find oblivion.
She was soon drowsy and he left her to sleep, deciding that he may as well travel to Knightsbridge and find out how Miss Kelling had got on in the Amethyst, rather than wait until tomorrow for her “report,” as she called it. He had no expectation that she would have found the girls she was looking for, but perhaps she had managed to observe something untoward in the club, something that might be of some use to him. Going to the Warrender was legitimate police business, he argued with himself. It was a specious argument and he knew it. What he wanted was to see Miss Kelling, he wanted the respite of her company.