‘Is it alive?’
‘I don’t know.’
Her arms felt weightless without it, and cold. She folded them across her chest, noticing that there was blood on her shirtfront. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look at the body on the table, so instead she looked at the man who had come to her aid. Not wealthy, but civilized-looking, thank goodness – collarless shirt, clean and open at the neck. A little older than her, she guessed, though young enough not to have been in France, which was how one automatically categorized people. Slight build. Dark hair, thick and badly in need of a cut, falling over his face as he bent over the cat. Dark eyes, which sent a jolt through her as he looked up at her suddenly and gave a brief shake of his head.
‘Sorry.’
A sob rose in her throat, catching her off guard. She turned away, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth and struggling to compose herself. ‘Oh gosh, how shaming. I’m so sorry. You’re very kind to help.’
‘I saw what happened from the window.’
‘It came from nowhere. I didn’t even see it – none of us did. There was no way Harry could have missed it—’ She stopped, choking on the glaring truth that he could if he hadn’t been going so fast, and wondering why she felt the need to explain herself to this stranger. She summoned a practised smile, at odds with the tears that were still sliding down her cheeks. ‘I suppose cats must be hit by motorcars all the time these days. Even so … it’s wretched.’
‘But not a hanging offence.’ His smile was grave. ‘I don’t think the police would have taken you in.’
There was a stillness about him. A watchful reserve. She wondered why he was still up at this hour.
‘No,’ she said ruefully. ‘But I could do without the … attention, Mr…?’
‘Weston.’ The yellow light gilded one cheekbone and carved a deep hollow beneath it. The other half of his face was in shadow. ‘Lawrence Weston.’
‘Selina Lennox.’
The smile widened a fraction. ‘I know.’
‘Exactly.’
She laughed, swiping at her cheeks again. He had been standing with his hands in his pockets and he withdrew one now, producing a crumpled dark blue spotted handkerchief which he held out to her.
‘Thank you.’ Her eyes flickered in the direction of the table. ‘I’m not quite sure what to do with it now.’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll … dispose of it.’
‘In a dustbin?’
He rubbed a hand over his forehead. ‘I’m afraid I can’t afford a plot in Brookwood cemetery,’ he said, and she got the feeling that he was teasing her a little.
‘Poor cat. It doesn’t seem right.’
She pictured herself wrapping it in her jacket and taking it home in a taxi, but her courage quailed a little at what she would do with it at Chester Square. She could hardly leave it on the table in the hallway for Fenton to deal with in the morning, or in the scullery where Mrs Barnes hung rabbits and pheasant. But to be dumped in a dustbin, amongst rotting peelings and tealeaves … The rats would pick it apart in no time; she knew that from what Howard had told her. They would take its eyes first.
She took a breath.
‘Mr Weston, I don’t suppose you might have such a thing as a shovel?’
* * *
Obviously, there was no question of him letting her do it alone. No matter what she said.
Just as she, rightly or wrongly, felt a responsibility for the cat, he, rightly or wrongly, felt a responsibility for her, and the streets of Bloomsbury at almost three o’clock in the morning were no place for a less-than-sober society girl dressed in a man’s dinner suit. Her extraordinary appearance made her too conspicuous; her casual confidence – ironically – made her vulnerable. The small hours belonged to the city’s misfits and outsiders, the disturbed and dispossessed. Many of them were gentle souls. Some of them were not. Sanity was a fragile thing these days.
She had waited in the hall while he’d gone back up to the flat to collect the things they needed, taking care not to disturb Sam, who shared the scruffy set of rooms at the top of the house: he wrote acerbic, socialist pieces for the Daily Herald and would have swooped on the story like a pigeon on a bun. Lawrence had half-expected her to have disappeared when he came down again, having changed her mind, dried her tears and decided that a stray cat wasn’t worth such a fuss after all, or for the whole thing to have turned out to be the latest prank by her silly, thrill-seeking set.
But she was there. He’d wished fervently that he could have brought his camera down and captured her like that, leaning against the wall with her hands in the pockets of her belted-in trousers, her slicked-back hair the colour of tarnished gold in the lamplight, the opulent sheen of her beauty incongruous in the shabby hallway. He suspected she would have disappeared pretty rapidly if he had.
Neither of them spoke as they walked along the sleeping street, Lawrence carrying the cat (now shrouded in a pillowcase) and the coal shovel, which was the most suitable grave-digging tool he could supply. The night carried distant sounds of revelry – the blast of motorcar horns and faint shrieks – but if she heard them she gave no sign. As she walked beside him she kept herself very upright, though every now and again her arm or her hip bumped softly against his; evidence, like the glitter of her eyes in the hallway and the careful clipping of her well-bred words, that she (like he) had had a substantial amount to drink.
‘Where are we going?’
‘There’s a garden in front of the crescent up here. Not as smart as Russell Square, but we’re less likely to be caught climbing over the fence.’
They passed beneath a streetlamp and he saw her swift smile. ‘You say that like a man who knows from experience.’
‘The doormen at the Russell Square hotels are very keen to keep undesirables off their patch.’
‘And you’re an undesirable?’ Her voice was low, with a husky quality that made up for her posh-girl accent, and her laugh was as deep and rich as expensive port.
‘I’m an artist,’ he said dryly. ‘I think it amounts to the same thing.’
They had reached the junction where Tavistock Place crossed over Marchmont Street and the crescent stood before them, its garden dark and shadowy against the row of houses that curved behind it. He led her to the place near the apex of the semi-circle, beyond the pool of light cast by the streetlamps, where the trees and shrubbery were thickest. Two large stones had been placed on the other side of the waist-height railings, to provide a sort of step.
‘Here. I’ll go first and help you. If you stand on here it’s easy enough to climb over.’
He lowered the pillowcase over and slid the shovel through the railings, then stood on the stones and swung himself over. It was a move he’d done many times, on summer nights when the walls of the flat seemed too close, on autumn evenings when the leaves rained silently down around him, or any time when too much booze and too many cigarettes had pushed him far beyond sleep. He’d never brought a girl here, though he knew Sam had (no doubt regaling them with his favourite speech about how property is theft and access to green spaces was a right for all). It was his space, where he came to be alone. Until now, anyway.