Free Summon Up the Blood by R. N. Morris Page B

it only yesterday. She said the strain was evident in your eyes.’
    ‘Miss Dillard said that?’ The name provoked a wave of sadness in Quinn. He relaxed his grip on the newspaper. Now the wrong side of forty, and by some margin, Miss Dillard had once supported herself by working as a children’s governess. But that was many years ago. These days she was entirely reliant on the small income left to her upon the death of her parents. It barely covered the rent for her room, the smallest in Mrs Ibbott’s house.
    As the years slipped away from her, and her hopes with them, Miss Dillard had fortified herself against disappointment by occasional recourse to spirituous liquor, her favoured tipple being gin. Her private income could not meet the combined expense of both alcohol and food. Being human, she naturally prioritized the former. Some months, if she ate at all, it was entirely due to the charity of Mrs Ibbott. From time to time, she drank herself into a tearful, stinking state, from which she was rescued by the appearance of her three married sisters (all younger than her) who would cram themselves into her tiny room for several days, nursing her back to health.
    There had once been a suitor, or so the gossip went. The affair itself had been conducted so discreetly that it was practically invisible. The gentleman had been one of the other lodgers. A Mr Newlove, appropriately enough. In fact, Quinn rather believed that it was his name more than anything that poor Miss Dillard had fallen for. But it was not to be. One day, Mr Newlove disappeared, taking himself out of her life without a word of explanation.
    That had precipitated the first of her alcoholic crises.
    After she had recovered, she began to look at Quinn with something approaching sympathy. He was terribly afraid that she saw in him a kindred spirit; even more afraid that she might be looking to him as a replacement for Mr Newlove.
    He found the possibility terrified him more than the prospect of confronting any murderer.
    He also found that he had never quite believed in Mr Newlove, his name least of all. He had known from the outset that it would end badly. If people would only refrain from trying to forge these hopeless bonds of affection, they would spare themselves a deal of pain.
    But tonight, somehow, he found himself strangely touched by Miss Dillard’s concern.
How nice of her to notice
, he thought. He also told himself that the period in which she had entertained romantic hopes on his account had long since passed. By now she must have realized that there was no reciprocal interest.
    ‘On second thoughts, Mrs Ibbott, I think I will come down to the dining room. It will do me good to have some company this evening.’
    Quinn heard a voice in his head, Inchball’s:
Dangerous
.
    ‘Miss Dillard
will
be pleased.’
    Very dangerous
.
    ‘I wonder if you could have Betsy bring some hot water up to my room. I would like to shave before dinner.’
    ‘Of course, Mr Quinn. She’ll bring it right away.’
    It was a high, narrow house, lives piled up one on top of the other. Quinn’s room was on the first storey. On the stairs, he passed Mr Timberley, one of the two young gentlemen who shared the other room on his landing. Both were employed in some capacity or other at the Natural History Museum, but they were far from being the studious scientific types that Quinn might have imagined. They were, in fact, a pair of droll wags, who took pleasure in baiting the other lodgers. Quinn himself had more than once been on the receiving end of their wit. But what irritated him more than anything about them was their habit of conversing with each other in Latin in front of everyone else.
    They were just a couple of overgrown schoolboys, Quinn had decided.
    He noticed that tonight, uncharacteristically, Mr Timberley’s eyes were red and moist.
    Timberley brushed past Quinn without returning his greeting. He bounded down the stairs and dashed out of the house,