Free The Twilight Hour by Elizabeth Wilson Page B

were a thief, an intruder.
    I was an intruder.
    As I adjusted to the semi-darkness I made out odd shapes in the gloom; on the landing a suitcase and a broken chair. Here were more doors, another set of rooms. I tried the door of the room at the front. It opened.
    The first thing I noticed was the smell. Alcohol? I looked around. There were no curtains and the moonlight was quite lurid. Bottles clustered by the grate. Paintings were stacked against the walls. Others had been thrown over anyhow onto the floor as if someone had been turning them over. I walked round the end of the sofa near the door.
    Someone lay on the sofa, with splayed legs and moon face, eyes closed, mouth open, gleaming in the livid light.
    The silence thickened. I stared. He lay so still. It gradually dawned on me that he was dead.
    For a long time – how long? A minute? An hour? A hundred years? I didn’t move. At last I bent slowly over him and my hand, with a life of its own, stretched out to touch his face. He was cold . Yet I jumped back as if I’d been burnt.
    The room was cold too. I came to, as if from a dream. I was perfectly calm. I’d seen a dead body before – once; at the end of the war, after a V2 attack. It had looked a lot worse than this one: blood, wounds, half a face, one eye staring upwards. Mavor’s eyes were closed. He looked peaceful.
    There was no other living person in the house; I was certain of that. I was alone with a dead man. But I was not afraid. I was eerily alert, abnormally aware of my own reactions, noting as I pulled my coat more tightly around me that there was an exhilaration, an illicit excitement in my grim discovery, almost as if his lifelessness made me that much more alive.
    I looked carefully round the room, noting the mess he’d lived in, and wondered how long he’d been here. He must have been far gone – perhaps despairing. Even his paintings were in a state, almost as if he’d attacked his own work.
    I walked back round the sofa, out of the room, down the lofty stairs and out of the house. The door scraped on the stone lintel, and I couldn’t get it shut. A lone pedestrian was approaching me, and glanced at me as we passed. I looked back, and it seemed to me that she was turning into the house I’d just left. I walked more quickly, hurried down Lamb’s Conduit Street, suddenly needing the brighter lights of Holborn and Southampton Row, hurrying towards the underground, the Central Line to Notting Hill and the flat where Alan could hear the tale of my adventure.
    Then I remembered my errand, Stan’s letter still crushed into my bag. I slowed down. In fact, I sobered up. Why had Stan written to him? I walked along until I found a phone box.
    I clanged my pennies into the slit and waited. But it was long after six now, and I doubted Stan would still be at the office. I didn’t have his home number.
    He answered. Thank God! I pressed button A and the pennies clattered down.
    â€˜Hullo! Hullo!’ I shouted. ‘It’s me, Dinah. Something’s happened. I found him, but – he’s dead.’
    Silence; then: ‘ Dead ? Can you meet me somewhere? Meet me at the milk bar round the corner from the office.’
    â€˜I’d better dial 999,’ I said. ‘Report it to the police; or get an ambulance.’
    There was another silence, then he said slowly: ‘No, don’t do that. Not yet. We’ll sort that out later. You’ve still got the letter, haven’t you? You didn’t leave that behind?’
    My money ran out. I hung up. I stood there, and the letter was burning a hole in my bag. I honestly didn’t mean to do it, but I drew it out and examined it. Why wasn’t it sealed? Had Stanley just forgotten to lick it down? Carefully I pulled out the flap and drew out what was inside. There was no letter, simply a cheque for £150.
    I left the sour-cold fug of the kiosk for the frozen street. I walked along,