philosophically. “And very attractive. I couldn’t help noticing that.” She smiled, and the bright brown eyes were set in a lace of little crinkles.
“I do depend on you, Marion.”
“Not in all things,” she said sharply.
“No. But to keep me on a straight level.” Did Marion depend on him? And in a moment he knew she did.
It came to Ezra sharply then that Marion was one of the people he most loved in the world. Until six months ago he would have said the person.
And she had aged. Grown thinner, tenser, more strained.
“What’s done this to you, Marion?” he heard himself say, to his embarrassment.
He saw great tears fill the brown eyes and it was like seeing the Pyramids weep.
“Marion!” he cried.
She mumbled something he could not hear. Then she repeated it.
“I’m being watched.”
The words struck him unpleasantly.
“I saw a man killed once. I saw his eyes crossed in death. I felt he was watching me. Since then I’ve hated people watching me.”
Ezra knew she referred to the death so many years ago of the man on the expedition. It came as a shock to him that Marion should refer in tones which so clearly showed that the wound was still there, raw and unhealed, to an incident he had thought long buried, far back in her past.
“No need to be so upset,” he said, startled into unsympathy.
“You try it some time.” Marion dried her eyes. “It’s unnerving. I don’t know this man from Adam. Or I didn’t.”
“Oh, it’s a man?”
“Yes,” said Marion shortly.
“Is he always there?”
“No.” In spite of herself Marion laughed. “Only human. Not all the time.”
“Are you sure? I mean, supposing he really is watching, are you sure it is you?”
“Quite, quite certain. He follows. Last week I went to London for the day. I saw his taxi follow mine to the station. Thursday I went to Stoke-on-Trent to give that lecture. He came, too. Don’t say I should tell the police.”
“No, I wasn’t going to.”
“There’s been no threat, you see, no nuisance. He never tries to talk to me. Never comes even very close. But he’s always there. Why?” She said slowly, “And yet I don’t feel any malice in him. He’s just interested. In me.”
“Well, so are a lot of people, Marion.” Ezra was thinking hard. So this was the basis behind all the rumours. Somehow it had got out. “Who have you told, Marion?”
There was silence.
“I have told no one. I swear. I have told no one at all.”
But this rumour was all over the town. Marion must have let it out. Or perhaps the neighbours had noticed.
“What about the neighbours?” he asked. “Do you think they’ve noticed? Or have you told them?”
Marion looked surprised. “I don’t know them.”
Ezra was half irritated, half amused. “You must know them, Marion.”
“Why? I’ve never even seen them.”
“Oh, you must have seen them. In the garden, digging or something.”
“Oh, but I never go in the garden,” said Marion, looking placidly at the jungle beneath her window. “Can’t stand it. No, I tell you the neighbours are out. I haven’t told them, and I don’t believe they’ve noticed.”
“People do know, though.”
Marion had walked to the window. “Look out there.”
Ezra pulled back the curtains and looked across the road to the junction of Chancellor Hyde Street and Little Clarendon Street. The wind that nipped that corner was usually chill and he was not surprised to see the figure standing there put its collar up. It was a small dark man with spectacles; he was wearing a mackintosh and underneath it a neat blue suit.
“He doesn’t look like a detective,” murmured Ezra.
“I’m sure he’s not that.” Marion spoke with decision.
Ezra looked round her quiet, green book-lined room. It was so difficult to associate Marion with all this.
“You stay here,” he said. “I’m going out to have a closer look at him.”
He shut Marion’s front door behind him, shutting in a stray creeper or two as he did so. As he pushed his way through the massed vegetation to the gate, it occurred to him that while Marion might not know her neighbours, the neighbours almost certainly knew Marion and her weeds.
In the street, a lorry was drawn up discharging a load of coal and Ezra was able to come round the back of it and get close to the man before he had a chance to observe him.
The man was standing there, his feet planted a little apart, and his hands in his pockets. He was making no pretence of having a purpose in being there, and yet he was very unobtrusive, he slipped neatly into the background. There was something vaguely familiar about him, some quality that Ezra thought he knew. But it remained elusive. As Ezra watched, the man shifted his feet, scratched his hair, and settled his hat more comfortably on his head. Clearly he meant to stay where he was.
“I suppose he is watching Marion?” wondered Ezra.
At that moment a window slammed in Marion’s house and the man swung his head round promptly to see.
Ezra stepped out from behind the coal lorry, and walked down Chancellor Hyde Street. The man watched him indifferently, although he must have observed him come from Marion’s house and had probably been watching him. Ezra saw that the hands now rolling a cigarette were neat and not swollen by manual labour, there was a gold ring on the left hand; they trembled slightly.
At the corner Ezra turned and looked back. The road was quiet and empty except for the lorry and the watcher. A little ginger kitten ran across the road, it was calling out in shrill kitten’s shrieks. It halted unsteadily in the gutter. The man called it to him, and stood for a few minutes with it in his hand, looking at it and stroking it. Ezra watching from a distance could have sworn there was liking, even affection, in the movements of those hands.
Till the kitten screamed. Ezra could not help thinking of Marion’s narrow bones beneath those hands.
It was true, although Marion would not admit it, that she had from the first been much more aware of the man than had been apparent. She had noticed him before anyone else. She had such a quiet constricted life that a new face stood out at once. Besides, there was another reason.
It
