The Meaning of Night Read Free Page A

The blameless
    red-haired stranger had fulfilled his purpose, and I was ready for what now lay ahead.

    I walked to the Surrey side of the bridge, turned round, and walked back again.
    Then, on a sudden impulse, as I passed back through the turnstile, I decided to take a turn
    back along the Strand instead of returning to my rooms.

    At the foot of the steps leading down from Cain-court, which I’d descended not
    two hours earlier, a crowd of people had gathered. I enquired of a flower-seller
    concerning the cause of the commotion.

    ‘Murder, sir’, she replied. ‘A poor gentleman has been most viciously done to
    death. They say the head was almost severed from the body.’

    ‘Good heavens!’ says I, with every expression of sudden shock. ‘What a world we
    live in! Is anyone apprehended?’

    My informant was uncertain on this point. A Chinese sailor had been seen running
    from the court a little time before the body had been discovered; but others had said that a
    woman carrying a bloody axe had been found standing in a daze a few streets away and
    had been taken away by the officers.

    I shook my head sadly, and continued on my way.

    Of course it was most convenient that ignorant rumour was already weaving nets
    of obscurity and falsehood around the truth. For all I cared, either the Chinese sailor or
    the woman with the bloody axe, if indeed they existed, could swing for my deed and be
    damned. I was armoured against all suspicion. Certainly no one had observed me entering
    or leaving the dark and deserted court: I had been most particular on that point. The knife
    had been of a common type, purloined for the purpose from a hotel across the river in the
    Borough, where I had never been before, and to which I would never return again. My
    nameless victim had been entirely unknown to me: nothing but cold Fate connected us.
    My clothes appeared to be unmarked by his blood; and night, villainy’s true friend, had
    thrown its accomplice’s cloak over all.

    By the time I reached Chancery-lane the clocks were striking eleven. Still feeling
    unwilling to return to my own solitary bed, I swung northwards, to Blithe Lodge, St
    John’s Wood, with the intention of paying my compliments to Miss Isabella Gallini, of
    blessed memory.

    Ah, Bella. Bellissima Bella. She welcomed me in her customary way at the door
    of the respectable tree-fronted villa, cupping my face in her long-fingered, many-ringed
    hands and whispering, ‘Eddie, darling Eddie, how wonderful’, as she kissed me gently on
    both cheeks.

    ‘Is all quiet?’ I asked.

    ‘Perfectly. The last one went an hour ago, Charlie is asleep, and Mrs D. has not
    yet returned. We have the house to ourselves.’

    Upstairs I lay back on her bed watching her disrobe, as I’d done so many times
    before. I knew every inch of her body, every warm and secret place. Yet watching the last
    piece of clothing fall to the floor, and seeing her standing proudly before me, was like
    experiencing her for the first time in all her untasted glory.

    ‘Say it,’ she said.

    I frowned in pretended ignorance.

    ‘Say what?’

    ‘You know very well, you tease. Say it.’

    She walked towards me, her hair now released and flowing over her shoulders and
    down her back. Then, reaching the bed, she once again clasped my face in her hands and
    let that dark torrent of tresses tumble around me.

    ‘Oh, my America,’ I declaimed theatrically, ‘my New-Found land!’?

    ‘Oh, Eddie,’ she cooed delightedly, ‘it does so thrill me when you say that! Am I
    really your America?’

    ‘My America and more. You are my world.’

    At which she threw herself upon me with a will and kissed me so hard I could
    scarcely breathe.

    The establishment of which Bella was the leading light was several cuts above the
    usual introducing house, so much so that it was known to the cognoscenti simply as ‘The
    Academy’, the definite article proclaiming that it was set it apart from all other