seat as the door banged and left me alone. I pressed my hands to my flushed cheeks, giddy and confused and hopeful and guilty. So many emotions that I was nearly drowning, missing my numb shell. What on earth was wrong with me?
Running off into England with an address and a name, my sharp inner voice said. What do you think you can do? You’re such a helpless mess, how are you supposed to help anyone else?
I winced. I’m not helpless.
Yes, you are. The last time you tried to help anyone, look what happened.
“And now I’m trying again,” I said aloud to the empty compartment. Helpless mess or not, I was here.
Night had fallen by the time I staggered, weary and starving, off the train in London. I trudged out into the streets, and the city rolled out in front of me in one huge dark smoky mass; in the distance I saw the outline of the great clock tower over Westminster. I stood there a moment as cars splashed past, wondering how London would have looked just a few years ago when this fog would have been scythed by Spitfires and Messerschmitts, and then I shook out of my reverie. I had no idea where 10 Hampson Street might be, and only a few coins left in my pocketbook. As I hailed a cab, I prayed it would be enough. I really didn’t relish having to yank a pearl off my grandmother’s necklace just to pay for a taxi ride. Maybe I shouldn’t have left that waitress a whole pound . . . But I wasn’t sorry.
The driver took me to what he said was Pimlico and dumped me at a line of tall row houses. It had started to rain in earnest. I looked around for my hallucination, but there was no flash of blond hair. Just a dark street, the spitting rain, the worn steps of number 10 climbing to a dingy peeling door. I hoisted my case, clambered up, and banged the knocker before my courage deserted me.
No answer. I banged again. The rain was falling harder, and despair rose in me like a wave. I pounded and pounded until my fist ached, until I saw the minute twitch of the curtain beside the door.
“I know someone’s in there!” I wrenched the door handle, blinded by rain. “Let me in!”
To my surprise the handle turned, and I flew inside, falling at last off my impractical shoes. I hit the floor of the dark hallway on my knees, tearing my stockings, and then the door banged shut and I heard the click of a pistol being cocked.
Her voice was low, graveled, slurred, ferocious. “Who are you, and what the bloody fuck are you doing in my house?”
The streetlamps sent a blurry light through the curtains, half-illuminating the dark hallway. I could see a tall gaunt figure, a straggle of hair, the fiery end of a lit cigarette. The gleam of light off a pistol barrel, pointing straight at me.
I should have been terrified, recoiling from the shock and the gun and the language. But fury had swept aside the last piece of my feel-nothing fog, and I gathered my legs under me to stand, torn stocking snagging. “I’m looking for Evelyn Gardiner.”
“I don’t care who you’re looking for. If you don’t tell me why I’ve got a damned Yank breaking into my house, I’ll shoot you. I’m old and I’m drunk, but this is a Luger nine-millimeter P08 in excellent condition. Drunk or sober I can take the back of your skull out at this range.”
“I’m Charlie St. Clair.” Pushing the wet hair out of my eyes. “My cousin Rose Fournier went missing in France during the war, and you might know how to find her.”
Abruptly the electric wall lamp switched on. I blinked in the rush of harsh light. Standing over me was a tall gaunt woman in a faded print dress, her graying hair straggling around a time-ravaged face. She could have been fifty, or she could have been seventy. She had the Luger in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other; she kept the pistol steadily trained on my forehead as she raised the cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. Bile rose in my throat as I saw her hands. Good God, what had happened to her hands?
“I’m Eve Gardiner,” she said at last. “And I don’t know anything about this cousin of yours.”