It was blood. Her blood. He could not know it for certain, though it seemed the obvious conclusion. She had hurt herself or been hurt. But what kind of injury caused such a wound? He walked again about the room and back into the bedroom, going to each of her things—searching for what, he did not know.

But there was nothing.

He went to the chest of drawers in her bedroom where, oddly, he now recalled leaving his gold tiepin on his final visit—but it was not there. He stood staring at the spot where he had placed it, uncertain now of himself, uncertain of everything.

He tried the French doors and the windows but they were firmly locked. The front door to the apartment had been locked. It seemed to imply no one had forcibly entered her rooms, that she had, instead, simply gone out. Or let someone in.

He left the apartment, wary of the man, Orange, but he had gone, or was waiting downstairs in the street till he might reclaim his client’s property. Alasdair went to the door of the apartment next door and rapped on it, throwing to the wind the caution, the subterfuge he had employed all these months.

It was opened at once by a tiny, frail old woman with milky eyes and scant hair and a pinched face that hinted at straitened circumstances. The promptness with which she answered his knock suggested she had been standing just inside the door. And perhaps she often stood there. Perhaps by standing in such a position she could hear all of what occurred on the landing outside.

‘Who are you? What do you want?’ she demanded in a high, querulous voice. Her milky eyes squinted and did not quite find his face.

‘Do excuse this intrusion, madam. I am enquiring after the whereabouts of the young lady next door, Miss Trent.’

‘I know nothing of this person and I certainly do not involve myself in other people’s business,’ the woman retorted, her sightless eyes scouring for him feverishly but unable to settle. ‘Kindly remove yourself from my premises at once.’ And the elderly lady—for she was a lady, or had been, which perhaps made her circumstances a little sadder—retreated behind her door with all the furious indignation of one habitually frightened and almost always alone.

The stupidity of the old woman—for Alasdair, in his rage, saw only stupidity where another might have seen fear and loneliness—almost caused him to pound an angry fist on the slammed door, and for a brief time this fury swelled and enveloped him. It abated as swiftly, leaving him deflated and without a plan. He turned bitterly away.