The Blind Detective by Christina Koning

Author:Christina Koning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2023-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

He’d been surprised to find, on coming in on Monday morning, that someone else had evidently been using the switchboard. Two of the cords had been replaced in the wrong jacks, so that they were all tangled up, and one of the front keys had been left open – not a thing he would ever have done. He couldn’t believe that Carrie Gilbert, absent-minded as she could be at times, would ever have been so careless. Bert, when questioned, indignantly denied having touched the switchboard without permission. Old Mr Cheeseman, the caretaker, said he hadn’t been near it either. Which just left him. Because of course, he was the last person in the office on Friday night. It had been then that he’d put through that call to Claremont. He supposed, in the agitation of the moment, he must have been the one to leave things in a mess. And yet he knew it wasn’t so. So who was it, then, who’d come along after him, and tangled up the wires? Who’d made a call and then left the evidence for him to find?

He puzzled and puzzled over it, until he thought he must be going mad. The uncanny idea that someone had been there after him, that hands other than his had moved amongst those cords and switches, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. Had there been someone in the office after him? Surely he’d have heard him, as he came in? Unless he – the invisible man – had waited until Rowlands was gone … but then, how would anyone have entered the building without a key? With the feeling that he was missing something which ought to have been plain as daylight, he went over and over the events of that day, trying to recall anything untoward. The truth was, he’d been so preoccupied with all he’d heard at the trial – Celia West’s evidence, and then Caparelli’s extraordinary intervention – that he hadn’t been paying attention to much else. Although there had been something, hadn’t there? Those footsteps he’d heard, descending the steps behind him, as he’d left the courtroom. There’d been something odd about them. Yes, that was it: the fellow’d had a limp. Not that that was such an uncommon thing, these days.

Now he came to think about it, he was convinced he’d heard that step again. It had been as he’d waited to cross at the lights at Ludgate Circus when someone – a little chap, wearing a mackintosh – had taken his arm to guide him across the street. He’d called out his thanks, as they’d reached the other side, but the Good Samaritan, whoever he was, had disappeared into the crowd, dragging his lame leg after him. At the time, Rowlands had dismissed the impression from his mind. Now he wondered if he should have paid more attention to it. Had that unseen someone been beside him, all along? Dogging his footsteps along

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