The two women ran into each other’s arms, exclaiming softly in delighted recognition. Swinburne skirted silently round them in the hallway, glad enough to hear:
‘Aunt Tizzi!’
‘Anna, my dear girl! At last! We have you safe.’
In the outburst of tears and sobs that followed, they didn’t hear him leaving.
He was blameless. As innocent as the obliging bird that gobbles down the inky, sweet berry of the deadly nightshade and then flies off unwittingly to disperse the seed, Captain Swinburne had just dropped off a deadly cargo in a fertile corner of London.
He prepared to move on.
‘We’re finished here, cabby. Back to Piccadilly while you can still see the road.’
He shouldn’t have looked back.
A last glance through the window showed him Anna. She’d come outside again and was standing motionless, neither waving away nor beckoning back, watching him leave. The fog was coming down and he couldn’t make out her face but, in his imagination, he saw her dark otter’s eyes following him as the taxi drew away.