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.Lost in these visions of distress, I never even heard a sound as Ephraim actually approached me in reality.His step suddenly sounding in my very ear caused me to jump out of my skin, and I turned around with a gasp.The boy handed me Mrs Munn’s capacious bag in silence, his expression a mixture of relief, guilt and sadness.‘Ah, thank you,’ I said, somewhat absurdly.‘It was much harder than I thought it would be,’ he said, following my hurried steps out of the garden and onto the street.‘I mean, it was very easy, in fact.I simply snatched the bag from her hand and ran.She cried out something, but there was no one around.I didn’t even have to run fast.But I thought I wasn’t going to be able to bring myself to do it.It’s awful, awful.I can’t believe I just did this to that poor old lady.I thought I wasn’t going to be able to.I didn’t realise that there was such a big, strong thing inside me trying to stop me.I thought I wasn’t going to be able to make myself do it.It was so mean.I feel so bad.’Water streamed down his face, but as he was absolutely dripping with rain, I made no assumptions, but laid my hand gently upon his arm.‘We will get it back to her and make it up to her,’ I promised.‘Just as soon as I’m finished here.Come quickly, now.’‘But she has to take a ’bus and she’ll not have the fare,’ he sniffled.‘I know.I’m sorry.But Mrs Munn has lived through much greater difficulties in her life than this.It’s not such a catastrophe.She will manage.Come now, we may have only a few minutes.Quick!’We crossed the road together and Ephraim stationed himself in front of the door of the building as a lookout, ready to rush up and call me to come running out the very moment he should spy anyone approaching.I climbed the stairs, quickly removed my wet wrap and boots, and laid them with my umbrella outside the flat so as to leave no traces at all inside.Then I located the key with my fingers inside Mrs Munn’s bag, unlocked the door without difficulty, and entered Sebastian’s flat for the first time.The flat was eerily quiet.I knew it would be empty, yet the silence was disturbing – though a sudden or mysterious noise would certainly have been worse! In my stockings, I stepped down the corridor, passing the open doors to the parlour on my left and the dining room on my right.Farther down, the doors were closed.I tentatively opened the first one, then closed it again quickly, then opened it again.So this was Sebastian’s room.It perfectly neat and perfectly clean, but probably no more so than it had been on a daily basis even during his life.I raised a corner of the quilted cover laid upon the bed, and saw that it was laid over the bare mattress; the bed had been stripped.But a music stand in the corner, books and music on the shelves, and clothes in the closet, spoke for the heart that had beat in this room.I had no time to contemplate it further, although I would have liked to absorb something of the personality that had left its traces there.I went out and peered into the next room: it was the study.Leaving the door ajar, I finally found my way into Mrs Cavendish’s bedroom.Like the rest of the flat, the room was a compromise between the style in which it had originally been furnished, some decades earlier, and a nature more attuned to a sort of stark simplicity in which two words would never do when one was enough.The heavy furniture spoke of another time, but their smooth surfaces were bare of the vases and pictures that must have once been crowded upon them.The heavy bed curtains were drawn back and held by thick braided ropes, opening to view what had been conceived as a secretive, cosy nook.Upon the dressing table, which was covered with a piece of plain white damask, were laid ivory brushes, combs and mirrors and a modest selection of pots and flasks.I lifted the lid of a porcelain pot with a shock, but it contained only the most ordinary powder, surmounted by a tiny puff.Of arsenic, there was none to be seen.I supposed that Mrs Cavendish would hardly have kept the pot, even if the police had returned it to her, which was most unlikely.Upon the washstand next to the dressing table stood a large porcelain bowl and jug, perfectly white, the latter filled with fresh water.The whole room denoted a struggle between the clutches of the dim, heavy styles of the past – an echo of collector’s objects all crowded together could still faintly be felt in the dense but faded garlands of the wallpaper and the intricate fruits and leaves carved on the wardrobe doors – and a striving for absolute simplicity and purity.Something about it was tremendously revealing.I felt as though I had had an unexpected glimpse into Mrs Cavendish’s very soul.But there was no time to waste, and I dragged a chair to the wardrobe and climbed upon it to reach the hatboxes perfectly stacked upon the top.The grey one was, as Mrs Munn had told me, on top of the striped one, and during the few seconds it took me to lift it down, I worried myself into a panic over whether she might have moved the key.I knew something was wrong the second I touched the box, for it was too light.My fears were confirmed as soon as I opened it.The box contained no hat at all, only a crumple of protective tissue paper.Stupid me – why had I expected to find the hat here? Had not Mrs Munn specifically said that the key was tucked into the loops of ribbon on the black hat that Mrs Cavendish wore for mourning? Obviously, she hadn’t been wearing it on the day that Sebastian came home, but, just as obviously, she was wearing it today.In fact, I had seen it not more than an hour ago atop her beautifully arranged silvery blonde hair.I fingered the tissue paper, and the tiny key dropped into my hand
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