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She was looking at him. “You don’t.” She said it as if she knew. “Sometimes it’s a shame to have everything known, every hillside, every cliff or beach, or even all of the trees. Then you don’t have to build them in your own mind, because they’re already built.” She turned away. “I’m sorry. That’s a bit fanciful. I’m trying not to think of this wretched man. Dreams are so much safer…sometimes.”
He wanted to comfort her, just a hand on her arm. But it would be intrusive.
He stepped into the road and hailed a cab. When it stopped, he handed her up into it, then followed. He gave the driver instructions quietly: just a street name and number, not that it was the morgue.
“Do you want to be safe?” he asked. “Never surprised?”
“You make it sound so…dead! Oh. I’m sorry. That was an unfortunate thing to say—when we’re going to such a place…” She trailed off, embarrassed.
He hid his smile. “I think that ‘hibernating’ would be a better word.”
“How gentle you are,” she said. “Going to sleep for a while is so different from never having woken up in the first place. But we can’t pick and choose to sleep through the bad bits. And how would you know if you did, that you didn’t dream them anyway?”
“You’d miss the cold,” he pointed out.
“And the winter furrows can be so beautiful across the ploughed fields, and the new fallen snow, and…and…” Her voice choked off. “I miss her already, and it’s only been a week. There are so many things you can’t talk about to just…anybody.”
“If you’ve ever had even one person you can speak to, you are fortunate,” he replied. “And if you can share with one, perhaps you can share with another. Some people can’t put a name or a word to anything and really mean it.”
She lifted up her hand as if she would touch his arm.
He sat painfully still, hoping she would.
Then she realized what she was doing and withdrew it.
They sat in silence, but it was companionable. He thought about broad estuary skies and birds on the wild winds, white gulls, skeins of geese with their wings creaking. There was no other sound like it. One day, perhaps, he would tell her about it.
They arrived at the morgue and Hooper paid the driver, then stood to help Celia out, taking her hand. She did not seem to lean on him at all.
They went inside, and he took her to a room to wait while he went for the police surgeon. Then they accompanied him to look at the body of Lister.
He had been considerably tidied up; nearly all the blood had been removed. He looked ashen now. There was almost a bluish tint to his skin.
Celia looked at him quite steadily, but she stood very close to Hooper. He would like to have put his arm around her, if he had dared.
“Has he blue eyes?” she asked.
Hooper had no idea.
“Yes,” the police surgeon told her.
“Then that is the man who took Kate. He…looked brighter-colored then. He moved gracefully.”
“Are you sure?” Hooper asked.
“Oh, yes, he has that funny little mark on his nose. I thought it stopped his face from looking too exact. Poor man. It’s too late to mend anything now, isn’t it! May we leave, please? I don’t like this. It’s all so perfectly…pointless.”
“Of course.” This time Hooper did take her arm, whether she thought it forward of him or not. He wanted to steady her because she looked a little off balance. “We shall get a cup of tea—very hot.”
“We?” She gave the ghost of a smile. “I am not your responsibility, Mr. Hooper.”
“We,” he repeated firmly.
CHAPTER
10
MONK WAS STILL WORKING at nearly half-past six, putting toget
