Enigma

the London express pulled in, packed and filthy. 'Worse than the bloody Jerries' train,' complained a man.
    Jericho couldn't find a seat, so he stood, leaning against the door to the corridor, until his chalk complexion and the sheen of perspiration on his forehead prompted a young Army officer to give up his place. Jericho sat down gratefully, dozed, and dreamed of the German prisoner with his sad owl's face, and then of Claire on that first journey, just before Christmas, their bodies touching.
    By 2.30 he was in London, at St Pancras Station, moving awkwardly through the mass of people towards the entrance to the Underground. The lift was out of action so he had to take the stairs, stopping on every landing to recover his strength. His back was throbbing and something wet was trickling down his spine, but whether it was sweat or blood he couldn't tell.
    On the eastbound Circle Line platform, a rat scurried through the rubbish beneath the rails towards the tunnel mouth.
    When Jericho failed to emerge from the Bletchley train, Kite was irritated but unconcerned. The next train was due in within a couple of hours, there was a good pub just around the corner from the station, and that was where the college porter chose to do his waiting, in the amiable company of two halves of Guinness and a pork pie.
    But when the second train terminated at Cambridge, and still there was no sign of Jericho, Kite went into a sulk that lasted him throughout the half hour it took him to trudge back to King's.
    He informed the domestic bursar of Jericho's non-appearance, and the domestic bursar told the Provost, and the Provost dithered over whether or not to call the Foreign Office.
    'No consideration,' complained Kite to Dorothy Saxmundham in the Porter's Lodge. 'Just no bloody consideration at all.'
    With the solution in his pocket, Tom Jericho left Somerset House and made his slow way westwards, along the Embankment, towards the heart of the city. The south bank of the Thames was a garden of ruins. Above the London docks, silver-coloured barrage balloons turned and glinted and nodded in the late afternoon sun.
    Just beyond Waterloo Bridge, outside the entrance to the Savoy, he managed at last to find a taxi for hire and directed the driver to Stanhope Gardens in South Kensington. The streets were empty. They reached it quickly.
    The house was big enough to be an embassy, wide and stucco-fronted, with a pillared entrance. It must have been impressive once, but now the plasterwork was grey and flaking and in places great chunks of it had been blasted away by shrapnel. The windows of the top two storeys were curtained, blind. The house next door was bombed out, with weeds growing in the basement. Jericho climbed the steps and pressed the bell. It seemed to ring a long way off, deep within the bowels of the dead house, and left a heavy silence. He tried again, even though he knew it was useless, then retreated across the road to wait, sitting on the steps of the opposite house.
    Fifteen minutes passed, and then, from the direction of Cromwell Place, a tall, bald man appeared, startlingly thin—a skeleton in a suit—and Jericho knew at once it must be him. Black jacket, grey-striped trousers, a grey silk tie: all that was needed to complete the cliche was a bowler hat and a rolled umbrella. Instead, incongruously, he carried, as well as his briefcase, a string bag full of groceries. He approached his vast front door wearily, unlocked it and vanished inside.
    Jericho stood, brushed himself down and followed.
    The door bell tolled again; again, nothing happened. He tried a second time, and a third, and then, with difficulty, got down on his knees and opened the letter flap.
    Edward Romilly was standing at the end of a gloomy passage with his back to the door, perfectly still.
    'Mr Romilly?' Jericho had to shout through the flap. 1 need to speak to you. Please.'
    The tall man didn't move. 'Who are you?'
    'Tom Jericho. We spoke once on the telephone. Bletchley Park.'
    Romilly's shoulders sagged. 'For God's sake, will you people just leave me alone!'
    I've been to Somerset House, Mr Romilly,' said Jericho, 'to the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths. I have her death certificate here.' He pulled it out of his pocket. 'Claire Alexandra Romilly. Your daughter. Died on 14 June 1929. At St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Of spinal meningitis. At the age of six.' He propelled it through the letter flap and watched it slither across the black