could I locate him anywhere else within easy distance. Well, it seemed it would be up to me.
Luckily, I was spared the task of disentangling myself from Mr. Turner-Hill by a group of bespectacled academics who approached, notebooks in hand, ready to discuss the merits of Jingdezhen porcelain.
With a vague farewell, I left Leslie Turner-Hill and followed Jerome Curtis outside.
* * *
I stepped through the French doors into a small garden. It was very dark—with the blackout curtains on the doors no light shone from inside—and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
It was then I saw the hulking shadow of Jerome Curtis standing with his back to the wall. He was watching me from the darkness.
I pretended to be startled. “Oh! Oh, hello.”
“Hello.” His voice was low and coarse. He sounded just as I had expected him to; that is, the way film villains sound.
“I just came out for a bit of air,” I said. “It’s rather warm with so many people in there.”
He said nothing. I saw the lit end of his cigarette moving as he brought it to his lips.
“Do you have a spare?” I asked. “I’m afraid I’ve left mine inside.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his dinner jacket and pulled out a pack, holding it out.
I stepped toward him and pulled one from the pack, put it between my lips, and leaned forward expectantly, waiting for him to light it. He struck a match, which momentarily lit up his features. He looked even more frightening up close than he had from across the room. I’d known plenty of rough men, as Uncle Mick’s friends were a motley crew. But there was something different about Jerome Curtis, and I tried to analyze just what it was.
His face was lumpy and misshapen, but I’d seen boxers’ faces before. The scars, too, weren’t especially unusual. It was his eyes, I realized. They gave the appearance of being completely black, the pupil indistinguishable from the iris. In combination with the violent past written across his features and his bulky frame, they made him look like some sort of storybook ogre.
“Thank you,” I said, taking a drag of the cigarette and blowing out a stream of smoke into the darkness.
We stood there in the quiet for a moment.
I wondered why it was that he had come out here. I supposed it was possible he’d just decided to have a smoke by himself. When involved in spy games, it’s easy to forget that some people are behaving without hidden motivations.
“I don’t really know that much about porcelain,” I said, by way of conversation. “Are you a collector?”
He glanced at me. “I work for Sir Nigel.”
“Oh, that must be very interesting.”
He gave something like a grunt in reply. Clearly, he didn’t want to talk.
We smoked for another moment in silence.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” I said at last. “The city so dark like this.”
Another grunt.
“I suppose the Luftwaffe will find us anyway. Eventually.”
This garnered no response.
“I just hope they don’t come by land.”
“They all will wish they hadn’t.”
I was a bit surprised that it was this statement that drew a response from him. I was also surprised by the sinister intonation of it, the clear threat in the words. He clearly didn’t have any love for the Germans.
“That’s what my uncle says,” I told him. “My uncle … well, he grew up with some rough characters. Underworld types.” I remembered what Major Ramsey had told me about Jerome Curtis being involved with racketeers and thought this might be the key to getting him to open up.
No such luck. He didn’t respond to the bait.
I was having a difficult time getting a read on this Jerome Curtis. Maybe it was having grown up around some unsavory characters, but, despite his fearsome features, I realized I didn’t feel uncomfortable with him alone in the shadows.
Maybe I should have. But I didn’t have the sensation that he posed any threat to me. And, somehow, I didn’t feel that he was the type of man who would side with the Germans or do any work for them. Of course, there was still the possibility that he killed at Sir Nigel’s behest.
As opposed to Mr. Turner-Hill, I could very well picture Jerome Curtis slitting a man’s throat without thinking twice.
The racketeering angle hadn’t worked, so I decided to see if the boxing angle would yield something. I remembered a friend of Uncle Mick’s, a mountain of a man with a face more battered than Jerome