The Secret of Annexe 3

Opposite the Haworth Hotel she could see the two front windows of the annexe clearly - and so very near! There seemed to be some sort of light on at the back of the building somewhere; but each of the two rooms facing the street - and especially one of them, the one on the left as she watched and waited - was dark and almost certainly empty. A glass-sided bus shelter almost directly opposite the annexe protected her from the drizzle, if not from the wind, and gave her an ideal vantage point from which to keep watch without arousing suspicion. A bus came and picked up the two people waiting there, a very fat West Indian woman and a wiry little English woman, both about sixty, both (as Helen gathered) cleaners in a nearby hospice, who chatted together on such easy and intimate terms that it was tempting to be optimistic about future prospects for racial harmony. Helen stood aside - and continued to watch. Soon another bus was coming towards her, its headlights illuminating the silvery sleet; but she stood back inside the shelter, and the bus passed on without stopping. Then she saw something - something which seemed to make her heart lurch towards her mouth. A light had been turned on in the room on the right, Annexe 1: the window, its curtains undrawn, glared brightly in the darkness, and a figure was moving around inside. Then the light was switched off, and the light in the next room - her room - was switched on. A bus had stopped, the doors, folding inwards, inviting her to climb aboard; and she found herself apologizing and seeing the look on the driver's face as he tossed his head in contempt before leaning forward over the great steering-wheel and driving away. The light was still on in Annexe 2, and she saw a figure silhouetted against the window for a few seconds; and then that light too was switched off. A man came out of the side door, walked round to the front of the annexe, immediately opposite to her, and disappeared inside; and the two rooms facing the street were dark and empty once more. But the policeman was still there at the side entrance. He had been there all along, his black-and-white checkered cap conspicuous under the light that illuminated the path between the Haworth Hotel and the cordoned area of the annexe - the red, yellow, and white tabs on the ropes tilting back and forth in the keen wind.

If Helen Smith had ever been likely to despair, she would have done so at this point. And yet somehow she knew that she would not despair. It may have been the cold, the hopelessness, the futility of it all; it may have been her awareness that there could be nothing more for her to lose. She didn't know. She didn't want to know. But she sensed within herself a feeling of wild determination that she had never known before. Her whole being seemed polarized between the black-and-white hat across the road and the key still clutched so tightly and warmly in her right hand. There had to be some way of diverting the man's attention, so that she would have the chance to slip swiftly and silently through the side door. But it had been so much easier than that! He had just walked across to the main hotel, where he now stood drinking a cup of something from a white plastic beaker, and happily engrossed in conversation with a young woman from the hotel.

Helen was in the corridor almost before her courage had been called upon.

No problem! With shaking hand she inserted the key in the lock of Annexe 2, closed the door behind her, and stood stock-still for a moment or two in the dark. Then she felt her way across to the bed nearer the window, and ran her hands along the smooth sheets, and beneath and around the pillow, and along the headboard, and finally over the floor. They had been there: they had been underneath her pillow - she knew it. And an embryo sob escaped her lips as again her hands frantically, but fruitlessly, searched around. There were two switches on the headboard, and she turned on the one above the bed she had slept in: she had to make sure! For half a minute she searched again desperately in the lighted room; but to no avail. And now, for the first time, it was fear that clutched her heart as she switched off the light, left the room and edged her way noiselessly through the side door. Then she froze where she stood against the wall. Immediately opposite, at one of the windows on the first floor of the main hotel, a woman stood watching her - and then was gone. Helen felt quite certain that the woman had seen her, and an icy panic seized her. She could remember little of how she left the hotel; but fear had given its own winged sandals to her feet.