Chapter 5

Isopel Lobbett nodded. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But hurry.’ The taxi route from the Strand to Piccadilly is not a long one, and Marlowe found himself outside the police station in the narrow cul-de-sac sooner than he had anticipated. The ‘door on the left’, he decided, must be the yellow portal which stood open showing a flight of wooden stairs, scrubbed white, leading up into darkness. After the first flight of steps he came upon a carpet, at the third there were pictures on the wall, and he began to have the uncom…