Without the Moon Read Online Free PDF

I can here, better get her over to Spilsbury, now, see what he makes of it. Poor old boy,” Cherrill added to himself. “I don’t suppose he’ll like it much. What’ll you do now, Ted?”
    Greenaway snapped his notebook shut. “Go house to house,” he said. “Try and find out who she was first, what she might have been doing here. And who she might have been knocking about with.”
    Cherrill nodded. “Well,” he said, “we’re looking for a left-handed man, I’m sure Spilsbury will confirm it. Good luck, Ted.”
    â€œAnd to you,” said Greenaway. “Hope you find him before I do.”
    For his own sake , he added, mentally.

4
THE MOOCHE
    Monday, 9 February 1942
    The dull afternoon light did not penetrate the windows of the first-floor rooms of 153 Wardour Street. The windows themselves, hanging in their frames like the bleary eyes of a heavy drinker amid a sagging façade of shell-shocked masonry, were covered with the accumulated dirt of so many bomb blasts that the sun would have had a difficult enough job even on the brightest of days. But this was not the reason for the dim aura of the room occupied by Mrs Evelyn Bettencourt, or, as she preferred her friends to call her, Nina Oakley, this Monday afternoon. Nina had drawn the blackout curtains early in order to best facilitate the atmosphere necessary for the services of her friend and confidante, Madame Arcana.
    Madame – or Flo, as she was known by her fellow expatriates in the community that dwelt around Berlemont’s pub in Dean Street – was a petite woman in her thirties, who dressed in black astrakhan and a flamboyant red hat with a feather in it. Thus she announced her profession as an occultist: palms and tarots read, fortunes told, spiritual assistance given for 1/6 an hour – a little above the average rate, but, as Madame would impress upon you the first time you met her, holding your hand tightly with red-manicured fingers and gazing with a solemn intensity through a pair of huge, black eyes, that was because she had studied under Madame Blavatsky herself, as a young girl in Paris.
    Very few of her clients, including the peroxide blonde sitting next to her, had insight enough to realise that, were this to be true, Madame Arcana would have had to have been at least sixty years older than she appeared to be. Perhaps, even if they had, they might have put it down to awe-inspiring magical powers, for very few of Madame’s regulars were ever disappointed by her.
    Nina had been seeing her on and off for some months now, since she had first made her acquaintance in the aforementioned hostelry one slow October evening. At first it had been the crystal ball Madame had consulted through, but today, because she was anticipating a change in her luck, Nina had asked her to read her cards.
    Nina drew from the Marseilles Tarot by flickering candlelight, while a lump of Indian incense, bought especially from the Atlantis Bookshop, smouldered in the ashtray. Even the most amateur of readers would have found the three cards she chose a challenge, but Madame was skilled enough in psychology not to let her dismay at the chaos she saw revealed transmit itself to her client.
    â€œTell me,” she said, lifting her head, “how was your husband when you last saw him?”
    Nina, who had fled to London six years previously, to escape the life of a Lancashire poultry farmer’s wife, gave a resigned sigh before she answered. Her trouble, as she had often confided to Madame before, was that her husband still paid her regular visits, always hoping – yet never bold enough to actually ask – that they might be reconciled.
    â€œMy Harry?” she said. “He was all right, I s’pose. Same as he always is. Oh, he’s a good man right enough, he’s kind, considerate, goes to church on Sunday; he’s just—” she shrugged, pursing lips around which the