How Asher knew, he couldn't have said. Only his instinct, honed in years with the Department, had not waned in the eight peaceful years of Oxford lecturing that had passed since he quit. Heart pounding hard enough to almost sicken him, he made his way without appearance of hurry to the ticket windows, the small bag of a weekend's worth of clean linen and shaving tackle swinging almost unnoticed in his hand. By the station clock it was half past five. The departures board announced the Dover boat train at quarter of six. The fare to Paris was one pound, fourteen and eight, second class-Asher had just over five pounds in his pocket and paid unhesitatingly. Third class would have saved him twelve shillings-the cost of several nights' lodging in Paris, if one knew where to look- but his respectable brown ulster and stiff crowned hat would have stood out among the rough clothed workmen and shabby women in the third-class carriages. He told himself, as he bought the ticket, that the urgency of not calling attention to himself was the only reason to stay out of third class tonight. But he knew it was a lie.

He walked along the platform among women in cheap poplin skirts loading tired children onto the cars, screaming at one another in the clipped, sloppy French of Paris or the trilled r's of the Midi; among men huddled, coatless, in jackets and scarves against the cold, and tried not to listen to his heart telling him that someone in third class was going to die tonight.

He touched a passing porter on the arm. "Would you be so kind as to check the baggage car and tell me if there's a box or trunk, five feet long or over? Could be a coffin, but it's probably trunk."

The man squinted at the half-crown in Asher's hand, then sharp brown eyes went to Asher's face. "C'n tell you that right low, sir." Asher automatically identified the cropped ou and glottal stop i of the Liverpool Irish, and wondered at his own capacity for pursuing philological points when his life was in danger. The man touched his cap. "Near killed old Joe 'eavin' the thing in, awkward an' all."