She went back to her flat, closed the door and picked up the letter. It was addressed to her in pencilled handwriting.

She tore the letter open, heart thumping now, because whenever he was in a hurry, Jim wrote in an almost indecipherable scrawl like this. She unfolded the single sheet of pale blue paper and read:

“Sorry I’ve messed things up, Judy. There’s nothing I can do now. I didn’t mean to kill him. I just felt I had to let you know.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Visitor

The note was signed with a scrawl which might have been “Jim”, might have been almost any short name. The handwriting was shaky—not Jim’s usual swift and confident scribble; but it wasn’t that alone which made her sure he had not written it.

She read the message again, then looked up at the photograph which was turned towards her.

“Judy,” she said, in an odd, squeaky voice. “Judy!” She gave a laugh which sounded as odd as her voice and read the note again. “Judy!” she cried aloud—then started violently as the flat doorbell rang.

She backed away.

Jim had never called her Judy but always— always—Punch. It had started at the moment when they’d been introduced, at a tennis-club dance—she could never remember who had actually introduced them. A casual: “This is Judy, this is Jim,” and the someone had been swept away in the crowd. Smiling eyes in a smiling face had looked at her and a merry voice had said: “Care to dance, Punch?”

The doorbell rang again.

She folded the letter, put it back in the envelope and opened the door. She had no idea whom it might be; she felt breathless from the discovery, sensing a significance which she couldn’t yet understand—and then a tall man appeared in front of her, smiling, vaguely familiar, hatless, wearing a dark grey suit of faultless cut. His eyes held the look that had so often been in Jim’s. She felt, not realising what she felt, that she had much in common with this man; they could get along.