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For Derek Thompson
Six years of war, and two decades of rebuilding and redevelopment, might have changed the face of London, but it had not changed the Bachelors’ club. It was still as austere as it had been in l939—gray-fronted, stone-pillared, its heavy oak doors surmounted by the Gothic archway, which is the delight of the antiquarian and the despair of the modernist. It lay to the rear of what once had been prosperous residences and which now were nothing but rubble heaps—a squat, invincible building looming with a certain air of aloof complacency amidst a spider’s web of alleys, small jewelers’ shops, second-hand dealers and light industries. The glory that had been was no more; this disgusting element of commercialism had crept in and around the Bachelors’ club, a product of the post-war era.
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The car pulled up in front of the station. Perry helped the girl out; then, seizing her case, he tugged it into the bare, barrack-like building.
“This won’t take a moment,” the constable said. “I’ll just type out your statements and then you can sign them.”
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