At that point Greta was very aware of Ruthven taking a deep steadying breath, and put in, “We’re just worried about Stephen, that’s all. I’m an old friend of his from ages ago, and he had stopped answering his letters. I wanted to find out whatever I could.”
There were two men behind the desk, one of whom eyed the pair of them with cold pale blue eyes and emanated officious disapproval, and the other of whom—rather younger, with facial bone structure that reminded Greta of certain rodents she had met—looked a bit less inimical, but frightened of his superior. She was not entirely surprised when, on their way out, he caught up with them.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “It’s just—the police have been around several times asking the same sorts of questions. It’s—this rosary business, at the murder scenes, they don’t seem to understand that it has nothing to do with the Church, they just go on and on about religious cult activity and it’s all very upsetting.”
Greta made sympathetic noises, waiting for him to get to the point. “About Halethorpe,” he said, eventually. “We don’t know where he went, but he—Just before he left, he seemed to be less than sure of his vocation. Sometimes that happens. People do, er, wash out, I believe is the colloquial term. It—there was—when he did leave, his roommate was terribly upset, and in fact he left, too. That wasn’t a very good time for any of us.”
“His roommate?” Ruthven asked.
“Eric Whitlow. A promising student but—well. Perhaps a little unstable.”
“Did Whitlow disappear, too?”
“Oh no,” said the man. “No, but he … seemed slightly unhinged. I gather he is still in London, however. I can get you the last address we have for him.”
“Thank you,” Greta said, exchanging a look with Ruthven.
The building in which Eric Whitlow currently lived was not a great improvement over the seminary, architecture-wise, but at least it wasn’t supposed to look either nice or welcoming: one of a row of grotty subdivided houses in West Ham. There were five doorbell buttons with hand-printed names beside them, stacked in a row beside the door. Edging into garret territory, Greta thought, and pushed the one marked WITLOW with no H.
After rather a long time the door opened to reveal a girl in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt advertising a band Greta had never heard of, who looked her and Ruthven up and down and demanded, “Yeah?”
“We’re here to see Mr. Whitlow. Eric Whitlow. Is he in?” Greta asked.
“Him? He’s weird,” said the girl, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “He’s not answering his door. Who are you, anyway?”
“I—” she began, but Ruthven cut her off smoothly, and Greta could see the change come over the girl’s face as he applied a hint of thrall.
“We’re friends of a friend,” he said. “We just want a word with Eric, if that’s all right.”
She was already nodding, eyes wide and firmly fixed on Ruthven’s face. It was clear that Greta had ceased to exist entirely in her world, and that she had just joined the ranks of People Briefly If Hopelessly In Love With Edmund Ruthven. “Come in,” she said. “I’m in the middle of studying, but I was just about to make a cup of tea, if you’d like anything?”
“That’s very kind,” he said, as she stepped aside to let them in, “thanks awfully, but we can’t stay. If you could just show us to Eric’s room, that would be wonderful.”
“Of course,” said the girl, and Greta could practically see the little hearts in her eyes. She sighed, following Ruthven up the stairs after his latest conquest. It was undeniably useful, of course, but sometimes Greta wished he wouldn’t do that in front of her. It wasn’t a comfortable thing to watch.
The girl led them to a door at the end of the hall and knocked. “Hey, Eric,” she called. “You’ve got company, and I want that mug back, and it better not have green fur in it this time, okay?”
There was a muffled response that Greta interpreted as fuck off, and the girl sighed. “He really is weird,” she said. “I’m sorry, it—Maybe you could come back later; he’s usually up later in the afternoon or evening. Eric, come on, open the door, there are people.”
This time the fuck off came from much closer range, and in fact they could hear the repeated click as several locks were unfastened. The door opened—a few inches, anyway. It was on a chain. Greta felt a flicker of profound sympathy for Eric Whitlow’s housemates.
A pair of suspicious eyeballs regarded them from within a quite extraordinary profusion of hair. It was difficult to tell where the hair on the head ended and the beard began; a kind of tangled shock of sandy growth seemed to have taken over most of his face. Greta was reminded, absurdly, of the It’s man from the beginning of Monty Python episodes.
“Who are you?” Whitlow demanded.
This time Greta simply let Ruthven speak first. “We’re friends of Stephen Halethorpe,” he said, smoothly. “May we come in?”
Whitlow was a harder mark than his housemate, but after a moment the suspicious look relaxed and he opened the door properly. The view thus afforded was more than enough to verify the girl’s classification of weird. It was, in fact, bizarre, but Greta said nothing other than “Thank you” and led the way into the room, leaving Ruthven to say good-bye to his new friend.
She stood in the narrow open space in the center of the floor, looking around. Every square inch of the walls, and some of the ceiling, was covered in devotional imagery. Plaster saints stood in a row on the windowsill and crowded the top of the desk and wardrobe, sharing the space with candles. There was a strong and distressing smell indicating that, if not the coveted mug, something in here was growing green fur; it was joined by a different if equally unappetizing smell given off by Whitlow himself, who seemed to have given up bathing as well as shaving quite some time ago.
He was short, thin—much too thin, Greta realized, clinically noting just how hollow his eyes were, how clearly the edges of his sternum were visible in the half-open V of his shirt—and even with the edges of Ruthven’s influence acting as a mild tranquilizer, his fingers would not stop moving. They fiddled with the ends of his sleeves, with each other, with the mess of his hair, never staying still for more than a few moments. The nails were bitten right down to the quick, cuticles raw and torn.
Ruthven closed the door behind them, and with it a kind of relief visibly washed over Whitlow; he didn’t stop fidgeting, but the anxious hunch eased a little, and he looked less hunted. “Who are you?” he said again.
“My name is Ruthven, and this is Greta. She’s a doctor.”
“Don’t need doctors,” Whitlow said, tugging at his hair. “Don’t need anyone.”
“We’re not here to do anything to you,” Greta said in her calmest and most reassuring voice, the one she used for frightened children of varying species. “We’re friends of Stephen Halethorpe, like Ruthven said. We were hoping you could tell us a little about him.”