He caught sight of her at once and realized with a shock that he had mistaken her in the half-light for a coloured blanket thrown over an armchair. She was a large flat woman in a long Paisley gown who wore a small dull red shawl over her head, while her face, which was not very different in colour, was creased and mottled until it merged into the chair’s own rust-and-brown brocaded velvet.
She did not move at all. He had never seen any living thing, save a crocodile, quite so still. But her eyes, which now peered up into his own, were for all their smudgy whites bright and intelligent.
‘On this little table,’ she said, but she did not attempt to point it out to him or to draw it closer to her side. She had a clear authoritative voice, educated and brisk. He obeyed it at once.
The littl
