Killing Times

The man had walked from Wimbledon underground station to the Common, a brisk walk on a pale, cold December afternoon. He was well wrapped up in a heavy black overcoat with fur collar, a garment reaching almost to his ankles and having about it a hint of capes, a flavour of coaches and posthorns, a style of something now twenty if not sixty years obsolete. The man was thus hardly dressed fashionably for the year 1911, in the strict sense of the word - and yet there was a suggestion of fashion, or at least of elegance about his tall-crowned bowler hat with its curly brim, about the gold band round his umbrella handle, about his beautifully polished and well-made shoes. He had walked fast. He needed to keep warm, to get his blood moving. A park bench in December was a chilly prospect. And this might take some time.