Murder at Hendon Aerodrome

[...] The scorn in her voice was almost palpable. ‘He’s like that, Dietrich. A true capitalist. Always trying to get something for nothing so that he can make as much profit as possible when it comes to sell.’

He’d [Frederick Rowlands, the blind detective] reached the Outer Circle and was strolling along past Cumberland Terrace; a vague recollection of its handsome white stucco mansions flitted across his mind. It was odd how, even after almost a decade and a half of blindness, his memory still supplied such images so that his world, far from being the unrelieved darkness of popular imagination, was made up of glimpses and halftones: a chiaroscuro of remembered sights and shadowy impressions. Just now, for instance, the evening sun, striking the dazzling white surface of the tall buildings, cast its reflected glow full on his face. He’d always been grateful for the small amount of sight he had left, even if, in the early days, it had made it harder to adapt to the realities of being blind.