eleven o'clock in the morning
Only one night more ! For the moment , time was no object to him , and he proceeded on foot through Roehampton village and by the sodden coppices of Putney Heath to the Portsmouth high road and the railway station of East Putney . He waited at the station until an underground train snaked its way in like a giant blindworm , and went with it to the Temple and so to the quiet hotel he had chosen in Lincoln 's Inn Fields . On his way , he sent off a telegram to the shipowner stating that John Rivière would call at Leadenhall Street at eleven o'clock in the morning . In the coffee-room of the Avon Hotel he sat down to write a long letter to Elaine which would explain all that had been hidden from her . Without sparing himself one jot he told her of the circumstances of his life since the crucial night of March 14th , and of the deception he carried out with her as well as with the rest of the world . It was long past midnight before he put to the letter the signature of `` Clifford Matheson . ''