Chapter 5 #3
The smell of the place was the same that I’d experienced in a dozen other such places in the past. That mixture of pig fat from cooking, rancid food, clothes in bad need of soap, and bodies as well.
All of it crowded into the tenement amid the noise of an argument somewhere in the building and the persistent wail of an infant.
The door to the flat occupied by the woman I now knew to be called Meggy stood open. There was no response as I knocked on the frame about the door. It did appear the disagreeable woman was not about.
Undeterred, I climbed the stairs to the second floor where Dory had her room. The door there stood ajar as well. I slowly pushed it open.
My previous visit had been sad and a bit disconcerting when I had returned to search for something that might explain what had happened, and who had killed my friend. It seemed that someone else was of a similar mind.
The room had been completely turned out. Not the sort that one might expect to prepare for a new tenant—clearing away any food or refuse that remained, an attempt to make it worth the rent that was to be charged.
The curtain from the alcove lay on the floor after it had been ripped from the hooks overhead that secured it, the thin mattress slashed to pieces, with the niche I had discovered at the wall gaping open, the few coins that I’d left behind scattered upon the floor.
Someone had been searching for something.
The matron of the building, Meggy? Scrounging about for anything of value? But that made no sense with the coins I saw on the floor.
“Cor! What a bloody mess!” an exclamation behind me.
Why was I not surprised, I thought. It seemed that, in addition to being too bold for his own sake, the boy was stubborn as well.
Even amid the chaos with trash strewn about and the destruction, this told me something. But precisely what that was had yet to be discovered.
I rose and turned at the smell of tobacco smoke, half expecting one of the other tenants, or possibly old Meggy.
The boy stood in the doorway instead, a shoulder braced at the door frame, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I snatched it away.
“Wot are ye thinkin’? Yer coin should be spent on food, not tobacco,” I announced as I crushed it under the heel of my boot to a loud exclamation of protest.
“I didna pay fer it.” He indignantly replied.
Of course, undoubtedly pinched off someone.
“Ye canna tell me wot to do!”
“I can as long as ye are in my presence, which you presently are, after I told ye to leave.”
“Yer not me mother.”
“Thank heaven for that. You are a troublesome, insolent baggage. Now get on with ye. Yer mother will be wondering where ye are,” I added as I left the room and closed the door behind me.
I swept a glance at the hall, then made my way to the staircase.
“I dinna have a mother, or father for that matter.”
“What happened to yer family?” I asked as we reached the cobbled alley of the Close and I glanced in both directions for anyone who might be there.
“Well?” I asked again. His response was a shrug of the shoulders.
“I never knew me father. Me mother gave me over to a blacksmith as a helper, one less mouth to feed. He paid her. I didn’t stay there. He beat me regular, and I figured I was better off on the street.”
Paid her? In other words, his mother sold him to the blacksmith.
“I dinna know where she is now.”
In spite of the fact the boy assumed that I was a lady, I felt a familiar hollow ache deep inside that I had not felt in a long time. His situation was one that I understood far too well.
“I suppose ye have a name.”
“Kip,” he replied. “It’s the only one that I remember. Me mum use to call me other things, but they’re not fit for a lady.”
I could well imagine.
“Do you know the Close well?” I inquired.
He nodded. “I’ve spent some time here. I saw the woman wot got herself murdered as well. She lived here.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the tenement.
It could well be a lie.
“Do you know the tavern where she worked from time to time?”
A nod. “It’s not far, but there’s a handful between here and there.”
Clever young imp. And for a coin, he’d take me to the one where he knew she worked, rather than spend a good amount of time making inquiries at each one as the hour grew later.
“How much?” I inquired.
“A half-crown to tell ye which one.”
I had to admire the little thief’s initiative.
“I can well make the inquiries myself, and find the tavern myself,” I replied. “Sixpence and no more.”
He nodded. “Payment up front.”
I gave him two pence. “The rest after I speak with the tavernkeeper.”
There was a slow nod.
“It’s the Halfway House, half the way along the Close.”
He gave me a toothsome grin, and we set off up that steep cobbled pathway of the Close.
“Do ye talk to crows?” he asked as we climbed the pathway.
“Wot are ye nattering about, ye lout?” I asked as we passed a print shop and two abandoned and darkened entrances.
“There’s a saying about those who talk to crows, that they have a special power. They know things people dinna know. Sometimes, they know when someone is gonna die. Two crows means somethin’ else. I forget.”
I frowned. I had heard that as well. Old wives’ tales, I thought.
“Wait here if ye want to be paid the other four shillings,” I told him and entered the tavern.