A dangling hand clutched at the man’s face as he went down the aisle between the wooden tiers. He didn’t flinch or jump but brushed the hand aside. He moved by instinct rather than by sight. At the far end of the room was a second tattered curtain, beyond which was a short flight of stairs illuminated by a single flaring gas lamp. At the bottom was a door. The man knocked again – the same pattern, two quick raps followed by a third – and was told to enter.
The interior was scarcely bigger than a boxroom. A cadaverous man was sitting on a low three-legged stool. He had a long pipe in his hand which he had evidently been about to lean forward and light from a candle on the floor when the knock came at the door. The sweet, pungent smell was even stronger in this little underground chamber where there was no apparent ventilation.
A woman lay on a mattress which was pushed against the wall and which took up half the floor space. One of her legs was cocked up and her skirts had fallen back to reveal pale thighs. Her white face was turned towards the door and her eyes were half-closed. She did not acknowledge the newcomer. Her white complexion by the light of the single candle, together with the gash of her red lips and the dark rings around her eyes, gave her a clownish look.
‘Evenin’, sir,’ said the newcomer.
‘Good evening to you, George,’ said the man crouched on the stool. He spoke with an odd formality as he gestured with his unlit pipe in the direction of the woman. ‘The lady is in the arms of Morpheus. She’s two pipes down and I haven’t even started. But I am glad of it, George. Why am I glad? Because I can listen to you with full attention before I take my pleasure. Sit yourself down on the mattress.’
The man called George – or in full George Forester – took off his cheap mackintosh and lowered himself on to the mattress. He sat cross-legged with the damp garment over his knees. He was small and lithe and did not find the position uncomfortable.
‘How can you breathe in here?’ said George. ‘It’s stiflin’. The air is wicked.’
Even as he spoke he felt the thick atmosphere in the room settle inside his throat like wet flannel. He would have preferred to be on the outside, drizzling and cold as it was.
‘It’s what you’re used to,’ said the other man. ‘Me, I take to this like a fish to water – or is it a duck?’
‘Anyone would think you own this place,’ said George, meaning it as a compliment.
‘Ssh, less of that now. I have my reputation to think of. The owner is a Malay whose name is so polysyllabic that no one can pronounce it apart from me. The fact that I can pronounce it and that I reminisce with him about Penang are reasons enough for him to respect me, and give me a private room when I require it.’
George did not know where or what Penang was. And, although he got the general drift of the other man’s words, the meaning of ‘polysyllabic’ was unfamiliar to him. The individual who’d been about to light an opium-pipe was someone of education and breeding, no doubt about it. You only had to listen to his talk for a few moments to realize he was a cultured gentleman. He might have come down in the world and grown thin and pinched in the face. He might have lost most of what he once had but he still possessed a certain authority. Perhaps it was on account of his old profession, George thought. That was how they had met, through his old profession. George had good reason to be grateful, eternally grateful, to the man he always referred to as ‘sir’.
‘Well, what have you learned?’
‘It’s quite simple, sir. I hung around their drum and asked around their neighbourhood today and yesterday and I visited the shops and picked up a few titbits.’
‘Such as?’
George raised his left hand and enumerated the points, one finger at a time. ‘They are newly married. They recently moved into Abercrombie Road. They’ve got a maid called Hetty who’s got a sister livin’ a few streets away.’
‘I’m not interested in the maid or her sister,’ said the cadaverous man, gazing up at the low ceiling where the shadows jumped.
‘What I’m gettin’ at, sir, is there’s just the three of ’em in the house.’
‘No little ones?’
‘Not yet.’
‘That’s good,’ said the gentleman.
‘Why’s that, sir?’
‘Never mind. Give me more details.’
‘His name is Ansell, which you already know. First name Thomas. Hers is Helen. He works at a lawyers’ in Furnival Street, he does. She’s the daughter of a lawyer, deceased, of the same firm, so it’s all very cosy.’
‘What time does he get back in the evening?’
‘’Bout six or so.’
‘And go to bed?’
‘I saw no lights after ten,’ said George.
‘Hmm,’ said the other. ‘Well, they’re newly married, I suppose. Street lights?’
‘Nearest one’s many yards away. You want any more help, sir? Any more kit? Just ask. I got one or two pieces left over. An’ I got the know-how.’
‘No, I don’t want any more help, George. I am not yet decided what to do.’
‘What about the other two, the ones I’ve already reported on?’
‘I am still thinking about them as well. You may leave now, George.’
And the cadaverous individual leaned forward and started his pipe going at the candle. It was a sign of dismissal. George sprang up from the mattress where the white-faced woman slumbered oblivious, her eyelids completely closed by now. He put on his mackintosh, almost knocking over the candle as he did so. The shadows swirled across the tight walls and low ceiling.
‘Careful,’ said the other. ‘We don’t want to be left darkling, do we? Shut the door behind you.’
George did as he was told. He climbed the stairs, pushed aside the tattered curtain and paced through the long low room full of men and a few women banked in tiers and sprawled in various attitudes in their roosts. The red embers pulsed in the furthest shadows like the eyes of nocturnal beasts. The individual who attended on the outer door was revealed, now that George’s eyes were more used to the gloom, to be an oriental woman, very diminutive and antique.
Once he had been let out and climbed the worn steps to street level, George paused and took in great lungfuls of the drizzly air as if he were striding along the North Downs rather than standing heel-deep in the filth of Penharbour Lane. He disliked his occasional visits to the smoking den – he had never been tempted by the habit himself – and he went only because it was the spot where he could almost definitely count on finding the gentleman he sought.
As he returned to Lower Thames Street, he wondered what use the gentleman was going to make of the information he’d given him. He wondered too why his offer of help had been turned down. For it would have been a simple matter for George to worm his way inside the house in Abercrombie Road. In his younger days he had been apprenticed to a sweep and the training was an excellent introduction for burglary, since climbing boys had to be fit, nimble and small. George dabbled in crime, acting as lookout for burglars, going to the scene of the crime beforehand to check that the coast was clear, then keeping watch while his two mates were at it. He had slithered through the odd window space himself. But he was not really cut out for a criminal life, never felt truly comfortable, and he did his best to turn away from it. Why, he even settled down and married. Now he and Annie had kids, a few of them, which was how he encountered ‘sir’ in the first place.
It was when one of their children had fallen ill of a fever. Someone said there was a doctor down on his luck who lodged round the corner in Rosemary Lane. He’d occasionally attend on a sick child if you caught him at the right time, if you found him in a kindly mood. His name? No one knew his surname. He answered to Tony. So George had hared round to Rosemary Lane and knocked on doors and toiled up rickety staircases and several times risked a punch in the phizog to track down this geezer. He’d inquired with increasing desperation of dozens of loungers and passers-by whether they knew a Tony, a medical gentleman. And, lo and behold, after half a day and when he was about to give up, he asked the man himself without realizing it. Doctor Tony was a tall, thin, long-haired gent with skin that, even by the vaporous daylight of Rosemary Lane, was decidedly sallow. George Forester did not discover his surname then or ask for it later.