“Pardon me, ma’am?” said Bram to a passing young woman in a black dress. “Might you know the way to Salmon Street?”
The woman stopped, quickly looked Bram up and down, and smiled flirtatiously. Her cheeks were brighter, as she grinned, than the copper buttons on her dress.
“I do, sir,” she said. “Might you be looking to take a trip to Hairyfordshire?”
Arthur looked genuinely confused; what in the world was she talking about?
“I’m very sorry, ma’am, you’ve misunderstood me,” said Bram in a hurry. “We’re just looking for Salmon Street. Is it that way?” He pointed up ahead, in the direction he had already suggested.
Now it was the young woman’s turn to look confused.
“Why, yes,” she said. “It’s just up there, take a right.”
“Thank you most kindly,” said Bram as he turned to walk in that direction.
“But I do think,” said the lady, “that if two right gentlemen such as yourselves are looking to take a trip elsewhere, perhaps somewhere more soothing, threepence apiece might pay your fare.”
Arthur figured out what she was driving at. He was shocked by the woman’s bluntness.
“Good day, madam,” he said simply, and walked away in the direction she, and Bram, had indicated. As Bram trotted behind Arthur, he turned back to the confused young woman and offered her a look of apology for his rude and simple companion. She shrugged and continued on her way.
A few minutes later, Arthur had found the address and rapped at the small door. Begrudgingly, Bram stood at his side, shifting his weight tediously from foot to foot.
Arthur knocked on the door once again, this time banging with the flat, pinkie side of his coiled fist. Paint peeling from its edges, the door creaked open, and a squat, angry man appeared behind it.
“And who all are you lot supposed to be, then?” he barked. He wore britches, and a dull gray vest open over his work shirt. His hair, slicked to the back of his head, receded aggressively from his brow, as if running flat out for the nape of his neck.
“Good sir, we are here investigating the case of the poor girl who was murdered two weeks past in your boardinghouse.”
“You don’t look like bobbies,” he said.
“No, we’re not. We’re-”
The man quickly shut the door in Arthur’s face. Arthur was stunned.
“Sir!” he yelled inside after a moment had passed. “Sir, if you’ll open the door again, I give you my word that we won’t take up too much of your time. We’d just like to see your rooms for a moment. To get a look at the crime scene, if we might. We-”
“This is Arthur Conan Doyle!” shouted Bram at the stolid door. Arthur turned to his friend, surprised to hear his voice.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” Arthur said.
But before he could continue, the door opened halfway and the angry man popped his head out into the street.
“You’re Arthur Conan Doyle?” he said to Bram.
“No,” Bram replied. “I’m…well, I’m nobody. This”-and here he gestured at Arthur-“this is Arthur Conan Doyle.”
The man gave Arthur a long once-over.
“Yes,” he said when he’d finished. “That looks like you. I’ve seen your pictures in the paper, awhile back. You sitting at your writing desk, bent over with pen and paper, looking like a grubby queer.”
Focused on the task at hand, Arthur did his best to conceal his annoyance.
“Sir, might we come in and take a look around the room where this girl stayed?” he said.
The little man opened the door a bit farther. “A spiffy gent like yourself, I don’t see why not,” he said. He turned away, pushing the door open wide behind him as indication for Arthur and Bram to follow. They did, taking care as they stepped in to avoid tripping on the raised door sill. They entered a small kitchen area and felt a slight warmth emanating from the stove on the far side of the room.
“Are you working on a new story?” said the man as he led his guests through the kitchen and up a back staircase.
“Yes,” said Arthur. “I suppose you might put it like that.”
The man’s face sparkled with excitement. “So you’re going to do it, then, eh? Bring him back to life?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Sherlock Holmes!” exclaimed the man as he turned at the top of the staircase to look downward at Arthur, circled in a halo of light from windows on the higher floor. “It’s about time, you ask me. He was always good for a snort, you know, to get a workingman through the day. I miss him like he were family.” The man laughed to himself. “More than my own family, right, if I do say so.”
In silence, Bram followed Arthur up onto the second floor. They could hear noises-muffled but close-from behind some of the locked bedroom doors.
“How many people do you typically have staying here?” asked Arthur, desperate for a change in subject.
“Oh, that depends,” said the man. “I’ve got ten or so regulars who lay their heads here every night, and then another five or ten who come and go as the whim pleases them. You’d be surprised, but it’s the regulars who give me more trouble. Think they can get a day behind in their rents and I won’t notice, or I’ll give them credit for another night. They get right indignant when I refuse. The comers and the goers, though, they know damn well they’ve to pay in advance. Threepence a night, and none of that Jew haggling neither.”
“Which sort was the dead woman?” asked Arthur.
“Neither, really,” said the man. “She only come that one night. With a gentleman, so I gathered, but I never got much look at him.”
“Why was that?”
“She come in first, asking if I had a room for the night for her and her husband. ‘Husband,’ she says! If I had a shiny copper for every ‘husband’ jerked out his dirty peter in these-”
“But you never saw his face?” interrupted Arthur, trying to learn as little of the sordid details of the man’s business as he was able.
“No, sir. Like I says, she come in first, in that pretty white dress, pocketful of coins, talking about a husband. She’s giddy, you know, talking all quick, got a blush in her face. Like my own girl on Easter, knows she’s got a fresh sweet orange waiting for her from Mum and Pop when she comes down the stairs. This girl is chock-full of grins. Tells me her name is Morgan Nemain, writes it down in my book and-”
“Might I take a look at that book?” interrupted Arthur.
“Surely, I’ll fetch it from downstairs on your way out,” said the man.
“Pray continue.”
“I show her to the room,” the man went on, “and she says a gentleman’ll be along shortly. I tend to my affairs, and a few minutes later I’m in Hattie Stark’s room, explaining to her why the slavey girl hasn’t done her wash yet. She’s putting up a fuss, saying she needs her wash, and I’m trying to explain that if she doesn’t have it out in the morning before ten o’clock, the slavey can’t get to it till the next day.” Arthur looked down the hall at the row of locked bedchambers. The room in question was at the far end.
“We’re going back and forth, like Hattie will do, when I hear a knock on the front door and a voice calling out to get let in. Thought it was a woman’s voice at first, to be honest, it was so high and squeaky, but then the ‘bride,’ she says that’s her husband and she’ll let him in.
“She seems like a good enough sort, so I let her do it. And I hear her and the gent laughing, coming up the stairs. I poke my head out of Hattie’s room to make sure it’s just the two of them-three or more people to a room is extra, you know-and I see her leading a tall fellow into the bedroom. I just see him from behind. Black evening cloak, top hat. Walked like a fine sort. Then I’m back to Hattie and her hollering. Told the detectives from the Yard as much.”
Arthur and Bram followed the man into the cramped bedroom. A well-made bed sat in the right corner, low to the floor. A pitcher of water rested on top of a bedside table. A stained bathtub that might one day, long ago, have shone bright white was in the left corner.