‘The time,’ he announced, ‘is now ten minutes afore ten. We can be in Golden Lane by eleven.’
As the two men walked down Golden Lane towards Old Street, Adam could see that a second-hand-shoe seller had taken possession of part of the pavement opposite. His stock of boots and shoes stood in a line along the kerb. It looked as if a small queue of the ill-shod had once stood there and that they had all been miraculously spirited away, leaving only their footwear behind. The seller had no customers. Indeed, the entire neighbourhood was surprisingly unpopulated. A costermonger’s barrow laden with potatoes and turnips trundled past, the costermonger perched precariously upon it, encouraging his mangy donkey forwards, but there was little other traffic in the street.
The lodging house was a brick building halfway along Golden Lane. A wall ran along the side of it, topped with mortar and broken glass to deter any passing thief with a mind to climb it, although it was difficult to imagine that the building held anything much worth stealing. It looked exceptionally uninviting. A man would have to be desperate, Adam thought, to choose it for his accommodation. Several windows on the ground floor had broken panes. A dingy yellow blind was half pulled down one of them. On it the words ‘Good Single Beds at Threepence Halfpenny’ had been clumsily scrawled.
The door to the lodging house was open to the street. Adam and Quint entered warily and walked along a long narrow passage to what was, they quickly realised, the communal kitchen. At one end of the room was a large fireplace and around it were gathered a dozen men. Several held long skewers and were toasting bread over the flames. The men were all dressed in an assortment of filthy and mismatched old clothes. None of them looked as if he’d had recent acquaintance with soap and water. The smell in the kitchen was like a physical presence squatting in the corner of the room. Adam was about to take out a handkerchief and hold it to his nose but thought better of the notion.
The men took little or no notice of the arrival of Quint and Adam. Two glanced briefly over their shoulders. The concentration of the others was focused fiercely on their toasting bread. A staircase ran off the room to the left and, before Adam or Quint could hail any of those gathered round the fire, they heard the sounds of heavy footsteps coming down it. Judging by the reactions of those by the fireplace, the man who now entered the room was the power in the land. Unlike the arrival of Adam and Quint, this man’s entry meant something to the lodgers. It meant that it was time to leave off what they were doing and fawn upon him.
‘Morning, Mr Pradd.’
‘You’re looking well, Mr Pradd.’
‘Pleasure to see you, Mr Pradd.’
‘Would you be wanting a tot of something warming, Mr Pradd?’
A chorus of voices surrounded the man as he came into the kitchen.
Pradd ignored them all and concentrated his attention on the new arrivals. The lodging-house keeper wore a dirty shirt that might once have been white, and a pair of greasy black trousers held up by a leather belt. His face was slate grey, as if he had not ventured into the sunlight for several years and, during that time, all his colour had slowly seeped away. One of his eyes was quite clearly a product not of nature but of the glassmaker’s art. This false eye moved as freely as the real one but, disconcertingly, the two eyes did not move in harmony. As the real, right eye focused on Adam and Quint, the false, left one was rolling upwards and examining the dusty rafters above their heads.
‘Ain’t no beds to be had here. We’re full.’
‘We require no accommodation, my good man,’ Adam said. ‘What we need is information. We are looking for someone who may have stayed with you in the last few weeks.’
‘Oh, hin-for-mat-ion, eh? It’s hin-for-mat-ion you wants, is it?’ Pradd’s mockery of the young man’s all too obviously educated accent was met with howls of laughter from his sycophantic audience. It seemed as if they had seldom, if ever, heard a more crushingly comic response to a presumptuous remark.
‘Well, I ain’t so sure there’s much hinformation to be had ’ere. And I ain’t your good man neither. I ain’t nobody’s good man.’
‘Of that I have no doubt. But if you want to keep your police licence, you would do well to be civil, at least to me.’
‘I can be as civil as the next man, if I chooses.’ Pradd’s false eye rolled alarmingly in its socket. ‘But maybe I don’t choose. I ain’t going to be vexed by every young pup what walks in off the street.’
Murmurs of approval came from his fireside supporters. The conversation was not going as Adam had planned. He glanced at Quint but his servant refused to catch his eye. There was to be no help from that direction. Adam was on his own. He was suddenly aware of how little experience he had of speaking to those outside his own class. He wondered what his next words should be.
‘Perhaps you should reassess your decision,’ he said after an awkward pause. ‘Or I might choose to speak with my good friend Inspector Pulverbatch.’
Adam decided to introduce the police officer’s name more out of desperation than hope. He was only too aware that, while struggling to sound authoritative, he was actually sounding priggish and petulant. However, the name of Pulverbatch seemed to have a magical effect. Pradd stared hard at Adam for a moment.
‘You’d best come in ’ere,’ he said and then turned abruptly on his heel. Adam and Quint followed. The lodging-house keeper led them to a small office to the right of the kitchen. The floor was covered in what had once been a plain green oilcloth. It was now black with dirt and torn in a dozen places. A cage containing two bedraggled linnets stood on a rickety table in one corner of the room. One of the birds made a half-hearted attempt at song as they entered. The only other furniture in the room was a small desk. Pradd went up to it and, opening a drawer, took out a black leather-bound book. He turned its pages and then thrust it ungraciously towards Adam.
‘See for yourself ’oo’s been staying ’ere.’
Adam took it and began to leaf through it. He laughed mirthlessly at what he saw there.
‘You are obliged by the terms of the Lodging House Act to record the names of your guests, are you not?’ he said.
‘The book must have names,’ the lodging-house keeper acknowledged with a surly edge to his voice.
‘But these names here’ — Adam pointed to one of the pages — ‘ “Admiral Tom”, “Hindoo Bill”, “Cock Robin”, “Cock’s Mate”. You would surely not claim that these are the real names of your lodgers?’
Pradd shrugged. ‘Ain’t no business of mine what folks calls themselves. The book needs names. The book gets names. Right names. Wrong names. Who cares?’
Adam continued to look down the lists of names in the book. Many were, like the ones he had quoted, obvious pseudonyms. Others looked genuine, but there was no Jinkinson amongst them. Adam was about to give up and return the book to the lodging-house keeper, when one surprising name caught his eye.
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed. ‘I think we have him, Quint.’
He pointed to the page where the name ‘Count D’Orsay’ was written in a flamboyant, copperplate hand.
‘Ain’t much of a billet for a count,’ Quint said.
‘No — and the real Count D’Orsay died in France twenty years ago. But I’m willing to wager a sizeable sum that the only person likely to appropriate his name for use in a place like this is the man we pursue. Remember what Simpkins said? A letter addressed to “The Count” would find him.’
Adam looked again at the entry in the lodging-house register. ‘According to this, the count graced this establishment with his presence on two nights in the last week. He was here but two days since. What can you tell us of the gentleman in question, Mr Pradd?’