‘It is not a good house, Sir, Mrs Eavis’s house,’ the boy told him.
‘In what way is it not a good house?’
The boy thought hard. ‘It is a bad house, Sir.’
A few minutes later, they were there.
‘I’d better stand by and hold your horse for you, Sir.’
Armstrong passed Fleet’s reins to Ben and passed him an apple. ‘If you give this to Fleet, you’ll have a friend for life,’ he said, then he turned and knocked at the door of the large, plain house.
The door opened slightly and he caught a glimpse of a face almost as narrow as the crack it peered out of. The woman took one look at his black face and her sharp features twitched.
‘Shoo! Off with you, dirty devil! We’re not for your sort! Be on your way!’ She spoke more loudly than she needed to; slowly too, as though to a half-wit or a foreigner.
She tried to close the door but the tip of Armstrong’s boot blocked it, and whether it was the sight of the expensive polished leather or the desire to give him a piece of her mind more forcefully, she reopened the door. Before she could open her mouth to speak, Armstrong addressed her. He spoke softly and with great dignity of expression, as though she had never called him a dirty devil, as though his boot were not in her doorway.
‘Forgive my intrusion, Madam. I realize you must be very busy and I won’t detain you a minute longer than necessary.’ He saw her register the expensive education that lay behind his voice, appraise his good hat, his smart coat. He saw her draw her conclusion and felt the pressure against the toe of his shoe cease.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I understand you have a young woman by the name of Mrs Armstrong lodging here?’
A snidely triumphant smile pulled at the corners of her lips. ‘She works here. She’s new to it. You’ll have to pay extra.’
So that was what Ben meant by a bad house.
‘All I want is to speak with her.’
‘It is the letter, I suppose? She’s been expecting it for weeks. Quite given up hope.’
The sharp, narrow woman put out a sharp, narrow hand. Armstrong looked at it and shook his head.
‘I should very much like to see her, if you please.’
‘It is not the letter?’
‘Not the letter. Take me to her, if you will.’
She led him up one, then another flight of stairs, muttering all the while. ‘Why should I not think it is the letter, when all I have heard, twenty times a day this last month, is “Has my letter come, Mrs Eavis?” and “Mrs Eavis, is there any letter for me?”’
He said nothing but gave himself a mild and amenable countenance whenever she turned to glance at him. The stairwell, rather smart and grand at the entrance, grew shabbier and chillier the higher you got. On the way up, some of the doors were ajar. Armstrong caught glimpses of unmade beds, garments strewn on the floor. In one room, a half-dressed woman bent over to roll a stocking up over her knee. When she caught sight of him her mouth smiled, but her eyes didn’t. His heart sank. Was this what had become of Robin’s wife?
On the bare top landing where the paint was peeling, Mrs Eavis stopped and rapped sharply at a door.
There came no reply.
She rapped again. ‘Mrs Armstrong? A gentleman for you.’
There was only silence.
Mrs Eavis frowned. ‘I don’t know … She has not gone out this morning, I would have heard.’ Then, with sharp alarm, ‘Done a runner, that’s what she’s done, the little trollop!’ and in no time she had the key out of her pocket, opened the door and burst in.
Over Mrs Eavis’s shoulder, Armstrong perceived all in a flash. The stained and rumpled sheet of the iron bed and, against it, that other, awful whiteness: an outstretched arm, the fingers splayed rigid.
‘Good Lord, no!’ he exclaimed, and his hand came to his eyes as though it were not too late to unsee it. So he stood, for some seconds, eyes squeezed shut while Mrs Eavis’s complaints went on.
‘Little minx! Two weeks rent she owes me! When I get my letter, Mrs Eavis! Oh, the lying vixen! What am I to do now, eh? Eating my meals, sleeping in my linen! Thought she was too good to work for money! “I’ll have you out of here if you don’t pay up prompt,” I told her. “I don’t keep girls here for nothing! If you can’t pay, you’ll have to work.” I saw to it that she did. I won’t have it, girls who think nothing of running up a debt and too good to pay it. She stooped in the end. They always do. What am I to do now, eh? Thieving little idiot!’
When Armstrong drew his hand away from his eyes and opened them, he looked like a different person altogether. With sorrow he looked around the small, mean room. The boards were bare and draughty, a broken pane let in knife blades of cold air. The plaster was pitted and blistered. Nowhere was there any bit of colour, of warmth, of human comfort. On the stand beside the bed there was a brown apothecary bottle. Empty. He took it and sniffed. So that was it. The girl had taken her own life. He slipped the bottle into his pocket. Why let it be known? There was little enough to be done for her, he could at least conceal the manner of her passing.
‘So who are you, eh?’ Mrs Eavis continued, now with a note of calculation in her voice. And although it seemed unlikely, she was hopeful enough to suggest, ‘Family?’
She received no answer. The man put out a hand and drew down the lids of the dead girl, then bowed his head for a minute in prayer.
Mrs Eavis waited testily. She did not join him at ‘Amen,’ but as soon as his prayer was done, picked up where she had left off.
‘It’s just that if you are family, you’ll be liable. For the debt.’
With a wince, Armstrong reached into the folds of his cloak and took out a leather purse. He counted the coins into her palm, then ‘Three weeks, it is!’ she added as he was about to put the purse away. He gave her the additional coins with a sense of distaste and her fingers closed around them.
The visitor turned to look again at the face of the dead girl in the bed.
Her teeth looked too large for her and her cheekbones jutted in a way that suggested, whatever Mrs Eavis said, that the young woman hadn’t benefited greatly from the landlady’s meals.
‘I suppose she must have been pretty?’ he asked sadly.
The question took Mrs Eavis by surprise. The man was of an age to be the young woman’s father, yet given the fairness of the girl and the blackness of the man, that was most unlikely. Something told her he was not her lover either. But if he was neither, if he had never seen her before, why pay her rent? Not that it mattered.
She shrugged. ‘Pretty is as pretty does. She was fair. Too skinny.’
Mrs Eavis stepped out on to the landing. Armstrong heaved a sigh and, with a final, sorrowful glance at the cadaver on the bed, followed her out.
‘Where is the child?’ he asked.
‘Drowned it, I expect.’ She gave a callous shrug that didn’t interrupt her progress down the stairs. ‘You’ll have only the one funeral to pay for,’ she added maliciously. ‘That’s one blessing, anyhow.’
Drowned? Armstrong stopped dead on the top stair. He turned and reopened the door. He looked up and down, left and right, as if somewhere – in the gap between the floorboards, behind the useless wisp of curtain, in the chilly air itself – a piece of life might be concealed. He pulled back the sheet, in case a small second body – dead? alive? – might be hidden in its flimsy folds. There were only the mother’s bones, too big for the flesh that contained them.