The bubble burst on a Tuesday in April. It was a fine day, almost warm enough for summer, and in the morning I had walked out to the pretty village of Stanmore, where Mrs Jem had a friend who wished to write a long and carefully worded letter of complaint to her father’s executor. When I returned to my lodgings late in the afternoon, I found one of the little Jems waiting for me on the stairs.
“Ma wants you,” she announced. “Mr Shield, am I as pretty as Lizzie? She says I ain’t – she’s a liar, ain’t she?”
“You and your sister are both incomparably beautiful, each in your unique way.”
I gave her a penny and went down to the basement, where Mrs Jem was usually to be found sitting in an elbow chair placed between the range and the window at the front, which commanded a view of the steps up to the front door. Her fine, dark eyes peered out at me from their swaddling folds of fat.
“There was a man come asking after you before dinner,” she said.
“He wanted a letter written?”
“He didn’t want nothing. Except to know if you lived here.”
“So you told him I did?”
“The girls told him. They was playing outside on them steps, the little monkeys. Then I came up and sent him about his business.” She studied my face. “What you been up to?”
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“Don’t try and gammon me. I smoked you a long time ago. A man of your parts must have a reason to want to live in a place like this.”
“Madam, I told you –”
“I know what you told me, and you don’t have to tell me again.” She smoothed her apron. “You’ll say it’s none of my business, and in the ordinary way of things it ain’t, not if there’s no trouble. But he wasn’t the sort of man I like to have inquiring about my lodgers. Sharp little runt, with a dreadful knowing way about him. He tried to bully me, too.”
I smiled at her. “I wish I had seen it.”
Mrs Jem did not return the smile. “Could have been a runner once, maybe, and now works private. The sort of fellow you’d find sniffing round the servants in an action for crim. con.”
“I assure you, ma’am, that is not the case here.” I felt myself grow warm, nevertheless: if Henry Frant were alive, then what had passed between Sophie and me on that afternoon in Gloucester would indeed have amounted to criminal conversation. “I – I cannot think what he wanted.”
“He wanted you,” Mrs Jem said. “That’s plain enough. I give you fair warning: I don’t want to lose you, Mr Shield, you’re clean and obliging and you pays your rent. But I won’t have unpleasantness in this house. I have to think of my girls.”
I bowed to her.
“Lord, don’t waste your fine airs and graces on me. Just make sure that man don’t come pestering us again.” She smiled as she spoke, though, and waved me away as she would have dismissed one of her own children.
I went quickly upstairs to my garret. I had little doubt what this visitor meant: Carswall had found out my direction. I cursed my own complacency. I had known from the beginning that he was a man of strong passions, a man capable of enduring hatred. I wished with all my heart that I had not hidden the ring in my room. Was there still time to dispose of it?
There was a loud knocking on the street door below, followed by voices in the hall, and then the patter of small feet running upwards. Lizzie and Lottie burst neck and neck into my room.
“Oh, sir,” Lottie began.
Lizzie pushed her sister against the jamb of the door, temporarily silencing her. “There’s another man for you, sir, not the –”
Lottie interrupted her sister with a well-directed kick to the ankle. “No, sir, please, sir, he begs the favour of a word with you.”
As she brought the last words successfully out, a smug smile spread over her freckled face. Her sister pulled her hair. I broke up the altercation, as I had broken up many of their altercations before, by interposing my body between theirs, and marched them downstairs. In a way I was glad it had come to this: the decisions were made for me; there was no need to debate whether to stay or to run, to take the ring or to leave it where it was. As we walked, the children chattered to me, each apparently oblivious of the other’s presence. My mouth was dry and I felt light-headed.
In the hall, a man in a black coat stood waiting. His back was turned to me, and he appeared to be studying the drops of dried blood on the floorboards that marked the place where Lottie and Lizzie had fought for possession of a sugar plum on Sunday afternoon. As I reached the foot of the stairs, he turned to greet me. I recognised the plump white face of Atkins, Mr Rowsell’s clerk.
“Mr Shield, sir, I trust I find you well.”
While we said what was civil to each other, though without warmth on either side, he examined me with barely concealed curiosity. I thought it probable that he had known of the reception awaiting me at Mr Rowsell’s house, but he had not warned me. He felt in his breast pocket and produced a letter.
“Mr Rowsell begged me to give you this. He said that if I found you here, he wished me to wait for an answer.”
I turned aside, broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
My dear Tom
I regret the misunderstanding that occurred when you called at Northington-street in January. Would you be kind enough to allow me to explain the reason for it? It would give me great pleasure if you were able to dine with me any day this week, apart from Saturday. In the meantime, believe me to be
Your affectionate friend,
Humphrey Rowsell
I looked at Atkins. “Pray give my compliments to Mr Rowsell, and Thursday would be quite convenient.”