Arrowood

‘I’ll put a small frame around it, the same one as around the soldier’s portrait. Your sister will be most taken with the picture, I assure you.’ He held open the door. ‘No doubt at all, sir.’

‘Well, that was interesting, Barnett,’ said the guvnor as we turned the corner at the end of the street. ‘It would appear that our client was not introduced by her uncle the art dealer as she says. According to Mr Fontaine, it was a minister of the church who approached him – last Christmas, if you will. The minister offered the lady at half the wage Fontaine would have to pay anyone else. She knew nothing about the art of photography, it seems. Nothing at all. But, you know, a pretty face and the soft persuasion of the Church can make up for much.’

‘And the cheap labour.’

‘Indeed.’

‘He only began to pay her in January,’ said I. ‘Least that’s what his account book says.’

‘I see you’ve been busy too. And something else: Miss Cousture has turned down Mr Fontaine’s intimate advances, and yet he will not give up the possibility of bedding her.’

I laughed.

‘I’m amazed what people’ll tell you, sir.’

‘Oh, he didn’t tell me. I read it in him.’

‘You read it in him?’

‘Yes, Barnett. It seems that her disappearances are quite regular and unexpected. He told me as much. More regular than one would tolerate from an employee. Yet still he doesn’t dismiss her, despite his obvious anger. Why? As Mr Darwin tells us, we need look no further than man’s essential animal nature. It is because she’s beautiful and he yearns to find himself between her thighs, as I’m sure many men do. No doubt, given his position, he believes it’s his right. It isn’t his fault. It is the lion’s right to take the females of his pride, and Mr Fontaine is his own little lion. I’ve no doubt many shopkeepers on this street bed their assistants. The city is awash with little lions. It must stick in his craw that she doesn’t offer herself. It’s as if he’s purchased a beautiful cake, which sits all day on his counter. Yet he cannot eat it.’

‘Perhaps he’s married.’

‘Oh, Barnett, you’re quite sweet sometimes.’

‘How can you be so sure he desires her?’

‘Because she’s beautiful. I desired her. You desired her.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did, my friend. I saw you lose your usual brute composure in my room. Despite your commitment to the formidable Mrs Barnett, even you were taken by her.’

We had to stop as a costermonger pushed a wide cart piled with coats across the pavement and into an alley.

‘Your deductions are more like Sherlock Holmes than you think,’ I said when we were walking again.

‘No, Barnett. I decipher people. He deciphers secret codes and flowerbeds. That man and I are not alike, and frankly I’m getting tired of your jibes about him.’

I laughed to myself as we walked.

‘Why did she lie to us?’ I asked as we passed under the railway bridge.

‘I don’t know. And since Mr Fontaine wouldn’t agree to tell me where she lives, we’re going to have to wait until she reappears to find out. Another job for you, Barnett, tomorrow. Pray the rain doesn’t return.’

I held out the scrap of paper on which I’d scribbled the address.

‘Lucky I found this, then, sir.’

A smile broke over his ruddy face. He clapped me on the back.

‘Excellent, Barnett. Let’s hope she’s in.’

I noticed the fellow as we turned into Broad Wall. He wouldn’t have been a noticeable man ordinarily except he had a piece of torn, brown paper stuck to his trouser leg. I’d seen it earlier in the coffeehouse, and wondered as I drank my brew if it was stuck on there by a smear of treacle or somesuch. And there it was again, attached to the same man who was walking along the other side of the road looking up at the high windows.

‘Shall we turn down this alley, sir?’ I asked as we approached a narrow lane on our right.

‘But why?’

‘There’s a man might be trailing us. Don’t look back. He’s on the other side of the road. Medium size in a grey coat.’

The guvnor clenched his hands and bit his lip, itching to have a little peep as we made our way forward.

‘No, don’t,’ I said. ‘Don’t look.’

‘Yes, yes, Barnett,’ he replied, chafing against this restriction and trying hard to keep his eyes on the way ahead. He was limping with his tight shoes and puffing with his weight. ‘I heard you the first time.’

‘You were about to look.’

‘No, I wasn’t.’

Presently, we reached the alley. It was a narrow, dark track, the workshops and factories on each side built high and leaning in towards each other as they rose to the grey sky. Most were closed for the night but a few had faint lights behind their grimy windows. Tired people trudged past us, their clothes thick and frayed, their eyes cast down. The ground beneath us alternated between gravel and mud. Up ahead, a cart was being loaded with crates. We continued past it, then turned again into an even smaller passage. We didn’t look back, and at the end turned into another alley, this one darker still. I pointed at a bend in the road ahead where a small wall jutted out.

‘Yes, ideal,’ said the guvnor.

We hurried towards it and concealed ourselves there, myself peeking out the way we’d come, the guvnor behind me, leaning against a door, catching his breath.

Very soon the man appeared, walking quick towards us.

‘He’s coming,’ I whispered.

‘Hold tight,’ murmured the guvnor.

There was a sudden noise behind us. The door the guvnor was leaning on was wrenched open and there stood a woman in rags holding a chamberpot full to the brim with a filthy stew. She looked taken aback to see two gentlemen standing on her doorstep awaiting the delivery of her family’s ordure. Perhaps unable to stop her muscles from doing what they were surely accustomed to doing at such a moment, she swung the pot back as if to chuck it into the street.

The guvnor, startled, backed away quick from the woman and straight into full view of our pursuer. Seeing him, the man turned and ran back the way he came.

‘Curses!’ exclaimed the guvnor, and as he spoke he received half the woman’s delivery on his trousers.

I set off after the man. As I turned the first corner I saw him running up ahead, dim against the black brick. All the way down I was gaining on him, so that by the time he reached the next alley I was sure I would catch him. He turned right, leading us further away from the lamps of Broad Wall, further into the maze of damp buildings. I was slowed by a cart trying to turn, the horse blocking my path.

‘Hold up, hold up,’ whined the deliveryman. ‘You’ll spook him.’

I scrambled over the empty cart.

‘Bloody prick!’ shouted the man, taking a swipe in the air with his whip.

The alley ahead was empty. I ran on, soon coming to a junction. On an instinct, I turned left again, seeing the lamps of a proper street some way up ahead.