He nodded, then left. He had the name of the man who heard where Soropkin was last seen.
Munro cursed for what must have been the dozenth time since leaving Sussex Square as the driver of the cab we had taken across London collected his fare then snapped the reins and disappeared down the street.
We had returned first to the office on the Strand after Munro insisted on placing a telephone call to Brodie. There had been no answer, nor had he been there according to Mr. Cavendish.
Munro left word for Brodie, then reluctantly agreed that I could accompany him after the threat I had made earlier.
We set off on foot in the direction he had described for the tenement in Aldgate, just across from a leather shop. The driver had been most accommodating in finding it. Imagine that.
“Damned stubborn woman,” Munro muttered.
I had been called that in the past and considered it a compliment.
“Ye’ll do exactly as I say,” he added.
Of course.
I had seen such buildings before in the inquiry cases Brodie and I took on, in other parts of London and Edinburgh as well. It was always disconcerting to see the poverty, the cramped conditions, sometimes two or three families to a flat; rats that ran the streets searching for garbage, a beggar who loomed up out of the shadows, only to disappear again as Munro warned him to leave off.
I couldn’t help but think of Lily and what might have awaited her in a handful of years, spirited as she was. Here, I saw firsthand what destroyed one’s spirit; the lights of the tavern where a young woman might be purchased for the night for the cost of a pint of ale, with no opportunity to survive much less change one’s life.
Munro snapped at me, no translation needed, and I hurried to keep up with him.
“Ye have the revolver Brodie gave ye?” he asked as we crossed the street at the leather shop.
I assured him that I had, my fingers brushing the cold steel barrel of the weapon in the pocket of my skirt.
“There doesna seem to be anyone around,” he nodded toward the two-story building. “Could be the tenants were turned out.”
I knew it was a possibility. With the winter there were fewer jobs. Fewer jobs meant less pay, or none at all. If there was no pay a family might persuade the landlord to extend them a month, but no more. Then they were out on the street.
This was the world where Munro and Brodie had lived, and by the darkened windows over the first floor it seemed that might be the situation.
There were many abandoned buildings in London crumbling into disrepair. Some were claimed by the city as it expanded roadways and thoroughfares.
Others, some built more than two centuries earlier, were either torn down or left to the rats and people on the street who might sleep there for a night or two before being turned out by the neighborhood watch.
Some stayed longer and built fires to keep warm. The fire brigade was kept busy with buildings thought to be abandoned that turned into an inferno. In most places like this there was nothing to be done but to let it burn, and try to prevent it from spreading to other buildings.
“Ye’re to stay behind me,” Munro told me as we approached the main entrance of the tenement.
It hardly seemed possible as he shone a handheld light at the front doors. They had been chained shut with a sign posted—Do not enter by order of the London Magistrate.
Munro’s source of information had been certain this was the location. I laid a hand on his arm and gestured to the sagging railing along the walkway that led to a lower level. We followed the railing to the steps that descended to a doorway below.
The door was slightly ajar. He pushed me back to what he undoubtedly considered a safer distance, then turned toward the door, revolver in hand.
It would have been wise to simply wait for him to make a cursory inspection. However…
I followed him into the lower level below the tenement that the Magistrate’s people had obviously failed to secure. Or possibly not if one went by the splintered frame of the door. Munro slowly swept the handheld light across the walls, floor, and door that obviously led deeper into the below street level basement of the building.
Munro moved on ahead, his light playing across the door. He slowly pushed it open.
A putrid smell swept toward me and choked my throat, bringing back a vivid memory from my travel years before onthe Nile when a man’s body was trapped in the water against the dock while the flies swarmed.
The smell was the same, of rotting flesh. Munro shouted and the handheld torch flew out of his hand, hit the floor and then went out. I had no idea where he was as I was thrown back against the door.
The air momentarily knocked out of me, I did the only thing that came to mind and reacted instinctively. I pulled back my fist and sent a blow as hard as I could in the direction of whoever had shoved me.
