Undeterred, I climbed the stairs to the second floor where Dory had her room. The door there stood ajar as well. I slowly pushed it open.
My previous visit had been sad and a bit disconcerting when I had returned to search for something that might explain what had happened, and who had killed my friend. It seemed that someone else was of a similar mind.
The room had been completely turned out. Not the sort that one might expect to prepare for a new tenant—clearing away any food or refuse that remained, an attempt to make it worth the rent that was to be charged.
The curtain from the alcove lay on the floor after it had been ripped from the hooks overhead that secured it, the thin mattress slashed to pieces, with the niche I had discovered atthe wall gaping open, the few coins that I’d left behind scattered upon the floor.
Someone had been searching for something.
The matron of the building, Meggy? Scrounging about for anything of value? But that made no sense with the coins I saw on the floor.
“Cor! What a bloody mess!” an exclamation behind me.
Why was I not surprised, I thought. It seemed that, in addition to being too bold for his own sake, the boy was stubborn as well.
Even amid the chaos with trash strewn about and the destruction, this told me something. But precisely what that was had yet to be discovered.
I rose and turned at the smell of tobacco smoke, half expecting one of the other tenants, or possibly old Meggy.
The boy stood in the doorway instead, a shoulder braced at the door frame, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I snatched it away.
“Wot are ye thinkin’? Yer coin should be spent on food, not tobacco,” I announced as I crushed it under the heel of my boot to a loud exclamation of protest.
“I didna pay fer it.” He indignantly replied.
Of course, undoubtedly pinched off someone.
“Ye canna tell me wot to do!”
“I can as long as ye are in my presence, which you presently are, after I told ye to leave.”
“Yer not me mother.”
“Thank heaven for that. You are a troublesome, insolent baggage. Now get on with ye. Yer mother will be wondering where ye are,” I added as I left the room and closed the door behind me.
I swept a glance at the hall, then made my way to the staircase.
“I dinna have a mother, or father for that matter.”
“What happened to yer family?” I asked as we reached the cobbled alley of the Close and I glanced in both directions for anyone who might be there.
“Well?” I asked again. His response was a shrug of the shoulders.
“I never knew me father. Me mother gave me over to a blacksmith as a helper, one less mouth to feed. He paid her. I didn’t stay there. He beat me regular, and I figured I was better off on the street.”
Paid her? In other words, his mother sold him to the blacksmith.
“I dinna know where she is now.”
In spite of the fact the boy assumed that I was a lady, I felt a familiar hollow ache deep inside that I had not felt in a long time. His situation was one that I understood far too well.
“I suppose ye have a name.”
“Kip,” he replied. “It’s the only one that I remember. Me mum use to call me other things, but they’re not fit for a lady.”
I could well imagine.
“Do you know the Close well?” I inquired.
