Page 54 of The Secrets of Lord Grayson Child
The woman nodded. “Yeah, he mentioned the place. I’m Ida Cummins, his landlady. I ’spect you’ll be wanting to check that he hasn’t anything of yours in his rooms here, then?”
Izzy’s smile was all gratified understanding. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble. We won’t take long.”
The woman tipped her head inside and stepped back from the threshold. “Come on in, then. At least you’re not all heavy-footed like those policemen who came this morning.”
“Inspector Baines and Sergeant Littlejohn.” Izzy followed the woman along a narrow corridor. “They told us they’d come and had finished their work here.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” The woman started up a flight of wooden stairs.
At the top, she halted on a miniscule landing, opened the door to the right, stood back, and waved them inside. “These are Mr. Quimby’s rooms.”
Izzy walked in, and Gray slipped past the landlady and followed.
The term “rooms” was a misnomer. There was only one longish narrow room with a single sash window at the far end. A single bed sat at the nearer end, with a simple washstand and wardrobe tucked into a corner, while closer to the window, a wooden desk stood against the inner wall, with a single straight-backed chair before it. An armchair that had seen better days was positioned in the opposite corner by the window, angled across the room toward the desk. There was, Gray noted, no fireplace.
Izzy walked to the window and looked out; over her head, Gray saw that the view wasn’t of any garden but a bare cobbled yard ending in a paling fence with a rickety gate.
When Izzy turned away and went to look in the desk drawer, he glanced around, confirming that there wasn’t anywhere else bar the wardrobe in which something might be hidden; he crossed to it and opened the narrow double doors. Clothes met his gaze, not that many and all of middling quality. Not the best but not the worst, either. A single pair of worn slippers, neatly lined up together, were the only things on the lowest shelf. He checked the drawers, shifting aside the few clothes and searching for anything else, gradually working his way up to the top shelf, where he found an old knitted hat and scarf and nothing else.
He shut the wardrobe doors and turned to see Izzy frowning at the back of a printed card. “Anything?” he asked.
She glanced at him, then looked back at the card. “Not exactly, but reading between these lines…I wonder if Quimby hailed from Dorset.”
She looked at Ida Cummins, who was leaning against the doorjamb. “Did Mr. Quimby ever mention where he hailed from? Or did he go for holidays to some particular place in the country?”
Mrs. Cummins nodded at the card in Izzy’s hand. “Just there. Said it was the place he knew best. He went every year in summer for a week.”
Izzy sighed and put the card back in the drawer.
“So”—Mrs. Cummins straightened—“did you find anything of yours? It’s just the police went through everything—left the place in a right mess. It didn’t seem decent to leave it like that, so I put everything back like he’d have wanted it. Quite particular he was.”
Understanding from that that Mrs. Cummins probably knew every stitch Quimby had owned, Gray asked, “Did you happen to notice—not just in the last days but at any time before—any glass plates or special photographic papers? Did he keep anything like that here?”
“Don’t believe so. He told me he kept all that sort of thing at his work.”
Izzy nodded. “That seems to be so.”
Mrs. Cummins gnawed at her lower lip, then with a jut of her chin, said, “Mind you, if he had brought something here over the last few days, that something—I don’t know what, mind—might have been here when he died.”
Izzy looked at the landlady and tipped her head. “Why do you think that?”
“Well, the day Mr. Quimby died—that Friday—he came back here late in the afternoon. Came straight up to his room here, but he didn’t stay long. He went off after maybe five or ten minutes.”
“Did he often do that?” Izzy asked. “Come home and go out again?”
“Oh, aye. He’d go back to his work, then he’d go and have his supper someplace and come home here about nine or so.”
Puzzled, Gray asked, “So why do you think he left something here that day, when normally—I assume—he didn’t?”
“Oh, it wasn’t that—him coming and going—made me think so. When he didn’t come down for breakfast on Saturday morning, I came up and looked in”—Ida Cummins stepped into the room and pointed at the window—“and that was open. Pushed right up it was, and I can tell you, in this weather, Mr. Quimby would never have left it like that.” She snorted. “He’d never have had it open at all—all the warmth from the stove below would go straight out.”
“This was before the police came?” Izzy asked.
“Aye—seven or so. They didn’t get here ’til gone eight.” Mrs. Cummins folded her arms beneath her ample breasts. “I shut it up tight again, o’course.”
Gray moved to the window, noting there was no lock on the sash. He pushed it up, leaned out, and saw a shed with a flat roof directly below, only about three feet down.
Izzy had come to peer around his shoulder. She turned back to Mrs. Cummins. “Did you notice anything not as it should be—as you would have expected?”
