‘Somewhere,’ said Lawrence vaguely. He peered around the shop with his other eye, and Cooper began to worry that the bookseller was going to ask him to look for his spare glasses among the mountains of books. But Lawrence was prepared he carried a tiny screwdriver on a little chain round his neck.
‘What’s the problem with this Tennent woman?’ he said. ‘What has she done?’
‘She’s dead,’ said Cooper.
Lawrence laid his glasses on the counter and bent over them
o
short-sightedly as he tried to tighten the screws holding them together. Watching him, Cooper thought the job might take him a long time. His hands were too unsteady either to keep the screw in position or to At the screwdriver on to it.
‘Ah, well,’ said Lawrence. ‘So that’s another customer ^one, then.’
Cooper hadn’t held out much hope of Lawrence. Even with so few people visiting his shop, it was asking a lot to expect him to remember a particular one. It was painful to watch him struggling with the screw, and it meant talking to the top of his head. But Cooper wasn’t going to volunteer to help.
‘I forgot to go and see your aunt about the flat,’ he said.
‘Not to worry,’ said Lawrence. ‘It probably isn’t your sort of place.’
‘No, I’m sure it’s fine. I meant to give her a call last night.
o o ‘
but I was busy.’
‘ There will be somewhere a lot better waiting for you. Have you tried the estate agent on Fargate? They’ve got some nice properties.’
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‘I can’t afford them.’
‘Aunt Dorothy is getting a bit eccentric anyway.’
‘No, I’ll go.’ Cooper looked at the board. ‘I see you’ve taken the postcard down.’
‘Oh, yes. The Hat has probably been let by now.’
‘Has ft?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lawrence was mumbling over his counter, so that Cooper could hardly hear what he was saying.
‘Sorry?’
‘I just thought the card was getting a bit faded.’
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‘It’s worth a try then. I’ll call round at Welbeck Street tonight.’
It was in that moment of saying it that Cooper knew he had committed himself. If the flat was even half habitable, he wouldn’t be able to find a reason to get out of taking it not without long and impossible explanations to make.
He left the bookseller still trying to fit the lens of his glasses back in. Near the counter, he saw a set of illustrated Thomas Hardy novels: faryrom (Ae
It had already been dark for over an hour by the time Ben Cooper got to the house in Welbeck Street. It was across the river from the Dam Street area where Marie Tcnncnt lived. If it hadn’t been tor the houses behind, he might have been able to see the roof of the heritage centre in the old silk mill.
Dorothy Shelley stood in the hallway of the ground-floor flat at number 8 and looked him over. She was a slender woman wearing a cashmere cardigan, with another slung over her shoulders. The cardigans looked a bit frayed round the edges, and they gave her an air of decayed gentility, which might have been natural, but could just as easily have been the image she
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was aiming to present. Cooper was initially pleased with the look of the flat, which comprised the ground floor of a stone-built semi-detached house, solid and sympathetically converted, with the occasional incongruity of stud wall and plastic coving.
‘If you could perhaps tell me what’s included in the rent,’ he said. ‘What about Council Tax and water rates?’
‘Do you have any objections to cats?’ said Mrs Shelley.
‘None at all. We have several back home. Well, they’re farm cats really. They’re supposed to be outside, but they spend as much time in the house as they do in the outbuildings.’
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‘That’s good,’ said Mrs Shellev ‘Only, there’s a sort of a
O ‘ ^ v ‘
lodger, you see.’
‘Oh?”
‘She stays in the conservatory, except to go out in the garden to do her duty. She’s no trouble at all.’
‘You mean there’s a cat? That’s all right, as long as the central
