The Cloven Foot

glow of light. The occupant of the basement had not drawn down the illuminated blind which generally shaded her domesticity from the vulgar eye; and, seated by her kitchen fire, indulging in the inexpensive luxury of slumber, Edward beheld that very Mrs. Evitt whom he had supposed lost in the metropolitan labyrinth. He had no doubt as to those corkscrew curls, that vinegar visage. This was the woman with whom he had talked for half an hour one bleak March morning, when he had inspected the scene of the murder, under the pretence of looking for lodgings.

He went up the steps to the door. There were two bells, one labelled “Surgery,” the other “House.” Edward rang the latter, which was answered after an interval by the landlady, looking cross and sleepy.

At the sight of Mr. Clare, with his travelling bag in his hand, she scented a lodger, and brightened.

“Have you a decent bedroom to let, on your second floor?” he asked, for although he was no believer in the influences of the spirit world, he would have preferred spending the December night upon the bleakest and windiest of the bridges, to lying down to rest in the room where La Chicot had been slain.

“I’ve got my first floor empty,” said Mrs. Evitt, “beautiful rooms, all new papered and painted.”

“I’d rather go higher up,” answered Edward. “You had a lodger named Desrolles. What has become of him?”

“Gone to travel in foreign parts,” replied the landlady. “I believe he had money left him. He was quite the gentleman when he started⁠—everything new, from his portmanchew to his railway rug.”

“Can I have his rooms for a few nights? I am only in town as a bird of passage, but I don’t want to go to an hotel.”

“Their charges are so ’igh, and there’s no privacy in ’em,” said Mrs. Evitt, with a sympathetic air, as if she divined his inmost feelings. “You can have Mr. Desrolles’ rooms, sir, and we shan’t quarrel about the rent.”

“The rooms are clean, I suppose?” Edward hazarded.

“Clean!” exclaimed Mrs. Evitt, lifting up her eyebrows with the indignation of outraged innocence. “Nobody that has ever lodged with me would ask that question. Clean! No house of mine ever ’arboured dirt.”

“I should like to see the bedroom,” said Edward. “The sitting-room matters very little. I shall be out all the day.”

“If you’ll wait while I fetch a candle, I’ll show you both rooms,” replied the landlady. “I suppose you want to come in at once?”

“Yes. I have just come from the country, and have no more luggage than this bag. I can pay you for the rooms in advance, if you like?”

“Money comes uncommonly handy now that provisions have rose to such a heighth,” returned Mrs. Evitt, with an insinuating air. “Not that I could ever feel an instant’s doubt respecting a young gent of your appearance.”

“Money down is the best reference,” said Edward. “I’m a stranger in London. Here’s a sovereign. I suppose that’ll square us if I only keep the rooms a week?”

“There’ll be a trifle for boot-cleaning,” insinuated Mrs. Evitt.

“Oh, very well.”

“And half-a-crown for kitching fire.”

“Oh, come now, I won’t stand kitchen fire. You don’t suppose I’m going to dine here. If you bring me up a cup of tea of a morning it is all I shall want, and the fire that boils your kettle will boil mine.”

“A trifle for attendance, then.”

“I’ll promise nothing. If you make me comfortable, I shall not forget you at parting.”

“Very well, sir,” sighed the landlady. “I suppose it will come to the same in the end, but I always think it best for all parties to put things clear.”

She retired into the darkness at the end of the narrow passage, the dark brown wainscot of which was dimly lighted by an old-fashioned oil lamp, and returned in a minute or two with a tallow candle in a capacious tin candlestick. With this light she preceded Mr. Clare up the staircase, whose shallow uneven steps, and heavy balustrade gave evidence of its age.

On the first-floor landing Mrs. Evitt paused to recover her breath, and Edward felt an icy thrill of horror as he found himself opposite the bedroom door.

“Is that the room where that poor woman was murdered?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” replied Mrs. Evitt, with a deprecating sigh, “it is the room, and I won’t deceive you. But it has been done up so nice that nobody as ever knew it before would be able to recognise it. My landlord acted very liberal; ‘anything that paint and paper can do to set you right with your lodgers, Mrs. Evitt, shall be done,’ says he. ‘You’ve been a good tenant,’ says he, ‘always punctual to the minute with your rent,’ he says, ‘and I should take it to heart if you was to suffer.’ Come in and look at the room, sir, and you’ll see that there isn’t a more cheerful bedroom in this part of London.”

Mrs. Evitt flung open the door with a flourish of pride, and led the way into the room with uplifted candlestick.

“That’s a brand new bedstead,” she said, “from Maples, in Tottenham Court Road, where all the crowned ’eds gets their furniture. And there ain’t a inch of carpet or a bit of bedding that was in the room when⁠—when⁠—what you mentioned took place.”

Mrs. Evitt had pinned her faith upon vivid colour as a charm to exorcise poor Zaïre’s ghost. A sixpenny chintz of all the colours in the rainbow draped window and bed. A painted drugget of corresponding violence hid the worm-eaten old boards, upon which soap, sand, and soda had been vainly expended in the endeavour to remove the dark traces of that awful stream which had travelled from the bed to the threshold. The dressing-table was draped with white muslin and rose-coloured calico. The chimneypiece was resplendent with a pair of Bohemian glass vases, and a gilded clock, Coloured lithographs in the vilest German art brightened the walls.

“Don’t it look cheerful?” asked Mrs. Evitt.

“Is