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He blinked and leaned forward, glancing from side to side as if he feared we were being observed. ‘I’ve heard you have a room,’ he said in a voice so faint that I had to strain to hear him.
'Who told you?’ I whispered in return.
The stranger smiled, pressed a finger to the side of his nose and winked at me with a jaundiced eye. ‘Is it true?’
I nodded. I was eighteen years old, fresh from school, and dressed to play the part of housekeeper in a long green apron with a pair of Marigolds in the pocket. We had several rooms to rent – it was a big house and we needed the money. Janet had taken a bright, sunlit room on the first floor with a little balcony to its window. Senior Franklin had a pair of rooms beneath the rafters where he cultivated his genius and scowled upon an ungrateful world from narrow windows secured with rusting iron bars. My parents slept at the back of the house and I slept above the kitchen in a room with a view of the grey backyard. And still the house seemed empty, its heavy walls and the massive floorboards absorbed our voices and muffled our footsteps, making us feel like a party of ghosts.
‘I think we might have a room.’
‘Is it overlooked?’ the stranger inquired, frowning at me as if I intended to trap him in some diabolical snare.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s at the back of the house.’
‘Empty?’
I was working on one of the grey stilettos, sitting in my chair with a newspaper spread on the table to catch the tiny, oily crumbs from the sweetly scented cakes of Cherry Blossom in their flat, old-fashioned tins. I had recently inserted three fingers into the soft, leather throat of the shoe until my fingertips were nesting where her toes had left their faint but indelible impression, and had already dipped my brush in the polish when the doorbell rang. Damn! I raised the brush to the shoe and listened, waiting for someone to answer the bell. Nothing happened. I tried to ignore the intrusion, working polish into the leather. Cradle the shoe and know the woman. The weight of her body has balanced it. Her movements have stretched and fashioned it.
The bell rang again. I withdrew my fingers, set down the brush and hurried impatiently from the kitchen to unlock the heavy front door, rattle the chains and wrench at the bolt.
The stranger stepped from the shelter of the rocking privet hedge and stood blinking beneath the hall light. He was short and very pale, with a heavy, lugubrious face and a slick of grizzled hair. He wore a baggy black suit beneath his overcoat and sported a pair of cracked brown brogues.
‘Marvel,’ he said solemnly. He looked at me suspiciously, sniffed at the air and set down his luggage on the carpet. He was carrying a cardboard suitcase secured with a strap and a small wooden box that clattered slightly as it touched the floor.
‘Can I help?’ I asked, when it grew painfully obvious that he meant no further introduction.
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