“In this room?” I asked.
My landlady seemed troubled at my tone.
“Well, not exactly in this very room. We carried her upstairs, but she died immediately. She was dying when she came here. I should not have taken her in had I known. So many people are prejudiced against a house where death has occurred, as if there were anywhere it had not. It was not quite fair to us.”
I did not speak for a while, and the rattle of the plates and knives continued undisturbed.
“What did she leave here?” I asked at length.
“Oh, just a few books and photographs, and such-like small things that people bring with them to lodgings,” was the reply. “Her people promised to send for them, but they never did, and I suppose I forgot them. They were not of any value.”
The woman turned as she was leaving the room.
“It won’t drive you away, sir, I hope, what I have told you,” she said. “It all happened a long while ago.
“Of course not,” I answered. “It interested me, that was all.” And the woman went out, closing the door behind her.
So here was the explanation, if I chose to accept it. I sat long that morning, wondering to myself whether things I had learnt to laugh at could be after all realities. And a day or two afterwards I made a discovery that confirmed all my vague surmises.