‘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, ‘which cost me two pound ten without the curtains. 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 chimney-piece was resplendent with a pair of Bohemian glass vases, and a gilded clock. Coloured lithographs in the vilest German art brightened the walls.