Page 72 of Evil at the Essex House
Taking stock of our surroundings in the beam from the torch, we were standing in a hallway that ended in a door and, beside it, in a set of rickety steps going up. The door was the only one on this level, and it stood halfway open. We all exchanged a look, and then moved towards it in unison. It opened with a creak when Christopher put his elbow to it and pushed. “Hello?” he called. “Anyone here?”
No one answered. Nothing else happened, either. There wasn’t even the scurry of small paws across the floor, and I would have expected that in a building like this.
“Florence?” I tried. “Are you here?”
“Let’s just take a quick look around,” Christopher said, “it doesn’t seem very big.”
He pushed into the flat—if one could call it that—torch first.
He was right: it wasn’t big at all. From what I could gather in the torchlight beam, there were only two rooms: this one, with a shuttered window onto the street, and another behind it, with shutters that probably opened into some sort of courtyard in the back. There was no lavatory, and also no cooking facilities, so whoever had lived here—no one did now; there wasn’t a stick of furniture left—must have done their necessary business elsewhere. The courtyard might boast shared facilities, or perhaps some of the odor we had noticed was the lingering scent of a chamber pot.
“Let’s go up,” Christopher said after we had ascertained that we were alone in the ground floor hovel and that Flossie was not hiding, bound and gagged, in any of the corners.
“Take care on the staircase,” I told him. “It doesn’t look safe.”
He nodded. “I’ll go first. If it’s safe for me, it’s safe for you and Crispin.”
“Test each step before you put weight on it,” Crispin advised. “The last thing we need is for you to step through something and contract a fatal case of lockjaw.”
“I’ll be careful. Just be ready to catch me should I pitch over.”
Off we went, with Christopher in the lead. He did tread very carefully on the makeshift stairs, and while the rough planks groaned under his feet, they did bear his weight. We made it to the top without stepping on anything worse than what had the consistency (and smell) of the contents of someone’s slop jar—“Ewww!” Christopher moaned, dancing out of the way, “that explains the smell; stay to the side, Pippa!”—before we found ourselves in the equivalent hallway to the one downstairs, with the exception that this one ended in a door but not in a set of steps.
The door was shut, and Christopher took a deep breath before he nudged it with his elbow. When it didn’t swing open, Crispin handed him the elegant silk square from his breast pocket—as if Christopher didn’t have one of his own he could use—and Christopher draped it over his hand before trying the doorknob.
It turned, and the door opened. With a squeal of hinges, of course. It was that sort of place.
“Hello?” Christopher called again, into what was surely the matching room configuration to downstairs. “Anyone here?”
There was no answer, although this level, unlike the ground floor, had a strange sense of expectancy. Downstairs had been empty, and had felt like it. This set of rooms gave the impression that it was waiting.
I pushed the feeling aside and started forward. Only to stop, perforce, when Christopher didn’t move out of my way.
I glanced up at his face, close enough to me to make out even in the semi-darkness. “What is it, Christopher?”
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Christopher said.
I nodded, since I felt that way too. Not something a staid Englishman, or Englishwoman, should admit to—sensations of woowoo—but there was definitely something in the air up here.
Before I could verbalize my agreement, however, Crispin had spoken up. “Are you sure that isn’t just the contents of the slop jar on your shoes, Kit?”
Christopher shook his head. “It’s not the slop jar. It feels ominous.”
“I agree,” I said. “Although the smell in here doesn’t help, I’ll admit. Slop combined with rot combined with… what’s that sweet smell?”
“Opium,” Crispin said.
I eyed him. “Are you serious?” He certainly sounded knowledgeable, but… “How do you know?”
“I’ve smelled it before,” Crispin said.
“I didn’t know you frequented the Limehouse dens, St George,” Christopher sniggered.
“I don’t,” Crispin told him. “But the Bright Young Set will try anything once. Babe Bendir and Lizzie Ponsonby organized an opium party last year sometime. It was a far cry from Limehouse, but I’m sure the opium smelled the same.”
No doubt. “Is this an opium den, then? Should we expect dope addicts to attack us?”
“Opium smokers are generally too mellow to attack anyone,” Crispin said, “and I don’t think anyone’s smoking right now. It smells more like someone has smoked opium here for so long that it has permeated the wood in the walls, and now it’s residual. I don’t notice any actual smoke.”
