Gibbous House 5

The stripped bones of the lamb chops hardly covered less of my platter than previously - even without the dubious benefit of their leathery flesh. I tossed some copper coins on the trestle top and resolved to quit the Chaste Maid to take some air. Half-way to the door, I reconsidered the prospects of an improvement in the elements and mounted the stairs once more to recover my topcoat. To my surprise, it no longer lay before the draughty window. Indeed, it was absent altogether. All too present were the bedclothes, strewn as they were about the room and garnished with the few items of personal clothing it was my habit to keep in scabrous tallboy next to the cheval mirror. It appeared to me rather more than serendipitous that Ketch’s fetch had given me notice through the window prior to my luncheon. Thackeray would provide some answers, I hoped. I threw up the sash-window and looked down at the street outside. It appeared that come dusk, a lamplighter would be searching for his ladder.

In the public bar the landlord was smearing a tankard with a rag as filthy as the one adorning his crop. He lifted his chin in acknowledgement of my regard.

‘Mr Moffat.’ He said.
‘Thackeray.’ I rejoindered, and held his eye in the hope of provoking discomfiture.
In a few moments, he rewarded me with a grudging:
‘I’ll send the missus up. Alright?’ He lifted his eyebrows at me.
‘Indeed, it is not alright. Who was he?’
He ran a finger around his neck for all the world as if he had a collar on his shirt.
‘The both of them were Peelers, sir. What could I do?’ For once it seemed his deference was genuine.
‘Could they not have used the stairs, man?’
‘Sergeant Purewipe and Constable Smackle were both in the Runners, before. Out of Bow Street. Old ‘abits die hard, Mr Moffat.’
‘What did they want? Did they say?’

For answer I received only a shake of his head and a look of pity for the ninny who would ask such a question in expectation of any answer.
I lifted a salute of sorts to the brim of my hat and wished him good-day.

Mercifully, however, the rain had stopped. Steam rose from the mud in the streets. The day was bright and clear, as were the sounds of London itself. Still intent on a walk to clear my head, I braved the mud and the street vendors and headed toward Sir Christopher’s legacy to the city. At that time, Cheapside, like most of London, was overrun with Cheap Johns, Water Cress Girls, Flower Girls and the like. Shouts of ‘Scissors sharp as like to cut as of themselves, 1/- only’ melded with the plaintive cries of water cress girls of barely 8 years old hawking ‘Creases, creases 4 bunches a penny.’ I tossed a penny to a smut-faced girl in a yellow bonnet and turned away as she held out the wilting bunch of greenery. Arabella’s child would have been the same age, I supposed.