McHaggis asserted. "I've got them everywhere. The rules, that is. It helps, I find, if people know what's what."
She led Barbara into a dining room, through a large kitchen, and into a sitting room at the back of the house. There she announced that her lodger - who was called Jemima Hastings - had gone missing and if the body that had been found in Abney Park had one brown eye and one green eye ...Here, Bella stopped. She seemed to try to read Barbara's face.
Barbara said, "Have you got a picture of the young lady?"
Yes, yes indeed, Bella said.
She said to "come this way," and she led Barbara out of a door on the far side of the sitting room, which took them to a narrow corridor that ran in the direction of the front door of the house. To one side of this corridor, the reverse side of a staircase rose, and facing them beneath it was a door otherwise hidden from anyone entering the building. On this door was a poster. The lighting was dim but Barbara could see that the poster featured a black-and-white photograph of a young woman, light hair blowing across her face. She was sharing the picture with three-quarters of a lion's head, somewhat out of focus behind her. The lion was male, marble, slightly streaked from weather, and asleep. The poster itself was an advertisement for the Cadbury Photographic Portrait of the Year. Evidently, it was some sort of contest, and its winners comprised an ongoing show at the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square.
"So is it Jemima?" Bella McHaggis said. "It's not like her to be gone without telling any of us. When I saw the story in the Evening Standard, I reckoned if the girl had eyes like those - two different colours ..." Her words tapered off as Barbara turned to her.
"I'd like to see her room," Barbara said.
Bella McHaggis made a small sound, something between a sigh and a cry. Barbara saw that she was a decent soul. She said, "I'm not actually sure, Mrs. McHaggis."
"It's just that they become rather like family," Bella said. "Most of my lodgers ..."
"You've others, then? I'll want to speak with them."
"They're not here at present. At work, you know. There're just two of them, beyond Jemima, that is. Young men, they are. Quite nice young men."
"Any possibility she could have been involved with either of them?"
Bella shook her head. "Against the rules. I find it's not a good thing if my gentlemen and ladies begin keeping company while living under the same roof. I had no rule about it at first, once Mr. McHaggis died and I started with lodgers. But I found ..." She looked at the poster on the door. "I found things became unnecessarily complicated if the lodgers ...Shall we say if they fraternized? Unspoken tensions, the possibility of breakups, jealousy, tears? Rows over the breakfast table? So I made the rule."
"And how do you know if the lodgers abide by it?"
"Believe me," Bella said, "I know."
Barbara wondered if this meant an examination of the bedsheets. "But Jemima was acquainted with the male lodgers, I assume?"
"'Course. She knew Paolo best, I expect. He brought her here. That's Paolo di Fazio.
Born in Italy but you wouldn't know it. No accent at all. And no ...well, no odd Italian habits, if you know what I mean."
Barbara didn't, but she nodded helpfully. She wondered what odd Italian habits might be.
Putting tomato sauce on the Weetabix?
" - room nearest to hers," Bella was saying. "She worked in a shop somewhere round Covent Garden and Paolo has a stall in Jubilee Market Hall. I had a vacant room; I wanted a lodger; I hoped for another female; he knew she was looking for permanent lodgings."
"And your other lodger?"
"Frazer Chaplin. He's got the basement flat." She nodded at the door on which the poster hung.
"So that's his? The poster?"
"No. That's just the way to his flat. She brought the poster to me, Jemima did. I suppose she wasn't altogether happy that I hung it here, where it's out of sight. But ...well, there you have it. There wasn't really another suitable space."
Barbara wondered about that. It seemed to her that there was space aplenty, even with the plethora of signs depicting the household rules. She gave the poster a final quick glance before asking once again to see Jemima Hastings' room. She looked like the young woman whose autopsy pictures Barbara had seen Isabelle