A Corpse in Shining Armour Read Online Free PDF

through the gateway into Abel Yard.
    The carriage-mender at the entrance to the yard had the forge roaring and was hammering at something on his anvil. Chickens
     scratched around the door at the bottom of our staircase. The door was locked, which meant Mrs Martley was out. Good. Mrs
     Martley might, I suppose, be described as my housekeeper, except I’m not grand enough to have a housekeeper and she’s far
     too opinionated to be one. A more accurate description might be that she’s my resident respectability. A woman can’t live
     on her own and keep up any reputation, especially if, like me, she sometimes has gentleman callers. Mrs Martley, a retired
     midwife in her forties, cooked and cleaned and nagged me about everything from forgetting to hang up my bonnet to still being
     single at twenty-three years old. As I was fumbling in my reticule for my key, something jogged my elbow.
    ‘Enerunds?’
    The girl Tabby had appeared from nowhere, standing there in her old stableman’s cap, her assortment of shawls that never varied,
     winter or summer, her stockingless feet in shapeless boots too large for her. She was, I guessed, around fourteen or fifteen
     years old and slept in a shed next to the cows at the end of the yard on piles of sacks and old blankets. As far as she made
     a living, it was doing small jobs for dwellers in the yard. She’d just asked me if I had any errands for her. I thought quickly.
    ‘Would you run along to the baker’s and see if there are any loaves left. Here’s sixpence. Keep the change for yourself.’
    Her eyes glinted. She took the coin and ran off, boots flopping, before I could change my mind.
    I found my key, unlocked the door and walked upstairs to our parlour. There was a note from Mrs Martley on the table:
Have gone round to Mr Suter’s. Your supper is in the meat safe.
Better still. My best friend, Daniel Suter, had married a dancer named Jenny the year before. Mrs Martley had expected me
     to marry him and was furious. With me, not with him. Then Jenny had done the only thing that could redeem her in Mrs Martley’s
     eyes and become pregnant. All Mrs Martley’s professional instincts, as well as her kindness, had been aroused. She now spent
     as much time at their rooms in Bloomsbury as she did at Abel Yard. I hoped Daniel and Jenny were grateful. I knew I was.
    I went on, up a narrower flight of stairs, into a room that was one of the delights of my life. The afternoon sun gleamed
     on the white walls, scattered here and there with rainbows, from the light filtering through a glass mermaid that I’d hung
     in the window. My second-hand couch, newly upholstered in blue to match the curtains, stood by the window. I knelt on it as
     I took off my bonnet, enjoying the view over waves of gleaming roof tiles with pigeons basking in the sun, to the tops of
     the trees in Hyde Park. Besides the couch, I had a trunk and a row of pegs for my clothes, a set of shelves overflowing with
     my books, a cheval mirror, a table to write on. There were still a few strawberries left in the chip punnet on my table, an
     extravagance from yesterday. I took off my gloves and ate them, then rummaged under the bookcase for the box where I kept
     my accounts. It took only a few minutes to establish what I was nearly sure of in any case–that if I wanted to keep my precarious
     comforts, I couldn’t afford to turn down a case as profitable as this one might be. That was true enough, but only an excuse.
     I’d known before I’d left Mr Disraeli that his appeal to my curiosity had been successful, and he knew it too.

    The events at the jousting practice two days later only increased my curiosity. As it happened, I had another social engagement
     that evening after I came back from the Eyre Arms. Often weeks might pass when I didn’t go to functions except on business,
     but this was June, with the season at its height. An embossed invitation card had come from a former pianoforte pupil of