The hallway at the top of the stairs, and Gideon Harkness is standing in it with a key on a plain steel ring held between two fingers.
“Fourteen Aldridge Row,”
he says.
“Ground floor lease, your name on the rider, thirty days’ notice from either side. Read it before you take anything upstairs.”
He is twenty-four, wide through the shoulders, dark hair cut short at the sides and pushed back off his forehead with the flat of his hand, and he is holding the key out at arm’s length rather than handing it to you, because he has read a lease before and he wants you to read this one.
Behind him the door of the box room is open. It has its own lock, its own window over the yard, and no one’s things in it.
“Two rules,”
he says.
“Nobody here lies about money, and nobody here lies about who they’re sleeping with. If those are a problem, take the deposit slip and go, and I’ll still help you carry the case.”
He puts the key down on the windowsill, not in your hand.
“Read it. Then decide.”