The Streetwise signature tune followed me downstairs. I put the hall light on before taking the plunge to the subterranean. It was rather like diving into a pool of dark water whose depth you’ve no idea of but you know it’s many fathoms and it may drown you. I didn’t really plunge, though, I walked down carefully, carrying my tray, and fumbled about on the wall till I found the switch. The lamps at old Mrs. Fisherton’s (which was what I came to call the place) were all of very low wattage. Forty watts, I suppose now. Then, though I know in saying this that I’m presenting myself as just as feeble as those lamps—sorry, that’s an electrician’s word, lightbulbs to you—I thought it was the way things were and there was nothing I could do about it.

You can always tell an old lady’s place from anyone else’s. It doesn’t seem to matter at what period they were young, the thirties, the twenties, the teens of the century or even its first decade, or what was the style in furnishings when they first grew up. In the here and now they always have the same sort of decor. Chairs done in gray velvet with a little pattern of red flowers and black leaves, chintz sofas with extra covers for the arms, in case, I suppose, people with dirty hands sit in them; tables with piecrust edges and curly legs, glass-fronted bookcases full of books by authors whose names are long forgotten, gray and pink rugs on top of bigger red and black rugs on top of green and beige carpets, umbrella stands and standard lamps with parchment shades and workbaskets full of cotton reels, vases of fluted glass shading from emerald through jade green to white, stained brown inside from chrysanthemums left standing too long in stale water, landscapes in gilt frames, their shiny surfaces darkened to invisibility by time and neglect, innumerable tiny white china pots and urns and vases bearing the name and crest in red and black and gold of the seaside town where they were bought a lifetime before. And, of course, the framed photographs, depressing to the visitor because their subjects are nearly always lumpish and awkward, miserable while trying to look happy, or posed in unnatural or fake surroundings.

In old Mrs. Fisherton’s there was one of these of Max, in academic gown and mortarboard, apparently seated in a library. I could just about tell it was Max from the protuberant round eyes which hadn’t changed and the long, then smooth and unwrinkled, neck. The other people in the pictures might have been Max’s grandfather, his father, his mother, aunts, uncles. The mystery was why anyone would want to keep them down here after their original owner was long dead.