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The kindness in her eyes was abruptly replaced by wariness. “Well, what are you doing here, then? They’re not closed. That place never closes. Do you not know the way?”

I could make no sense of this. “I heard there was a shop for rent in the neighbourhood,” I said slowly, noting that her knuckles had gone white against the arm of her chair.

“And where did you hear that?” she said. “From one of them?”

“Ah,” I said inarticulately. Though I am fluent in English, it is not my first language, and when a conversation does not follow the expected pattern, I tend to flounder. I was beginning to wonder if the woman was entirely well.

She leaned forward and fixed me with a sharp look. “If you don’t know what I mean,” she said, each syllable clipped and precise, “then turn around, and look elsewhere. There are plenty of places for rent in this city. Wholesome places. If you do understand me, then I must kindly ask you to leave. I don’t want trouble—can’t afford it.”

She lifted herself to her feet with the aid of a cane and carefully navigated her way through the shelves, then disappeared into what I assumed was a back room.

I gazed after her, sifting through what she had said. Only one thing was clear: the shop next door was indeed the one I sought. I wondered if she had some conflict with the landlord—disputes between neighbours could be bitter indeed.

It was a mundane explanation, and I wished I could believe it. The truth was, though, that even if the woman had informed me that bloodcurdling screams could be heard emanating from the shop in the dead of night, I still would have made my enquiries. This likely sounds absurd, akin to the follies of silly fairy-tale heroines who cannot stop themselves unlocking doors they have been expressly told not to open, but the fact those stories often leave out is that paying heed to vague warnings is the prerogative of those comfortably situated in life.

I went to the scarf shop and rapped upon the door. Whatever the woman thought, the place was definitely closed. I half expected the door to creak open and some ghostly hand to beckon me in, but there was only a little silence, followed by the sound of perfectly ordinary footsteps approaching, and then the door was pulled back to reveal a young man.

He was in his early twenties, perhaps, with longish dark hair, olive skin, and a rather worried expression. He smiled at me with a warmth that implied I was a much pleasanter alternative to whatever visitor he had been anticipating.

“How are you?” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve met—Yannick Abrams, hello. Were you looking for anything in particular? Do come in—rather blustery, isn’t it? You don’t need to knock, you know; just walk right in.”

This was all said in a single breath, and, thoroughly perplexed, I murmured my thanks and allowed him to usher me into the shop.

I was confronted by a large echoing space with walls of brick and floors of fog-coloured flagstones. I saw instantly that it was a historic building, the floors nearly medieval in appearance, like those dating to the city’s founding, whilst the windows were arched in the late-eighteenth-century style and the brickwork was perhaps half a century old. It was a layered sort of antiquity, like an archaeological site, and I wondered how many shops the place had held over the generations. It was mostly empty, but in a way that suggested it had been ransacked rather than tidily packed away. A few chairs and delicately carved tables were scattered haphazardly along the walls, one piled with brightly coloured scarves, another with wooden hangers. The counter by the front windows held an old cash register with the sort of oversized keys that clacked alarmingly when pressed. The helter-skelter appearance of the place was emphasized by the uneven light—the heavy curtains were drawn, and only an oil lantern burned on one of the tables, which threw strange shadows.

I frowned. What had Yannick been doing before I knocked—sitting alone in the dark?

At the rear of the shop, near a door that must have led to a back room, was a large and inexplicable oven built into the stone wall, which made me wish I had not just been thinking of fairy tales.

Yannick was adjusting the neat suit he wore in a fidgety sort of way, as if he were not much used to wearing one. “What were you hoping to find?” he said.

An oddly phrased question. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Perhaps I was misinformed, but I understood this place was for rent.”

His face went through a remarkable series of transformations at that—startled, then comprehending, then dubious, and then, abruptly, delighted. I almost wanted to laugh, wrong-footed as I felt, for I’d never met a person who better exemplified the phrase like an open book than this Yannick Abrams.

“Ah!” he said. “You have a shop! Yes, we do have a vacancy—we are vacant, I mean. Yes. What sort of things do you sell?”

This was asked with an air of desperation, as if to distract from his odd reaction. I said, too discomfited to be anything but blunt, “Well—cats, in a sense. I run a charitable organization that rescues and rehabilitates street cats, then offers them up for adoption. Our goal is to eventually put an end to the unhoused population living in the city, if we can drum up the resources. We have a small staff—it’s mostly my sister and me, as well as the odd volunteer.”

“How lovely,” he said, and I watched as the thoughts churned in his head before my very eyes. Oddly, he’d had no discernible reaction to cats, but charitable organization had elicited a definite spark of excitement. “Have you been in business long?”

I gave him an overview of the history of Les Amis des Chats, making sure to mention my many positive references as well as the docile dispositions of our current wards, all the while waiting for the other shoe to drop. He listened with a pleasant smile, clearly occupied with some internal conversation.

“You are the landlord, yes?” I enquired when I’d come to my conclusion.

“The landlord?” he repeated. “Oh, no. I’m his—his representative.”

This was said with such transparent delight at having come up with a suitable response that I almost felt sorry for him, even as my unease ballooned. Had no one ever told the man that his thoughts were as obvious as a smudge of food at the corner of his mouth?

“Would you care for a tour?” he said eagerly.

“I—” No, thank you, said a wise little voice, which I ignored. “Might I ask the rent first?”

“Of course!” And he named a sum less than half that of M. Levasseur’s rate.

I blinked at him. “Per week?”

“Per month.” He looked suddenly worried—or, rather, more worried, for there was an ambient anxiety about him. “It’s on the low side, I know—but you see, we’ve had difficulty keeping tenants. The last one—an importer of scarves from around the world—left without notice. The one before that was a baker who couldn’t even be bothered to take his pies with him. We found them still in the window display one morning, and no trace of the man himself.”