upstairsfromreality

Inspector Athelney Jones hauled himself into the attic room with mild disgust. All these places around Montague Street were the same, full of students and dilettantes, pretending to be writers or artists or something else to make up just enough rent to be three weeks behind. There wasn't one of them who would ever do any honest day's work, let alone respectable police work.

Jones knocked on the door. "Good evening, Mr. Holmes" he said. "Your landlady gave me your name.I am a police detective and I have some questions about Mr. Tompkins, your neighbor from the floor below."

"I don't know him. Should I?" asked Holmes.

"Well, he lived right below you, so it would be usual to be at least a little acquainted," said Jones, "but if you can't tell me about him, you can't."

"Oh, I can tell you about him. We've just never met. He pretends to be a painter. I don't mean like most of the people here, who paint and pretend they can make a living out of it. Tompkins didn't actually paint at all. He'd leave in the morning with more stains on his hands than when he came in at night, so the stains didn't come from a studio somewhere else. But his rooms never smelled of paint or turpentine. He smelled a little like paint when the stains were fresh, of course, but there was never enough smell in his rooms to be a painting drying. He never put paint to canvas. I think he had family somewhere giving him money, but only for as long as he worked at his art.

"He was usually late on his rent, even later than me, because Mrs. Murchison would have to go up and hassle him for it twice to my once. He got his money regularly, though because his hair never got too long and his clothes never got worn out. He was spending the bulk of it on something else, either drink, or gambling, or being blackmailed.

"He was left-handed - he carried things and used his key that way, but the right hand was the more stained one, corroborating what I said about him pretending. He liked strawberries. Miss Murchison never planted strawberries, but there are some growing in the yard, just under where our two windows line up. I never eat them, and there aren't any other windows there, so he must be the one who dropped them."

"All right, that's enough out of you! You can come along with me to the station," said Jones.

"Why? What has happened?" asked Holmes

"He got murdered last night at Limehouse is what happened. And anyone who knows that much about a man they claim not to know, knows something about it. Come along with me and I won't have to use the handcuffs."