A heavy fog drifted along Pall Mall as Edgar left the War Office. He followed a pair of torch-boys through mist so thick that the children, swathed in heavy rags, seemed disembodied from the hands that held the dancing lights. “Do you want a cab, sir?” one of the boys asked. “Yes, to Fitzroy Square, please,” he said, but then changed his mind. “Take me to the Embankment.”

They walked through the crowds, through the stern and marbled corridors of Whitehall and then out again, through a jumble of carriages, filled with black coats and top hats and sprinkled with patrician accents and the smoke of cigars. “There is a dinner at one of the clubs tonight, sir,” confided one of the boys, and Edgar nodded. In the buildings around them, tall windows gave onto walls of oil paintings, lit by high-ceilinged chandeliers. He knew some of the clubs, he had tuned a Pleyel at Boodle’s three years ago, and an Erard at Brooks’s, a beautiful inlaid piece from the Paris workshop.

They passed a crowd of well-dressed men and women, their faces ruddy from the cold and from brandy, the men laughing beneath dark mustaches, the women squeezed in the embrace of whalebone corsets, lifting the hems of their dresses above a road glistening with rain and horse dung. An empty carriage waited for them on the other side of the street, an old turbaned Indian already at the door. Edgar turned. Perhaps he has seen what I will, he thought, and had to suppress the desire to speak to him. Around him the crowd of men and women parted, and losing the light of the torch-boys, Edgar stumbled. “Watch where you are going, my dear chap!” roared one of the men, and one of the women, “These drunks.” The crowd laughed, and Edgar could see the old Indian’s eyes light up, only modesty keeping him from sharing this joke with his fares.

The boys were waiting by the low wall that ran along the Embankment. “Where to, sir?” “This is fine, thank you,” and he flipped them a coin. Both boys jumped for it, dropped it, and it bounced on the irregularity of the road and down a grating. The boys fell to their knees. Here, you hold the torches. No, then you will take it, you never share. You never share, this is mine, I talked to him…Embarrassed, Edgar fished two new coins from his pocket. “Here, I am sorry, take these.” He walked off; the boys remained arguing by the grating. Soon only the light of their torches remained. He stopped and looked out at the Thames.

Below, sounds of movement came from the river. Watermen maybe, he thought, and he wondered where they were going, or coming from. He thought of another river, distant, even its name new, pronounced as if a third syllable lay between the I and the w, soft and hidden. Salween. He whispered it, and then, embarrassed, quickly turned to see if he was alone. He listened to the sound of the men and the splash of waves against the Embankment. The fog thinned over the river. There was no moon, and it was only by the light of lanterns swinging from the tugboats that he could see the vague line of the shore, the vast, heavy architecture that crowded the river. Like animals at a waterhole, he thought, and he liked the comparison, I must tell Katherine. He then thought, I am late.

He walked along the Embankment, past a group of tramps, three men in rags huddled around a small fire. They watched him as he went by, and he nodded at them, awkwardly. One of the men looked up and smiled a broad mouth of broken teeth. “G’day t‘ ya, Cap’n,” a Cockney voice heavy with whiskey. The other men were silent and turned back to the fire.

He crossed the street and left the river, squeezing through swarms of people gathered outside the Metropole, following Northumberland Avenue to Trafalgar Square, where masses shifted around carriages and omnibuses, where policemen tried to move the crowds in vain, where conductors cried out for fares, where whips snapped and horses shat, where signs rose shouting

Cigars de Joy: One of these Cigarettes gives immediate relief in the worst attack of asthma, cough,

Beneath the glow of the fountains around Nelson’s Column, he stopped to watch an organ-grinder, an Italian with a screeching monkey in a Napoleon hat, which hopped around the barrel organ, waving its arms while its master turned the crank. Around it, a group of children were clapping, torch-boys and chimney sweeps, rag collectors, and the children of costermongers. A policeman approached, his baton swinging. “Get home now, all of you, get that filthy animal out of here. Play your music in Lambeth, this is a place for gentlemen.” The group moved slowly away, protesting. Edgar turned. Another monkey, giant and grinning, groomed itself in a jeweled mirror, Brooke’s Soap Monkey Brand: The Missing Link in Household Cleanliness. The billboard rolled past on the side of an omnibus. The busboy hollered for fares, Fitzroy Square, Hurry for Fitzroy Square. That is home, thought Edgar Drake, and he watched the omnibus pass.

He left the square and pushed his way through the darkening swirl of merchants and carriages, following Cockspur Street as it funneled into the din of Haymarket, hands deep in his jacket now, regretting he hadn’t taken the omnibus. At the top of the street the buildings drew closer and darker as he entered the Narrows.

He walked, not knowing exactly where he was, but only the general direction of his movement, past dark brick houses and fading painted terraces, past scattered bundled figures hurrying home, past shadow and shade and glints of light in the thin puddles that ran in veins between the cobbles, past weeping mansard rooftops and a rare lantern, perched and flickering, casting shadows of cobwebs in distorted magnification. He walked and then it was dark again and the streets narrowed, and he brought his shoulders closer. He did this because it was cold, and because the buildings did the same.

The Narrows opened onto Oxford Street and the walk became lit and familiar. He passed the Oxford Music Hall and turned onto Newman, Cleveland, Howland Street, one, two blocks, then right, into a smaller lane, so small that it had been missed, much to the chagrin of its residents, by London’s most recent map.

Number 14 Franklin Mews was the fourth in the terrace, a brick house virtually identical to those of Mr. Lillypenny, the flower seller, who lived at Number 12, and Mr. Bennett Edwards, the upholsterer, at Number 16, each home sharing a common wall and brick facade. The entrance to the house was at street level. Beyond an iron gate, a short walkway spanned an open space between the street and the front door, down which a set of iron stairs descended to the basement, where Edgar kept his workshop. Flowerpots hung from the fence and outside the windows. Some held fading chrysanthemums, still blooming in the cold of autumn. Others were empty, half filled with soil, now dusted with mist that reflected the flicker of the lantern outside the door. Katherine must have left it burning, he thought.

At the door, he fumbled with the keys, deliberate now in his attempt to delay his entry. He looked back out at the street. It was dark. The conversation at the War Office seemed distant, like a dream, and for a brief moment he thought that maybe it too would fade like a dream, that he couldn’t tell Katherine, not yet, while he doubted its reality. He felt his head jerk involuntarily, the nod again. The nod is all I have brought from the meeting.