The cold light of morning illuminated the scene with pitiless clarity. It missed nothing, not the shabby buildings with their broken and boarded-up windows, nor the piles of refuse in the street. A bundle of rags lay in the gutter outside her lodgings. As Magda crossed the street, the rag bundle grunted and rolled over. She looked down, but didn’t recognize the man’s features. Just another gin-soaked drunk. The door to the lodging house was unlocked. This was nothing new. Her fellow lodgers came and went at all hours of the day and night, and the landlord was too lazy to lock up after them. Mrs. Brightwell swore that one day thieves would break in, and they would all be murdered in their beds. Magda held no such fears. Several of her fellow lodgers had no obvious occupations, and Magda suspected that thieves already had the run of the place. She climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, leaning heavily on the railing. It seemed that a hundred more stairs had been added since yesterday.
