Chapter 2: Dorian's Lease Renewal

The lease was, as it had been for forty-three consecutive years, a single page.

This was, in Dorian's considered opinion, one of Mrs. Hargreave's finer qualities — her determination to conduct the business of tenancy on a document that did not presume too much. He had signed leases, in his time, that ran to thirty pages and referenced acts of Parliament that had since been repealed, amended, and in several cases forgotten by Parliament itself. He had signed one, in 1887, that included a clause pertaining to the stabling of horses. Mrs. Hargreave's lease said what it meant and stopped, which was, in his experience, a rarer virtue than it should have been.

He arrived at her ground-floor flat at half past ten, which was when she preferred him to arrive — she had never said this aloud, but forty-three years of arriving at half past ten and finding the tea already made had communicated the preference with reasonable clarity. She opened the door before he knocked. This, too, was customary.