Explore "The D'Arblay Mystery" by R. Austin Freeman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed the entire streets, have been picked up second-hand. There is in their aspect a grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique shop, but rather of the marine-store dealers; a quality which even communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.
It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish's brougham being at the moment under repairs and his horse 'out to grass' during the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of Hoxton--Market Street by name--which abutted, as I had noticed when making out my route, on the Regent's Canal. The said route I had written out, and now, in the intervals of my surveys of the unlovely prospect, I divided my attention between it and the note which had summoned me to these remote regions.