17 St Leonard's Gardens

17 St Leonard's Gardens is a vacant house in a run-down part of Paddington that Frankie Derwent searches while pursuing the Caymans. Its dilapidated condition and near-total lack of personal traces turn the visit into a failed search: the only potentially useful object is an open railway guide, whose names Frankie copies down without knowing whether they matter.

Setting and Condition

The house stood in St Leonard's Gardens, a gloomy collection of mostly dilapidated homes that seemed to have seen better days long before Frankie arrived. No. 17 itself was advertised for sale or to let unfurnished. Its interior offered little to suggest that anyone had recently made a home there: the decoration was cheap, the paint blistered and dirty, and the rooms had not been cleaned after the previous occupants left.

Frankie searched methodically from garret to basement. The ordinary remnants of departure—bits of string, old newspapers, nails, and tools—were present, but they did not amount to a personal record. She found not even a scrap of a torn letter, leaving the house materially cluttered yet unusually empty of identifying evidence.

Frankie's Search

Frankie first approached the address in the guise of a political canvasser, carrying pamphlets and wearing pince-nez and an earnest expression. The board announcing the unfurnished property for sale or let defeated that pretext; she removed the glasses and abandoned the canvasser's appearance. Later, she unlocked the front door and entered the closed-up house, whose musty smell greeted her as she began the inspection.

The one object that seemed worth noting was an ABC railway guide lying open on a window seat. Nothing on the open page marked any listed name as significant, but Frankie copied all of them into a small notebook as a poor substitute for the evidence she had hoped to find. The guide offered a possible trail, not a deciphered clue.

Outcome and Narrative Significance

The search produced no trace of the Caymans, and Frankie recognized that she had drawn a blank. The contrast between the house's leftover debris and the absence of personal papers makes the address a place of frustrated investigation rather than revelation: its objects preserve the fact of occupation but disclose almost nothing about the people who occupied it. The railway guide briefly redirects attention toward a possible lead, yet the scene ends with uncertainty rather than a breakthrough.