Epilogue: The oldest stallholder in the market was never alone

Ask anyone in the Old Market who its oldest stallholder is, and you will get the same answer, usually with a smile. Viola Quint of the wool stall. Forty years behind the same counter, in the same green hat with the pearl pin. Never missed a day. Never once had a cold.

Stallholders tell the story to new porters the way they tell them about the bell. It is a lovely story. It is also wrong. Not about the forty years, and not about the hat. About the one person.

That is how the old lady of the wool stall could go home to bed with a streaming cold at half past six and bid for her own sign at seven without a sniff. There are two of them.

Viola Quint and her younger sister Susannah have kept the stall week about for forty years, under one name, one licence and one green hat. Pim walked Susannah home through the snow. Viola, in the hat, bought back the sign.

Monday to Monday, one sister at the counter and one at home, for forty years. The market saw the hat, heard the name, and filled in the rest by itself, the way you finish a familiar tune after the first two notes.

First: The last night under the iron roof

It is New Year's Eve, the Old Market's last night. Every lamp in all four halls is lit. The Fish Hall has been scrubbed white, the Flower Hall smells of the last pine branches, and the windows of Mrs. Odile Fenn's café are so steamed that the people inside look like a painting of themselves.

You walk the halls one last time before the crowd thickens, and the whole year walks with you. Rag Row with its rails half empty. The arch where the umbrellas hung. The corner where the last Wainwright apples came from two doors along. The end chess table, where Dorn has one last game booked for half past eleven against the old man who lost the great final forty years ago.

Under the great clock, ticking through its last night in the Long Hall, the clock-winder stands with his hands in his pockets, listening to it.

At the wool stall, for the first time in forty years, both sisters stand behind the counter together. They wear matching grey coats. The green hat hangs on a hook between them, worn by neither, and the painted sign that Viola bought back leans against the pigeonholes of wool like an old friend come to say goodbye.

Their mother kept the stall before them, they tell you, and the market's rule was always one stall, one licence, one name.

When the mother's eyes failed, forty years ago, Viola had the licence and Susannah had the better head for colours, and neither could manage the stall alone with children at home. So they took a week each, and kept the name between them.

Inspector Elena Dorn, who has caught a switched face in every month of this year, laughs until she has to sit down on a crate. “Thirty years I've bought my gloves at this stall,” she says. “From both of you, apparently.”

Then she turns to you. “Everything was in plain sight,” she says. “It always is. Before midnight, prove it to me two ways, without asking them.” It is the last case of the year, and it is the only one played for fun.

You look from one sister to the other. Same height, same grey curls, same small, amused mouth. Not twins, they tell you; three years apart. But forty years of customers saw the hat and the counter and never needed to look any higher.

Second: Two kinds of seven in the wool stall's sales book

Viola lets you look at the sales books. There are forty of them in a tea chest under the counter, one for every year, their spines soft as old gloves. Every sale is written in pencil: the date, the wool, the price.

You lay two books open side by side on the counter, one from your own first year in the force and one from before you were born, and run a finger down the columns while the sisters watch you with identical, patient smiles.

You turn the pages. One week, every seven in the book has a little bar across its middle. The next week, not one does. Then the bar comes back, and goes again, week after week, year after year, never two crossed weeks running, like the serve in a tennis match changing sides at every game.

Mrs. Fenn, bringing over a tray of hot drinks, adds her own piece without being asked. For forty years the lady of the wool stall has taken her afternoon tea with lemon one week and with milk the next. “I always thought she was just changeable,” she says. “Lemon weeks and milk weeks. I set my calendar by it.”

And she remembers the colds that never came. “Whenever she looked peaky on a Saturday, there she'd be on the Monday, bright as a new pin. I used to ask her secret. She'd say she just took a week off from it.”

Dorn leans back on her crate and gives you the last list of the year.

Check the pattern, not the single page. One odd seven is a slip of the pencil; two thousand odd sevens, in strict turns, are a second hand.

Check what a story asks one person to do. Forty winters without a cold is not a record; it is a clue.

Check the small habits that change on the same day. When the tea and the handwriting turn over together every Monday, something bigger is turning over with them.

Third: The first way, by the sevens in the sales book

People learn to write their sevens at school, crossed or plain, and they keep that habit for life, as fixed as the way they hold a cue or a darts flight. Nobody changes it every Monday for forty years.

So the sales book was kept by two hands, taking turns a week at a time. The crossed sevens belong to one writer and the plain sevens to another. A stall with one stallholder has one hand in its books.

This stall has always had two. And the bar never appears or vanishes in the middle of a week. It changes on Mondays, exactly when a new shift would begin.

Fourth: The second way, by a cold and a bid on one evening

Now put the book away and use the clock. At half past six on the night of the auction, you watched Pim walk the lady of the wool stall home through the snow, streaming with cold.

At seven, the lady of the wool stall bid for her sign in the Long Hall without a sniff. One person cannot do both. Two people can. Pim saw her to her own front door and watched the lamp go on upstairs.

Then add the forty winters without a cold, which no single person in a draughty market hall could manage, and the lemon weeks and milk weeks turning over every Monday, and the answer is the same as the book's. Two sisters, one name, taking turns like a relay team passing a baton so smoothly that the crowd never saw the change.

Viola and Susannah applaud you, very properly, with their gloves on. Nobody ever asked, they say, and so nobody was ever told a lie. Only one person in the market guessed.

Pim, it turns out, has walked both sisters home on snowy nights for thirty years, one week and then the other, and has never said a word to anyone. “Not my secret,” Pim says, and suddenly needs to look for his keys.

Dorn, wiping her eyes, declares the case closed without a charge. A licence shared by two sisters who never once let the stall stand empty is not a fraud, she says; it is a relay. Besides, every licence in the market runs out at midnight.

At half past eleven she plays her booked game at the end chess table, and the arcade sees a draw offered, accepted and toasted with Mrs. Fenn's cocoa. Her old opponent says it is the best result he has had at that table in forty years.

Remember: when a story says one person never missed a day in forty years, look for the second person who made it true.

At five to midnight the whole market crowds into the Long Hall under the great clock, still ticking above them on its last night. The umbrella mender is there, and the honey seller, and the toy stall's Winter Grandfather with his stiff leg stretched out on a bench. The wool stall's sisters stand arm in arm, and nobody can tell which is which, and for once nobody minds. Mrs. Fenn has propped her café door open, and the steam rolls out into the hall like a warm breath.

Then Pim goes to the iron post in the Long Hall and takes hold of the rope for the last time. You count the strokes with everybody else, out loud, the way a stadium counts down the last seconds of a final. On the twelfth, Pim holds the rope and lets the note hum on through the iron and the glass for a long, long time, and nobody moves until it has gone. Then Dorn takes your arm, the sisters put the green hat on a peg for good, and the Old Market, with its thousand faces, goes quietly and happily home.