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“I can’t be sure . I’m not offering guarantees, I’m telling you my impressions.”

“Extraordinarily detailed impressions.”

Wildsmith shrugged again. Aaron took the letter back, mind racing.

There were tricks of the trade: flattering statements that sounded plausible to anyone, leading questions to help the faker draw truths from an unsuspecting client, and of course private investigation to get information another way. He found that last very hard to believe, given he’d supplied a false name and only made the appointment yesterday, and his brother-in-law Roger, whose letter this was, lived in Sheffield.

Not investigation, then. But it was, surely, possible that there was enough in handwriting for Wildsmith to judge that a writer was steady but unimaginative—not to mention forming a judgement on the content, a detailed and lengthy list of furniture to be sold from Aaron’s father’ cottage—and that he had elaborated the rest of it out of the air from those two points.

As it happened, Roger had proposed with the words, ‘What do you say, old thing?’, and had only ever bought Sarah flowers on her direct orders, but had indeed recently dug their cottage a rose bed. But that was sheer coincidence. Or, perhaps, an indication that Roger was a ‘type’. People were often predictable and behaved with remarkable similarity: much of policework came down to knowing patterns. Graphology—which was to say, quackery—was doubtless the same and it didn’t do to start reading anything more into what were, admittedly, some extremely well-targeted guesses.

“Interesting,” he said. “What about this?”

He handed over the second paper, which he’d written himself. He’d copied out the opening of Bleak House , inspired by last night’s weather. Good luck to Wildsmith wrenching anything personal from that.

The graphologist once again went into a brown study, eyes intent. Aaron sat back, considering him.

Wildsmith was dressed adequately but not well: clean, but without any great effort at smartness. He wouldn’t consider himself poor, but he clearly counted the pennies. That was hardly surprising. It was difficult enough for able-bodied men to find work these days, and maimed ones were common enough that nobody would give him special treatment. If he couldn’t do manual labour and he couldn’t write, he would be in something of a bind. No wonder he’d turned to graphology.

Still, he was personable enough and there were jobs as salesmen. He didn’t have to descend to this rather shabby pretence, and particularly not since it did real harm.

Wildsmith’s assessment of Roger’s letter had been superficially very convincing indeed. A more credulous person would have taken that a string of inferences and lucky guesses as evidence of mystic knowledge or astonishing powers or what-have-you. If Wildsmith had been equally lucky or cunning when he was pronouncing a verdict on Paul’s letter, his fiancée—doubtless an idiot, given she’d agreed to marry him in the first place—might well have taken every word as gospel truth.

In fairness to Wildsmith, an engagement that could be broken on the unsupported word of a third party had probably not been destined to succeed. But that didn’t entitle this man to throw out praise or condemnations based on how people crossed their ts.

His thoughts were broken by Wildsmith’s long exhalation as he looked up.

“Well?” Aaron said, and was annoyed to realise he felt a touch of anticipation.

Wildsmith paused. Then he said, “I would like to know the context. Are you asking about a job, a friend, a man marrying your sister?”

“Just give me your impressions.”

Wildsmith gave a small hmph of annoyance. “Fine. Well, this man—this hand—good Lord, it’s like he’s wearing a corset.”

“Excuse me?”

“Metaphorically. Tight-laced. He is so held in, so tense—I’m surprised he can breathe.” He clenched a fist illustratively at his chest. Aaron felt his own lungs tighten. “It’s like he’s got his teeth gritted, all the time.”

“Repressed. Is that what you mean?”

“That’s one of those psychoanalysis words, isn’t it? All sorts of things bubbling away and you want to marry your mother?”

“Something of the sort.”

“I couldn’t say about that. He’s certainly struggling with something, and there’s a whole lot of tension because of it. So much tension. He’s keeping hold of himself till the muscles seize up. It makes my neck hurt.”

Aaron stared at him. Wildsmith made a face. “There’s a lot more here too, don’t get me wrong. It’s an intelligent hand, and there’s a lot of force of character. And it reeks of honesty. Not quite as plain and straightforward as your other chap necessarily, but I think you could rely on him in a hard spot, and trust him to do the right thing, even if it was difficult. This is not someone who fiddles his taxes. An upright man with a lot to him, but I don’t think the world is working terribly well for him.”

“Does it for anyone?”

“Ha. But, you know, some people live with that, and some people struggle with it, and this is a struggler. I think...I feel like he’s unhappy? Yes. I think he’s really quite unhappy.”

Aaron’s chest was squeezed tight. He manoeuvred his hands towards his pockets as he sat in a casual sort of way, to avoid massaging his neck.

“Well,” he said. “That’s certainly interesting. Do you have any idea why?”

“I couldn’t begin to speculate. I’m just saying what I see here, not how he got there.”

“How he writes a capital F doesn’t give it all away?”

That came out a little less lightly than it should have. Wildsmith said, “I told you, I take an impression of a personality at the time of writing. It’s not a life history. And my impression is, this is a man with an awful lot to him, but if your sister wants to marry him, she should consider what she’s getting into.”

“That’s a damning thing to say of a stranger.”

“I don’t mean it badly! I’m just trying to say that this chap’s got a lot going on inside that’s a challenge for him, therefore it’s liable to be a challenge for someone who loves him. I’m not saying he’s not worth it, not that at all. I think...I think, if you could...” He looked back at the paper. “Actually, I think it would be absolutely worth it. There’s so much pent up, so much feeling. God. If someone could just cut those laces for him, I bet he’d—”

He clamped his mouth shut on that, the copper eyebrows shooting up. Aaron said, “He’d what?”

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing: he looked decidedly self-conscious. “You were saying something.”

“Rambling,” Wildsmith said, not entirely convincingly. “Thinking aloud. My point is , this is a man with a lot to him but a lot to sort out too, and that might be hard to live with. Or it might not, if he keeps it all in, but that’s not much of a life if you ask me.”

Aaron’s hand, concealed in his pocket, was clenched into a fist so tight his knuckles strained against the cloth, the skin. “Rather less favourable than your first assessment, then,” he said as easily as he could.

“Depends what you want him for. Honestly, you might well be able to work with him and not notice a thing: people can be remarkable at hiding themselves. More tea?”

Aaron did not want more tea. “Yes, please.”

He tried to breathe out, watching Wildsmith as he moved around the kitchenette. Relax. Relax .

There was no way on earth that Aaron’s handwriting proclaimed his interior life to anybody with the eyes to read it. Fortune-tellers made sweeping statements that everyone could nod along with; probably lots of people spent their lives trying to reconcile contradictions and needs, attempting to keep their unruly thoughts and wants in check. Well, Aaron knew they did, because his job dealt with the ones who didn’t bother.

Wildsmith did not know him, or anything about him, and if it felt like he’d slit Aaron’s chest, peeled open his ribs, and taken a clinical look at the insides, that was part of the well-oiled deception. Persuasive statements that half the population might apply to themselves. A lucky guess.

He took the second mug of tea with a murmur of thanks, and, as Wildsmith sat, said, “What about you?”

“Had plenty, thanks.”

“Not tea. What about your handwriting?”

“You mean, what does it say about me? I’ve no idea. I couldn’t tell before I lost my hand—it was like trying to listen to your own voice—and now I don’t suppose it says anything much except This man hates his prosthetic . Are you all right, Mr. Thurloe? You looked a bit shocked.”

“Surprised,” Aaron said. “You cast an interesting light on some things I hadn’t considered. It’s given me a lot to think about.”

Wildsmith gave a quick smile, barely visible under the moustache. “Glad to be of use. You mentioned judgement before. I really don’t try to sit in judgement, or claim the right to do so. But I do think, if I can help people understand one another a bit more, that’s got to be a good thing.”

“What if you feel compelled to judge? If a young man brings in his sweetheart’s letter, and you conclude she’s a bad lot?”

“I don’t know I’d use that expression,” Wildsmith said. “I might read deception, or anger, or greed, or selfishness, but I’d try not to extrapolate that to This is a bad person .”

“But there are bad people. You can’t deny that. The prisons are full of them.”

“And the rest,” Wildsmith said, with unexpected feeling. “The average gaol will offer you bad people, people who made lots of bad decisions, people who made one bad decision, and people who were just very unlucky on one particular day.”

“True,” Aaron admitted. “But they all committed offences, all the same. They made the choices that put them in gaol, when other people made different choices in similar circumstances.”

“Similar circumstances? Like when the hungry child wickedly steals a penny bun from the baker’s, whereas the well-fed banker standing next to him nobly chooses to pay?”

“‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’”

“Exactly!” Wildsmith said. “Did you just think of that? It’s jolly good.”

“Anatole France.” Aaron had been required to learn that line by heart. “I quite grant you that some people have fewer and harder choices than others, and that we could reduce crime if we reduced poverty. So let’s leave aside your hungry child, and look at your well-fed banker who’s planning to flee for South America having robbed his investors for years. Is he not a bad lot? Or do you decline to judge him too?”

“He stinks,” Wildsmith said. “But even so, it’s worth looking at the why and the wherefore, isn’t it? Otherwise you’re saying They’re a bad lot because they make bad choices, and they make those choices because they’re a bad lot. Whereas I think it’s more useful for me to say, oh, This person is writing with contempt , or They don’t seem to believe they’re doing anything wrong , or This feels like they’re telling lies. That way, perhaps my client can understand more about what’s going on, based on their own knowledge of the person and situation. Perhaps you might even work out how to change things—how to appeal to the better parts of their nature, or to understand what motivates them and offer something else.”

“You think so?”

“Well, it’s possible. I had a client who was having awful trouble with his employer, a very highly regarded professional man. He was a brute and a bully on my client’s word, but his hand reeked of fear. He felt deep down he wasn’t good enough, and he took it out on his staff. So I told my client to praise him. He said, Don’t be absurd, I’m a junior, my praise would mean nothing to such an important man , but all I could see was someone desperate to hear he was doing well. I said, just try it. He did, and the chap’s now eating out of his hand.”

Aaron frowned. “That sounds very like pandering to a man who ought to behave better.”

“Yes, he ought to, but he wasn’t,” Wildsmith said. “And you might prefer to be screamed at daily rather than lower yourself to grease the wheels, but my client just wanted to go to work. What he needed from me was a way to do that, not a condemnation of his employer’s character. Do you see?”

Aaron saw quite a few things, one of which was that Wildsmith was very good at what he did, which was nothing to do with handwriting. He clearly understood people, and particularly the two most potent human desires of them all: to be found interesting, and to gossip about others.

“What about this chap?” he asked, and held out the third paper. Wildsmith took it, and started to read.

The difference was dramatic. Within a few moments his shoulders rose and hunched like a cat’s, and his jaw and neck tensed visibly as he read. His mouth worked silently, and then he said, “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No. Absolutely not. Don’t hire him, don’t let him marry your sister, none of it.”

“Why not?”

“Christ, can you not read?” Wildsmith demanded, and then, immediately, “Sorry. Sorry. It’s—look, forget what I said just now, I’m making a judgement. This man is bad to the bone.”

Aaron sat very still. “Why?”

Wildsmith gave the letter a little shake, as if trying to dislodge dirt. “He’s wrong inside, horribly wrong. There’s a disconnection. This is someone who doesn’t care and who likes to do—to hurt— It’s pulling the wings off flies, but that’s all he does or wants to do. It’s cruel and it’s clinical—and he’s entertained — Oh my God. What the fuck. What is this?” He shoved the paper back at Aaron. “What the hell have you brought me?”

Aaron took it automatically, and rose to his feet as Wildsmith sprang to his. “Calm down. And look here—”

“No, you look. If you know this man, then do something about him. You need the police, not a bloody graphologist! And do it now , because I will bet you the contents of my bank account that he has hurt people, and he will hurt people again.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Wildsmith said through his teeth. “I suppose he’s what you really came about? Well, I’ve told you your suspicions are right, congratulations, now bloody do something. Take it away. Go away. Pay me first,” he added.

Aaron fished out two ten-shilling notes, in the hope that paying up would lead to calming down. “Wait. Could you tell me more about this?”

“I do not want to—” Wildsmith stopped himself, inhaled very deeply, and went on with a thin veneer of control. “Please, just go to the police. Ask them to spare five minutes from their busy schedule of harassing the Irish and entrapping men in public conveniences, and look at this fellow. I’m sure you can make someone listen to you, you seem like the sort. If they investigate him they will find something.”

“What something?”

“Something horrible,” Wildsmith said flatly. “This man’s wrong all the way through. He’s done terrible things and he doesn’t care. If they hang him for it, he still won’t care. He needs to be stopped and he won’t stop till he’s made to, so go to the police and make—them—look .” He jabbed a dictatorial finger on each of those words. “And if you need a starting point—oh hell, I don’t know. Helplessness. Children. Animals or children. You need to go. I’ve a headache.”

He shoved Aaron’s coat at him, then his hat, and Aaron found himself outside in short order. He stood in the night air, steadying himself for a moment and then set off home with a lot to think about.

There could be no doubt of Joel Wildsmith’s skills. This last display was proof positive: he was unquestionably a fraud, and a shameless one at that. A little bit too clever, Mr. Graphologist , Aaron thought savagely.

He’d known who Aaron was. That was the key to the whole thing, and all his explanations made sense in the light of that. Probably the spiritualist-confidence fraternity exchanged notes on police? Or maybe this whole thing was an asinine practical joke on Paul’s part, and if it was, Aaron was going to give his cousin the sort of dressing-down that led strong men to emigrate. There was an explanation along those lines, even if Aaron didn’t yet know exactly what it was, because Wildsmith had quite clearly known the author of the third letter.

Children . What a damned filthy thing to use as a deception.

They’d found four small bodies wrapped in sacking under Wilfred Molesworth’s kitchen floor, and he had shown no remorse, no guilt, nothing at all. He had been a mild-mannered little man, blinking behind his spectacles as they levered up the floorboards, and he had blinked mildly just the same way while the hangman put the rope round his neck.

The papers had had a field day, of course. Probably one of the rags had reproduced a letter or some such: that might have been how Wildsmith had recognised the hand. From a newspaper photograph several years ago.

That was clutching at straws. Nonetheless it was, must be a trick, and he would find out how Joel Wildsmith had done it—how he’d known, and, as important, what he knew. And he’d do it carefully, because the man was a sufficiently brilliant confidence trickster to be positively dangerous.

He’d damn near persuaded Aaron with his first demonstrations, and he’d damn near got his liking as they’d talked. Aaron had wanted to argue more, had had all sorts of points to make and things to say. He’d felt like it would be enjoyable to thrash things out. He had in fact found the man remarkably easy to talk to: it was why he’d stopped.

Yes, Wildsmith was very good indeed. Why, when he’d read Molesworth’s letter, he’d gone quite grey, the blood visibly draining from his face. Even the greatest actors couldn’t do that on command.

Trick , Aaron thought again, and strode furiously down the road.