Page 5

“T EA?” JOEL SAID GRUDGINGLY .

He didn’t want to give Detective Sergeant Fowler tea. He wanted to have told him to sod off and shut the door. But he’d let the man in now, and that meant some things had to be done. He hadn’t served in a war for people to go around not offering other people tea.

Joel could use a cup himself, having spent a miserable couple of hours doing his accounts, trying to persuade his left arm to work with the prosthesis, as though a pencil clamped in a hook was a substitute for the press and shift of fingers. He’d been assured it would become second nature soon enough: why, he’d be able to use a fountain pen one day! You saw pictures of men welding with prosthetics, so a pencil should be nothing. His notepad, covered in scrawls and skids, gave the lie to that.

His arm was uncomfortable, too. The muscles were twinging, which hopefully just meant they were getting stronger, but the end of the stump was a tiny bit sore, and that was never good news. He wanted to take off the prosthetic for relief, but he wasn’t doing that in front of a sodding copper. Instead, he loosened the hook enough to pull the pencil out, and set about getting the kettle on. He had a feeling that behind him Fowler was looking around. Probably at his inept efforts at writing, maybe at his bleak room. There was very little chance he was looking at Joel’s arse.

Which was for the best. He didn’t like or trust police, he really hadn’t liked that hellish hand Thurloe-Fowler had sprung on him last time, and he had a strong feeling he wasn’t going to like whatever Fowler wanted now.

He had rather liked the look of the man, at least before he’d learned he was a copper. Fowler was a tall man, decent shoulders, in good trim. He had black hair cropped regrettably short, perhaps to hide curls; the sort of skin that would brown easily instead of going painfully pink in April sun as Joel’s did; liquid dark brown eyes. Not a Valentino, despite the Pictorial’s claims, but extremely easy to look at, all the same.

Even easier if he smiled more. He’d initially held his mouth tight and hard in a decidedly unappealing way, but when he’d been startled it had softened and rounded and...oof. Joel could be a fool for a man like that.

If that man wasn’t a rozzer. Which this one was. So fuck him, and not in the good way.

He brought over the tea—milk, no sugar—and took his own chair. “Well. You want something.”

“Yes. It’s to do with a client of yours.”

“I’m not discussing my clients’ business. That’s confidential.”

“I understand, but as it happens, I already know what you told her. Or rather, I have been informed what you told her. I want to know if that information is accurate and, if it is, how you knew it.”

Joel narrowed his eyes. “That still sounds like me discussing a client’s business, and also like none of yours. You said this wasn’t a professional call.”

“It’s not. Her fiancé is my cousin. Rather, her ex-fiancé. She broke it off after what you said of him.”

“I can’t help that, and—do please try to listen—I’m not discussing my clients’ business. Shall I write that down for you?”

Fowler’s mouth tightened another notch. “My cousin says you made certain assertions about his conduct. I want to know if what he said is true.”

“Liar, is he?” Joel said in a friendly manner.

Fowler did not react with the expected how-dare-you. He sounded quite unconcerned as he said, “One can’t expect Smith’s account of what Jones told him that Brown said to be reliable. And people are particularly prone to exaggerate in these circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“Fortune telling,” Fowler said, with a touch of bite. “You say ‘I see a woman wearing blue’ and it quickly turns into ‘He saw Aunt Elsie in the blue hat she always wore.’”

He wasn’t wrong, but it was still rude. “I don’t tell fortunes, or see visions. I analyse handwriting.”

“According to my cousin the conclusions you reached were extremely specific and highly unlikely. I’d like to know if and how you reached them.”

“Oh, well, that’s easy to answer,” Joel said, with bright helpfulness. “I used graphology.”

Fowler’s jaw clamped. “You looked at his handwriting and saw intimate details of someone’s personal conduct shortly before the letter was written.”

This was unquestionably the Barbara Wilson job. Joel probably didn’t need to worry about client confidentiality—she seemed to have told half of London about her affairs, judging by the nine new clients, all of them raving about how he’d caught out that dreadful Paul Napier-Fox—but he wasn’t going to help the police, or at least this policeman, as a matter of principle. “I did a graphological analysis and gave the results.”

“And was my cousin’s conduct expressed in the writing angle? The curve on the vowels? A sinking tendency of the letter basis?”

Someone had been doing his homework. “Yes, all that,” Joel agreed sarcastically. “I read handwriting, Detective Sergeant. I don’t spy on people to get my answers, if that’s what you’re getting at, or have a team of shills to dig out information like one of those Spiritualist operations: there isn’t the money in graphology. I just have a knack for hands.” He glanced at his left sleeve. “Ironic, really.”

Fowler’s dreamy-dark eyes could look rather menacing, he discovered. “So you look at a scrawled note and it gives you a profound insight into someone’s character and recent actions. I don’t believe you, Mr. Wildsmith.”

Joel eyeballed him right back. “I don’t care, Detective Sergeant Fowler.”

Fowler took just a fraction of a second on that. Joel couldn’t fault his self-control. “And I specifically don’t believe that graphology can tell anyone what you supposedly said of my cousin. How would that work? Did his handwriting look different to normal?”

“Since that’s the only time I’ve seen his handwriting, I really couldn’t—oh, was that meant to be a trap? Jolly good. But pointless, because I’m not lying. I’ve told you what I do, and if you don’t believe me, that’s your problem. You can watch me all day and night and you won’t find me sending out spies, or picking pockets for information or whatever else you suspect. I’m just good with handwriting.”

“ How? ” Fowler demanded.

Joel leaned back. “Before we continue this, Detective Sergeant, we had an agreement. You were going to tell me who wrote those papers.”

“No—” Fowler said. It sounded involuntary, almost like he’d tried to cut it off.

“Yes. I agreed to talk to you on that basis, so you can make a down payment now. If you’re going to change the deal, the door’s behind you.”

He saw the twitch of feeling on Fowler’s face, annoyance quickly leashed. “Very well. The first paper was written by my brother-in-law.”

Joel nodded approvingly. “Good choice. Decent chap. I’d let him marry my sister.”

“My sister didn’t give me a say in the matter,” Fowler observed. “He has, by the way, just dug her a rose bed.”

“That’s nice?”

“You specifically said a rose bed. You said he wouldn’t bring her flowers, but—”

“Good Lord, man, you can’t imagine I could tell that from his hand,” Joel said. There was no bottom to most people’s credulity but he’d expected different from Fowler, somehow.

“Of course I don’t. That’s why I’m here. I want to know how you knew that.”

“I didn’t know that. It’s an example I use a lot because people grasp it. I say, this is someone who does practical things to show love, he’s not one for gestures. So he won’t buy you flowers, but he will dig you a rose bed. People understand examples better than abstract words.”

“Why roses specifically?”

“Because I don’t know anything about flowers, that’s why. I couldn’t spot a dahlia in a police identity parade, but my family home had a rose bed.”

Fowler exhaled. “And roses are about the most popular flower in the country, so you’ve a good chance of the example striking a chord. I dare say that’s very persuasive to clients.”

“Are you suggesting I should use metaphors that are completely alien to people’s experience?” Joel enquired. “Anyway: brother-in-law, how nice. More importantly, what about the third one? Have you reported— No, wait, you’re a rozzer. Have you arrested him?”

“As it happens.”

“What for?”

Fowler hesitated for a few seconds, and finally spoke with clear reluctance. “The third paper was written by Wilfred Molesworth.”

Joel took a second to place the name then sat bolt upright. “Molesworth? Kids under the floorboards Molesworth? And you made me touch that? Jesus! What the hell did you do that for?”

Fowler’s brows had gone steeply up. “It was just a letter. There was nothing telling in it.”

“It was his hand . I read characters from hands and I do not want to read the characters of child murderers, certainly not without warning. Don’t ever do that to me again.”

Fowler had a sceptical look, as if he thought Joel was play-acting. He could go screw himself. Molesworth’s writing had been like plunging into a mass of cold grey cobwebs—sticky, clinging, crawling. “He hanged, didn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Maybe try catching the next one before he racks up four children.”

That came out with a touch more venom than, perhaps, it should have, because Fowler gave just the tiniest flinch. His voice was deliberately level when he said, “I suspect it was more than four. He wouldn’t say, though, and now he’s dead.”

Joel paused on that, considered his face. “I don’t remember the case well. It was in the papers when I was in hospital getting the remains of my hand taken off, so I wasn’t paying much attention.”

Fowler gave a tiny shrug—not indifference, more like helplessness. “We found four bodies under the floorboards, and they had not had easy deaths. That’s all we ever managed to discover. We only caught him through sheer luck in the first place. None of the missing children had even been reported, poor little wretches.”

“So how did it come out?”

“Oh, Molesworth’s next door neighbour marched into my police station and said she thought he was a murderer. That might be written off as spite or feuding or eccentricity, but there was something about her; she was truly unsettled. I went round on a pretext, had a nice chat and a cup of tea, and when we were done I popped into the kitchen to rinse the cups. There was a smell, and it didn’t require a lot of police work from there.” Fowler grimaced. “It was counted as a success, but as you say, there must have been an opportunity to catch him earlier. Something that could have been done.”

“You can’t solve a crime before it’s been discovered, I suppose,” Joel said, and then wondered how the blazes he had found himself offering comfort to a rozzer. “Except when you entrap people into them, or frame them up, of course.”

“Naturally that would make it easier,” Fowler said, with some sarcasm. “Did you recognise his hand?”

“Who, Molesworth? From where?”

“You tell me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake. How many times must I say—”

“Until I believe you,” Fowler said over him. “If it was possible to glance at a man’s writing and say This is a child murderer , we’d have squads of you people looking over samples from everyone in the land.”

“Then thank God it isn’t,” Joel said. “And I didn’t say he was a child murderer. I said there was something horrible about him and he liked to hurt people, and I guessed children because—” Because he’d felt something vile and squirming. “Because that sort of personality targets the weak, the helpless: that’s part of the fun. His hand stank of it and if you can’t see that, it’s not my fault.”

“I can’t see it, because it’s just handwriting. And in my view, the best way to judge a man’s character from his writing is if you already know who he is.”

Joel clenched his fist, and felt the twitch in his left arm that suggested he’d tried to clench both. “What’s your idea? That I’ve memorised samples of every lunatic murderer’s handwriting in case a police officer under a false name asks me to look at a random piece of paper?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

“I don’t know!” Fowler said, with sudden, explosive frustration. “I want to know how you come up with this stuff, how you work it, because you have presented me with an absurd claim. You didn’t simply say that Molesworth had this or that characteristic: you recoiled as though I’d presented you with a dead rat. Therefore, you knew .”

“I knew what he was, not who he was!”

“That isn’t possible.”

“Well, it is sodding possible, because I do it. I just look at handwriting,” Joel said savagely. “I think, What kind of person would I be if I wrote like that? I imagine being the person who wrote like that, and then I tell you what I feel like. That’s the big secret you’re after: I put myself behind their pen, rather than in their shoes. I don’t know why it works—Christ, I don’t even know that it works at all, except that everyone tells me I’m right. And I certainly can’t teach you how to do it, any more than you could teach a colourblind man to see in colour.”

Fowler stared at him. Joel glared back. “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not my fault.”

“If you’re unqualified—”

“Who’s supposed to qualify me? Was I wrong about any of your letters?”

“But you’re asking for money to do something akin to palm reading. Drawing conclusions and making things up.”

“Fine. That’s what I’m doing. It’s still not against the law.” He’d checked that carefully, and was quite sure that if he didn’t claim supernatural powers, he was in the clear. “And if I’m just making it up, the laws of probability suggest I must be getting a majority of it wrong so I’m not sure why you care about a few lucky guesses landing compared to all the mistakes you’re about to tell me I made.”

If Fowler’s mouth got any tighter, he was going to need to see a dentist. He put a hand up to massage his neck, taking a couple of deep inhalations as he did it. “So you looked at Molesworth’s handwriting and thought, this is a warped and evil man. You looked at my brother-in-law’s and thought, this is a decent, reliable one. Any particulars you cited were chance. Very well. So how did you make a highly specific accusation about my cousin? Or did his fiancée invent it?”

Joel was tiring of this. He had other appointments, accounts to do, and an aversion to interrogation. “Shall we stop messing about? I’m not talking about my client, but your cousin is Paul Napier-Fox, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Fine. I was presented with a letter rambling about a costume ball. I said the man who wrote it was selfish and deceptive. I said he wrote it with immense self-satisfaction, as if he’d got one over on her. Specifically, I said it felt like he’d just rolled out of bed with someone else and was feeling jolly smug about it.” He glowered at his opponent. “Are you telling me he had?”

There was a silence, then Fowler said, “As it happens, yes.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

Fowler made a noise that suggested something had ripped. Possibly his brain, possibly his trousers, who could say. “That specific detail—you cannot claim that’s the same as a rose bed. People don’t do that.”

“Apparently your cousin does. I didn’t think much of him,” Joel added. “I’d choose my cousins more carefully if I were you.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. The letter didn’t have a glob of spunk on it or whatever you may be imagining. The writer felt smug and sneery and, I don’t know, careless, the way you do after a good screw, and...it was how it felt. That’s all.”

“A lucky guess.”

“Yes!” Joel said, a bit too loudly. “A lucky guess. A dramatic illustration of what a rotten fiancé would do, which you tell me is what your rotten cousin actually did. How is that my fault?”

“Do you gamble?” Fowler asked.

“With all the spare money I have lying around? No.”

“Perhaps you should. On your telling, you’re an extremely lucky man.”

“Yes, I often think that,” Joel said, absolutely deadpan, and saw the flick of Fowler’s eyes to his left arm.

A little silence. Then Fowler said, “What would you do in my place?”

“As a proud member of the Metropolitan Police? Beat someone up for a confession, I expect.”

“Does your mouth ever get you into trouble?” Fowler enquired, and it was the most unguarded he’d sounded yet. It made his own mouth look really rather good. “It’s not a marvellous idea to talk like that.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, it is not. This is a free country, and you can talk as you wish. I just hope you aren’t quite so provoking in your daily life.”

“My daily life doesn’t include coppers,” Joel said. “As for what I’d do in your place... I hope I would realise that the graphologist whose time I’m taking up couldn’t possibly have intimate knowledge of my cousin’s post-coital correspondence or my brother-in-law’s horticultural pursuits. That I’m fretting about a couple of freak coincidences, and everything else can be explained by the fact that said graphologist is as talented as he is good-looking.”

Fowler began a response but managed to stop it on the first plosive, though it was very plosive. Joel probably shouldn’t be winding him up to this extent. He was too rigid, and that sort of self-control was liable to explode.

Which reminded him.

“Anyway, I’ve held up my end of the deal,” he said. “I’ve told you how I do it, and what I said. Now you tell me, who wrote the second paper?”

“Why do you want to know that?”

What he’d have liked to say was That hand was hot as hell and I want its owner’s name and address. Any ideas? It was the kind of stupid risk he might have taken a few years ago, reckless and angry, a wild punt with a magnificent fuck on one side of the scale and God knows what dangers on the other.

He was probably too old to be that stupid. But not that much too old, so... “I was intrigued,” he said. “Well, it’s an intriguing hand. Corseted, I think I said, and someone ought to cut the laces. Does that sound right to you?”

Not a twitch, not a flicker. Fowler’s face was unnaturally still.

“And you promised to tell me,” Joel added. “Are you going to break your word, Detective Sergeant?”

“It’s...a friend’s. A friend of mine.”

Ooh, the rotten liar. In both senses, because a child could spot the fib there. “That’s interesting. A lady friend?”

“Excuse me?”

“I was wondering if she’s single?”

That had come out of his mouth too fast for his brain to stop it, and he thought, Oh shit , as the dark red bloomed on Fowler’s cheeks.

And then the bastard said, “Are you interested?”

“I’m a single man myself, Detective Sergeant,” Joel flipped back. “Footloose and fancy-free. And I appreciate a well-filled corset, so I thought you might introduce me.”

“What if I told you my friend was an octogenarian gentleman with six cats?”

“I’d say you were lying through your teeth. If one is allowed to accuse the police of such a thing, even when it’s clearly true.”

“I’m here in a private capacity,” Fowler reminded him. “I can’t put you in touch with my friend, I fear.”

“At least pass on my advice. Get someone to cut those laces for you before you pop.” He gave it just a second, and finished, “...is what you should tell her. If you’re that sort of friend.”

He was pushing this, he knew, but he could no more resist the temptation than fly. “Don’t you think?” he added. “Better out than in, don’t they say?”

“That reminds me,” Fowler said. “When we discussed my friend’s handwriting you said I bet and then stopped. What did you bet?”

It was ridiculous he should have remembered that, or expected Joel to remember. It was even more infuriating that Joel did.

“Oh, I don’t think I should say,” he temporised. “I spoke without thinking. I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful to a lady.”

“I won’t repeat it,” Fowler said. “I’d just be interested to know.”

“Still. It was trench talk, if you know what I mean.”

“I was in the Navy, but I expect it’s much of a muchness. Say what you meant. I shan’t take offence on my friend’s behalf.”

“Well, if you insist,” Joel said. “When I read your friend’s letter, I thought that was someone who, in the right circumstances—the right hands—would bang like a barn door in the wind. Oh, will you look at the time: I’ve a client arriving any moment. It’s been an absolute pleasure, Detective Sergeant. Drop by whenever you’re passing.”

He ushered the slack-jawed policeman out. Then he put his back to the door, slid down to the floor, and laughed himself sick.