The Affair of the Porcelain Dog (32 page)

I selected two good sets of clothing from the wardrobe and laid Mrs. Wu's bag on top of them. I could have left the statue. I probably should have. But Lazarus and St. Andrews had been so kind to me that I couldn't bear the thought that, enraged at my departure, Goddard might use the evidence inside to destroy them once and for all. As I closed the portmanteau, my eyes fell on the trunk, where I'd kept the few possessions I'd brought with me from Whitechapel. The hat didn't suit me anymore, even less so my old clothes. Smiling, I scooped up the cloth with Lazarus's surgical needle. I'd return it to him one day. And then there was that page from the
Telegraph
. Was it my mother in the photo of the opium den victims? And had Acton's experiments led to their deaths? I would probably never know.

I carefully folded the page and tucked it into the breast pocket of my borrowed jacket. I shut the door behind me, then found my way down the stairs. The five letters were still on the vestibule table. I scooped them up and put them in my pocket. Then I left my own note in their place. Laying my keys on the table beside it, I let myself out.

Christmas Eve 1890

It had saddened me to sever our connection with something as insubstantial as a note. The lack of finality ate away at me for some time. Ultimately, though, I was grateful that Goddard hadn't been at York Street that day. It wouldn't have taken but a single smoldering look, a moment in his arms, for my nascent scruples to have gone up in smoke like a fine Egyptian tobacco. There were several times over the course of the following year that I'd have happily thrown away my new independence for a mouthful of whisky and a night between silk sheets. The only thing that kept me from doing so was the fact that the house on York Street remained locked up tight. It was miserable to make one's way on a secretary's pittance. But it was better for the soul, as Pearl would say. And it was miles better than accepting the proffered room in the house that Lazarus had purchased after his wedding.

He wasn't so bad for all that, Lazarus. He and Bess were wed in September, and he fell effortlessly into the rhythms of married life. Every few weeks or so, when I allowed myself to be dragged to Sunday supper, their home had glowed with domestic contentment. I suppose my presence served to remind him of more adventurous times--from a safe distance, of course. My exploits provided no end of entertainment for their surprisingly eclectic parade of friends, one of whom would become my first employer. He was a man after my own heart, but fortunately not one to let my rejection stand in the way of an excellent working relationship.

Summer turned to autumn. Winter came and went and came again. And eventually the streets began to whisper of Goddard's return to London. Though in truth, I never expected to see him again, I slept with one eye open for quite a while. But in the end, my worries came to nothing. In addition to his affection, Goddard had set aside his rancor. He had, it seemed, simply relinquished all feeling toward me. His hand was evident everywhere I looked, but as far as my life was concerned, his disappearance was so complete as to make me wonder if any of it had ever really happened.

It was with surprise, then, trepidation, and, yes, a brief, bittersweet flutter in my chest, that I found him Christmas Eve at my door.

"I mean you no harm," he said, before I could speak.

He was pressed and coiffed to his usual perfection and held a large parcel in his arms. Perhaps foolishly, I stepped aside to let him enter. As he surveyed my room, I suddenly saw it as he must have: the peeling paint, the faded rug with patches of floor showing through; the long black crack in the basin of the commode half hidden behind a tattered screen; the narrow bed with its sagging mattress.

"It's only temporary," I said. "My employer says that when his next book is published, he'll have more work for me--"

"Ah yes," he said. "Mr. Wilde. I'm surprised he hasn't offered you a different sort of work."

He had, in fact. But I'd seen too many of my contemporaries take that one last job, only to fall back into the life that I'd clawed my way out of. For all I knew, Oscar Wilde might not have been an entirely unpleasant lover, but I had no intention of allowing myself to be kept by him or anyone else, ever again.

"Forgive me," Goddard said. "That was uncalled for. It just saddens me to see you reduced to..."

"To fending for myself?" I finished. "I don't mind."

It was a lie. Not a night went by that I didn't curse the filthy coal in the grate, the rowing neighbors and their nasal, low-bred accents; and the lack of privacy and indoor plumbing. The latter I missed more than even Goddard himself.

"One might even argue," I said, "that lesser circumstances make a greater man."

He glanced around the room once more. William Shakespeare had once lived on Aldersgate Street. John Wesley had experienced his conversion among these once-stately houses. But the houses had long since been divided into tenements. The glory days of Little Britain were far in the past, and it showed.

"Indeed," he said.

He placed the parcel in my hands. It was heavy. "I bought this in Paris to surprise you. It's been cluttering up my morning room for more than a year now. What I really wanted was to throw it off the roof, but that would have been an unconscionable waste. Go ahead, open it."

I didn't need to open it to know what it was, or that it had cost more than I'd likely earn in five years. The weight of the thing, its shape, and the cold metal plate on the bottom gave it away. Nonetheless, my fingers trembled as I pushed a pile of papers to the corner of my desk, set the typewriting machine beside it, and peeled back the paper that concealed it.

"Cain, it's magnificent."

And it was: a Remington keyboard typewriter, which, when one could find it, cost upward of fifty pounds. A far cry from my two-quid Ingersoll, which still required me to set the letters one by one by hand.

"I don't know what to say," I said.

"Say that you'll put it to good use."

"I promise," I said. "Thank you."

"Nonsense. If you're determined to make a career of this, you'll need the right equipment. At any rate, it's gratifying to see that the time I put into training you wasn't completely misspent."

There wasn't much to say after that, and for a long while we stood on opposite sides of the fireplace, watching the coal in awkward silence. I was grateful for the gift. Beholden, really. Goddard had been quite open-handed when I lived at York Street, but now that he had no claim over me, I wondered what strings this gift actually entailed.

"So this sort of work makes you...happy?" he finally ventured.

I shrugged. It was difficult not to squirm under his scrutiny, but I made an admirable job of it.

"You look happy," he decided after a moment. "You look well, despite the beard."

It would have been dishonest for me to return the compliment. I flatter myself to think that the new peppering of gray in his hair was my fault, somehow, or that I, and not the winter, was to blame for the excessive pallor of his skin.

"You didn't come here to tell me that," I said. "Nor to give me a gift that any trusted messenger might have delivered."

"No." He cleared his throat and began to pace. When he reached the ancient screen that hid the commode six short steps away, he turned. "I understand why you did what you did, Ira. It took extraordinary courage to defy me. I admire that."

The corner of his mouth twitched, no doubt at the astonishmment that must have shone on my face.

"Courage, strength, and integrity."

He made a slow round of the room, hands clasped behind his back, looking for all the world as if he were sizing the place up for investment potential. Eventually, he returned to his place at the opposite end of the imitation mantel.

"I came with a proposition," he said.

"Cain, I--"

He cupped my cheek with one gloved hand. My blood rose at the familiarity of the gesture, and I closed my eyes, allowing myself, one last time, to revel in his touch. Notes of jasmine and bergamot danced above the smell of burning coal, then disappeared.

"Not that kind of proposition, Ira."

His expression was kind but adamant. Releasing me, he reached into his coat and withdrew an envelope.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Courage, strength, and integrity are in short supply in this world, especially in combination. I'm prepared to pay handsomely for them."

"I don't understand."

"It's all in here." He nodded toward the envelope. "Read it at your leisure. I think you'll find the duties to your liking. The terms, it goes without saying, are generous."

What an infernal temptation came over me then! Integrity be damned! I wanted it all back again, wanted him back. But that wasn't what he was offering. An eternity passed while Goddard waited for me to take the envelope. Then, sighing, he walked it over to the desk.

"I'll consider the offer open until you tell me otherwise," he said, laying the envelope atop the new typing machine. "The Remington is a gift, regardless of your decision."

"Thank you, Cain."

His gaze flicked over the papers that littered my desk, looking for what, I couldn't imagine. I said nothing; I'd nothing to hide.

"I don't suppose you still have the statue," he said.

"It's at the bottom of the Thames."

His shoulders relaxed. A decade's worries fell from his features.

"I knew I could depend on you," he said.

He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but, of course, there was nothing left to say. So, without the exchange of pleasantries that most people find so necessary, he showed himself out.

Once Goddard's footsteps had faded into the noises of the street below, I fished a small key from behind the clock on the mantel. The porcelain dog was in the deep left-hand drawer of my desk. At one point, a mere quarter-inch of cheap wood had stood between it and Goddard, and I couldn't shake the superstitious feeling that it had somehow left with him. But it was there, where I'd placed it the day I'd moved in, and as I opened the drawer, it stared back at me with eyes of malice and fire.

The porcelain was cool in my hand. The seal was intact, and the paper that could have cost three men their freedom still rattled faintly inside. If not for this monstrosity and its contents, I'd have been at that very moment curled up in my chair in Goddard's morning room, a tumbler of expensive whisky in one hand and a book of erotic art in the other. And yet until that day, I hadn't been able to muster the anger to smash it to bits, nor the curiosity to pry loose the seal. Why I was still hanging on to it, I couldn't say. Perhaps it was nostalgia. Perhaps I'd felt the need for some sort of insurance. But Goddard seemed to have made his peace with me. If I turned down his offer, I'd not hear from him again.

"A Fu dog!" a woman's voice suddenly cried out behind me.

I started upward. The object that had been the cause of all of my troubles slipped from my fingers and crashed to the floor. From the doorway, the redoubtable Mrs. Lazarus winced. Her husband peered apologetically over her shoulder. It was a testament to the woman's persuasive powers that I'd agreed to spend the holiest of all nights working with them in a soup kitchen in Bethnal Green, and a testament to my own abstraction that I'd forgotten. How fortunate that they were late.

"Sorry about that," she said, as she bustled to my side. "But it couldn't have been expensive. My parents dragged me all across the Orient saving souls. I've seen more than my share of the things, and that one's a fake. Here, let me help you clean that up. Do you have a broom?"

Muttering to myself, I snatched a few sheets of Wilde's latest article from the desk and crouched down beside the wreckage.

"Didn't mean to surprise you," Mrs. Lazarus said. "I thought you were expecting us."

"I wasn't expecting you to let yourselves in," I said.

"The door
was
open. Well, no matter."

Her deft fingers piled the larger pieces onto the paper, while I used a few more sheets to sweep up the smaller bits. There was something disarming about her enthusiasm, about the way she kept stuffing her unruly ringlets back beneath her bonnet, while melting snow dripped from her oft-mended coat onto my pathetic excuse for a carpet. The whole time, her wide mouth kept threatening to break into an unseemly grin, and I found it impossible to remain angry.

"Mr. Adler, please tell me you didn't pay more than a few pennies for that horrible thing."

"It was a gift," I reassured her. "From someone with whom I'm no longer on speaking terms." I fixed Lazarus with a pointed look.

Recognition dawned on his face, and he blanched.

"I should hope not," she tutted. She raised the head of the beast on two fingers like a puppet. "Really, Mr. Adler, I'd never have suspected you of harboring such appalling taste. Something this ugly must have a cracking good story behind it. Come on, then, out with it."

"Well...I...er..."

"That's enough, now, Bess," Lazarus said.

"Oh, Tim, don't be--oh, look!" Mrs. Lazarus suddenly cried. "There was a photograph inside! Now this
is
intriguing!"