“Any reading is good for the mind,” Kingsley said. “And I suppose even a humorous magazine may stimulate the imagination.” He smiled. “We have some of these same weeklies around the house, don’t we, Fiona? I’ve seen this before.”
The girl blushed and made a show of concentrating on her drawing. She spoke as if to the tablet of paper.
“I quite like the illustrations in it,” Fiona said. “Did you see the new one by Mr Tenniel in that one?”
Hammersmith was surprised. It was the most the girl had said in his presence. “I’m afraid I haven’t had a chance to look it over yet,” he said.
He turned the pages until he found the cartoon she’d mentioned of two men who apparently represented Capital and Labour. They were playing a card game called Beggar My Neighbour. The meaning of it eluded Hammersmith entirely.
“It’s a very good picture,” he said.
“He’s my favorite artist,” she said. “I study him. Did you ever read Alice?”
“Alice?”
“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. He drew it all up and it’s beautiful.”
“I will seek it out,” he said.
The girl smiled at him.
“Well,” Kingsley said, “Mr Hammersmith, I would like you to distract yourself now by thinking very hard about music hall songs and cartoons. I’m going to reset your nose and it’s going to hurt a great deal. You should have come to me immediately instead of poking about newsstands. By now the tissue has swelled all round the break. It would be best for you to cast your mind on something else.”
“But now that you’ve told me how painful it’s going to be, I doubt I’ll be able to think about anything else.”
“I apologize. I’m used to dealing with the dead. They never complain.”
“I certainly hope not.”
Kingsley brought his hands together on Hammersmith’s cheeks and placed his thumbs on either side of the bridge of his nose. Hammersmith closed his eyes and felt the doctor drag his thumbs down across his face. Pain exploded through Hammersmith’s skull and he jerked away from Kingsley. Fixing his nose hurt infinitely more than breaking it had. He braced his arms against the back edge of the table, his elbows locked straight, and breathed deeply through his mouth.
When he opened his eyes, Kingsley was holding the bucket out to him.
“If you need to vomit…” he said.
Hammersmith swallowed hard. “Thank you, no.”
“It will be crooked, I think. Noses aren’t my specialty. But it should set well and you’ll be able to breathe through it in the near future. Just be careful about your face for the next few days. Sleep on your back. The nose will most likely be tender for some time to come. Use a steak on it to reduce the swelling.”
Hammersmith couldn’t afford steak, but he smiled as well as he was able. “I will. Thank you.”
“Well, I don’t think you came here to have your nose fixed. And I’m sure you didn’t come to discuss popular literature,” Kingsley said.
“Right,” Hammersmith said. “I’m here about the boy, of course.”
“Yes, I thought you might be anxious for results. I got to him first thing. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot to tell. The boy basically baked to death in the chimney.”
“But the fire wasn’t lit.”
“No, but the intense heat that built up inside the structure was enough. His lungs weren’t able to process the air around him and he slowly suffocated. There is evidence that his organs began to break down before his death, so I imagine it was a long and painful process.”
Hammersmith’s jaw clenched.
“Was there any … Did you find anything on the body that might provide a clue?”
“The boy’s elbows and knees were bloodied and scarred from repeatedly rubbing against bricks over a period of time. At some point, I would say within the past week or so, salt water was rubbed in his wounds to clean them. The soles of his feet had been burnt repeatedly. His master might have given him incentive to climb faster by lighting fires beneath him. He also had a small burn on his left wrist. It was up high and covered by the sleeve of his jacket. Possibly inflicted by a cigarette or a fireplace ember, but of an unusual shape.”
“I drew a picture of it for you,” Fiona said.
“You did?”
“Yes, so you wouldn’t have to look at the body again. You were so upset yesterday, I didn’t think…”
“That’s awfully considerate of you.”
The girl was holding her tablet of paper and had already turned to the proper page as the two men were talking. She tore the page out and handed it to Hammersmith. The picture she’d drawn was of a child’s arm with a dark mottled half-moon centered halfway between the wrist and elbow.
“Thank you very much.”
Fiona smiled. “You look horribly sore and tired, but you smell like chocolate,” she said.
“I do?”
Kingsley leaned in and sniffed Hammersmith’s jacket.
“You do,” he said.
“It must be … I live above a confectioner’s shop.”
“It’s not unpleasant,” Kingsley said.
“It’s nice,” Fiona said.
“Dr Kingsley?” A young woman wearing a starched white hat stood in the door of the big room. “There are two more gentlemen from the police here to speak to you.”
“Well, show them in, of course. No, wait. I’ll accompany you.”
He turned to Hammersmith and lowered his voice so that the nurse wouldn’t hear.
“Clean yourself up. I’ll keep them in the vestibule for a few moments. Fiona, please fetch a clean shirt from my closet in the back. Mr Hammersmith can’t wear this thing.” He waved his hand at Hammersmith’s bloody shirt.
“I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble,” Hammersmith said.
“It’s no trouble at all.”
Kingsley followed the nurse from the room. Fiona gave Hammersmith a shy smile and disappeared through a second door at the other end of the room.
Hammersmith stood up from the table and had to grab the edge of it to keep from falling down. He felt light-headed and the room tried to swim away from him, slowly receding and being brought back by the tide and leaving again. He moved carefully to the counter against the side of the room, holding the table until he was close enough to put his hand on the countertop. He worked his way to a mirror on a high stand in the corner. It was angled toward the floor, and he swiveled it so he could see his face.
His nose was a huge misshapen beet, and the skin around his eyes was deeply purple with flecks of yellow fading into the flesh of his cheeks. His face had puffed up to double its ordinary size and resembled a bad cheese.
There was a basin of clear water beside the mirror and a stack of small white towels. Hammersmith dipped a towel in the water and dabbed it carefully over his face. He dipped it into the water again and repeated the process. Looking at his face, he couldn’t see a difference, but the water turned pink the second time he dipped the towel, so he supposed he was making some kind of progress.
The towel was rough and it caught on Hammersmith’s whiskers. He cast about the counter for something he might use to shave. There was a drawer under the basin and he pulled it out. There, amid a selection of alien tools, was a razor. Hammersmith didn’t think Kingsley would mind if he borrowed it for a few quick swipes at his chin. He used his hands to pat some of the pink basin water onto his cheeks and jaw and then drew the razor over them as gently as he could, scraping away hair and crusted blood, swishing the razor in the water again and again until it had turned a dark muddy brown.
He was finishing as Fiona reentered the room with a shirt in her hands. He saw her in the mirror and turned to greet her. He moved too fast and almost fell, and she rushed forward to steady him. He noticed that it was the first time he had seen her without her sketchbook.
She drew away from him quickly, as if he had burned her, and gasped when she saw the open razor on the counter behind him.