A Fatal Likeness by Lynn Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

Charles opens the lid Abel can see a row of small glass bottles, each one carefully labelled.
    “What might these be, Mr Charles?” asks Abel, reaching to the nearest phial, only to have Charles quickly restrain his hand.
    “Have a care, Abel. Some of these bottles contain acid. Or poison.”
    Abel backs off at once, and eases his old body down slowly into the spare chair. Charles, meanwhile, has pulled on a pair of large leather gloves and poured a quantity of clear liquid into a small porcelain basin. This he dilutes with water, and then applies to the ink with a stiff white feather. Slowly, carefully, stroke by stroke. His task done, he sits back, waits a moment as the chemicals bubble on the page, then takes a piece of cloth from the case and dabs the liquid away. Abel gets creaking to his feet, and comes to stand over Charles’ shoulder. The acid has burned through here and there, and the words that remain have bleached to sepia brown. But they are legible, they are legible.
    I never believed her allegation of murder, seeing it only as the natural consequence of a justifiable anger and an insupportable grief. But after what I have now witnessed, I believe the accusation to be mistaken only in the identity of the perpetrator. It was her death her enemy had in view even if no blow was struck, no poison administered, no weapon ever wielded. Whatever part I myself have played, whatever blame I must in future endure, I know now where the true guilt lay.
    Ever since the appalling death of that other innocent creature I have believed him accursed—fated to bring death and ruination on all those unfortunate enough to come within his sphere, whether by action, or by negligence, whether it is his intention or not. But this time, I accept I was wrong. She has a touch as mortal as a Medusa’s gaxe, and a heart as frozen as midwinter ice.
    Charles is scarcely breathing, his heart beating hard, suddenly, in his ears. Ever since the day he returned to this house to find Sir Percy’s card, and his uncle sunk in a stupor only death can deepen, he has wondered. Wondered how the mere sight of the Shelley name could have precipitated such a terrible seizure. Could these words be the answer to that question, or at least the beginnings of one? For what Charles has here is not only an allegation of murder, but what amounts to a confession of complicity in Maddox’s own hand. Was it the memory of another’s guilt that came back to Maddox with such horrifying force that day? Or the consciousness of his own?
    “Do you know what this means, Abel?”
    But he already knows from his face that the old man is as disturbed by what they have just found as Charles is himself.
    “Would Fraser know? Was he in London then?”
    Abel nods slowly. “He were. His memory isnae allus what it was, Mr Charles. But I could write and ask him.”
    “Do that,” says Charles thoughtfully, after a moment. “And have a look, would you, for where these missing pages might be. Get Billy to help you. It’s possible they may still be somewhere in the house.”
    • • •
    By the time he leaves Buckingham Street the following morning Charles has made a decision. He’s not naïve, and he understands the risks: He knows that what he has discovered threatens to reveal something about his uncle’s past that the old man himself has done all in his power to destroy. But he also knows—or suspects—that it’s connected in some way with Sir Percy Shelley’s decision to employ him, and he has no intention of colluding, even thirty years later, with the concealment of a murder. And all the less so if the victim was a woman or a child, for surely that must be what the words ‘innocent creature’ meant. Whatever task it was that Maddox undertook for William Godwin it was clearly no minor legal matter, whatever Sir Percy may have wished him to believe, and what Charles needs now is a rather more objective source of information than the philosopher’s own grand-son.