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

Indeed he’s struggling to imagine how a man like Godwin ever came to need the services of a thief taker in the first place, and if there are other people yet living who have the answer to that question, Charles has no idea how to go about finding them. But an account of Godwin’s life might—just—hold a clue, and this it is that Charles is now in quest of. It’s early—too early for Mr Bond (and as for Mr Nattali, he has been ‘late’ these five years and more), so Charles kills time with bread-and-butter and a mug of coffee from a stall on the Strand, and watches the fruit and vegetable carts heaving up towards Covent Garden, pursued by shabby urchins hopeful of a tumbling orange, but sharp enough to stay beyond the costers’ whips.
    The blinds of the bookshop are finally raised a quarter of an hour later, but Charles has to loiter another slow five minutes before the door opens to reveal the elegant, rather sardonic features of Archibald Bond. He is dressed, as always, in an impeccable ensemble of discreet greys, accompanied by a pair of white cotton gloves as immaculate as his stock. His hair is smoothed glassily against his head, and there is an unobtrusive but unmistakable odour of pomade.
    “Ah, Mr Maddox,” he says with a careful smile, as he recognises his client and holds the door open for him to enter. “I am afraid I have no news for you as yet.”
    Charles stares at him a moment, dumbfounded, but then remembers. The Medwin memoir.
    “No,” he says, following Bond into the shop. “It’s not that. I’m after something else this time. A biography of William Godwin.”
    Outside, the sky is bright with winter sun; inside, the shop looms dark with shelves from floor to ceiling. Motes float slowly in air heavy with the must of old books and dry paper. Bond straightens a pile of copies of the Illustrated London News that does not need straightening, and then circles round to his accustomed place behind the counter. His assistant is halfway up the library steps at the back of the shop, eddying a duster along the tops of the volumes. He’s worked here for as long as Charles can remember, and has hardly changed a day in all that time, having seemingly descended into a prematurely desiccated old age long before Charles was even born. There is a deep disfigured hollow where one eye should have been, and the other wanders somewhat alarmingly, which may explain why Mr Bond prefers him to remain, as now, in the shadows. But he would not be without him: Sefton knows Bond’s hoarded stock better even than his master, and will take but a moment to place a coarse and sinewy finger on any volume a customer may require.
    “A biography of William Godwin,” Bond says now. “I am not sure I can help you.”
    “In that case,” replies Charles, somewhat curtly, “I’m sure I can find another shop—”
    Bond holds up a hand. “You mistake me, Mr Maddox. I doubt my ability to assist you purely because I do not believe such a volume exists. I can offer you a very nice edition of An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, scarcely used, and a slightly foxed but otherwise serviceable copy of Reflections on Education, Manners, and Literature, but as to a memoir—”
    He spreads his hands, at a loss, and theatrically so. Charles strikes the counter in frustration, sending dust into the air and a flicker of alarm across the proprietor’s face.
    “It is surprising, I grant you,” says Bond in a placatory tone, “given the undoubted status of the subject. I believe his daughter once planned to write just such a memoir, but as far as I am aware it has not yet appeared.”
    Charles is about to turn away when Bond calls him back.
    “After you left yesterday it was brought to my attention that we are in possession of one piece of Shelleyiana that might interest you.”
    Charles frowns— Shelleyiana? —but he’s intrigued all the same, and watches as Bond dips down behind the counter and reappears with a small book in