The Affair of the Porcelain Dog (6 page)

I hated being shaved. I hated being shaved by him. But Goddard had made it very clear that in exchange for a roof, fashionable clothing, and all the peaty Islay malt I could bolt down, I was expected to keep my appearance up to his exacting standards. To wit, I'd been clean-shaven when Goddard had met me, and though I sometimes fancied cultivating one of the extravagant beards currently in fashion, clean-shaven I would remain until Goddard grew bored with it.

But that didn't mean I had to be cheerful about it.

Collins cleared his throat.

Ignoring him, I rattled the wardrobe open and looked for the patched, frayed jacket and trousers I'd been wearing when I first came to live at York Street. One couldn't, after all, go poking around Whitechapel dressed like a crime lord's fancy man.

"I've taken the liberty of laying out your brown suit," the manservant said.

"No, not today."

Where the devil were they? When a third inspection of the wardrobe came to naught, I glanced toward the bed. I'd nothing against the chocolate-colored jacket and trousers Collins had arranged there. A canary waistcoat might even have made them attractive. But the immaculate linen would draw pickpockets like flies. The previous night's clothing might have proven adequate. Unfortunately, I'd left it on the floor of the bath, and it was no doubt already below stairs awaiting Eileen's attentions.

"Your shave, Mr. Adler," Collins said impatiently.

"For the love of--oh, fine. Let's get it over with."

I pushed the wardrobe door shut, stalked over to the chair, and offered up my face for the morning ritual. Things could be worse, I thought, as he slapped my face with warm, moist towels. I could still be peddling my arse up and down Dorset Street. I'd have been my own man, but how much was that worth when it meant fighting the rats for a bit of doorway to sleep in? And yet, how long could I stand for the humiliation of being pushed around by a mealy-mouthed manservant? At least I was the one receiving the shave, rather than giving it.

"Doesn't it bother you, Collins," I asked, my words muffled by a damp cloth, "to be butler, footman, and valet to not just one, but two gentlemen?"

To his credit, Collins didn't choke on the idea I fancied myself a gentleman, but merely swiped the razor back and forth across a length of dark leather tied to his apron.

"I'm Professor Goddard's butler," he replied. "It's my job to see to the needs of his guests."

Guests? I started up in my chair. He might fancy himself a butler, but he was not demoting me to "guest"! My face towel flopped into my lap. Collins plucked it up between two fingers, discarded it onto the tray, and pushed me back down.

"Has Dr. Goddard had many
guests
like me?" I asked irritably as he lathered my chin.

"A few."

"But none who have stayed on for two years."

Having buried my face and neck in thick drifts of foam, Collins took the razor by the handle. His hand paused above my throat, as if contemplating the professional repercussions of an unfortunate slip of the fingers. Fortunately, he wasn't the type to throw away decades of service and the extravagant salary that bought his silence for an instant of bloody gratification. He laid the blade against my throat and brought it to my chin in one smooth stroke.

"Your master can afford a proper staff," I continued, while he rinsed the blade in the basin and shook it dry. "He could afford an improperly large staff, for that matter. Surely you must sometimes resent the extra work."

For several long moments, he did not reply, setting himself to his task with a worrying determination. Ultimately my worry came to nothing. Collins's hands were as steady as a surgeon's, and when he wiped the last of the lather from behind my ears, my face was as smooth as it had been the day I was born.

"It's not for me to question our employer's methods," he said, as he toweled the blade clean and folded it. "Speaking for myself, I prefer leading a small, trusted staff to being one of a parade of interchangeable faces, here one day and gone the next without a trace."

Smiling mildly, he set the blade next to the bowl, collected the towels, and piled them onto the tray. With one final glance in my direction, he picked up the tray and turned.

"Breakfast will be served in the morning room," he said.

Parade? Interchangeable?
My mind bubbled over with so many retorts that the man's heavy footfall was already sounding on the stairs before I found the wherewithal to speak.

"I've taken breakfast in the dining room for two years!" I shouted.

There was nothing wrong with the morning room. Goddard had given it to me during my first year at York Street, and it was my favorite. All the same, if Goddard had been at home, I'd have been served in the dining room like a member of the household, rather than in the morning room like some unwashed tradesman one was unexpectedly obligated to feed.

But breakfast be damned, and the manservant be damned to hell. I had a statue to find, and to do that I needed to trace my steps back to Whitechapel.

And I was not about to do it in brown linen.

I threw open the trunk next to my wardrobe. I pushed aside a battered hat I'd once thought flash, a cloth stuck through with a surgical needle, and a yellowing, decade-old clip from the
Times:
L
IMEHOUSE
D
EATHS
R
ECALL
1870 O
PIUM
T
AINTING
.
An acquaintance had told me the picture of one of the 1870 victims looked as if she could have been my mother. The dates were right. There was a resemblance, though since I'd last seen the woman at the door of the workhouse where she'd left me to go chase the lotus, there was no way of knowing for sure. And at the bottom of the trunk, I found my Whitechapel clothes--clean, pressed, and utterly threadbare. Brown suit indeed! I took them out and set them down beside my knee. And when I went to shut my memories back where they belonged, I found the one thing that would have solved the previous night's problems before they began.

My pipe had been a formidable weapon in its day. A section of lead as long as a man's forearm, with one end cut to a sharp angle and the other wrapped in rags, and molded by time and use to the exact contours of my left hand. Even after two years of sitting forgotten in the trunk, it returned to my grasp as if it were part of me. I gave it a swing, relishing the weighty hum as it sang through the air against the somber toll of the Great Westminster bells.

"Fillet of sole," Collins said, behind me once more.

The pipe flew from my fingers and clattered against the legs of the wardrobe.

"Will you stop sneaking up like that?"

Instead of skulking back down the hallway, Collins crossed my chamber. He laid a pile of freshly laundered clothing on the bed, perhaps to reemphasize his belief that being egregiously taken advantage of proved how highly valued he was as an employee.

"Er, I thought the brown suit today," he said as I shook out my old jacket. "With a white shirt and, er..."

He lifted a pair of drawers from the pile. Like the morning room, I had to admit that these drawers were my favorite. Who wouldn't enjoy walking around in cream-colored silk from waist to ankle? But
guest
or not, I'd be damned if I'd let the man dictate the very clothes on my back.

"My old clothing will be better suited to today's activities," I said. "Thanks for the drawers, though."

"Activities? I wasn't informed--"

"Is the
butler
to be informed every time I take a piss?" I snapped.

He considered me for a moment, his upper lip twitching against a snarl. Then a curious serenity descended over his features.

"Of course, Mr. Adler," he said with a short nod. "But might I remind you that Dr. Hendricks is scheduled to arrive within the hour?"

"No doubt I'll meet him along the way. Good day, Collins."

"But your breakfast--"

"Enjoy it with my compliments."

The Great Westminster Clock was striking half-eleven when I sighted the boarded-up windows of Stepney Clinic. The clinic, where my relationship with Timothy Lazarus had begun and ended, was tucked into a narrow alley off Whitechapel Road in the dour brown shadow of the London Hospital, half a mile northeast of Miller's Court. As I stepped from the hansom onto crumbling pavement, I saw the front step had been recently repaired, and the chipped, dented door hung from new hinges. An angry-looking pair was sharing a bottle against the wall nearby.

Stepney Clinic was one of many infirmaries in the area created by the poor laws. Between the standard of care set by Dr. Lazarus and the relentless advocacy of Nurse Pearl Brand, it was surely the best. All the same, I had never understood why Lazarus chose to squander his talents there. He'd trained with the finest minds at the London Hospital, before going on to serve with Her Majesty's army during the disastrous Siege of the Sherpur Cantonment. I understood mere survival of the latter was a heroic feat--though Lazarus refused to speak of it. Nonetheless, someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of the human condition and distinguished military service should have been soothing the fevered brows of the crowned heads of Europe, not scrubbing some drunk's dinner off the floor of his own surgery. And yet there he was, day after day, as if his salvation depended on it.

As I entered the clinic, my eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim light inside. Out of deference to the heat, or perhaps to save oil, only one lamp had been lit in the waiting room. It stood on the wobbly desk in the far corner where Nurse Brand was sorting the incoming patients according to the severity of their complaints. I glanced around for Lazarus, relieved that he seemed to be elsewhere. The plan was to quietly put a bug in the nurse's ear about the statue, with promise of a substantial reward buying both her best efforts and her silence. The latter hope was scuttled when, with the preternatural perception of one who has spent years surrounded by the worst people at their worst, she looked across the crowded waiting room and met my eyes.

"Mr. Adler!" she exclaimed.

Nurse Brand resembled a draft horse in stature--twelve vigorous stone of fierce compassion in a cap, stained apron, and forearm cuffs--and proved just as effective at clearing a path through the crowd.

"You look terrible," she declared when she reached me.

Of that, I had no doubt. Sweat plastered my hat to my head, my eyes and throat were gritty with soot, the bruise below my sternum was causing me to stoop slightly, and my crotch burned with the fury of hell itself.

"Beastly day," I muttered.

"Well, don't just stand there, you daft boy, come in." She glanced around cautiously. "Don't suppose you're wantin' to run into the doctor."

"Not if I can help it," I said.

She nodded knowingly. It had been two years since Lazarus had slammed the clinic door in my face. I doubted Nurse Brand knew the details, but she'd known how I'd earned my daily bread. Lazarus, despite his best efforts, had made quite a spectacle of himself. Though my reasons for avoiding him that day had nothing to do with our sordid past, there was no harm in allowing the nurse to draw her own conclusions.

"Into the dispensary with you. The doctor ain't stepped out of the surgery for five minutes since we opened the doors. If he ever finishes with the lot of them, he won't think to look in there."

I followed her back through the waiting room, down a short corridor, and into the converted closet that served as a storehouse for the clinic's meager hoard of herbs and potions. A narrow counter ran along one wall, with a series of jars lined up neatly at one end. A crudely made cabinet housed labeled bottles behind locking glass doors just above the counter. The window in the back looked out onto a brick wall.

"Now," said the nurse, folding her arms across her substantial bosom, "What can I do for you, Ira?"

I told her everything--well,
almost
everything. Though she'd only met Goddard once, she'd despised him on sight. If she'd known finding the dog would make his life any easier, she'd have tossed me out on my ear. I also omitted the tussle with Lazarus. The nurse had tried her best not to take sides when things went sour between us, but she hadn't seen me in two years. She worked with him every day.

"A doxy, you say."

"Dressed like one, talked like one, but it was the statue she wanted. I'm certain of it," I said.

She looked up, frowning.

"I had a silver flask in the other pocket, and a handful of coins. She didn't touch those," I continued. "Also, she was Chinese."

"A Chinese? Right there on Dorset Street? Blimey."

She frowned at the long expanse of counter, pulling a rag from the waistband of her apron. I watched as she thoughtfully ran the rag over the cracking white paint, stopping to address a recalcitrant spot with her thumbnail.

"What were so important about that statue, anyway?" she asked, squinting at me through the dim light.

"I'm not at liberty to say. But if you help me get it back, I can assure you that certain parties are prepared to be quite generous."

She narrowed her eyes.

"
Certain parties?
You ain't still with
that man
," she said.