A Fatal Likeness by Lynn Shepherd

man’s face that is an answer to his words. Charles moves forward in his seat.
    “You remember the case?”
    A jerk of the head and Maddox’s eyes swivel past Charles’ face. Charles looks round but there is no-one there—no-one, and nothing, except the little side table that bears the remains of his great-uncle’s lunch, and his case-book for 1816. Abel must have brought it up to look at it. Charles reaches quickly for the book and places it gently on Maddox’s lap.
    “Were you looking at this, Uncle? Is that what you meant?”
    The old man eyes him narrowly, then looks down at the book.
    “Is there something about this that you remember?”
    Again Maddox is staring at him, but as one gnarled hand reaches slowly for the book, a coal slips with a rush of sparks onto the hearth, and Charles has to race to stop the rug from catching light. And when he turns back, the old man has lurched up with a strange stifled cry, his eyes stark open, his feet tangling in the bedding as he tries to rise from the chair.
    “Now, what’s to do here, Mr Charles?” exclaims Abel, starting from his sleep, his face drawn in alarm.
    “He was trying to tell me something, Abel—something about the case.”
    Abel looks at him askance, clearly unconvinced, but conditioned by a lifetime in service to hold his tongue. Maddox meanwhile is belying anything Charles might now contend by sagging sideways in his nephew’s arms, his head lolling to one side and a ribbon of spittle hanging from his mouth.
    “Or mebbe it was just the thunder that was frettin’ him,” Abel suggests as the two of them steady Maddox slowly back in his seat, and Charles lifts the pillows so he can sit upright. “That storm’s not afar off now.”
    Maddox stares at the two of them suspiciously, then cowers back in his chair, his hands before his face as if warding off a blow. Perhaps the most distressing aspect of Maddox’s decline in the last few months had been his own awareness of it—fitful, yes, but all too frequent. The strange sleep that has since descended on him has, if nothing else, saved him from that, but if the veil is now to be lifted, might that not prove more killing than the kindness of quietude?
    But all the same it is progress, of a kind. As Charles keeps repeating to himself when he sits with his own dinner and watches as Maddox manages far more food—and brandy—than Abel says he has taken in the best part of a week. All things considered, Charles’ heart is as light as it has been for days as he stands in the hall making ready for the journey back across town.
    “Are you sure about this, Mr Charles?” worries Abel, as they look out at a night sky electric with flashes of silent lightning. “It’s no weather for wandering about outside when ye’ve a warm bed here.”
    “I won’t be wandering, Abel. I’m going straight up to the Strand to hail a hansom. All you need concern yourself about is my uncle. I can look after myself well enough. It will seem odd if I do not return on such an inclement night, and besides, there’s something I need to do. Something that may mean I will not have to stay there at all for very much longer.”
    “Well if you’re sure, Mr Charles.” Abel is clearly unconvinced. “At least let me go up and have Molly fetch ’ee down a great-coat. The boss has a good heavy one he winnae miss.”
    “Very well,” says Charles with a smile. “I suppose that wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
    But five minutes pass with no sign of the coat, and a drumbeat of heavy raindrops is starting to patter the pavement. Charles grows irritated, and goes to the bottom of the stairs and calls up.
    “Is there a problem, Abel?”
    A moment later Stornaway appears on the landing looking flustered. “My apologies, Mr Charles. Heaven knows where that Molly has got to—Billy says she was sick this mornin’, but she made yer uncle’s dinner right enough.”
    Charles heads for the door. “It really doesn’t matter. I can just as