Tom All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd

lawyer is not telling him. But what that is, and how deep it goes, even we cannot yet fully imagine.
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    Lincoln’s Inn Fields looks particularly beautiful this morning, the trees frosty against a brilliant blue sky, and somewhere among the branches, a blackbird singing. Charles presents himself as before, and as before he is shown upstairs, though progress is somewhat impeded by a little group of people in the hallway, gathered around a wizened and vociferous old man in a chair and a black skull-cap, attended by a lean female with a thin and wasted face. An angry altercation breaking out at just that moment, Charles leaves Knox to clear the house of such undesirable riff-raff and makes his own way upstairs. He arrives, as a result, rather sooner than his host seems to have anticipated, since Mr Tulkinghorn is not at his desk – is, in fact, still in a little ante-room Charles did not notice on his first visit,and from which come voices and the smell of fine tobacco. Charles catches sight – so briefly it is no more than an impression – of three men sitting round a table, and a fourth, older, grey-haired, standing upright with his back to the door. A moment later Tulkinghorn appears, closes the door firmly behind him, and moves, rather quickly for him, back to his wonted position of state behind the desk.
    â€˜Good morning, Mr Maddox.’
    â€˜Mr Tulkinghorn.’ As before, the lawyer takes the ring of keys from his waistcoat-pocket and unlocks the desk drawer. As before, the papers are placed on a plain brown sleeve. Two sheets. Tulkinghorn hands them to Charles.
    â€˜This arrived six weeks ago, the other some three months before that. As you will see, our anonymous correspondent seems to be lacking in either imagination or vocabulary. Or, indeed, both. It does not seem to me that they add a great deal to the evidence already at your disposal, but here they are.’
    There is, indeed, a dogged persistence in the content of the letters:
    I naw what yow did
    Yow cannot hide from me
    Yow sins will find ee out
    I will make yow pay
    â€˜You were going to ask about the envelopes?’
    â€˜I have put enquiries in hand. I am not hopeful, but if they can be found, I will have them sent to you.’
    Tulkinghorn is about to close the drawer again when he notices that Charles is eyeing the strange black paperweight.
    â€˜Such curios interest you?’ he says, as if casually, picking it up and holding it towards Charles in the palm of his small dry hand.
    Charles reaches out and takes the object. ‘It’s Egyptian, I think? Obsidian?’
    The old man raises an eyebrow. ‘Indeed. It came from a mummy discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in the Valley of the Kings. Some high-ranking official, buried with his master. I saw the body unwrapped before my very eyes. Some of my noble clients have a taste for the macabre, and such evenings are, I believe, becoming rather fashionable. This amulet was found among the linens. I was taken with it, and my client was good enough to present it to me. A small token of recognition for many years of loyal service. Of course, there are some who condemn such acts as sacrilegious – even accursed – but that, I am sure you will agree, is mere ignorance and uncouth superstition.’
    If he did but know it, this hard, dark artefact is a rather interesting metaphor for its equally impenetrable owner. Tulkinghorn may not understand exactly what role it played, but if such things interest you, you can see these selfsame fingers in the British Museum, which is where – by a circuitous route that need not concern us – this object now finds itself. And as the label on the case will tell you, these long thin fingers were a tool of the embalmer, designed to hold the incisions closed after the organs were removed, so keeping malign forces at bay, and the body intact for all eternity. Whatever his view of the possibility of an afterlife (and if he has