The room on the first floor was small. It was empty of people and almost devoid of furniture. Stacks of books were piled on the floor against each of the walls, and in a horseshoe shape on the single large desk. Before the desk were two chairs with rounded backs, and another behind it, but other than that there seemed no provision for comfort. The only pictures on the walls were maps of London pinned untidily in place. Dust motes danced in the air, backlit by the little daylight that penetrated the single grimy window behind the desk, which overlooked Little Pulteney Street. Muriel realised that the doubling back of the staircase had deposited her directly above the archway entrance of William and Mary Yard. As she approached the desk the floorboards groaned in complaint, and a vivid image came into her mind: she saw herself and this oversized desk crashing through the floor to be deposited on the cobbles beneath the archway.
A plain door to the right of the desk opened and a figure emerged, backwards. To Muriel’s relief, it was Henry.
Even though she was standing in the centre of the room, Henry didn’t notice her, struggling as he was to keep his grip on a metal bucket filled with empty wine bottles, and balanced on top of that an overflowing porcelain ashtray. He shuffled across the room, performing an awkward dance to turn and grasp the handle of the door on its opposite side and pull it open. He bent sharply as his load began to topple.
“Here – let me help you,” Muriel said, darting forwards.
Her intervention caused more harm than good. Startled, Henry knocked the ashtray and it crashed to the floor, sending up a plume of ash and littering the bare floorboards with cigar ends. The bucket overturned and one of the empty bottles fell from it and shattered on impact. Henry leapt away, grinding glass under the sole of his shoe.
Finally, he took stock of his visitor.
“Oh no,” he moaned. “Muriel.”
His panic and dismay lent Muriel courage. Surely no harm could come to her from an old friend who was capable of acting such a fool.
“Do you have a dustpan and brush?” she asked, moving towards the door from which Henry had emerged.
Henry moved surprisingly nimbly to block her way. “Not in here.”
Muriel turned to the door on the opposite wall, which was slightly ajar. Through it she could see a corridor leading to a bare scullery, or perhaps it was a tiny kitchen, as well as a room within which she could see the foot of an unmade bed. She prayed that it was Henry’s rather than belonging to his friend.
“It’s of no concern,” Henry said. “That is, I’ll sweep it up later.”
“How houseproud you are. I take it you live here?”
“It’s practical, and I don’t require much.”
Avoiding the broken glass and ash on the floor, Muriel approached the desk and took the uppermost book from the pile.
“Are these all medical textbooks?”
“Yes. I placed them in storage when I left. Now they’re of use only as…”
“Collateral,” Muriel finished for him. It was clear that Henry had little money, and this new business of his was hardly flourishing. However, these books must be worth a fair amount, to the right buyer.
“What are you doing here, Muriel? I thought I made clear that—”
“I was sent here. With a message from Miss Teresa Courtenay, who is very grateful to you.”
“You shouldn’t have—” Henry cleared his throat. “I hope you understand that there is nothing untoward about my relationship with that young woman.”
“Please don’t think I’m envious. I’m only curious, Henry. About all sorts of things. Until a few hours ago my main concern was the body of Benjamin Hardy which was found in the grounds of Simeon Courtenay’s home.”
Henry stared at her. “What?”
“The house where we spoke to one another yesterday.”
“Yes, I know that. What’s this about a body?”
“You hadn’t heard? He was a barrister.”
Henry’s forehead creased. “I read reports of a barrister who was found dead. There was nothing about any link to the Courtenays. Though now that I think about it, the name Hardy is familiar…” He trailed off.
“Familiar from where?”
His expression clouded. “Never mind. I’m mistaken.”
His hesitance was interesting, but Muriel recognised that he wouldn’t respond to a direct question. “At the moment I’m more interested in Teresa Courtenay rather than her brother, and particularly your involvement in the disappearance of a certain document which is at this moment being scrutinised by her lawyer. I’ll take a chance and say that it’s a will. Am I correct?”
Henry’s posture became slack. “An amendment to a will, in fact.”
“An amendment which Simeon Courtenay was keeping under lock and key because…” Her thoughts whirled. “Because it would apportion to his sister a share of their father’s substantial wealth.”
“It seems you know rather less than you pretend to know.”
“But I know enough, don’t I? You may as well satisfy me.”
Henry sighed. “The discovery of the amendment is likely to result in the apportioning of almost all of Elias Courtenay’s fortune to his daughter. It was created only last year, upon Elias’s discovery of the true nature of his son’s fundamental character. In short, Simeon Courtenay is a scoundrel. I trust I needn’t go into particulars.”
“Heavens, no,” Muriel said innocently. “We don’t want me swooning into a dead faint, do we?”
“In fact, it was Courtenay’s plotting that resulted in his sister being ousted from the family home in the first place, so the insult of the stolen inheritance was secondary. As I understand it, he intimated to his father that Teresa had given birth in secret following an affair with some lowly type. Twins, no less. The children, that is – and then only allegedly – not the participant, or participants, in the love affair.”
“I hope you present your findings to your clients in a more concise manner than this. You’re gabbling.”
Henry swallowed. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Because I’ve discovered one of your secrets?”
“Yes. No… Because you’re you.”
Muriel waved his comment away. She was positively cheerful now, having proved that Henry was on the side of people who had been wronged.
“To sum up,” she said, “an amendment to an ill-advised will has been restored to Teresa Courtenay, which will result in her financial security and the toppling of her scoundrel brother.”
“Indeed.”
“And you were responsible for this?”
Henry hesitated. “Yes.”
Puzzled at his lack of pride, she said, “You should feel very good about that fact, Henry.”
“The will is in its rightful place. The virtuous party has triumphed.” She clucked her tongue. “Though there’s the matter of the money Simeon Courtenay has raised to build a school. If he loses a portion of his personal fortune, he will have even less inclination to put the donations to their intended use.” She looked up. Henry had become glassy-eyed. “Do you have any opinion about that?”
“I’m sorry… about what?”
It hardly mattered at this moment that Simeon had probably never intended to build the school. What mattered was that Henry didn’t seem to have considered it either way.
Curtly, she said, “About the good that Simeon Courtenay may have done, that he now won’t.”
“Ah. Yes.” Henry fingered the lapel of his waistcoat distractedly.
“Henry Jekyll! Anybody would think that you didn’t care about the right and wrong of all this.”
In a strangled voice, Henry replied, “It’s important to retain an emotional distance between—”
“I understand.” Muriel spun around, trying to ignore the pain in her heels and wishing she’d had the opportunity to purchase new footwear before discovering William and Mary Yard. “What’s through there?”
Henry looked at the closed door through which he’d emerged. “Just stores.”
“Stores of empty bottles and cigar ash?”
“Muriel. This is hardly becoming, to barge into my workplace—”
“Your home, in fact.”
“Quite. To barge into my workplace and my home, asking endless questions.”
Bristling, she snapped, “Do not tell me I have no right to expect answers from you, Henry.”
Giddiness was descending upon her. The questions that had accumulated over the last decade tripped over one another in their rush to come forth. There could be no holding them back.
“I have to know what really happened on that night ten years ago, when…” She was overwhelmed by the image of a grinning face, but some impulse made her determined not to speak of that awful vision. “When I nursed you through the night in my own bedroom – and then in the morning you were gone, never to be seen until now.”
Slowly, he said, “I had no choice but to leave.”
“Why is that?”
“My position had become untenable.”
Muriel snorted. “Your position. Is that a veiled reference to your friend?”
Henry stared at her.
“I’ve been told a little about him by my steward. My father’s lawyer, Gabriel Utterson, mentioned him in his more lucid moments, too.”
She had spoken to Gabriel at the Holloway sanatorium in the hope of finding a trace of her father in his close friend. On her first visit at the age of twenty-two she had determined never to return, and though she had broken that pledge more than once, she had similarly regretted each of her successive visits and her last visit had been five years ago. Gabriel had never provided her with anything more than nonsense. His obsession with Henry’s home and laboratory had suggested professional rivalry despite their different vocations, and it had pained her that it was his preoccupation with her absent fiancé that prevented her learning about her equally absent father. Gabriel had also referred to ‘that other man’ or, more alarmingly, ‘Jekyll’s demon’ who was closer than a brother. He had wept and cried out for help and begged Muriel to hide herself away, but at other sides it was unclear whether he even recognised her. On the single occasion Muriel had described her recurring dreams of the grinning face at her balcony, he had struck his head repeatedly against the metal rim of his bed until an orderly rushed in to restrain him.
Now that same grinning face was superimposed over Henry’s. Muriel grimaced and resisted the urge to strike out at it.
“Muriel, that man…”
“Yes? What of him?”
“He went away too.”
“You went together.”
“Yes.”
It was notable that he made no attempt to deny their closeness. What nature of relationship might result in fleeing the country together? For that matter, what nature of relationship might result in Henry following that other man into Muriel’s house at night?
She looked at the closed door. Might the man who had resided in her nightmares for so many years be directly behind it?
“Did you dispense of him, during your years away?” she asked.
“That was very much the purpose of my travels.”
It was clear that Henry would volunteer no information freely. He had only ever responded to bluntness.
“Did you know that I saw him?” she asked. “The same night my father died.”
Henry stiffened but didn’t respond.
“Perhaps you hoped that I woke only to find you, strange as that would have been in its own right. But I did see him. He climbed the balcony to my room. He—”
She saw the vision all over again. The Yellow Book had kept her awake until long after her usual hour, so she had heard the sounds from outside and risen from her bed as that man, that grinning, hunched beast, had scrambled up and over the railing. He approached her slowly, jerkily, his hair-covered hands outstretched. He retained the same awful leering grin even as he pounced and fell forward, narrowly missing Muriel and toppling onto the thick carpet of her room.
After that, he hadn’t moved. Muriel had called out for her father, and for Kenzie, but neither had come to help her. She hurried from her bedroom and into the corridors of St Stephen’s Vicarage, pushing open doors, but all of the rooms were empty. When she returned to her bedroom the intruder was still there, face down. With dreamlike inevitability, she reached out and, slowly, carefully, pulled at the shoulder to turn the body over only to find—
“Then you were there, in his place,” she said.
“I—” Henry swallowed audibly. “I had no idea that you’d seen Edward. When I came to, you were asleep. My head was in your lap. It was when I left your house that I made a promise to myself – that is, even before…”
“Edward. So that’s his name.”
Henry’s eyes darted. “I must make clear that he’s not my friend. I have no knowledge about what happened that night, or how I came to be in your room. It’s all in the past now, Muriel. Can’t we move on?”
Muriel’s fingernails dug into her palms. Can’t we move on? Move on, from the greatest shock of her life? That night her world had darkened suddenly, and every aspect of her life remained within that shadow.
Hopelessly, Henry gazed down at the mess of papers on his desk. Partly in an attempt to prevent herself lashing out at him, Muriel reached out with a trembling hand and took up a sheaf of documents. Proving that Henry was now capable of helping others would go some way to alleviating her anger.
Some of the documents were formal letter-paper, others notes and partial maps scrawled on mere scraps. Beneath these was a photograph of a young man in a card frame. He was grinning.
Her breath caught. Perhaps she had been wrong about that man’s – Edward’s – age, and perhaps his appearance had been distorted in her memories. She held up the photograph, which was printed on a tin plate. “Is this—”
“A client,” Henry replied quickly. “Or rather, this picture was brought to me by a client, a Mr Jackson. This young man is missing, and I am charged with the task of locating him.”
Muriel studied the picture. The man appeared to be in his early twenties. Despite superficial good looks, his cheeks were sallow and his eyes sunken, as though he had had too little sleep. In contrast to the faraway look in his eyes, his lips were parted in a smile that revealed neat teeth.
Henry took the photograph from her. “Allen Jackson went missing some five days before his father came to me in his distress. The young man was a student.”
“I hope you didn’t refer to the poor fellow in the past tense when you discussed the matter with his father,” Muriel said, then chided herself for her stern tone. Henry was an investigator of missing persons and stolen amendments to wills. He was performing work for the good, which in turn suggested he was a good man, poor grammar notwithstanding.
Henry pursed his lips. “Ah. No, I simply meant that he had been a student, but not in recent weeks. He fell behind in his studies and failed to attend lectures, culminating in him simply not making an appearance at all, either at his university or at his family home. His father spoke of his other son, who lives far away in Hastings, having sometimes been surprised when his brother Allen, the student, appeared on his doorstep unannounced.” He tapped the stack of papers on his desk. “Now, Muriel, I really must attend to my work…”
He bent to study one of the handwritten letters, though she had the distinct impression that this close attention was for show, and that when she finally left his office he would simply slump into his chair and stare at the grimy windowpane. He was still hiding something. It remained possible that Kenzie’s wariness of him was justified.
Without warning she walked briskly to the windowless door on the right wall, and tried the handle. It was locked. She pressed her ear against its surface, but heard no sounds from within. All the same, Edward might in there, hiding.
“Well,” she said, noting Henry’s appalled expression, “I’ve delivered Teresa Courtenay’s message, and I’ve satisfied my curiosity as to your whereabouts. I ought to consider this visit a success. Though one small matter remains.”
“Oh?” Henry said in an artificially casual tone.
“Your arms.”
“My—”
“Please don’t take offence, but you were never a strong man, Henry. And it appears that the time spent in whatever country you hid yourself wasn’t dedicated to physical pursuits. You walk with a cane and you are decidedly sickly-looking.”
He began to reply but she interrupted him. “It remains a puzzle how you succeeded in climbing to the first floor of Simeon Courtenay’s home – by means of a rainwater pipe, I presume, or the ivy growing there – let alone how you tore away the trellises that covered the windows once you’d shattered the glass. As for the destruction of the locked drawing-room door—”
Henry stood sharply. He took Muriel’s arm and guided her forcibly to the narrow staircase that led to the exit.
“I’m sorry, but I must insist,” he said in a tone that brooked no further discussion. “Perhaps we might arrange to meet again, but I’m very busy at the moment, and will remain so in the foreseeable future.”
Muriel didn’t bother to protest. She descended the stairs and, at the point where the staircase doubled back on itself, she didn’t allow herself to look up.