Page 41 of Copper Script
“I suppose he might have guessed I was doing this with you, and perhaps he could get hold of a list of everything you’re working on from someone in your department—”
“I should damned well hope he could not,” Hollis objected.
“But even if he could, he’d still need to pick the right case, get a list of the suspectsandthe ringers, get hold of samples of their hands to know who was who, discover enough about each of them to give these summaries, and then—”
“Work out that number three was the culprit, days before we did,” Hollis finished for him.“That’s where I stick.Stage magicians and mediums go to extraordinary lengths to get their effects, and I wouldn’t put much past them.But to pull this off, this he’d have had to solve the blasted crime!”
“If he could do all that in the few days between you picking the case and me giving him the handwriting, he wouldn’t be a shabby graphologist off the Pentonville Road,” Aaron said.“He’d be running the Met.”
They both contemplated that for a moment.Hollis took a long gulp of beer, and grimaced.“Hell’s bells, Fowler.Is he the real thing?”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“Not at the moment.Well, well, well.Do you suppose we could use him in court?”
“I wouldn’t like to try it,” Aaron said.“No professional qualification, and the defence would insist on proof.As well they should.”
“Still, a useful man to have in the back pocket, as a consultant,” Hollis mused.“Off the record.”
Aaron had his doubts as to whether Wildsmith would do it.Then again, he needed the money, or at least wanted it.He didn’t voice that to Hollis, and they talked a little longer about Wildsmith’s accuracy, circling repeatedly back to any way he could have fixed it, concluding there simply wasn’t one.
Aaron wasn’t paying full attention.There were two thoughts occupying his mind to the exclusion of all else.One was that Joel Wildsmith was—impossibly, gloriously—the real thing.Not a liar or a manipulator or a fraud, but the bizarrely gifted, outrageously frank man he seemed.
The other was number seven.
“Well, this has been damned interesting,” Hollis said at last.“More things in heaven and earth, and all that.”
Aaron agreed with the sentiment.They finished their beers, and left the pub.Hollis walked off with a wave.Aaron went in the direction of the next pub that didn’t look crowded, bought himself a half he didn’t want, and sat at the table with the envelope in his hand.
He’d been assuming, or making himself assume, or perhaps simply praying, that either the case was a murder and number seven the guilty party, or that Wildsmith would be proved to be fraudulent, deluded, wrong.Either of those outcomes would be better than this one, which was that a terrifyingly accurate graphologist had identified one of Aaron’s colleagues as a moral imbecile and a probable murderer.
He’d told Hollis he’d taken number seven’s sample from a file.He’d lied.In fact what he had done was to ask Challice for a sample of her handwriting, and have her copy out a passage from the novel she was reading at lunch.A few colleagues had demanded what they were up to, and Aaron had given them a cover story since he had not wanted to explain the test to his colleagues.Wildsmith called him honest, and he hoped he was, but he wasn’t stupid.
So he’d claimed that his niece was enthused by a book on how to read handwriting, and had exhausted her own acquaintance.DI Davis had snorted, but DDI Colthorne had laughed and offered his services, and so Davis had done the same.And Aaron had put them in as the ringers, feeling a secret desire to get Wildsmith’s opinion of his superiors.He’d thought it would be interesting, maybe even useful.That would teach him.
He knew which one was Challice’s hand; he could guess number two, the unimaginative bully, was DI Davis.He did not want to face what that meant.
He wasn’t usually a coward, but he still felt an urge not to check.To throw the envelope on the fire, pretend he never knew, keep his head down, let harm happen and make no effort to intervene.
No: that would not do.He could not ignore this, because Joel Wildsmith had proved his gifts again and again, and if Aaron ignored this warning, he didn’t deserve to keep his job.
So he opened the envelope, found the paper with a ringed 7 in the top corner and pulled it out, enough to confirm the very familiar hand.
“Hell,” he said.
***
HE HEADED STRAIGHTto Pentonville without calling.Wildsmith might be out, or occupied, but Aaron couldn’t wait.He couldn’t sit alone at home tonight, and go into work tomorrow with this in his lap.
He arrived at about half past eight.Wildsmith’s landlady made angry noises about late callers; Aaron made placatory ones and got himself allowed up.He knocked urgently on the door.
Wildsmith answered.He was wearing a frankly disreputable woollen cardigan over his shirtsleeves, and looked tousled and tired.“Oh,” he said.“Hello.Was I expecting you?”
“May I come in?”
Wildsmith stepped back to let Aaron in.The bare room was familiar enough that he had an odd sense of finding safety.He still bolted the door after him.
He turned back from that to see Wildsmith looking rather startled.“Private conversation, is it?”
