Page 2 of Copper Script
Paul sniffed.“I suppose it’s something.”
***
MR.JOEL WILDSMITH, Scientific Graphologist, lived in Great Percy Street, Pentonville.It was highly convenient for King’s Cross nick, or indeed a spell in prison.
Aaron had made an appointment by letter, which he’d typed, and signed with a false name.He knew how mediums and the like operated, often going to extraordinary lengths to find out information about clients, and saw no reason to make things easier.
He regarded graphology in the same light as astrology, phrenology, Spiritualism, and religion, which was to say, he accepted that their believers were sincere in their faith, and considered it none of his affair unless they attempted to foist those faiths on himself.Aaron had not grown up in a habit of placing reliance on higher powers, universal meanings, or natural justice.
He did believe in service.He’d served his nation at war, and now served its people as a police officer.He carried out his duty as best he could, to uphold the law and help redress a balance that felt permanently tilted against too many people, and that gave his life meaning.
Or, at least, it should, even if some days, the pursuit of justice felt as far-fetched as any astrological fantasy.
He shook the thought off as he approached the rather shabby boarding house at 22 Great Percy Street.A char in a smutted apron let him in without ceremony.
The narrow hallway smelled of cabbage.It wasn’t the sort of place one might think a Scientific Graphologist would live: Aaron had rather imagined either a pristine laboratory or somewhere book-lined with leather chairs.
He went up to the first floor and knocked at the indicated door.A red-headed man of medium height answered, holding a mug of tea.“Mr.Thurloe?Please come in.I’m Joel Wildsmith.”
He indicated the hatstand with the mug, rather than taking Aaron’s coat or hat.Aaron took half a second to disapprove of the poor manners before he realised Wildsmith only had one hand.The other sleeve, his left, was empty at the end.
It wasn’t unusual: London was full of men who lacked hands and arms and legs and eyes, and that was the damage you could see.It wasn’t even the most notable thing about him.That would be the moustache, which was horrible.
It was an obtrusive, bristling moustache, so absurdly over-large for his face that it made Aaron’s own face itch just to look at it, and aggressively ginger.If one could look past it, his hair gleamed copper under the gaslight; he had eyes of so light a brown they were somewhat unsettling, thick eyebrows the same shade as the moustache, and a roundish face that probably made him appear slightly younger than he was.Aaron guessed late twenties.He might have looked like a curate or a clerk if it wasn’t for the moustache; given that self-inflicted disfigurement, he looked like nothing so much as a dishonest bookie.
Aaron took his time to hang up his coat and hat, digesting his impressions as he looked around the room.It was a small bedsit, with a kitchenette consisting of a single gas ring and a sink, a bed in the corner behind a screen, a little gimcrack wardrobe, two threadbare armchairs, a small table with a single kitchen chair.The table bore a scrawled-upon notepad, a pen, and some sort of metal device with leather straps and a hook that couldn’t possibly be what it looked like.There were no pictures on the walls, no photographs, nothing personal.It was bleak.
“Have a seat.Tea?”Wildsmith asked.
Lower half of the middle class, Aaron thought.“Thank you,” he said, on the grounds that a sensible officer never refused tea.
Wildsmith managed the making of it with great efficiency, using his elbow to turn on the tap via the lever attached.He lit a match for the gas by holding the matchbox to his side with the same elbow, and striking the match with his right hand.It all looked very practiced.Aaron glanced again at the thing on the table.
“Prosthetic,” Wildsmith said from the gas ring.
Aaron hadn’t realised he’d been observed.“I beg your pardon?”
“That contraption.It’s a prosthetic.If I strap it to my arm, I can crank the hook affair tight to hold a pen or what-have-you.I can’t say it makes writing particularly easy, but here we are.”
“You’ve still got your right hand.”
“Everyone says that,” Wildsmith said.“It was the first thing the doctor told me in hospital, actually: ‘Good job it wasn’t the right, eh?’I’m left-handed.”
Aaron had known a few cack-handers at school and in the Navy, but they rarely announced it quite so assertively; Wildsmith sounded almost belligerent.It seemed particularly forceful for a man who visibly wasn’t left-handed any more.“Ah.Rotten luck.”
Wildsmith made a noncommittal noise of response.It was a very familiar noncommittal noise to a police officer, or to anyone after the war.Yes, it is, isn’t it?Dreadful, actually.Close to unbearable.Still, mustn’t grumble!
The graphologist made the tea, added milk and no sugar on request, and brought over the mug, then reclaimed his own mug and took the other armchair.“So, Mr.Thurloe.What can I do for you?”
“That’s the question,” Aaron said.“I understand you’re a...what was it?”
“Graphologist.I read handwriting—not in the way everyone else does, I could hardly charge for that.”That was very clearly a practiced line, probably to head off the weak joke that would otherwise be inevitable.“I analyse handwriting and tell you what it reveals about the character of the writer.”
“How?”
“It’s a scientific study.I look at emphasis, angles, length of lines and shape of letters, how they connect—”
“And what does that tell you?If I put a long tail on mygs, you infer I have a short temper?”
