Pandora(31)

‘Are you sick?’ her uncle says now.

She avoids looking at him by focusing instead on pouring her tea. ‘I did not sleep much last night.’

And this is, after all, the truth. When she did finally return to her bed it was after three in the morning.

Hezekiah grunts. At the sideboard, Lottie uncovers a tureen. Immediately the aroma of salted fish pervades the room and Dora swallows, tries not to feel sick. The housekeeper serves Hezekiah first before setting Dora’s plate down unceremoniously in front of her, and Dora stares into the blank unseeing eyes of two herrings, their scales swimming in melted butter. She lifts the tail of one with a prong of her fork before letting it drop; it slaps wetly onto the plate.

‘Thank you, Lottie,’ she says faintly.

The housekeeper sniffs, holds out a bowl of boiled duck eggs to Hezekiah who reaches in, taking two in one fleshy grab. When Lottie proffers the bowl to Dora, she shakes her head.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ Lottie says, putting the bowl in the middle of the table, and in the stark morning light the eggs look like bleached pebbles. ‘Best be getting on.’

Hezekiah looks at her from across his eggs, a curl of peeled shell hanging from one still clasped in his hand. ‘You’ll remember to change the linen, won’t you, Lottie? My best blue coverlet. The damask?’

‘Of course, sir,’ comes the reply, and Lottie bobs a curtsey before closing the door behind her.

Dora turns her attention to the fish. There is one thing she will admit to, when it comes to Lottie Norris – for Hezekiah, the woman will stop at nothing to please him. The housekeeper may be a mediocre cook, but while the shop floor and Dora’s attic room are neglected in Lottie’s daily rounds, the apartment is spotless. Even the little nooks and crannies of the staircase look as though Hermes has pecked them clean.

She slices into her herring; the silver flesh gives easily – a little too easily – beneath her knife. Across the table Hezekiah eats noisily, breathing heavily through his nose, and Dora distracts herself by thinking about the vase.

It is genuine, she is sure. It would be worth a lot of money, undoubtedly. So why not display it on the shop floor? What is so special about it that makes it necessary for her uncle to keep it locked away?

What is he about?

Before returning to her bedroom Dora had taken a cursory look through the crates on the floor and the ones she also found stacked on the shelves – all of them, she had been both shocked and thrilled to discover – contained pottery of Grecian design. Next she had looked through the desk but found only the shop ledgers. The scrolls in the shelving above it turned out to be nothing more than maps; keepsakes, she supposed, from Hezekiah’s years as a cartographer. Finally she had tried the Bramah safe, but was disappointed to find her key did not fit the lock, nor – when it occurred to her to check – did the gold-and-black key she had found previously in the cabinet on the shop floor.

Across the table now Hezekiah makes a noise somewhere between a grunt and a groan. Dora lowers her fork, watches him wince.

‘How is your leg, Uncle?’

He hesitates, seems to turn something over in his head.

‘Like you,’ he grunts, ‘I slept poorly. The wound … it’s turning into a sore.’

Dora blinks. ‘Then you must fetch for a doctor.’

‘And pay a fortune for him to poke and prod and do little else?’

‘An apothecary, then.’

He waves his hand. ‘Witches, all of them.’

‘Then I can say nothing, Uncle.’

‘That would be best, Dora, I dare say.’

His tone is cutting; Dora knows when to let be. They eat then in silence, other than for the occasional sucking sound when Hezekiah is obliged to remove a fish bone from his tongue.

Dora forces herself to finish one herring then reaches for her tea, takes a long sip before swirling the liquid in her mouth to wash away the taste of salt. She has just sliced into the second fish when Hezekiah asks, ‘Have you seen my coin purse?’

Dora freezes, fork halfway to her mouth. The congealing butter drips from it, makes a tinny tap-tap on her plate.

‘No, Uncle. Where did you see it last?’

‘Hmph. My coat pocket. The black one with the satin seam? It was there the other day, I’m sure of it.’

Dora is glad she wears a high neck which hides the telltale blush at her throat. She gives a tiny shake of her head that could mean anything at all. Hezekiah worries his inner cheek. Dora completes the trajectory of her fork.

It will not occur to her uncle that she is responsible for the purse’s disappearance, Dora thinks, not when she has always left well enough alone in the past. It would be easy to misplace, whether she had a hand in it or not. And he deserves to lose it, does he not?

Dora chews thoughtfully, navigates a brittle bone between an incisor and her tongue.

Her sketches of the vase are not finished by any stretch of the imagination. She only got as far as copying the first scene – Zeus and the fire – before her fingers began to ache, her spectacles to pinch. To ensure she has enough inspiration for her jewellery designs Dora knows that she must sneak down into the basement again and more than once, no doubt, in order to finish the copy before Hezekiah catches her – or worse – moves it. Will she have time, too, to explore the rest of the basement, examine in detail those straw-filled crates?