Pandora(84)

‘I am sorry for it,’ Hezekiah says now, though he does not mean it. ‘But I fail to see how this is my fault.’

‘You fail to see?’ Coombe tweaks at the sleeve of the elbow-length suede glove he wears. ‘It is you who sent me to Greece when you found out about the excavation. You who made me track that damn cursèd thing, you who bade us salvage it when it was lost—’

‘I say to you once and for all that the vase is not cursed!’ Despite his fear of the man, his anger begins to ripen once more. ‘You superstitious fool. How can one vase be the cause of so much? It is a piece of pottery, a mere artefact, nothing more.’

Coombe is striding toward him again and Hezekiah flinches, wishes he had the power to run. The larger man tears off the glove.

‘And I say to you, how can you explain this!’

Though the shop is dark, Hezekiah can see all too well the thing before him. And thing it is – what should have been a hand and arm is nothing more now than a blackened appendage. From the scant light from the street he sees its pustules glisten. And the smell. By God, the smell!

Hezekiah begins to gag, to turn his face away, but Coombe takes hold of his chin with his good hand and clenches it so hard that Hezekiah cries out in pain.

‘Look at it, damn you! And it all came from a simple twine burn. Twine I used so I could haul your godforsaken prize up from the seabed. You tell me that your precious vase had no part in it?’

But Hezekiah is stubborn. He will not accept this. He cannot.

‘The twine was yours not mine, nor did it have any connection to the vase. It could have easily been tainted with something else, some substance, something that could have infected the skin.’

Coombe is shaking his head in outrage. His nostrils flare like a bull.

‘Still won’t see sense, eh? Is your leg any better?’

Hezekiah clamps his mouth. With a sneer Coombe releases his jaw.

‘Matthew.’ Lottie has stepped forward, is wringing her hands. ‘Do you believe the vase made you ill? That Sam’s death, Charlie’s sickness, Hezekiah’s leg … it’s all because of a pot?’

Coombe slowly puts the glove back on. ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I believe.’

Lottie looks as if she is about to cry. ‘Hezekiah—’

‘Stop,’ Hezekiah snaps.

He heaves himself up. He will not stand to be spoken to like this. By a lowborn such as Matthew bloody Coombe in his own damn shop.

‘I do not believe in curses. I am sorry for your brother but it is not my fault, as little as it’s the fault of an ancient piece of terracotta! You are mad with grief and it makes you nonsensical.’ When Coombe says nothing to this, Hezekiah feels his confidence rise, puffs up his chest. ‘What’s more, you have come here at an inhospitable hour. You have damaged my wares. You have frightened my housekeeper and you have more or less accused me of murder. No, I will not have it. You will leave my premises at once. At once, I say!’

There is a foreboding silence in which Coombe watches him, clenching and unclenching his good fist, and Hezekiah begins to see renewed danger in the man’s eyes. In that moment, the sudden bravado that has overtaken Hezekiah begins to fall flat; he feels doubt set in, the trickle of fear slip down his spine like quicksilver.

Coombe shifts in his boots. The floorboards creak.

‘You will not take responsibility?’

Hezekiah raises his chin. ‘I will not.’

‘Very well. You leave me no choice. Tomorrow, once I have buried my brother, I am going to the authorities. I will tell them everything. Your niece, too. Mark my words, Hezekiah Blake, you will pay for what you have done.’

‘Do so, and you will sink with me.’

But Coombe is already gone, the shop door swinging on its hinges, and Hezekiah does not notice how his breathing has shallowed until he struggles to breathe at all. He thinks of Elijah, his bitch of a wife, both long dead and buried, the troublesome daughter they left behind, their fortune, his fortune, the note …

Lottie is stepping forward, hand reached out. ‘Hezekiah.’

The sour smell of his own urine reaches his nostrils; something begins to snap in his mind, a series of sharp, collective cracks.

‘Hezekiah—’

‘Where is Dora?’ he bellows, the broken pottery clattering noisily at his feet. ‘I’ll have it out with her now!’ He pushes past Lottie, violently pulls on his leg to help him along. ‘Upstairs in that hovel of hers, is she? That pit of a room!’

‘She isn’t here!’

The words are spoken at such a high panicked pitch it stops Hezekiah in his tracks. He turns on her.

‘What?’ he snaps, and Lottie blanches. Her pale bruised skin reminds him of the bulbous mantle of an octopus he saw once, washed up on a beach in Mykonos, and for the very first time in his life the woman disgusts him.

‘She …’ Lottie wrings her hands again. ‘She’s dining at the Hamilton’s. Lord and Lady, she said.’

Silence.

Lord Hamilton.

A fist clenches his lungs.

‘What?’ he asks again, and this time he cannot control his fear.

But Lottie has fallen silent, seems to see the Devil is in him, and he flings open the apartment door so violently the bell dents the wall. He pulls himself up on the first step of the stairs.