Free Devoured by D. E. Meredith Page B

and glasses down, all jangling together on a silver tray, an unwanted interruption. Broderig waited till the drinks were poured and, ignoring the coffee, knocked back the sherry. Hatton did the same.
    Broderig continued, ‘Now let me see, I have a book somewhere.’ He crossed the room and climbed up a ladder, which was leaning against a wall stacked with shelves of books. ‘I can show you more examples, but there are better pictures in the British Museum. My collection of anthropology is very poor, I’m afraid. There’s a specialist you could talk to who could tell you more. His name is Dr John Canning. He is a botanist by training but has long since veered off and is interested in the native savage, whereas I stick with my lizards and butterflies.’ Broderig opened the book.
    ‘Here’s the meaning of it.’ He read it out, his voice cracking slightly. ‘The star is to light the way to the next world. I’m sorry, Professor.’ He took the bottle of sherry and poured himself another. ‘I don’t wish to vex you with my unmanly sentiment. To light her way, Professor? She’ll need it now.’
    Hatton rested his hand on Broderig’s shoulder and waited for the weight of grief to pass. Broderig sat down again. ‘But tell me, on another subject entirely. What will happen to the girl?’
    ‘The girl in the mortuary?’
    ‘Perhaps you are inured to such sights in your work and I shouldn’t have looked I suppose.’
    Hatton shook his head. What could he say? ‘We’ve had girls like her before and Roumande gets incensed by it. They are gay girls, Mr Broderig, there’s no delicate way to put it and we are men of the world, are we not? Girls who lift their petticoats to make a living. It’s a dangerous profession.’
    ‘But she was a child? Can The Yard do nothing about it?’
    ‘The police do what they can, which is to move the girls on from place to place, though it achieves little. Roumande is planning to speak to Adams about her, much good it will do.’
    ‘And you sleep at night? Knowing this, Professor?’
    ‘It’s absolutely necessary to be objective in my profession. As with all science, Mr Broderig.’
    ‘Do you play chess, Professor?’
    Hatton smiled, relieved at the change of direction. ‘A little. Do you?’
    ‘It passed the time in Borneo during the rainy season. Perhaps you would care to join me one evening? I’ve been playing with my father since I returned, but he’s not the queen slayer he used to be.’
    ‘I would be delighted to,’ answered Hatton.
    The clock struck twelve. ‘Would you join me for lunch, Professor? You’d be very welcome.’
    Hatton shook his head. ‘Another time, sir.’
     
    Leaving Broderig, Hatton walked along the river for a bit. Chelsea riverside was bustling and, for a second, he watched the queue of passengers attempting to take the paddle boat to the city. There were arguments brewing with the steamer’s captain shaking his head and pointing at the ice. Hatton looked away from the ship and back towards the house on Nightingale Walk, which had taken on a melancholy air. He’d take the traces quickly, he told himself. He had no desire to linger there.
    He knocked on the door which was opened by a dishevelled footman, his jacket half on and half off. Hatton went straight upstairs and into the room he had been in the night before. There were traces of the wax just along the sides of her desk. Hatton scraped them and bagged them, then went back down the stairs eager to visit the morning room, but found himself stopped on the stairs by a woman who had a rolling pin in one hand and a knife in the other. ‘The footman shouldn’t have let you just glide in here, sir. Why, you could have been anyone.’
    Hatton was impatient to get on. ‘I’m working alongside Inspector Adams. I’m here on police work.’
    ‘I know who you are, sir. You’re the doctor of death, aren’t you? I have heard all sorts of things about your black art, and it’s not right, I say. Not