The door to the courtyard was curiously open. With no servant to show him in, Hoffman walked himself to the front steps of the house and rang the bell. Almost instantly, Ghertrude was there, shaking his hand and inviting him to enter. The interior was blank, without sign of individual arrangement, yet the proportions were pleasant and well kept.
‘Is this your house, Mistress Tulp?’ he asked.
‘No, doctor, it belongs to a friend,’ she answered, with a modest smile.
She took him through to a reception room that smelt a little musty and unused. He stood in the centre of it, smiling uncomfortably.
‘May I offer you a sherry?’ she asked.
‘That would be delightful!’ he said, tucking his Gladstone behind the chair while she went to the cabinet. It was in his best interests to keep the bag and its contents out of her way.
‘Please, take a seat,’ she said, returning with the brimming glasses.
He settled himself and enthusiastically took the sherry. ‘I have often walked past this house and wondered who lived here,’ he fished. ‘It must be one of the oldest houses in the city.’ He sipped his sherry and looked around admiringly.
‘Yes, it is one of the older properties,’ she answered, without much interest. ‘The basement is even older, it still has the old well.’
‘Hence its name,’ he said.
‘Yes, hence its name.’
There was a pause of silence, while she fingered her delicate pearl necklace and he stared into his diminished glass. She poured him another and sat back.
‘What may I do for you, Dr. Hoffman?’
Her directness pleased him: he could have this matter cleared up in time for dinner.
‘Firstly, my dear, I wanted to apologise for that distasteful business at the slave house. I am afraid my colleagues are not the brightest of men.’ He paused for a moment to truly engage her eyes. ‘And your description of your curious friend was a little, shall we say, vague?’
She showed no expression and sipped from her glass. He drained his in a single gulp and set it noisily on the glass top of a small side table.
‘Anyway, it’s all taken care of now, and we can begin again to look for… Ishmael, was it?’
‘Thank you, doctor, but that’s not necessary. Miss Lohr and I no longer wish to engage your services.’
Hoffman bristled. How dare she speak to him like a common tradesperson? He was just about to comment when she continued.
‘We no longer feel it necessary to go searching for him; he will surely make his way out of the Vorrh in his own time.’ The doctor was speechless and she decided to use his silence to press the point. ‘We were curious though, doctor: how did you manage to get such a monster out in the first place?’
‘We went to a lot of trouble for you, some more specialist lengths,’ he said, his neck beginning to flush.
‘Using the Orm, Dr. Hoffman?’ she asked. ‘What is that, exactly?’
This was all going extremely wrong. It was meant to be he who had the upper hand. ‘Well, Mistress Tulp, why don’t you tell me? You seem to know all about it,’ he said, in a churlish tone.
‘I know that you and the keeper have some power over the Limboia and that you sell it as a service to anyone who can pay; I know that Cyrena paid you a great deal of money to be confronted by that creature.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he said, ‘we did our best to help you. It was you who came to us.’
‘Best?’ she asked, her lip curling sceptically.
There was a silence, as if the air itself had been chopped short, a segment of it removed from the room. After a shallow, gasping time the doctor sidestepped and said, ‘How is Cyrena?’
Hearing her friend’s name spoken in such casual terms inflamed Ghertrude even more. ‘Miss Lohr is still recovering from the humiliation that you and that brute put her through.’
Hoffman had had enough, and snapped back. ‘I did not come here to be insulted by you, young woman!’
‘Then why did you come here?’ she said, quick as a flash. He was caught off-guard again and searched fruitlessly for the right words.
‘I…came here…to…’
‘Yes?’ she quizzed insolently.
‘I came here to encourage your silence about our business together.’ It was Ghertrude’s turn to be disarmed.
‘I came to advise you that our assistance was given as a favour, out of respect for you and your families, and that it would greatly benefit you if the whole business were immediately forgotten.’ She took in his thinly veiled threat and countered with her own.
‘I think our families would be very interested to know about your favours, don’t you, doctor?’
He had been flushing near to scarlet, but a livid whiteness began to creep through his broken veins. He took a step towards her, his voice raising. ‘YOU DARE? You dare to threaten me?! If you utter one word to implicate me or my associate in this matter, I will not hesitate to spread the truth about your secret friend; about him fucking you and that Lohr slut, and about everything else! The house, everything!’
‘Good! Do it. Say whatever you please; you know nothing about this house, and our indiscretions are nothing to your crimes.’
He was astonished; this should not have been happening. He had never met a woman as impertinent and disrespectful as this. ‘I warn you…’ he growled fiercely.
‘With what?!’ she laughed, challenging the last reserves of his restraint.
‘With your life!’ he snarled, grabbing her throat and tilting her face painfully up towards his. ‘You open your mouth and I will shut it permanently; I will have the Orm hollow out your soul and deposit it on my dissecting table, and I will cut that bastard out of your cunt. I will…’
His words tailed off as he found himself moving up and out of the room, weightless and undirected. His ring caught on her necklace, breaking it as he flew away from her, the pearls shotgunning in all directions. She grabbed at her throat and the remnants of the string, her eyes wide and staring at something behind him. He watched, oddly detached, as the girl’s shivering figure diminished and he moved towards the door, the tiny white orbs bouncing and dancing around her feet. He had no idea what was happening, and was still thinking of what to say when the door opened and he was catapulted out into the cold night air and down onto the shining black cobblestones.
He looked up to see Mutter standing over him. He attempted to stand, but the old man kicked his legs away from under him.
‘Alright, alright,’ he said angrily, waving his hands in the air. ‘Your point is made, I have calmed down now, I won’t hurt her.’
The next blow totally confused him; he did not see it coming and it felt like he had run headlong into a wall. He remembered doing that as a child; the shock of the solidity against the speed of his intention. But he was not running now.
A light came into the courtyard: Ghertrude was at the door, the beam from the house streaming across the standing and kneeling figures. Hoffman squinted and saw that Mutter had a manuscript in his hand, a tight scroll of paper, some kind of accusation. He would have this peasant crucified for this outrage. He might even do it himself, maim him, as he had once maimed his son.
The servant went to the door and held up a protective hand, gesturing to the girl to go back into the corridor, before shutting her and the light firmly inside. Mutter returned and took a short run with his second blow. The scroll was not paper, but a two-foot length of lead pipe. With the anticipation of its impact, the doctor understood everything.
‘No! NO!’ he cried.
The third blow cracked his skull; he heard it go, or it might have been his teeth shattering against each other. He tried to protect his head with a flailing hand, but Mutter kicked him over and stamped on it, his solid weight and hobnailed boot crushing the bones and mangling the gold ring flat and into the flesh. The next blow fell across his ear, sending him rolling across the yard, screaming. To stop the noise, Mutter swung the heavy, inert pipe up under his jaw, flipping him over and making him bite through his tongue. He was on his hands and knees, whining like a lost dog as he vomited part of his tongue, along with the recent sherry and the remains of his lunch.