The House of the Wicked

Baccan’s Hound





Tunny was a nickname. It had been with him for so long that he scarce recognised the name John as belonging to him. He had no idea where or how it had originated, and the meaning behind it would now never be known.

Nicknames were a tradition – nay, an essential – amongst the men at Porthgarrow, as there were so many shared the same few surnames, and the stock of Christian names thought befitting of the men of the cove so limited, that it was a fact well known in Porthgarrow that one man might call another but four would answer.

Thus Spike, Jib, Curlew, or any number of strange names might be heard in the cove, and the names were deemed as much a part of a man as his teeth or hair, with the exception that, unlike these attributes, he was never in danger of losing his nickname.

Illustrative of this was Yardarm Pellow. He died aged around ninety years, as far as people could reckon, for no one could be sure. He’d served with the navy since he was a boy, acquired the nickname Yardarm on account of him being flogged before it on a number of occasions, came back to the cove as a man in his thirties, then pressed into service again to serve on the Bellerophon ten years later, seeing action at the battle of Trafalgar. He lost the sight in one eye and part of his throat, as a French cannon ball gouged out a screaming path through the deck and sent giant splinters of wood tearing into his face. He used to boast that though he had not himself seen Nelson, he had shaken the hand of a man who had touched the much admired admiral, helping lower Nelson’s corpse into the leaguer of spirits that preserved his body on board Victory during its long and crippled journey home.

Men would beg Yardarm to shake their hands, so they too might touch the hand of the man who touched the hand that touched the Immortal Nelson, in the hope that something of the great sailor would rub off on them. But Yardarm gave the privilege to very few people. Never to boys. But for Tunny he made an exception.

Tunny had been a young boy, about ten years old, and like all young boys they were in awe of Yardarm with his wrinkled, sun-tanned and salt hardened face whose every fold told a story of faraway lands in the sun, of old sea battles won and lost, of storms so huge they swallowed whole fleets, and of hunger so sharp it sucked in a man’s soul. Like many old men in Porthgarrow, as was his custom Yardarm sat on his adopted spot on the harbour wall, where he could stare out to sea, or talk to the other old men who gathered to share exaggerated tales of their youth, and to bemoan the current state of affairs.

Tunny’s friends had dared him to ask to shake hands with Yardarm. They were all a little afraid of him, for his milky blind eye was like that of a dead fish, and his throat carried a fierce, ragged scar, causing his voice to assume a dry, mysterious croak that caused the boys’ hair to bristle. They knew he did not shake hands with just anyone; that he was very particular on whom he bestowed favour, had little time for those who persisted against his wishes or the frequent needling of intrigued youngsters. They say he had a monstrous temper, and if he had a mind he knew how to put a curse on a man, a black craft learnt from his times in the South Seas.

That did not stop the boys from taunting Tunny, calling him a coward for not going and asking the old man, yet shrinking back and hiding beyond the wall as Tunny drew on courage he never knew he had to approach the sailor.

“I beg your pardon, Mr Yardarm, sir,” he said, his throat being sponged dry almost immediately.

Yardarm was sucking on a thin, bone-white clay pipe. He removed it carefully from his colourless lips. The old man’s head turned stiffly, as if it pained him to perform the simple action. His clouded, sightless eye bored into the boy. His other remained slitted against the sun, so that Tunny could not make out the colour. Yardarm lifted a long, bony finger that scratched under his wiry, grey beard. His hair was drawn back into a pigtail, tied with blue cloth, as in his naval days.

“Yes?” he said, his voice sounding like the sea grinding rocks together. Yet the single word carried with it so much more that Tunny felt he might keel over in a faint.

“Can I please shake the hand that shook the hand of the man who touched Nelson?” His voice quaked, his legs urging him to turn and run.

The old man scrutinised the boy, from his hair to his feet. “Tunny is it?” he asked.

“Yes sir.”

“Why do you wish this?” he said

“I want to be a great sailor, Like Nelson,” he replied, his confidence gradually seeping back.

Yardarm nodded sagely. “You believe it will help you become so?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why?”

The young man thought hard about this. It was no longer a need to look good before his friends, to prove he was strong. He really wanted to shake the hand, but he could not formulate a suitable reply. “I don’t know, sir.”

The old man remained silent for a while. Then his face broke into a lopsided smile, and Tunny could see that the scar on Yardarm’s throat prevented the right hand side of his mouth from rising fully. He swore he also saw the dead eye light up. Yardarm held out his hand. ”Then shake the hand that shook the hand of the man who touched the Immortal Nelson.”

Surprised yet grateful, Tunny held his hand out slowly. Yardarm wrapped bony fingers around it with a strength that surprised the boy, pressed his fingers into the soft young flesh. He held it there, and Yardarm’s smile faded, replaced by a face that was both serious and studious as if he felt something pass from the boy into his ageing frame. He drew closer to Tunny, their faces but inches away from each other. Tunny smelled the old man’s stale breath, reeking of old tobacco, and a little of the fear came back. He tried to pull away but the wizened brown hand squeezed tighter.

“I know about you boy. I heard tales. I think I can see it in your eyes.”

“I don’t know what you…”

“Hush!” he rasped, raising a finger. “Tell me, what do you feel, boy? What do you feel when you touch the hand that touched the hand of the man who laid the Immortal Nelson into his barrel of brandy?”

Tunny’s heart began to beat faster. “I feel something, sir,” he said uncertainly. “But I have fallen in the cove and am bruised.”

“Where?”

“In my chest, and my back.” He became unaccountably afraid. “I have had enough, Yardarm. Let me go.”

“You know how he died? Nelson?”

He shook his head.

“Shot from on high, the French ball passing down through his shoulder, into his spine. His lungs filling. Drowned in his own blood.” Yardarm’s eyes took on a mysterious gleam. “You feel it, don’t you, boy? In your chest, your back?”

He shook his head, this time wildly. Fighting to remove his hand from Yardarm’s grasp. “Let me go, please, Yardarm! It scares me!”

“You have the Gift. You already see more than others. I knew it. For I had the Gift once. Take care, Tunny. It is both a blessing and a curse.”

He allowed the boy to snatch his hand free. Yardarm gave a dry, crackling laugh. Tunny ran past his friends, not stopping till he reached home. They followed, begged him to tell them what had happened, but Tunny would not reveal to anyone what transpired between himself and Yardarm. He never did. And it would be many years before he understood the true meaning of what the old man had said.

It was in Tunny’s mind now. He left his sister to finish sorting out the young man called Denning, and as he climbed lithely onto the cart his feigned joviality fell from him like a cloak. He felt his very skin creep. It had been all he could do to stop himself bolting from the cottage in a blind panic. He experienced a strange urge, a need to wash, and he gave an involuntary shudder that ran through every fibre of his body. He could not have known how he would be affected. Not after all this time. It was so long ago. But it was as if the cottage walls had absorbed and hung onto its sordid past and it had oozed from them to be soaked up by his receptive body.

Tunny tried to calm his racing heart, aware of the strong winds buffeting him, the driving rain. But he sat there, letting the rain soak into his clothes, wanting the unclean sensations to be washed from his pores, till they became a misty remembrance, like a dream that faded beyond recall as the waking mind took hold.

All was not right. He could taste the air and it tasted of something bitter and vile. He looked at the clouds rolling overhead and unexpectedly, gratefully, he saw a patch of bright sky, a glowing ring of calm and light trying to force its way through the rising storm.

In an instant he knew, as all fishermen who’d spent their lives reading the weather knew, that the threat would subside, peace would soon fall, the rain would thin and stop and the wind would run off to cause anxiety elsewhere. Already he felt it easing, the promise of a full blown battering by the elements fading as quickly as it had come on.

It wasn’t the natural way of things. It was as if the dark heavens had been flexing their muscles, a mere show of strength. What did it all mean?

A voice now. Distant. In the wind? He strained to hear it. But it was more a feeling than actually physically heard.

I am here, it said. I am growing stronger. I am come again.

Yes, Tunny understood the full meaning of what Yardarm had told him all those years ago. The Gift was indeed a blessing and a curse.

The wind retreated and he thought he heard the voice again as it raced away down the narrow lanes and passages of Porthgarrow.

I am come again, it whispered.

I am come again!

* * * *



“To be an artist is the pointless pastime of lesser beings, Stephen; degenerate, lazy, effeminate and morally compromised wastrels!”

He couldn’t remember exactly when he’d said it, but that didn’t matter, for every time they met it felt like his father was always saying it, or on the verge of saying it, or thinking it; it was in the sound of his voice, in between the words he spoke, the words he wrote, sitting on the flick of an eyelid and clenched in his hands that he held behind his back. He lived it, breathed it. It was a permanent background noise to their relationship.

And if he could see him now he’d be sorely disappointed all over again, his son ensconced in a mean little cottage in a mean little fishing village on the remote, ragged edges of the country, his financial security in tatters, on his haunches and dangling a piece of fatty ham between forefinger and thumb. All combined, an image that did nothing to counter his father’s acerbic opinions.

“Take it you great lump,” he said, tossing the ham onto the floor. The dog eyed him suspiciously, eyed the meat, then gently picked it up and swallowed it.

He knew it was probably the wrong thing to do, to encourage it, yet he felt sorry for the beast, even a certain affinity. Anyhow, if his father and brother were to be believed he made a habit of doing the wrong thing, so what was one more to add to an ever increasing tally?

He picked another piece of meat from the plate and dropped it under the dog’s nose. This time it took the food with less reluctance.

“There you are, old fellow,” he said, wondering how long the creature had been out of doors. Its coat was in a terribly matted and filthy state, and even through the thick fur he could tell it was a skinny old thing. He bent forward to stroke its head but it growled and he thought better of it. “Suit yourself,” he said, rising to his feet and putting the empty plate on the table. “I’m used to it; your growl is not unlike like that of my father’s.”

That Stephen Denning would pursue a career in law was not so much a family expectation as a state of being. Five generations of Dennings, dusty ancestors galore, as he had been reminded since the first slap which brought breath to his newborn lungs, had taken their place and made their names in the various ranks and permutations of solicitors and barristers, Queen’s Council and judges, and it was unthinkable that he should choose any profession that did not involve a wig and gown at some point. His father, one of the most eminent judges in England, blew like Vesuvius when he heard his youngest son had dreams of becoming an artist. Correction: his youngest son had dreams of avoiding what he thought was a wearisome, archaic and prejudiced profession, and, quite frankly, took a lot of work to get there. It didn’t help that his elder brother, Michael Denning had but five years ago ‘taken silk’, and was becoming quite famous in his own right. This prompted his father to look on his youngest as if he were a changeling, or give that frequent expression of thought which suggested he was pondering what fatherly sins he had committed to be so unjustly punished.

Being the youngest did have its advantages, the principal one being that of his mother. In her quiet, persuasive way, she convinced his father to “Let the horse have its head” - though he sorely resented being compared to a filly standing in her stables. In a fraught meeting reminiscent of an Old Bailey trial, he was told he was allowed to go to France to pursue his art, and what’s more provided with a small monthly allowance, the conditions attached being that the entire affair lasted for no more than two years, that his father (in reality his mother) would choose the studio, and once he got the whole ludicrous fixation purged from his system he would return forthwith and diligently apply himself to studying what had been, he could only assume, preordained by the Almighty Himself. He would not have been surprised if a contract and a pen had been produced.

“You must not tease him so,” said his brother before Stephen Denning left for the ateliers, freedom and temptations of France. “He only wants what’s best for you.”

At such times Michael was the image of their father. Cold, blue eyes, thin-lipped, haughty angle to the head, the way he stood erect with his hands clasped behind him. Pronouncing judgement.

“He thinks of nothing but his own reputation,” he replied.

“You must understand, to him it is such a foolish venture. We have our responsibilities, and, yes, our reputation to think about. Father indulges you because he thinks you will soon be back, suitably chastened and with your tail between your legs.”

He loved his brother Michael, thirteen years his elder, but still it galled him to hear him talk like that. He knew he would never stand alongside him as an equal in their father’s eyes. For that matter, neither did he want to be seen as such.

“So do you think it’s foolish?”

“Father’s words, not mine.”

“Do you have none of your own?”

“None you’d care to hear, brother.” He shook his head resignedly. “Against my better judgement, but wanting to give you at least half a chance and not wishing to see you starve, I am arranging to supplement your allowance whilst in France,” he said, “but do not let father know. I must, however, have your assurance that you will abide by the terms he has granted you.”

“In heaven’s name, I swear you and father are the one and the same! Do you too think you can buy my submission, that you have my very soul entrapped and at the mercy of your purse? Or are you both so afraid that if I live simply as an artist, foregoing the comforts of life for the pursuance of a higher calling it might reflect on our odious good name?”

“Don’t be so tedious, Stephen. A simple thank you will suffice,” he said, turning to leave. “One’s passage to greatness is made easier by a full stomach and clean shirts, no matter what is romantically supposed in those dire European novels, and please don’t tell me you think you’re actually going to live off the income generated by your painting or I shall die laughing. Rewards are equal to the effort you expend and alas I have yet to see evidence of such an industrious trait in you. Though you might surprise me yet.” He smiled as all elder brothers in positions of established authority smile at their younger siblings.

Stephen Denning scowled, on principle, but accepted the offer.

The rain had stopped. It was no longer rattling on the tiny window panes. He gave a hefty sigh. “My friend,” he said to the dog, “you see before you a young life shipwrecked, and as yet uncertain upon what barbarous coast I have been washed ashore.” He went to the door, opened it wide and grimaced at the stench. How does one find oneself in such predicaments? he thought wearily. And in particular why should I be the one whose every decision, every action, leads to some situation I did not anticipate nor desire, and from which I have yet again to extricate myself?

He loathed believing in fate, for fate smacked of a coherent order to the universe, a controlling force that took you down a fixed route over which you had no say in the matter. It hinted strongly at a God, and that would never do as he’d since disassociated himself from such beliefs. But no matter how he railed against it, he could not sponge from his mind the conviction that someone, something, somewhere, had set its cruel sights on him. Fate.

He closed the door. The dog looked at him.

It’s as if I saw the rocks, he thought, did my utmost to steer clear, and was pushed screaming onto them in spite of my best efforts. Shipwrecked.

Nautical metaphors being the order of the day, he recalled with a pang that caused his stomach to twitch how he knew a storm was brewing as soon as he saw his elder brother’s angry expression. Michael had called at his studio but two days after Wilkinson had visited. He did not take long in getting to the point of the matter.

“You young fool!” he said, every word emphasised and strung out.

Michael Denning never lost his temper, but he was edging pretty close to it right now. That fact alone unnerved him all the more. He knew something was dreadfully wrong, and pretty certain he was lodged at the centre of it. Again.

“I’m sorry!” he blurted, more out of habit, for as yet it wasn’t clear what had prompted his brother’s unexpected visit, or his alarmingly uncharacteristic outburst.

Michael had been more than supportive of his younger brother. Even when Stephen had ignored his father’s wishes, returning from France to set up a small studio in London, thus signalling an abrupt halt to his meagre allowance, Michael had stepped in to help.

He’d provided a steady stream of contacts and commissions from a social circle the envy of his many peers. Stephen found himself painting the portraits of a good many bankers, back bench politicians, the odd-senior ranking officer of both navy and army, their wives, children and once, but only once because the money was just too tempting, an ugly dachshund named Peter the Great belonging to the wife of a Russian lady who boasted connections to the court of the Russian Tsar.

Thanks to Michael, and unbeknown to their father, Stephen Denning was able to maintain a semblance of success in his chosen profession. A semblance because his expenditure had always exceeded his income, and his many debts were starting to move from a relatively comfortable concern to a rather more discomforting worry. In an increasingly complicated game of catch-me-if-you-can, the proceeds from his current commission would at least keep his debtors happy enough till he could calculate his next move. All of which caused his insides to assume the consistency of lead as his brother put his hands behind his back, like his father, and delivered the bomb that blew a gaping hole into his comfy little life.

“Did you think it would go undetected?” he said.

Stephen Denning’s mind raced energetically – there were just so many things he could mean, and the prospect of any of them being ‘detected’ was more than a little unnerving. In his head he did his best to prioritise misdemeanours, large, medium, small and virtually insignificant, silently begging his brother not to mention the very one he’d put top of his list.

Michael Denning pointed to the portrait of the woman. “Felicity Brandon. You were only supposed to paint her!” he said angrily.

He groaned inwardly. That was the one.

“I don’t know what you mean…” he defended lamely. His brother was far too astute for that. It was why he was terribly good at what he did.

“Don’t you dare, for one moment, try and lie to me!” he returned, his cheeks flaming a livid red. “How could you, Stephen? She is a married woman. And to the attaché of the American ambassador, of all people!” He rolled his eyes.

He slumped, defeated. It was pointless defending a hopeless position. “She was lonely,” he replied meekly. “And I was – “

“Lonely!” It was like the booming of a cannon. “I trusted you. When he talked of having his wife’s portrait painted I urged him to consider you. ‘She will be safe in his hands,’ I assured him. I meant entrusting you with the final quality of the image; obviously I cannot now vouch for your trust in anything else. He has powerful connections, Stephen, and he seeks retribution.”

“He knows?” he said, the enormity of the situation now beginning to dawn on him. “He knows about me?”

“My reputation – our family’s good name – is teetering on the brink,” he continued, then, as if his brother’s anxious words had only just reached him: “Knows? Of course he knows!” He held up a hand. “Correction. He suspects, very strongly; very, very strongly.”

What had first been lead in his insides now turned quickly to a churning soup and he felt quite sick. “How?”

“Does that really matter now, Stephen?” He turned away from his brother, and he heard him taking in a long calming breath. When he turned back he had regained his composure and appeared totally unruffled. The transformation was all but instant. He had to admire him for that.

“He says he is going to kill you,” he said steadily. “And who can blame him?”

“Kill me?”

“He is American, after all. He says he has a gun. A Colt.”

“A gun?”

“Stephen,” he sighed in exasperation, “can you simply not repeat all I am saying and listen? Fact: the Americans are a very passionate and unpredictable single-minded people. He is likewise passionate and single-mindedly unpredictable. Fact: he his from pioneering stock whereupon they all carry guns as a matter of course, and to a man possess a long-standing aggressive colonial temperament that abides by shooting first and asking questions later. Adding those facts up I wouldn’t be surprised if he had both the weapon and the suitably aggrieved state of mind to use it.”

“This is England, not some Rocky Mountain backwoods! He can’t do that!”

“Even so, my advice to you is that you leave London immediately whilst I try and find a means of dealing with this debacle, and certainly before father hears of this.”

“Oh God,” he said, his newfound atheism taking a hard swipe. “Not father. He can never find out. Please help me, Michael.” He was just thinking that it couldn’t get any worse when something flashed into his mind that said it possibly could. “I need the money, from that painting,” he said, his voice betraying a tremor that even he felt sounded unmanly. “I have debts, Michael. Significant debts.”

The face remained as impassive as granite. “I would dearly like to say I am surprised, but I am not. You should have thought about that before your indiscretion.” He looked at the nearly completed portrait. “It’s now worthless,” he said, and he didn’t know whether he meant the painting or the relationship. “And I am sorry to have to say that you are cast away to steer your own course from now on. You shall sink or swim by your own actions. I can no longer afford to indulge you.” There was both anger and sadness in his eyes.

Stephen Denning had never felt more wretched, seeing his brother’s pained expression. The one man who had done his utmost to help him, to understand, and he’d let him down.

Guilt, however, was quickly replaced by desperation. He needed a bolthole, and he needed a rapid injection of money to stave off his debtors and prevent his bubbling stew of debts from boiling over.

He learned in no short space of time that from the many friends he had courted, favours, like blood, did not travel both ways. They astutely perceived that this latest damage Denning had inflicted on himself had all the appearance of being socially terminal, and strangely, to a man, had other more pressing commitments demanding and absorbing both time and fiscal prudence. Before long his avenues, once plentiful, shrank eventually to just the one: Terrance Steadman Wilkinson. What he long considered the joker in the pack on re-evaluation might just be the ace he needed.

He searched frantically for the calling card Wilkinson had left and which he’d so casually tossed aside as never again needing, took the cheaper horse bus as far as he could to the address in Kensington and prayed the man had not yet left London. He stood open-mouthed and wondered, as he stared up at the pale stone Georgian front, where he had gone wrong and Wilkinson had so obviously gone right. He’d vaguely heard he’d had some success at the Royal Academy, placed ‘on the line’ no less, but, as was his habit, Denning’s interest in the comings and goings of his one-time friend and companion had waned all too quickly.

He was admitted by a butler – quite an expensive-looking butler – and shown to a plush drawing room where he waited as patiently as he could for nearly twenty minutes before Wilkinson appeared, all boundless energy and smiles, which rather irked Denning. He thanked Wilkinson for his offer to come to Cornwall, told him he was delighted to accept. Wilkinson was clearly pleased and celebrated by pouring them both drinks.

“I’m impressed,” said Denning, looking about him. “You never said.”

“My father’s London residence,” Wilkinson explained. “He made his fortune manufacturing biscuits. Sadly, he thinks he can buy acceptance. Of course, he’s very proud of the fact that I’m making quite a name for myself in art – pumped no amount of money into me to ensure I succeeded. Culture, you see; by association he feels it puts him in a good light, in possession of certain high qualities that disguise his humble roots. I say let them think what they will and rot.”

Wilkinson quickly read in Denning’s pale face and tense body that something was wrong. The conversation quickly turned to the subject in hand. “Something is troubling you, my friend.”

After much shuffling and prevaricating, Denning confessed: “I have sizeable debts, Terrance.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Stephen.”

“And, alas, insufficient funds with which to clear them before I leave for Porthgarrow.”

Wilkinson’s smile, which had been wavering for some time, slipped away, his lips forming a thin, hard line.

“You understand, I must sort this out before I join you in Cornwall. It would cause me – how shall I phrase this? – great distress, if I failed to do so.”

Wilkinson cleared his throat. “Yes, I can understand that.”

He wasn’t forthcoming. Denning did not wish to push this, but he was on the edge. “I did you a great favour in France, you recall?”

The man’s dark eyes narrowed. There was a coldness about them that unsettled Denning. “That is true,” he said evenly. “A great favour.”

Denning released a pent-up breath. “Let us stop this beating about the bush and get straight to the point. Without me, without my word, you may well have ended up in a French prison, and maybe even under the guillotine. You have since done very well for yourself,” his eyes surveyed the room, but Wilkinson’s remained fixed on Denning, “the Royal Academy loves you, society obviously loves you, whilst I…” He sat back, hating himself. “Look, it would be a loan. I will pay it all back, with interest if you so desire.”

Wilkinson looked hurt, an emotion Denning had supposed the man wasn’t capable of. Yet again guilt tore at him. But desperation tore deeper.

“You need only have asked, Stephen,” he said, “and I would have freely given.” He twirled the brandy glass, watching the rich fluid as it clung greasily to the sides. “And believe me, I was innocent of that horrible crime,” he said.

The two men sat in awkward silence for a few moments, then, unexpectedly, Wilkinson jumped to his feet. “Enough of this! We have been through too much, you and me! We have a journey to plan!” His eyes were once again beaming and he bound energetically to the door. “Come! Come! Let me show you our veritable palace!”

It was as if the conversation had never taken place.

“Thus you have my shipwreck,” Denning told the dog. “A series of unfortunate circumstances that combined and conspired against me to bring about this fateful conclusion.” He wagged a finger at the dog. “Let me tell you, that is why I stopped believing in God, because He stopped believing in me! Should you want proof of it, look about you!”

The knocking at the door caused him to snap out of his self-indulgent morbidity. It was replaced by alarm. Had he been found? Already? He nervously glanced about him for means of escape, and was faced with a window too small to climb through and an admittedly hefty but hardly bullet proof curtain behind which to cower. The third option was to pull himself together and answer the door, which he did, but all the same there was evidence of relief in his voice when he saw Mrs Carbis standing there.

“Mr Denning, sir,” she chimed, “Mr Wilkinson has changed his plans and wishes for me to accompany you to Mr Hendra’s house in about half an hour’s time, where you have been invited to dinner.”

“Who is Hendra?” he asked.

But Mrs Carbis’ almost infuriating jollity dropped as soon as she caught sight of the dog. She immediately pulled away, back into the street again, her hands working together in front of her. “What’s he doing inside, sir?”

He glanced back. “Oh, I suppose he’s adopted me.”

She shook her head. “Well I‘d get it out, sir, right away. It will bring bad fortune down on you.”

He laughed. “Nonsense!”

Her eyes were wide, deadly serious. “That’s Baccan’s hound.”

“Then Baccan, whoever he is, ought to take better care of it.”

But she didn’t hear him. She’d moved further out into the middle of the road. “I tell you, for your own good, please get him out of there.” She then did a curious thing and bent down, picking up a limpet shell from the many scattered across the road. She tossed this into the house, mouthing something to herself. The shell clattered noisily on the stone flags before the hearth. “I cannot enter the house with that dog in there, sir. If you wish me to continue in my employment then you shall have to remove it, Mr Denning.” She took one last, fiery look at the dog. “I’ll be back presently.”

He turned from the street and stood over the dog, arms folded. “Tell me this is but a bad dream,” he said under his breath. Anyhow, he thought, there is no choice in the matter; the dog shall have to go.

He stooped, picked up the limpet shell Mrs Carbis had thrown in and turned it over between his fingers, studying it.



* * * *