On the other hand, his last unexpected visitor had been Fowler. Joel turned off the gas ring, went to the door, and came face to face with a policeman in uniform.

His stomach plunged instantly. For all the bravado he’d put on with Fowler, the sight of a uniform still made him feel sick and fearful.

“Mr. Joel Wildsmith?”

“Yes?”

“My name’s Sergeant Hollis. May I come in?”

“Why?” Joel asked.

“Just a chat, sir.”

Joel did not want him to come in at all. He also didn’t want his landlady to take the hump about policemen cluttering up the halls, so he stepped back and Hollis let himself in.

“I was just making lunch,” Joel said, with an absurd sense of shame at being caught preparing food. “What’s this about?”

Hollis glanced at the kitchenette, but if he thought he was getting asked to sit, let alone offered a cup of tea, he could fuck off. Joel had his limits. “Bit of a question, sir. I understand you interpret people’s writing. Fortune telling, sort of thing.”

“I use the principles of graphology to analyse handwriting. It’s nothing to do with fortune telling: it’s a scientific study. There’s books on the subject.”

“There’s books on palm reading too.”

“There’s books on all sorts of subjects,” Joel said sharply, and bit back the urge to give ‘miscarriages of justice’ or ‘police corruption’ as examples. “I don’t do magic or tell fortunes, and I don’t claim to, either.”

“Mmm. We have received a complaint that you made a series of slanderous allegations against a gentleman on the basis of his handwriting.”

Shit. “I haven’t made any allegations against anyone,” Joel said. “I give assessments of character based on handwriting. I don’t ask who the handwriting belongs to.”

“I expect people tell you, though. No? This is my fiancé, this is my superior...?”

“That’s up to them,” Joel said. “For all I know they’re not telling the truth. And I don’t think it’s slanderous to say This hand suggests weak character. I think that’s free speech.”

“Oh, undoubtedly, sir. But making a specific allegation of immoral conduct against a gentleman which cause his fiancée to break the engagement—that sounds like slander to me, and I suspect there’s a very material claim for damages there.”

Joel was rapidly approaching panic. He couldn’t be sued for slander: even if he won, the lawyers’ fees would eat every penny of his painstakingly accumulated fund.

This had to be the Paul Napier-Fox business. But Fowler had said he’d been right about Napier-Fox’s post-love letter, and it wasn’t slander if it was true.