In the few days that have passed since Downing first heard the slow shuffle of what he imagined to be Sir Richard Ostlet under the antlers of deer buck, he has been hard at work readying his shop for the Viewing, which means:
Rolling up the Bengal tiger skin into one huge, fat, furry scroll and storing it in an equally fat wooden barrel. Cleaning and oiling the battered pine workbenches, organizing scattered brushes, polishing all knives, scissors, even tweezers of various lengths and points. Then it’s wiping dust from glass bottles of fluids, sweeping and scrubbing the floors, washing all windows, and Downing does all of this himself before arranging in his main shopwindow the finest of his own personal collection, and these are four stuffed geese, three stuffed dogs, assorted stuffed fish and stuffed rabbits, and a collection of skittish-looking tods, reynards, in the center of which Downing places his personal favorite, a memento from the Hyde Park Exhibition: the shining taupe vixen with an elegant, upturned snout.
The gathering of tods are arranged around the vixen so it appears they protect her—which Downing believes the women will enjoy—and when it’s ready, when all is complete, the taxidermist returns to his workshop to occupy himself for the day with a small commission from a local family.
On the menu is an amiable coal-black Schipperke, a decade-old lapdog with a tail like a chimney brush and ears like a bat’s, and although Downing is usually bored by such commissions, little dead dogs have kept him in business these some twenty years, and he has stuffed more lapdogs than perhaps any other creature, so for him the friendly Schipperke is just the sort of mindless distraction he needs to avoid thinking about the Viewing tomorrow, about the hordes of reporters and collectors and smatterings of people who represent the General Public—or about the arrival of Rebecca Ostlet, who, Downing is now convinced, will traipse through his shop before Viewing the aardvark, talking about, sure, how fine and noble the creatures in the windows all look, but will, in time, under her breath whisper what all women whisper: “He’s still no Walter Potter!”—and the Schipperke helps Downing not worry about Walter Potter or how much money he makes, but most of all, the little black dog helps Downing avoid thinking about the undeniable fact that he has actually seen, in bright daylight, the body of Sir Richard Ostlet walking past his shop three times now, eyes bandaged, Wellingtons scha-lumping.
Downing, the scientist, intellectually cannot bring himself to believe what his own eyes have seen, not even when lunchtime arrives and, as he is brushing the playful culottes of the Schipperke, his neck hairs start tingling. Not even when he senses that the Wellingtons are, once again, parked in front of the shop. Which they are.