Jack Maggs by Peter Carey

Author:Peter Carey
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: 1837-1901, Romance, Criminals, Psychological Fiction, Historical Fiction, London (England), Mystery & Detective, Fiction, Psychological, Literary, Great Britain, Historical, Crime, Great Britain - History - Victoria, General
ISBN: 9780571270170
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1997-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

46

CONSTABLE, SEARCHING THE house high and low, found Jack Maggs in Mr Spinks’s bedroom, at which doorway he remained unannounced.

The Australian sat aside the butler’s sick-bed. His back was to the door, and he was offering a spoon of broth to the old man.

“You should never look a pooka in the eye. The eye is the strong point of all these dark magicians.”

He moved the spoon closer. The butler turned his head aside. The spoon withdrew a little.

“Every creature has its strong point,” continued the big man. “With a pooka it is in the eyes entirely. Were it not for the eyes they would be helpless as a new-hatched chicken.”

Mr Spinks knocked the spoon aside, and some liquid fell upon his counterpane.

Jack Maggs patiently set the soup bowl and spoon upon the side table. The feverish butler withdrew as far as he was able, until he was sitting up straight and hard against the bed-head, far too preoccupied to notice the footman standing in the doorway.

“Don’t look at me like that, old chap,” said Jack Maggs. “I’m not the pooka who put the spell on you.”

Mr Spinks folded his arms across his chest.

“His name is Oates.”

“Pooka!” croaked Mr Spinks sarcastically.

“So you can open your gob when you want.”

He offered another spoon of broth, but the butler’s mouth stayed firmly closed.

“Very well then.” Maggs took the old man’s unshaven chin and dug his thumb and second finger in at the hinge, between the gums. “This is how I drench my sheep in New South Wales.”

“Mmmph,” cried Spinks.

As he struggled to avoid the broth, the butler’s rheumy eyes alighted on Constable. The footman smiled encouragingly. Spinks began to speak, but as his mouth opened, so the soup slid in and Maggs clamped his horny hand over the old chap’s mouth and nose. There was no choice but to swallow.

“Fight fluid with fluid.”

In his distress, Mr Spinks pointed to the door.

Jack Maggs, seeing Constable, immediately set down the bowl upon the side table. “He squeezed the lemons? He understood the mirror?”

While Mr Spinks escaped back beneath his covers, Mr Constable held up the unopened packages, then watched as the other inspected them, checking each and every untied knot along the way.

“Apparently he is not known of.”

At this point, Mr Spinks began to snore. Jack Maggs busied himself covering the old fellow’s withered shanks; when he finally showed his face again, his eyes were completely expressionless.

“If the man will not be found,” said Constable sympathetically, “he will not be found. There is no better place to hide than London.”

Jack Maggs showed no further interest in the topic.

“Mercy is doing for the women,” he said. “I said I would do for the Bishop here.”

“You have new linen,” Constable offered. “If you lift Mr Spinks I’ll do the changing.”

Constable then removed his jacket, and draped it carefully across a chair. While Jack Maggs lifted the butler, he swiftly stripped the bed and laid a cool clean sheet upon the old man’s ancient mattress. In all this,

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