Fatal Enquiry by Will Thomas Page B

barbers little better than inebriants, with but a single set of proper teeth between the three of them. It came as no surprise that the shop was empty. We settled uneasily into two ancient chairs and unwashed sheets were tucked around our throats.
    “What’ll it be, then?” the barber leered, brandishing his scissors.
    I sighed. “Cut it short.”
    “Righto.”
    As the first lock tumbled down the sheet, I felt like a sheep being shorn. It reminded me exactly of my first haircut in Oxford Prison prior to my employment with Barker. It never occurred to me that such a humiliation could happen twice in one lifetime.
    I was so concerned with the state of my own head that I hadn’t noticed the Guv’s.
    When I finally looked his way, his face was being patted with a towel. Gone was the heavy black mustache that reached to his chin. His face looked naked without it, his upper lip pale against his swarthy chin. My hair was short, the familiar curls gone, but the barber had reduced his to mere stubble.
    It was demeaning to pay these fellows for the butchery they had done to us, but I did so, clapping my bowler on my head, where it promptly slid down over my ears. Stepping out into the sunshine I had so admired that morning, I turned back and bowled the hat back inside, where it kicked up layers of dust and hair on the dirty floor.
    “This gets better and better. We should have had them pull a few teeth, as well. No one would recognize us then.”
    “Step in there a moment, Thomas,” the Guv said, pointing to a villainous-looking alley, black with soot.
    I obeyed, wondering what further indignity I was about to endure. Immediately, the April sunshine disappeared and the temperature dropped sharply. Barker reached into the pocket of his coat and took out an eye patch.
    “Where did you get that?” I asked.
    “From the millinery shop we were in earlier.”
    “I don’t recall paying for it.”
    “You didn’t. I stole it,” he said.
    “You stole it?” I asked. Barker’s integrity is so exaggerated that he would walk a mile to pay back tuppence. “Why didn’t you simply pay for it?”
    “Scotland Yard will trace the cabman who brought us to the City. They will track down the barber and find out how we’ve changed our hair. I needed something else to alter my appearance that they couldn’t possibly know about.”
    Looking away from me, he removed his spectacles and put them in his pocket before tying the patch over his right eye, the one bisected by the scar. Then he turned back to face me.
    I had never seen Barker’s eyes before. Either from a habitual squint or heredity, his left eye was little more than a horizontal slit in his face. The iris looked black as coal.
    “Well?” he asked.
    “Excellent,” I replied. “No one would recognize you.”
    My employer stepped out into the street again and regarded his reflection critically in the window of a pawnshop, running a hand over his stubbled head. Whatever he saw didn’t fully satisfy him, because he pushed me back into the alleyway again.
    “We still look too much like ourselves. I’m afraid we must lose our collars and ties.”
    “But this is my favorite tie, sir!”
    “It can’t be helped, Thomas.”
    “Blast!” I cried, and ripped off the collar. Somewhere, perhaps even now, some down-and-outer is wearing my best tie.
    “Satisfactory,” he growled. “Now, we must get out of the City, but we do not dare use a cab. I’m afraid we will be walking the rest of the day.”
    “Where should we go? Ho’s restaurant? Reverend McClain’s?”
    The Guv shook his head. “Terry knows them both. He also has Fu Ying’s address in Three Colt Lane.” Bok Fu Ying was Barker’s ward, who also cared for his prized Pekingese, Harm. She lived in Limehouse in the middle of the Chinese district, a few streets from the tearoom of Ho, my employer’s closest friend.
    “Would Poole give that information to his superiors?”
    “Of course. He would have to. You know he