CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Polidori supped with Officer Hamilton at Brooks’s, both somber but finding solace in each other’s quiet company. When the club lounge clock struck one, the doctor took his leave. Instead of taking a carriage home to Soho, he walked a circuitous route south, through St. James’s Park, past the Houses of Parliament, ending up on Westminster Bridge. The River Thames churned below, dark and forbidding. Most of the city lights had been extinguished, but fires blazed along the hazy riverbank, highlighting shanties, barges, and tented rafts. He listened to the murmur of late-night conversations, muted laughter. Muted life. He should have kept to the bridge and upper embankment, but instead he descended the stairs to walk amongst the hovels and feel the warmth of companionship—of
