Gibbous House Page 15

  The burns were not serious, merely a reddening of the hands, mostly caused by the heat from her own lucifer box, an item perhaps not suited to the role of demure young lady and, consequent on this, left this past few weeks in the attic rooms with her child – and an equally dead older woman whose name I do not remember.

  I held Arabella close in the overwhelming stench of burning and smoke.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Indeed, I must surely have been dreaming on the terrace of Gibbous House, since I awoke with a start; a woman-ish scream – evidently produced by Edgar Allan – pierced the silence. I supposed the scream might either have been as a result of the flames coming from his frock coat or of Miss Pardoner’s stalwart efforts at extinguishing them by beating at them with a no-longer white cloth, late of the table’s surface.

  Allan, having fought off the ministrations of Miss Pardoner to his smouldering apparel, fixed me with a rheumy eye. ‘If your dreams did not disturb your slumbers, Moffat, they did disturb mine. Who is this Brougham you have been muttering about, sir?’

  I chose to ignore him. However, my ward declared herself to be equally interested in the identity of the fellow who stalked my dreams. I confess I was somewhat nonplussed, and before I had collected my thoughts she added, ‘A noble fellow, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘The man no more exists than Springheeled Jack. Enough of this nonsense, miss, I’ll join you for dinner. A man must have some time to call his own.’

  Before I had made good my departure, Miss Pardoner added, ‘You would find few to agree with you in London, Mr Moffat, from Peckham to Cadogan Square.’

  Her rejoinder almost gave me pause, but I showed her my back nonetheless.

  My first intention was to reflect in my monkish apartments on a further course of action towards achieving some pecuniary advancement from my current position. But by the time I operated the newfangled brass lever on the door to my cell, my proposed activity was transformed into a determination to read Arabella Coble’s diary with diligence.

  It was with some alarm that I noted that the journal lay not on the threadbare counterpane where I had left it. This alarm subsided when I caught sight of the book, spine up, covers splayed, on the boards beneath the iron bedstead. It might well have fallen from the bed whereon I had left it, but I had been sure that Allan’s womanly squeal had awakened me – and not some seismological phenomenon. For the journal was heavy, the leather binding being of quality and the paper within it, too. The hasp that had surrendered all too easily to my spear-blade penknife was of metal, gilt or possibly even gold, having been marked easily by the blade. A substantial book, with many pages.

  It was astounding to see that the book, which I had assumed would contain little after Arabella’s anticipatory speculations concerning a certain Cadwallader’s arrival – which revelations occurred only a little way into the tome – was inscribed to the very last page. Beyond, indeed, for the endpapers and the inside of the cover were bedecked with an inky trail resembling a spidery imitation of my late wife’s writing as I had known it. The very last words were written just so:

  ‘Ware the homunculus, “Alasdair”,’ and a line meandered downward from the extravagant serif at the foot of the letter ‘r’ to the bottom edge of the book. Thick black strokes in another hand had written

  θάνατος

  Which strokes taken together meant Thanatos, the Greek god of Death.

  Alongside were other Greek letters, which looked familiar. I removed from my pocket the volume purloined from the library, on the flyleaf of which a similar hand had written

  ΜοΦΦατ

  And yet I knew I had seen these symbols before, long before I had met Arabella, in the library of the man who had been Moffat. Alongside these letters was a drawing depicting the symbol that hung outside the Coble Inn at Seahouses.

  I slumped, aghast, onto the cot. It was no great revelation that my late wife had been in the habit of keeping a secret journal during the course of our marriage: our life together had necessitated much independence of thought and deed. No; what I could not understand, or rather conceive of, was how any such journal, having been nowhere in evidence at the time of Arabella’s death, had appeared in timely fashion at Gibbous House. Nor could I fathom that she had met me by design and perhaps at another’s behest.

  I turned the leaves of the diary rapidly through Arabella’s callow musings, more rapidly still through her swoonings over her tutor Cadwallader, and the veiled hints as their illicit relationship progressed to elopement. I was stopped short by an entry for January 12th 184_:

  ‘I am in receipt of a communication from Septimus. I am loath to broach its contents with my Husband; viz. that we are summoned to Northumberland; that there I shall learn something to my advantage. That pronoun being underlined with a savagery that precludes any mention of the missal to Cadwallader.’

  It seemed an affectation to refer to her husband by his familial appellation. Perhaps it was a measure of the distance between them, evidence of the fading of romantic love in the presence of more ardent needs of a pecuniary kind. I wondered how Arabella had revealed their joint summons without showing Septimus Coble’s hand. Her journal gave no clue. The following entry read:

  ‘Post coach north, from the Golden Cross.’

  Thereafter came a pause altogether in the journal’s entries. One month had passed before she wrote another word, and there she wrote one only:

  ‘Quickened!’

  The script foreshadowed that of the most recent entries, in so far as it quavered, perhaps due to some great emotion. Arabella’s next entry was more businesslike – and less terse:

  ‘I wish that in my dealings with Coble I had bargained better. However, the man was immovable on the matter of income and interest, swearing that if I did not take the capital sum of one thousand pounds, I should receive nothing at all. In truth, I was glad to leave, and to take the sum offered. I shudder yet at the prospect of suffering Cadwallader’s fate...No matter, one thousand pounds I have and not a penny more. One can but hope that it is sufficient to see the unborn child some way to majority, at least until I can acquire some prospects of my own. That or fulfil the task they have set me of finding their unwitting mark.’

  I continued to read as quickly as I could, noting with interest that my brief reconnaissance on the East India Docks had been no more painstaking than her own. She had inveigled herself aboard the recently arrived cutter in the knowledge that I would likely meet her on the gangplank. A smile was the consequence of this intelligence, as I reflected that howsoever devious a man might be, he will always be more than matched at some or other time and, most likely, by a woman.

  The subsequent pages, I passed by in the most cursory manner. I had been there after all, had I not? Again there was a lacuna in Arabella’s entries after a reference to Brougham’s dilatoriness in plighting his troth. Her grief had been profound, mystifyingly enough, for she had shown the child no great affection prior to her fiery demise.

  There was a subtle change in the diary afterwards; at times the hand was fierce in its assault on the paper, at other times the script was beautifully formed – at these times, however, there was an undercurrent of some nebulous hysteria, the text being full of rhetorical and nonsensical questions. On many pages she railed against punishments as yet unmeted, hinted again at her fear of meeting with Cadwallader’s fate and vowing that if she did, she hoped it would be while still possessed of her looks.

  As I read I realised, as I had not at the time, that the syphilis had been rampant in her and that despite appearances she had been quite mad for some time before her descent. I had oft wondered at the change in our relationship and why through several years she had ministered to my needs much as Solomon’s handmaidens to his.

  On removing the hunter watch from my pocket, I reflected that it still seemed not quite mine own. The engraving showing the unlucky reverend’s name was no part of this feeling – it was more that the damned thing fit poorly in
the fob; when Maccabi’s sewing jackanapes finally appeared with my new wardrobe, I hoped sincerely that it would be more generous in the matter of pockets.

  As cursory as my reading had been, the watch showed that some hours had dissolved in it, for the time was five of the afternoon. The diary I placed in a simulacrum of its aspect on my earlier entry to the chamber. It was whim, caprice; nothing more. I doubted that Miss Pardoner – if indeed it had been she – would be so bold as to invade my sanctum twice in one day. Why had she left the book so? She surely could not think that I would credit so recent a reading of it? In hindsight, I believed that Miss Pardoner had hinted at some knowledge of Arabella before that afternoon.

  Downstairs, I made again the journey from the atrium to the library, puzzling once more over the existence of the hidden room. The internal dimensions of each room gave no clue to any entrance hidden or otherwise; nor indeed to the very existence of such a room. Of course, had I been in possession of a mason’s square or a plumb-bob, I could have satisfied myself that such were the case. However, the condition of certain parts of the house precluded the ministrations in recent times of any tradesman at all, much less that of a carpenter or mason with their square and lead.

  Several things gave me pause in the room containing the nightmare bestiary of the taxidermist’s imagination. In one corner, behind a phantastical beast that possessed a half-dozen supernumerary crane’s legs, a komodo dragon’s body and an elephant’s head, I caught the glint of some light on glassware. Behind the chimerical beast were five sealed jars: they contained the major organs of a human being, save the skin. I was sure I knew where the missing item might be found.

  Where the light had penetrated the dark and dust-covered room I knew not. All drapes had been drawn against the daylight and there was not so much as a candlestub in any sconce. It occurred to me that there might be some marking on the wax-sealed lids of the jars, and there was sufficent light to descry the hieroglyphs, perhaps those of this pharaonic disembowelling. My fingers traced the letters H and C.

  Heathfield Cadwallader.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Plainly, Arabella had been quite justified in her fear of meeting her first husband’s fate: I had no intention of suffering any such demise. The silent gatekeeper’s identity was now self-evident, and I wondered just how long Heathfield Cadwallader had remained mute and rigid in the gatehouse before I had stumbled on his preserved relict. Still, the man had achieved immortality of a sort.

  On arrival in the library, I encountered the purported Edgar Allan engaged in mortal combat with a recalcitrant bottle of claret. The man appeared to be assaulting it with a complicated arrangement of levers and a metal spiral. Opalescent beads of sweat adorned his flushed forehead – perhaps from his exertions – although I surmised it might have been a while since his last enlivening refreshment. He acknowledged my entry with a rolling eye and punctuated his explanation with much grunting and several tosses of the head to prevent his forelock obscuring his already limited vision.

  ‘The – ah – four-square – oh – pay – mmm – tent wine-stopper – uh – removal tool!’

  This last word emerged four-square between a shout of triumph and the squeal of an inconvenienced pig, as the stopper was revealed to be impaled on the metal spiral but, unfortunately, still firmly inserted in the neck of the bottle. The remainder had smashed at the reporter’s feet, one of which was promptly lacerated through the sole as the man attempted to recover his balance.

  The man was to be admired for his bravery in embracing the innovatory, but I could not help thinking that this latest device was no advance on the admirable Reverend Henshall’s much simpler patent.

  To summon aid for the still hopping reporter, I pulled a handle without much hope of it ringing to any effect. It hung limply between two shelves that contained ancient philosophical writings interspersed with books adorned with vaguely familiar glyphs. I removed one at random: the shapes were similar – but not identical – to those on the documents that had magically appeared during my interminable coach journey from London.

  A scrap of paper fell from the book: the lettering was in the Roman style: As above, so below, it read. I pocketed the book and the paper, thinking to glean a clue as to the meaning of the glyphs.

  Mindful of Allan’s difficulties with the claret, I seized a decanter of jerez and poured us both a good draught. I savoured my own whilst admiring his ability to remaining upright on one leg while spilling nary a drop.

  *

  Somewhat alarmingly, the bell’s summons was answered by the diminutive academic. It pained me to no small degree that the man thought nothing of loitering in the servants’ domain, but any such pain was overwhelmed by astonishment at the fact that he would meet their responsibilities. It should have pleased me inordinately to order the fellow about, but I was less enamoured of the idea since, evidently, the dwarf would willingly perform his duties.

  As Mr Dryden said, ‘Bold knaves thrive’, so I summarily despatched the midget to fetch such swaddling and medicaments as he saw fit. The journalist evinced a pallor rather paler than that to which even he was wont, and as I stepped forward to guide him to a chair he fell in a dead faint, fortuitously enough into one of the more comfortable furnishings in the room. Well upholstered and with a rich, if grubby, brocade covering, it seemed in better condition than many of the other pieces. The gilt on one of the elegantly turned legs was misfortunately tarnishing under the flow of the journalist’s own red ink.

  Jedermann returned in his customary crustacean manner, scuttling toward Allan with enough bandaging to supply one of Miss Nightingale’s hospitals and a variety of vilely coloured liquids in bottles of various shapes. Allan, whose faint had been as transitory as any glory he might have aspired to as a writer, reared up in the chair in fright at the professor approaching him.

  ‘There is nothing about which you must be worrying, Mr Allan; among my studies there is the small matter of a medical degree. I am completely and utterly immersed in the mysteries of the human organism, thanks to several years’ study of cadavers under... Well, no matter, what is that surgeon’s name to a man bleeding profusely, if not to death?’

  Upon this, the little man advanced on Allan with a demeanour that enabled the inflicting of the quite noxious-smelling liquids, one by one, and an amount of cloth wrapping that would evince to the innocent observer a heroic episode of the gout. I addressed the professor with as peremptory a tone as I could muster: ‘I am surprised that your religious sensibilities permit such tasks on the Sabbath.’

  The smallest of grins widened his puckered little mouth.

  ‘Mr Moffat, as you know, I am not of the Jewish faith, but even if I were, what kind of religion would not per-mit succour to the injured on account of the day of the week?’

  I was not ignorant of this aspect of Judaism: Arabella had justified many quite unlikely acts by what one might, or might not, do on Shabbat. Furthermore, she had explained to me the role of the Shobbas Goy, who might perform any prohibited task on the Sabbath on behalf of the frum. On our few intimate occasions she honoured me with this appellation. One could not but admire such practicality.

  The reporter was still trembling after the professor’s ministrations and I suggested that he might hie himself to a spare chamber that he might recover the better.

  The professor kindly offered to see the man to a room; the reporter appeared to me to be quite horrified at the prospect. I was obliged, by an overwhelming curiosity as to the reason for this, to offer mine own services.

  We made slow progress to the vestibule, Allan’s arm draped around my shoulder, as his uninjured plantar was seemingly ill-prepared to bear even half of its owner’s weight. I allowed myself a smile as we passed through the taxidermic grotesques, imagining the pair of us as a human equivalent of the two-headed equine monster recently despatched by Cullis Major.

  The dining room remained in a state reminiscent of the aftermath of a Roman feast, platters and dishe
s containing remnants of food covering the table’s surface. I heard the scratch and click of rodent claws on the parquet and pondered the liberation of a cat or two from the west wing.

  Manoeuvring through the clutter of the vestibule was difficult and not accomplished without curses – or the barking of Allan’s shins on sundry furnishings. We mounted the stairs and Allan, though it cost him some effort, addressed me for the first time since we had left the library. ‘I have dissembled, sir. I have made my own investigations: there is little I do not know – or suspect – about the Cobles.’

  Humouring the fellow seemed the best course, therefore my reply was succinct: ‘Do tell, Mr Allan.’ Although I confess I stifled a yawn.

  ‘Not here, Moffat.’

  It was uncertain whether he meant not on the staircase or at Gibbous House; furthermore, I suspected my yawn had not been quite so well suppressed as I had hoped. In any event, he forbore to speak further as we passed through the trompe l’oeil and I manhandled him into a chamber whose door, being a heavenly blue, was one of the first few leading off the corridor. The man was deceptively heavy despite his ascetic appearance.

  It was a room unvisited by myself in my earlier explorations. More generously appointed than others, I felt I detected the hand of the Bedlamite designer of the house: the room was large, but not so large as to accommodate the violent commingling of styles and designs the furniture brought to it. Messrs Sheraton and Chippendale were both represented, but not by any complete suite of items. The toilette was the one and the chair before it the other.

  One particularly large cabinet was as vulgar and vibrant a piece of Chinoiserie as ever I had seen. A Persian kilim served as barrier to such light as the single small window admitted, although the bed was equipped with drapes as would have performed this obstruction more happily. A larger version of the kilim covered the majority of the cracked and splintered floorboards. It looked as though it had been rolled out for display with little care for symmetry or use: in fact a significant proportion lay under the bed, and one corner climbed the large cabinet as if in hope of escape.