Gibbous House Read online

  ‘Some of the uninformed bystanders thought that the wretched man was on the eve of being restored to life. This, however, was impossible, as several of his friends, who were under the scaffold, had violently pulled his legs in order to put a more speedy termination to his sufferings.

  The professor broke off his reading and traced on the leaf with a finger until he found what he next wished to impart.

  ‘The experiment, in fact, was of a better use and tendency. Its object was to show the excitability of the human frame when this animal electricity was duly applied. In cases of drowning or suffocation it promised to be of the utmost use, by reviving the action of the lungs, and thereby rekindling the expiring spark of vitality. In cases of apoplexy, or disorders of the head, it offered also most encouraging prospects for the benefit of mankind.

  ‘My brother attended several less ambitious experiments of my own at my chambers on the grounds of the University.’

  He stopped suddenly, and not for the first time I felt some pity for the little man, who was absently – vainly – stretching neck and spine to make himself appear taller.

  ‘There was an argument. Of course. Brothers argue. Amongst humans it has always been so. The old stories are not universal truths, Mr Moffat. I have ever found my sympathies with Cain and Esau.’

  He broke off to recharge the glasses.

  This time, I received the more suitable of the two glasses. Ellen Pardoner raised her eyebrows at me over the rim of the tumbler. The dwarf assumed his former post before the ranks of books, and stuttered slightly over the first word: ‘My work was the cause of the disagreement. I had been in communication for a number of years with several learned men, concerning consciousness, the soul, the self. I believed that there really must be some Vital Spark, which was the motive for life and being. I had received letters from Aldini himself, although he believed me too literal in my appreciation of his uncle’s experiments and his own. Whilst studying briefly with Fichte in Berlin, I had met a man who introduced me to the Rosicrucian texts.

  ‘I asked my brother for a loan to continue with my experiments. I did not mention the mystical aspects of my work. In any event, he did not understand even the simplest of Galvani’s experiments. He was a Philistine in the temple of science, and I threw him out of my rooms at the university. I have not laid eyes on him to this day. To stay in Vienna became unsupportable for me. I wandered. Perhaps I was always fated to do so.

  ‘In 183_, I received a letter in Szczecin: a packet that had followed me for some years, from palace to slum, university to hospital. It was an offer of employment, signed by Septimus Coble. It was a matter of several months to reach this place. Coble was already frail, though he survived much more than a decade after my arrival. Perhaps the young woman in his care preserved his vitality.’

  I had not perused my former wife’s journal in its entirety, but I could remember no reference to the professor in the earlier pages. The professor slipped into silence at this point and I, for one, was most grateful for it.

  My ward had developed some strange agitation about her eye, and a few moments later a most alarming jerk of the head. The stamp of her foot alerted me that the young woman was attempting to apprise me of her wish that I accompany her out of the library. The dwarf, by the bookshelf, was twirling a watch in his fingers, for all the world as though he needed this link to the temporal plane. In short, he was as oblivious as to her intentions as all men are to the musica universalis.

  Miss Pardoner took my hand and led me to the fireplace in the dining room, whence we made our way to the hid-den room. I looked her square in the eye as I operated the mechanism hidden in the dybbuk’s intimate parts and followed indecently close behind her as she entered the short dark passage.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Feigning ignorance of the exact location of the lever to open the entrance, I reached around Miss Pardoner and enjoyed the proximity of the confined space. There was, in fact, nowhere for her to find relief from my presence, but I was encouraged that she appeared not to try. Placing my hand on the lever, I jerked it forcefully and Miss Pardoner gave a little cry – although I was sure the handle had not touched her person. The painting swung away from us and I enjoyed the moment of assisting Miss Pardoner’s entry into the room from behind. She did, it must be admitted, look a little flushed as I landed softly on the polished boards.

  ‘Well?’ I asked.

  ‘We are here so that we might not be observed.’ Her eyes slid to the window.

  ‘An excellent situation, Ellen,’ I replied.

  To my great surprise she stepped backward. I made as if to catch her by a slim wrist, but she evaded me easily.

  ‘Mr Moffat, we are here because I have confidences for your ears.’

  ‘Words of love – or passion?’

  ‘Are you so shallow that you do not comprehend the danger you are in, sir?’

  There was heat in her words; it pained me to realise that it came from anger.

  ‘I think, Miss Pardoner, I am more than a match for a dwarf who is halfway to Bedlam and that handsome dolt Maccabi. Besides, what is your concern for me?’

  ‘You do not concern me in the slightest, Mr Moffat. My purpose here is quite specific.’

  ‘Then why take me into your confidence?’ I lifted an eyebrow, at which the young woman heaved a sigh.

  ‘Because you, sir, are part of his plans and there is none other here in whom to confide, more’s the pity.’

  ‘Plans? Crackpot schemes, more like,’ I scoffed.

  She was not amused. ‘I do believe you are so dull as not to have guessed what the professor’s plans for you are.’

  Suddenly she turned to a rosewood table on the far side of the Reynolds. A handsome, though dilapidated, damask-bound volume lay atop it. From the distance of several feet, one could see that the pages of the book were well-thumbed. To my astonishment she seized the tome and threw it toward my chest. I was so shocked I made quite a poor fist of catching it.

  ‘I assume you have not read this, Mr Moffat. You must indeed be a trifle dull if you do not see its significance after having done so.’

  I turned to the flyleaf and read the handwritten note: ‘To Enoch from John William Polidori, Mary’s wonderful book. Let the truth ever be stranger than fiction!’ The title page shewed me the name of a work I recognised – a succès de belles lettres from perhaps four decades previously. I read the opening lines. ‘It was on a dreary November night that I first beheld my man completed... ’

  I tossed the book onto the nearby sofa. ‘Truly, does the professor think such a thing can be achieved? Is he quite insane?’

  For answer Miss Pardoner pressed the Star of David carved on the Reynolds’ frame; the strange table emerged clicking and whirring into the room. It was not empty. Judging by the dimensions of the thing, the remains of the policeman were lying on it. It was hard to tell, since most recognisable features had disappeared with the skin.

  There was no doubt of it, even so. What the late disciple of detection would have termed a ‘clue’ to his own identity stood four-square atop the skinned flesh: to whit, the policeman’s top hat. I removed it gently from the abomination on the table.

  A leaf from a notebook fluttered onto the raw meat. I lifted it, a corner between thumb and forefinger, and read the policeman’s last notes:

  Heathfield Cadwallader – knew too much? Professor – mad? Evil?

  It was hardly illuminating and I reflected that the science of detection had done him little good in the end.

  Miss Pardoner appeared little disturbed by the sight of the charnel house relict, staring composedly into the distance somewhere over my shoulder.

  ‘Forgive this dull student, Ellen,’ I began. ‘Would you be so kind as to explain the necessity for fear on my part?’

  ‘Oh, you are a most exasperating man,’ she spat.

  ‘Indeed? So much more entertaining, I find,’ I replied.

  ‘Let me ask you something, Mr Moffat,’ she
went on. ‘Do you think that you alone in the house are not what you seem?’

  In that moment, her face seemed to offer some indication of a strain whose cause I could not fathom and I thought perhaps that, at the very least, she had been less than precise in the matter of her age.

  ‘And what are you, if not my ward? Abandoned and unwanted daughter of impoverished clergy? Bluestocking acolyte? What?’

  My voice may have been a little above the conversational, as her eyes widened at this last.

  ‘I have seen you mark my appearance, sir. No doubt you have seen that I am no pale English lily. What am I? What should I be in this house of David?’

  It ocurred to me that the Sephardi had been expelled from Spain in great number and that her forefathers might have been among their number.

  ‘There is change in the world, sir.’ Her eyes glittered and there was something of the fanatic evident in the excessively toothy expression occasioned by her drawn-back lips.

  ‘We stand with permanence on the threshold of discovery. Each day brings new knowledge and science into our lives. There are those who will stop at nothing to advance their own knowledge.’

  She moved to the frame and pressed the Star of David once more, returning Constable Turner to his hiding place behind the Reynolds.

  ‘Why, pray, does this require the skinning of a policeman and a reporter?’

  ‘He mounts his failures as trophies by means of the taxidermical art,’ she said simply.

  ‘Failures?’

  ‘Having murdered the unlucky, he attempts reanimation by the power of electricity.’ She looked to the floor. ‘You will be next, you are wanted for a particular reason. That must be the meaning of the coded messages to you.’

  ‘What reason?’

  ‘That I do not know,’ she replied, still gazing at the floorboards.

  ‘And for God’s sake, how have you not stopped the luna-tic already?’

  I was, I confess, quite belligerent, though I gave not a fig for the victims.

  ‘We must be prepared for the unlikely eventuality of his success,’ she replied.

  Chapter Forty-three

  Clearly the dwarf was not the only person on the premises with a tenuous foothold in the real world. I stepped forward and grasped the woman’s chin. The spark in her eyes had most definitely not been struck on the flint of passion. No matter, I spoke calmly. ‘Do you mean to tell me that Alasdair Moffat is here at the whim of some scheme dreamt up by a Mittel European madman and his equally deranged acolytes?’

  ‘They will call us the heroes of science,’ came the unsatisfactory answer.

  I released her chin. ‘Well, Miss Pardoner, though clearly that is not your name, I am surprised that you expect me to go calmly to my fate.’

  She inhaled deeply through her nostrils and let out a long sigh.

  ‘I do not, sir. My belief is as yours – that the professor is a deeply misguided man.’

  My eyebrows must have looked most peculiar at this point, as I raised them to an exceptional degree.

  ‘Perhaps disturbed?’ she offered. ‘In any event, I believe he has no hope of success. I am more interested in you than your part in the Professor’s schemes.’

  Sadly, this development could not be further explored, as the Gainsborough swung open and the professor’s head and shoulders appeared over the lip. He gave no evidence that he had heard any part of the conversation, merely requesting that I give him a hand to make entry to the room. Seizing him by his jacket was perhaps not what the dwarf had in mind, but he contented himself with straightening his jacket in a most dignified manner.

  A look passed between him and the woman; whether it meant I was in more danger or less, I could not tell.

  ‘One might think you were a man of science yourself , Mr Moffat,’ he said. ‘But for your singular lack of curiosity.’

  Enoch Jedermann gave a leer at the purported Miss Pardoner, though I could not begin to guess the reason for it.

  This particular room still made me feel uncomfortable. The impossibility of its existence, coupled by the incontrovertible proof offered by the view through the window from outside, not to say our presence in it, brought me close to nausea.

  ‘By the by, Professor, how is it done? This room, how do we pass from the vivarium room to the library without going through it?’

  The little man laughed until he passed into a coughing fit. On recovering himself he said, ‘It is all done with mirrors.’

  A strange thing to say, as I had yet to remark on the presence of any in the house, save for on the ceiling of the midget’s own chamber and in the trompe l’oeil painting through which his chamber and others were reached.

  Miss Pardoner, Jedermann and I had passed the hours until lunch in the library. Conversation between the two former had been animated and, to my distracted ear, brittle. Perhaps, as I was, Ellen Pardoner was unsure at to what the professor had heard of our conversation. In any event I took no part in theirs, preferring to ponder the phantastical plot into which I had seemingly fallen. There seemed no possible reason for me to have attracted the attention of either the late Coble or the professor. Although my own origins were lost behind Moffat’s, they did not include anything remarkable enough to attract the attention of those interested in the extremes of scientific endeavour. I felt my only connection to Gibbous House was that which my association with Arabella Coble had afforded me.

  In the random manner of the house, luncheon was served at a quarter before two, which time heretofore had not seen any prandial activity. Maccabi had returned from restoring the good name of the household among the commercials in Seahouses. Sadly, he had not thought to return with any supplies, preferring instead to arrange delivery at some unspecified time.

  The professor prefaced the entry of the two naturals by informing us that we were to be treated to one of his favourite dishes from the English cuisine.

  ‘And furthermore,’ he went on, ‘it will serve as a tribute to the late Mr Allan, who informed me that he liked it also.’

  This proved to be jugged hare delivered by the two offspring of Mrs Gonderthwaite in their acrobatic style. I enquired of the professor as to its suitability for observant Jews, with regard to dietary laws.

  ‘There are no blunt knives in this house. I drained the blood myself; for the thickening, you understand,’ was his reply.

  ‘Is it really your favourite dish?’ I asked, although I was unconvinced concerning this gruesome-sounding activity.

  It was impossible to think of the dwarf’s careful preparation of the beast without an image of the late constable intruding. Miss Pardoner, I noted, ate nothing but a few potatoes perched on the side of her platter, far distant from the tiny portion of the dish she had allotted herself. Maccabi picked at his food, but I could not swear I saw him actually swallow anything.

  I grew impatient, wanting the meal to end and the chance to quiz Miss Pardoner further concerning the professor’s plans. Bearding the man himself seemed a foolhardy idea, although I was tempted. Finally, Jedermann cleared his plate, dismounted his high-chair and announced his departure on ‘Collection business’. He was through the door before I could challenge him, but clearly this was merely a euphemism for the experiments connected with his madman’s plot.

  Maccabi excused himself, thank goodness, citing the need to check on the welfare of the horse he had used on his excursion, since it had done more work in the last week than in many a year.

  I turned to the woman calling herself Ellen Pardoner. ‘So? Might I know your real name?’

  ‘Ellen will do,’ was the reply.

  ‘Tell me, Ellen, what is my involvement in this plotting? How did it come about?’

  She seemed unimpressed by my seductive tones. ‘I will show you tonight,’ she said. ‘Wait for my knock at your chamber door. The professor will leave his room at about two. We will follow ten minutes behind.’

  ‘But surely he might be anywhere in this sprawl of a building by that time.’<
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  ‘Ellen’, choosing to ignore the peevish tone, retorted, ‘I know where he will be.’

  I should have liked to spend the rest of the day in the idleness beloved of the rich and borne uneasily by those less fortunate. Instead I brooded and paced like the hero of some novel by one of the brothers Bell. In my impatience to learn more I forwent dinner, sending word via Job that I was indisposed. It was my hope that this would encourage an earlier withdrawing from the dining room and that I could make my rendezvous with Miss Pardoner all the sooner.

  Chapter Forty-four

  The professor’s progress announced itself in the staccato tapping of his boots as he passed my own door; it was only a moment or so after the hour of two, just as Ellen had predicted. She was still more accurate in her forecast of her own appearance, since the scratching on my door began precisely ten minutes later.

  She held a finger to her lips, and pointed down the passage toward the hidden entrance. Opening the door with extreme delicacy, she peered onto the gallery and beckoned me forth. Once the door was shut behind us, she whispered, ‘No more than a whisper until we reach the other side.’

  ‘The other—’ I began, but she cut me off with a savage motion of a flat hand.

  It seemed expedient to follow her meekly downstairs.

  In the cluttered atrium, she withdrew two ’kerchiefs from somewhere about her person. She held one to her nose and offered me the other. The cloth was redolent with a most astringent smell. I sneezed.

  ‘Wha-what is it?’

  ‘Camphor. It is better than the cats,’ she said.

  I led the way to the large armoire and occasioned our entry through its rear to the west wing.