by Ewan Lawrie
‘Professor,’ I sneered, ‘I thought you were a man of science, not a court room pettifogger.’
‘I have studied a modicum of law, Mr Moffat. Do you know what a discretionary trust signifies?’
‘I have no doubt that it signifies you will continue to be a parasite on the estate, sir.’
He gave a smile that quite transformed his face. From that of a sweet-faced dwarf it transformed into the physiognomy of a corrupt and evil gnome. ‘Quite so, Mr Moffat, if you care to phrase it thus.’
The smile was gone ere he finished speaking and he assumed a pious look. ‘It is time for the Shabbos meal, Mr Moffat. I think you will find it interesting, even though it be a religious observance. I do.’
His tiny boots beat their tattoo back through the hoards of miscellany to the dining room, and I was forced to follow him.
Chapter Twelve
The room was gloomy. Barely four candles were lit in the few sconces visible in between the stockpiles of bizarrerie in evidence, however, there were several bronze candelabra at intervals along the imposing table. In the murk I could see Miss Pardoner already seated. Maccabi hovered as if caught betwixt taking a chair and moving to stand at the wall like a footman. There were three further places at the table. I moved to the head of it, opposite Miss Pardoner.
Discourse over dinner would be at some volume, it seemed. I enjoined Maccabi to take a seat, if he was sure all was in readiness for the repast. He flinched at the imputation that I might expect him to fetch a cruet set or a bottle of port if not. On my waving the professor to the remaining seat, the fellow shook his head and began intoning in an alien tongue, while picking up a carafe containing wine. It was a prayer of some sort. Maccabi’s head was bowed, and Miss Pardoner gave me a bold look for the duration of the incantation. I returned it with interest.
Jedermann moved down the table until he stood next to a silver platter with two unusual loaves atop it. The bread had a look of a braid or plait and the dwarf had, as with the wine, a little difficulty in reaching the platter to bestow his blessing on the bread. His domed head appeared over the edge of the table. It was all I could do not to laugh. It seemed a very serious matter for Maccabi and the professor himself, if not for my ward, who appeared to be biting the inside of her cheek.
I smote the table with my palm. ‘For pity’s sake, when does a man eat!’
Maccabi shook his head while the professor fetched a lit taper from a tall, thin piece of cabinetry that looked like it should be furniture, but which shared no features with any piece that I knew, save that of being made of wood. The professor took only a few minutes to terminate the pantomime of lighting the candles in the holders, the taper being long enough to allow him the lighting of them whilst on tiptoe and balancing on one leg. He sat at last, breathing a little heavily. Looking from my face to a bell at my left hand, he nodded vigorously. I grasped the wooden handle and the bell gave out a sound of less-than-perfect pitch, but of surprising volume.
A sparsely lean and forbidding figure entered bearing a huge covered platter. Her strength must have been a sinewy sort. Garbed in black with hair shorn as short as a man’s and so white, in conjunction with the pallor of her skin, as to offer as monochromatic a study of a less-than-matronly figure as ever I had seen, she said not a word. Placing the huge dish on the table, she uncovered a massive pike. It was surrounded by whole grunions and the leaves of an uncommon large lettuce. The professor let out a groan of what I assumed was appreciation. Maccabi explained, ‘It is customary to eat fish or meat for the Shabbos meal; we thought the fish would have something of novelty for you, sir.’
I forebore to say that I might have expired from a surfeit of novelty since arriving at the house.
The skeletal Mrs Gonderthwaite assembled our chargers in the centre of the table and began serving portions of the freshwater fish and whitebaits on them. Picking up two of them she made first of all towards Maccabi, who wisely shook his head. Veering around the table she appeared to be making for the professor’s place setting. The diminutive fellow, who, despite a complex arrangement of a wooden block and some cushions atop his chair could barely reach his cutlery, held up a hand. At which point I interposed. ‘No, no, I insist, Professor. Guests should always be served first, don’t you think?’
He made no reply other than an expressive shrug.
Maccabi stood up, with little grace I thought, as he had to steady the chair behind him. He then set about pouring the blessed wine. Noting his decision to begin with me, I waved him towards Miss Pardoner, at least as soon as he had reached my glass. I informed Mrs Gonderthwaite that I expected, as the host, to be served last, and plates in hand she accomplished a graceful curtsey while nodding her agreement.
So, whatever Mrs Gonderthwaite’s intent had been in the apportionment of the viands, I was not displeased to mark that my plate showed much less of the intricate designs favoured by the Spodes Major and Minor than the others’. The woman departed, as silent as a wraith and perhaps as insubstantial.
I waited expectantly. No further mummery being forthcoming, I bade the table commence. Opposite me, Miss Pardoner manipulated her cutlery with less delicacy than one might have expected: she did not, of course, have a simian grip on the handle of her knife by any means. She merely applied her silverware with a methodical and efficient will and seemed to be making very short work of her vittles. Maccabi pushed his fish around his platter like a sulky boy of five. The professor ate at a fashionably slow pace. I raised my glass. ‘To absent friends, and those soon to depart.’
Maccabi and the professor reluctantly raised their own. My ward raised hers to the accompaniment of either the most prodigiously lethargic tic, or the most lascivious wink I had ever witnessed.
Mrs Gonderthwaite drifted in and out with a selection of unfamiliar dishes, fish for the most part, fresh and saltwater, hot and cold, pickled and salted, with nary a sign of crab or lobster. Of conversation there was little; on being presented with something which the professor informed me was ‘gefilte fish’, I enquired if it was the custom to eat so much food at one sitting.
It was Maccabi who replied, ‘For us, yes. The chosen are blessed with an extra soul on Shabbat, and we ensure that it is well fed.’
The professor simply said that he didn’t care for moderation, to which I replied, ‘No more do I.’
Having finally engaged the fellow in conversation, I bluntly and perhaps somewhat rudely said, ‘Discretionary trust?’ Tilting my head on one side, I waited for a response.
It did not come from the little man. Miss Pardoner’s pleasingly deep but not unfeminine voice informed me: ‘It is quite a simple instrument in its basic form, as I understand it. However, Mr Moffat,’ here she gave the beginnings of a smile, ‘your inheritance is subject to a particular type of discretionary. That is, a testamentary trust.’
She paused. Maccabi looked at the ceiling. I caught a glimpse of the corrupt and evil gnome in the professor’s visage and watched him give the barest of nods. Miss Pardoner went on. ‘Wherein the discretionary trust shall be a testamentary trust, it is not uncommon for the settlor to leave a letter of wishes for the trustees to guide them as to said settlor’s wishes in the exercise of their discretion. In so far as Coble left sundry papers detailing his wishes for the disposition and management for the legacy in trust, you, Mr Moffat, whether you had read the papers or no, might be said to be in receipt of a Fool’s Mate. Certainly, with the game barely begun, regarding whatever plans you might have had for the house, its contents or – it pains me to say it – my own self, said game is already lost. And your plans are therefore moot.’
The young woman finished speaking and looked me directly in the eye. I confess to being dumbstruck. Not at the legal expertise so lightly shewn, nor at the seeming impasse to which I had come: no, I was absolutely captivated by the boldness of the woman, and I wondered what such a woman would not do, given the opportunity and means.
Maccabi and I sat down once more, just as the pr
ofessor tumbled from his perch in a most inelegant style. Not even this mishap could disturb the dwarf’s remarkable sang-froid, and he announced that he would serve the port since he was up, or at least down, from his chair. Luckily the port decanter and glasses had been placed somewhat nearer to the edge of the ostentatiously large table. Having charged a glass for each of us, he drew himself up to his far from considerable height and addressed me thus: ‘Mr Moffat, if you would be so kind as to indulge me, a mere guest in your home, to propose a toast of my own.’
I nodded my assent; Jedermann began a rambling anecdote seemingly as preamble for his toast. The academic’s voice was strangely compelling for me; so much so that I paid little heed to the wanderings of his speech. No, I spent the time cudgelling my brains in a vain attempt to ascertain quite why this voice intrigued me so. It was, it must be admitted, a fine one. Befitting an actor on the London stage. Not for the principal parts, of course, but it would have done splendidly for the villainous foreigner of whatever stripe, which character at that time was the sine qua non of the dramatic arts. Neither was it the contrast I had previously noted between his beautiful diction, coupled with an undeniable erudition, and the starkly alien accent. It was the familiarity of it: I do not mean to say that I had heard this voice before my arrival at Gibbous House; indeed not. My feeling was that I had heard somewhere, at some forgotten time, a similar voice, with similar traits of vocabulary and accent. Naturally, I was quite unprepared to find Maccabi and Miss Pardoner both upright and looking at me expectantly with glasses raised. I cleared my throat and my ward offered the toast: ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’
Maccabi repeated the toast in a choking voice and I wondered if he had been as unlucky as Harbinger in the matter of fishbones. Certainly, he was affected enough to have a tear in his eye. I raised my glass and tossed off the port. It struck me that there had been quite some fuss for a small household’s dinner on a Friday evening. Waving my empty glass, I said slowly, ‘Well, I think there’ll be a little less formality in future. Or at least such that there is will be of a more civilised kind.’
‘Let it be so, Mr Moffat,’ Jedermann replied with great equanimity and I noted he had not drunk the toast nor even risen from his peculiar chair.
I espied Maccabi turning a little puce at this point, and hoped to see the spectacle of the professor attempting to dislodge a fishbone from his throat by leaping up to strike the middle of his back. Unfortunately, the bone was swallowed forthwith or there was some other reason for my factotum’s antics.
Abruptly, Miss Pardoner stood and, naturally enough, we did the same. Or, rather, Maccabi and I did. The professor was still struggling to dismount from his complex seating arrangement as Miss Pardoner informed us:
‘As is customary, sirs, I shall withdraw and leave you to your gentlemanly pursuits.’
Again, I noted the upward tilt of one corner of her mouth, and I pondered whither she would withdraw, since the accommodations I had thus far seen had not included any manner of withdrawing room. It had amused me to pretend to Maccabi and Miss Pardoner that I knew nothing of their customs and that I was unaware that, in fact, Passover had not yet begun and no matzah had been served. Of course, I was not entirely unacquainted with Jewish custom; how could I not be so, having married the occasionally righteous Miss Arabella Coble?
Nevertheless, Professor Jedermann continued in a most affable voice, ‘Mr Moffat, you must forgive us if we have been a little more formal than usual. The Passover meal . . .’
‘Yet you are not Jewish yourself, Professor?’
‘I am fascinated by all religion. Since Miss Pardoner and Maccabi are Jewish it suits me to indulge them. We have learned much from the Jewish scholars.’
On and on he went, as if I were a student in some lecture hall in Siena, Berlin or Vienna, and as if I gave a bent farthing to boot. The voice continued to nag at me; my mind turned quite inward and I forgot to ask whom he meant by ‘we.’ I did not hear the word that brought the memory back, I only knew that the owner of the voice that his own so brought to mind had been instrumental in Alasdair Moffat’s long-awaited release from the asylum, years before.
Chapter Thirteen
It was a measure of how distracted I was that I gave a start when the professor dismounted from his siege perilous somewhat acrobatically, and, it must be said, with a modicum of grace. He gave an exaggerated bow and excused himself to his chamber, no doubt to savour the acrobatic propensities of some of those figures depicted on its walls. Maccabi gave the sketchiest of bows and an indecipherable grunt. The decanter of port was half full when I poured my next glass, and I placed it nearby for the sake of convenience. Memory found me in Moffat’s cell in the Edinburgh asylum on the day of my release: December 24th 183_, and I remembered letters scrawled on mildewed leaves of long-lost books...
The Medical Superintendent, ‘the Keeper’, as we patients knew him, was present in the company of a tall figure possessed of an authoritarian air and the brow of a polymath. I sat on the cot; my two interlocutors had brought an ill-matched pair of gimcrack chairs in rough deal, and placed them adversarially opposite me in the cramped cell. The Keeper and the other fellow had been seated for a quarter-hour in complete silence. The stranger had a notebook open and a pen poised, but to that point had written nothing. Abruptly he began with a diffident question: ‘Mr Alasdair Moffat, is it?’
‘Who else might I be?’ I offered.
‘Well, begging your pardon, according to the Medical Superintendent’s account you might be Napoleon on Monday, Nelson on Tuesday and Nebuchadnezzar by the end of the week, d’you see?’
A reasonable, cultured voice it was. I noted a few uncertain vowels and the hardening of certain consonants.
‘It is some time since I have answered to any appellation but Alasdair Moffat.’
I was sitting up quite straight despite the lack of support for my dorsal area. Silence prevailed for a few moments. The other two gentlemen exchanged a look I could not decipher. The interview, thus far, was broadly similar to many I had had with the Keeper.
The exotic fellow spoke at last. ‘But before, who were you then?’ He gave me an encouraging look.
‘It is true I am quite changed from what I was. A new man, you might say.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘I have a past, surely, as everyone does. Is it remembered or related, innate or acquired; who can say? Not I.’
‘So you remember nothing before the attack on your person?’
‘Remember? Perhaps not. However, a journal is a useful thing, wouldn’t you agree, Mr McKay?’
The Keeper averted his gaze and said nothing.
My interrogator wore a pin in the lapel of his jacket. It seemed a frivolous gewgaw out of temper with the sobriety of his dress. It was a symbol I had seen in several of the books in the trunk. At its base was a number 3 on its side, points downward. Atop this was a cross, then a circle of similar size, with a tiny dot at its centre. The circle seemed to sport a pair of devil’s horns. The man spoke again. ‘So, Mr Moffat, how would you describe your experience? An old life – changed, forgotten, discarded?’
‘A new birth, a virgin birth, maybe.’ I laughed at the thought of it.
The man opposite me smiled and nodded. ‘Just so, Mr Moffat. Just so.’
The men stood. As he turned to go, I saw that the pin had the peculiar attribute of seeming at one moment a thing of base pewter, the next of purest gold.
I was turned out the next day with a portmanteau containing Moffat’s journal, his copy of Malleus Maleficarum and spare linen; two gold sovereigns weighed heavy in my pocket.
As the newly cured Alasdair Moffat, it had seemed expedient to depart Edinburgh and Scotland, and I expended a portion of my paltry monies on coach travel to London. In the manner of many foolish young men, I spent my assets rapidly and without considering how I might replace them. I left a hotel of good quality one March morning by a first-floor window, a modus egressi I have not infrequently
been re-duced to since.
Penniless, I found in myself a natural talent for the nefarious: I picked pockets, being careful to practise on the inebriate; I took to carrying a blade, short and vicious, although on most occasions a sight of it produced the purse – and if it did not? Well, I became proficient in the use of it. There was a good living to be made, but it was obvious to me that a footpad could not hope to evade capture for ever. Besides, in the lower taverns I frequented, I overheard whispers concerning a desperate criminal some had taken to calling the Scotchman. Limehouse became too hot for me, and moonlight illuminated my decamping to the East India Docks. I spent a week watching the clippers of the Honorable company sailing into berth.
It surprised me that these ships, narrow of beam and patently incapable of carrying cargo of any great bulk, formed the major part of the empire’s merchant marine, at least on the routes to the Orient. Their tall-masted elegance was pleasing to the eye, however, and on occasion I would be engaged in conversation by some grizzled mariner on matters of little consequence. I learned the difference between a clipper and a cutter, and to appreciate the sleek lines of the former with its sharply raked stem, counter stern and square rig. I could not help but notice their cargoes: expensive, low-volume commodities: spices, tea and passengers.
Many passengers were women, travelling with paid lady’s companions or offspring destined for education in the home country. Occasionally, there were ladies travelling quite alone, recent widows of East India Company officers, English flowers too delicate for the tropics or, sometimes, women driven home by some scandal or other. I made it my business to welcome such ladies home, avoiding only those with progeny likely to prove an obstacle to my ends. For the most part, it was a matter of offering these ladies escort to their destination, the requisition of a hansom, guiding them out of the dangerous docklands to more salubrious accommodations. Often I would perform these services, and take whatever beneficence they offered. Sometimes I made more lucrative arrangements, the more vulnerable and gullible found their way to a certain house I knew well, as did some of the more promising children. Arabella Coble did not.