by Ewan Lawrie
But Arabella Coble was already part of my past by now. What profit was there in thinking of her? Perhaps I would peruse her journal in an idle moment at some later time. I felt I should stir myself from the dining room and take some exercise; perhaps I could circumambulate the house and quell the queasiness I felt whenever I contemplated its design. In truth I was unused to superstition’s hold, but there was something unnatural about the arrangement of the building, as if it were as much a trompe l’oeil as the hall of mirrors paper on the gallery leading to the bedrooms. I was resolved. Taking a last draught of port direct from the decanter, I made my way to the furniture-crammed lobby.
Chapter Fourteen
Of course, I was not in possession of any keys. No matter, I considered that it would be interesting to discover who answered the bell on my return. I swung the door wide and looked out into a starlit night. Turning left I passed the front of the east wing and peered in the dining-room window. The view to the interior was somewhat obscured by yet another item of exotic bric-a-brac: it appeared to be an orrery, although the number of planets was plainly incorrect, since a celestial body unknown to man was stationed outwith the orbit of the newly discovered Neptune.
Even so, it was a beautiful thing, if tarnished, and I wondered that it had not caught my eye during dinner. The next two windows also looked in on the dining room, and the second of them presented me with a sight as like to stop the heart of any disposed to afreets and phantasms. Some large furnishing blocked the view into the room, but it stood some feet back from the glass. Directly behind the grubby window stood a skeleton, displayed, I supposed, for the benefit of students of medicine. I hurried on my way.
In common with the asymmetry of the towers of both the west and east wings, the windows were not placed equidistant along the wall. Again, it seemed as if the architect had been intent on offending every tenet of aesthetics regarding his profession. He appeared to have delighted in odd numbers and an absence of motif or repetition. For example, the windows would be at random any one of mullioned, sash, oriel, clerestory and even, memorably, stained glass. The latter type of window enjoyed a run of three into the vivarium and I was more than grateful for that.
But the most disconcerting of all were two windows that appeared to offer insight into a room through which I had not passed: the withdrawing room I had previously noted as being deficient. The windows were the more expensive double-hung sash rather than the singles of the taxidermical room. It contained two chaise longues, a sofa and a rather grand chesterfield. A long sideboard provided a place for cordials suitable to the most refined of ladies. There were two paintings on the walls, after Gainsborough and Reynolds, or perhaps by those two themselves, strangely – and ironically – close, given that each had been anathema to the other whilst alive. The room could not possibly have existed, but there it was, visible from outside the building, plainly sited betwixt the vivarium and the library.
To my relief, the windows of the library revealed only the extraordinary room in which I had enjoyed a tincture with the wandering professor. It was only when I noted that the candles had been snuffed that I realised that someone had been but recently in the hidden room. Why else had it been illuminated? Who had been stealthily bearing tapers and doubters to all parts of the house? Maccabi had not mentioned any staff other than the insubstantial Mrs Gonderthwaite. My determination to have more than several matters out with Maccabi grew still more forceful with every hour.
I turned left at the end of the west wing. The French windows at the library’s end opened onto a generously proportioned terrace. A long sward of grass swept downward, flanked by oaks of some antiquity, and I could see a tiny coal-red light in the distance, moving rhythmically but slowly, as though someone were smoking a briar pipe. Surely someone tended the numerous sheep I had seen on my arrival at the house? The terrain dropped away as the flags of the terrace marked the edge of the library wall. To my left I could see a wall adjoining the main body of the west wing approximately where the library ended, and where the secret room began. This long extension to the rear of the house obscured the wall supporting the dome. I had seen no entry to this part of the building, although almost anything could have been concealed by the disorder in the atrium. Of course it was likely that access to this part of the building was in the mysteriously hidden withdrawing room, but I had discerned no such portal when I peered through the sash windows, and, as I have said, the room was unaccountably well lit.
The long wall could well have been a mole – had it been at Seahouses, instead of land-locked in Northumbrian hills. It was uncommon long: a furlong perhaps, with not a window to it, although it plainly was the wall of a building. It was possessed of a mansard roof. At the top of the wall itself was a ludicrous arrangement of deep embrasures and high merlons, although the house was scarce a hundred years old, as Maccabi had informed me during one of our interminable journeys in the phaeton. I doubted that the most irrational fear of the Jacobites could have justified the fortification.
Again, at the termination of this long spur, the terrain swept down a steep gradient. A charming lake, little more than a pond perhaps, lay at the foot of the hill. I resolved to walk down to it. It was no more than several chains away. As I approached, I could hear the waterfowl competing with a cacophony of frogs to claim precedence over the water. At the water’s edge I turned to look back at Gibbous House. The ridiculous dome had taken a large bite out of the night’s full moon and I learned a further reason for Fitzgibbon House’s sobriquet.
On the other side of this elongated extension from the main body of the house, a shorter edifice did indeed emerge from the dome. It was almost commensurate with what one might have expected from the bedroom arrangements on the first floor. Disconcertingly, it did seem a little short, as though several of the bedrooms were little more than closets.
Despite this peculiarity, I was in fact more interested in this part of the ground floor for the simple reason that I had not seen it. The first two windows belonged to the kitchen, which was a little small for the house had both wings been in use. A solitary candle guttered on a large table, its flickering light reflected in the shine from numerous copper pans hanging from a rack suspended from the ceiling. The room was deserted, although I did detect an occasional rapid movement that might have warranted the recall of a cat or two from the west wing. At the next window, I truly was discomposed when the cook appeared with an oil lamp before her breast. The woman could have been blind for all she registered my presence a few scant inches away on the other side of the glass. She put me in mind of the anatomical specimen hidden behind the wardrobe, peering out of the dining-room window. Perhaps because she was naked, and would have provided quite as good a guide as to the composition of the thoracic skeleton as that other assemblage of bones.
I passed several darkened windows obscured by the absence of candlelight and the dirt of neglect. The final window in the wall was brightly illuminated; Maccabi was bare-chested. He appeared in a state of some excitement. I caught a flash of blue skirts as someone left his room. A sleepless night for Jedediah, I surmised. I stepped back quickly into the shadows. Maccabi stared, chin jutting, out of the window, the very picture of the romantic hero. Stifling a laugh, I decided to put off exploring the other half of the exterior until the morrow. Retracing my steps, I soon found myself on the terrace outside the library, where my eye was caught once more by the red coal light. I descended the gradient, thinking to place myself some yards to the right of the smoking shepherd.
Though scarce ten feet from me, he remained unaware of my presence. The sheep were skittish but he appeared to think little of it. There could be no other reason for a shepherd to be abroad at this hour save to protect his master’s flock. This fellow appeared to be making a very poor effort at his duty and so I felt his fate was deserved. There was a yellow scarf in my pocket, but even the most credulous would not have accepted the presence of thuggee in this isolated place. My boot struck a rock lightly. I bent
down and picked it up. It made a fine sound as it cracked the man’s skull. Picking him up, I carried him over the brow of the hill. We were looking towards the pond and both frogs and ducks were silent until I threw the shepherd down the slope. He rolled like a misshapen barrel until I heard a splash and the renewed hostilities between the waterfowl and the amphibians.
I cursed the fact I had not kept his pipe as, for once, a smoke would have completed my pleasure. The night had turned cold, although it was almost April. I had quite forgotten how much difference a few degrees of longitude could make to the climate, and how isolation and the absence of civilisation could lower the temperature. The faint sounds of the pond were almost masked by the Northumbrian wind. For the first time, I contemplated turning my back on Gibbous House and all that I had not quite inherited, but a slight unpaid burdens the soul more than any sin.
On returning to the house, I lifted the iron monkey’s chin and swung the knocker as forcefully as I knew how. The satisfying sound that it made produced no satisfactory result, at least in subsequent minutes. On the point of rattling the monkey’s brains again, I was surprised when the door swung wide. Blinded by the light of an oil lamp, I fervently hoped that if it were Mrs Gonderthwaite admitting me, she had taken the time to dress.
Fortunately, when my sight had returned, it became clear it was not she, but Miss Pardoner who bore the lamp. She stepped gracefully aside to admit me. There was a touch of high colour on her cheek and her lips seemed a little swollen. It was possible she had had to run to answer the door knocker’s summons.
We stopped at the foot of the stairs; forced to intimacy by the Chinese Chippendale desk behind her and the rough oak chest at my back. She retreated a step, leaned against the vulgarly ornate escritoire, and ran her hand along its bevelled edge. I kept my distance – such as could be kept in such confinement. Chin up, head slightly tilted to one side, she appraised me, showing no deference or need to speak. I expressed my surprise that she was not already retired. Her reply was succinct. ‘I keep late hours, Mr Moffat.’
‘And bad company... ?’ I ventured, but the woman remained quite unprovoked, provoking me in her turn with bold looks.
‘Miss Pardoner,’ I said, gesturing at the blue of her skirts, ‘pretty and distinctive though this cerulean hue might be – it is scarce your colour.’
‘But I like it, Mr Moffat, it is the exact colour of the Chalk Hill Blue butterfly – a truly beautiful creature.’
She attempted a fluttering of the eyelashes after the manner of an Eliza Wharton. It was not a success; there was nothing of the coquette in her manner. Still I made reply, out of courtesy. ‘Miss Pardoner, it is not the butterfly that interests me, but the moth.’
‘And the moth, does it perish at your flame?’ The telltale corner of her mouth rose once again. She looked momentarily downward, toward the front of my breeches. My blood was up after the despatch of the careless shepherd. The woman had not finished. ‘Or do you pin it – spreadeagle, to a board – at your leisure?’
As I mouthed, ‘soon, very soon’, to the retreating flash of blue, she scampered up the stairs and through the ‘looking-glass’.
Having recovered myself sufficiently, I made my way up the stairs to the concealed entry to the vestibule leading to the blue-doored bedrooms. Naturally, I lingered at the teal-blue door. It was only a shade or two distinct from her unsuitable skirts – it pleased me to a large degree that she evinced a taste for the unsuitable. I put my eye to the keyhole on the tarnished brass plate and was thwarted by the key in the other side. It may have been fancy but I discerned the song of Sheba, faint but urgent, from behind the door.
Surprisingly, at the other end of the corridor there was no aural evidence of the solitary vice I expected from behind the professor’s door. Perhaps he was indifferent to the tableaux on his chamber walls, or merely treated them as objects of academic interest. Alone behind the navy-blue door, in my monkish cell, I noted that although the bourdeloue remained in the centre of the rough floor, Miss Arabella Coble’s journal was now upon the window ledge with a tall candle burning beside it.
Though still troubled by the passions aroused by my adventure on the hill by the pond, I did not indulge them as a lesser man might. It has long been my experience that gratification deferred is all the more pleasurable, for the most part. Moving the candle to the side of the window ledge nearest my cot, I picked up my late wife’s juvenile scribbles, let the journal fall open where it chose and lay down to read it.
A C
Friday 13th May 183_
Yesterday, Great-uncle Septimus visited the ‘schoolroom’. Though it is found amongst the blue-doored bedrooms, it always puts me in mind of a gaol, especially in the presence of my tutor. He is a most vile drunkard, and his hand lingers too oft upon my person. Mr Snitterton had the misfortune to be asleep upon my great-uncle’s arrival. Uncle nodded once at me and said but one word: ‘So!’ He received only a snore from the tutor for an answer, though his back was already turned. I am at a loss to understand how the man sleeps so well in the straight-backed and, frankly, spindly chairs we have brought from the library to this room. But I think, perhaps, Mr Snitterton is none too long for employment at Gibbous House.
Saturday 14th May 183_
It is late and I write in my room by candlelight. Today is yet another Shabbos gone; Gentiles are so lucky; how I wish I might do something on the day of rest. Visit Alnwick, try the wares in the market. Buy a hat at the milliners, waste the day at a coffee shop. I often think we persecute ourselves as much as the Gentiles oppress us.
Sunday 15th May 183_
Mr Snitterton cut a tragic figure as he boarded the farmer’s cart before the house this morning. How can anyone travel with so few possessions? I was summoned to the library at eleven of the morning. A rare occurence, though I do not complain; my uncle is so serious a fellow, he quite intimidates me. It was not so important a matter; he merely wished to inform me that my new tutor would arrive tomorrow. A Heathfield Cadwallader, such a mouthful of a name. I wonder what sort of man might own to it?
I had read enough to know that my former wife – the woman who stepped down the cutter’s gangplank in the East India Docks – was of quite different character to the silly girl who had written that journal.
Naturally, consequent on earlier events, I was not disposed to sleep. Arabella Coble’s entrance on the stage of my life appeared equally naturally in my thoughts.
She had been dressed appropriately for a spring day in London, although not in that particular year. It was not foolish to surmise that her apparel had spent several years in trunk in Simla or Shanghai. We were nearing the end of the decade, and the woman disembarking appeared to be of my own age, or the age I purported to be. That is to say, seven and twenty. She lifted one hand to adjust a large white cap with a striped ribbon bow. Her other hand held that of a female child aged between babble and cogent conversation, and so of little interest, either to me or to my business associate. Nonetheless, she cut a striking figure: unusually tall for a woman, she was not possessed of a fashionable silhouette for this decade, or many previous. From the dockside, I marked the usual encouraging signs of a suitable gull: head, and eyes presumably, moving to take in the full panorama of the quayside, searching for some or other expected welcome. This was ever more frequently interspersed with a heave of the shoulders indicative of great sighing. I wagered with myself that the woman would wait longer than the average time before stepping onto the dock. She did not disappoint. The bell from a nearby church had tolled two quarters before she did so.
I pondered the while how best to approach her. For older women of middle age, I usually made a deep bow of greeting and presented a card. The card bore a name I no longer care to remember, I had stolen its original from a self-satisfied lawyer in Limehouse on the pretext of introducing him to a French whore. Such a fool to have followed a man he scarcely knew behind an East End tavern. Still, such lessons are hard-learned, and if a fellow may not benef
it from them in this life, he surely must in the next. An unscrupulous printer in the Fleet was happy enough to produce a couple of hundred examples of the card for half a crown – and a promise that I not return to his family home.
Younger women were often less suspicious, but also inclined to mistrust over-elaborate manners. I clicked my heels like a commissioned hussar and made the briefest of inclinations for a bow.
‘Captain Crawford, at your service, Ma’am. You were expecting me?’
She began a shake of her head, but stopped abruptly.
‘I was expecting someone.’
She looked me up and down, seeming little impressed with my attire. I presumed that her time in the tropics had not enabled her to keep up with the latest male fashions. My wardrobe, at that time, was my greatest extravagance: I felt that I cut a fine figure that day in my red and black patterned waistcoat, russet trousers, lovat tailcoat and top hat. The acquisition of a modicum of good taste was one of the many things that I owed to my late wife.
‘And who should that someone be, if not you?’ she said, which utterance quite took my breath away. It seemed that we had both been on the hunt for a flat upon whom we might play the crooked cross. However, I found it strange that she did not address me as ‘Captain’, as politeness required.
Chapter Fifteen
Good memories such as these had ever helped me into the arms of Morpheus, and I passed one of my rare dreamless nights. The light of dawn was struggling through the filth of the tiny window when I awoke. The late Mr Parminter’s watch informed me that the hour of six was a quarter gone. The cheery mood I might have expected after an undisturbed night was somewhat dissipated by the chatter and twitter of innumerable birds, which I had no doubt Maccabi could name from their song alone. I was tempted to target the bourdaloue with my morning micturition from atop my bed, but contented myself with a more customary use of the porcelain.