Gibbous House

by Ewan Lawrie

  Depositing Allan upon the bed with as much ceremony as he deserved, a packet of papers became dislodged from one of my pockets and the reporter caught it deftly. My effort at retrieval achieved nothing as a suddenly sprightly Allan held the packet out of reach. Disdaining to demean myself, I did not demand its return.

  He gave them up willingly after a brief application of my knife blade, through the swathe of wrappings, to the sole of his foot.

  There was a satisfactory vibrato in the reporter’s voice as he interrupted my move to the door.

  ‘M-m-moffat?’

  I turned and looked quizzically at the invalid, who let his words tumble forth like water at a mill race. ‘Do you read the Arabic script, sir?’

  ‘I do not, as it happens, Edgar.’

  ‘No matter, your documents use the Aramaic. Similar, of course, how could they not be? The one is the precursor of the other; many ancient texts were written in it in the Holy Lands and beyond.’

  ‘But who would write it now, Edgar? And why in a document meant for me?’

  His voice became more steady. ‘Perhaps it was not meant for you, Mr Moffat.’

  I could not but concur.

  ‘I will ask the dwarf; the damn fellow seems to think himself a polymath.’

  The newspaperman’s reply was to the point. ‘In your place, I would not.’

  ‘And for why?’

  ‘The man is not to be trusted, least of all by yourself, I think.’

  I advanced toward him with a meaningful look at his swaddled appendage.

  ‘There are rumours, that is all. Unnatural rites, blood-drinking, sacrifice.’

  He looked almost affronted when I laughed in his face. ‘My dear fellow, such rumours abound . They are merely fear of the Other.’

  His crest had not fallen quite so far, even so. ‘Well, Mr Moffat, in any event the man is a strange cove and appears to wield quite some influence in the affairs of Gibbous House, and so of course... ’

  ‘In mine,’ I finished for him.

  He gave a slow nod as much as if to agree with some inner voice as with me.

  ‘I knew who you were. News comes in many forms, and not everything appears in typeface. I have made it my business to cultivate the coachmen on the Alnwick stage. So many passengers are indiscreet to some degree, still more so in the inns through which they pass. A man may learn much in low bars and coaching houses for the price of a gin and water.’

  ‘So you are less the reporter and more the spy, Mr Allan?’

  He revealed himself a true journalist by refusing to be insulted by the jibe.

  About to take my leave, my sleeve was tugged in the manner of a beggar in the street; I shook my arm, angry at this presumption on my person.

  Predictably, he cringed, shrinking into the bolster. Nevertheless, he addressed me once more. ‘A moment, Moffat, a moment only. What if the script should be but encypherment, a feint?’

  I enquired as to what he meant, though I knew well what it was, since the idea had occurred to me scarce a quarter-hour ago.

  With the zealous proselytising manner to which we had both been subjected by the policeman, he began to regale me with an account of substitution codes and cypher wheels and I knew not what else. He was anxious that I know that the papers might not feature simple transliteration by transposition of the letters between alphabets, but that any or all of these arcane techniques might well have been employed to confound an accidental reader. He finished by reiterating: ‘The essential thing, Moffat, the sine qua non, as it were, is of course a sample of the Aramaic alphabet.’

  I asked him how he proposed I should acquire such a thing. He gave a sly look and said, ‘I am sure you would get no satisfaction from merely asking the professor to write one for us. A man of your talents will find a way, Mr Moffat. No one could evade the police for quite so long without some ability as well as luck.’

  This may have been true, but there surely was no manner of means by which the so-called Mr Allan might have known the breadth of talents I did possess, nor how accustomed I was in employing them.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I left him abed. He had raised matters that would bear consideration. I resolved to accost Miss Pardoner in her chamber, or wherever she might be, to glean some further intelligence concerning the crab-like curator of the Collection.

  Hesitating momentarily before the teal of the door, I reflected again how little such colours – which I had noted she liked to affect in her dress – suited her colouring. I should have preferred to see her in rich burgundies, carmines and the shining black of Norwich bombazine. I gave the signal knock of a seasoned molly-house visitor and received for answer the alarmed cry: ‘A moment, if you please!’

  A moment it proved to be: Miss Pardoner appeared at the door, her Hispanic colouring made still more attractive by a certain flush. She motioned me in a little breathlessly, a curious conical item of polished hardwood in her hand. She saw me eyeing the curiosity and held it up for display, demonstrating a screwing motion of the base; the upper part of the cone separated and, by a convoluted contraption involving a transverse expanding bar, continued to widen as each half was forced apart from the other.

  ‘It is a glove stretcher, Mr Moffat.’

  She gave me a look that dared me to challenge her. I did not. The item was not unfamiliar to me: Arabella had owned one, and it was indeed purposed for stretching the fingers of a lady’s glove. However, my late wife had demonstrated other – more imaginative – uses on occasion.

  Miss Pardoner sat on her bed and pointed to the chair before her toilette. I nodded my thanks and turned the delicate seat toward her. She had not secured or even closed the chamber door after my entry.

  ‘Miss Pardoner, I come in search of conversation, nothing more. We may adjourn to one of the public rooms if you would prefer, the library perhaps?’

  To my surprise she nodded vigorously. I was disappointed that she thought so much of decorum, as I had believed her above such things.

  We did not repair to the library, after all. To my utter astonishment, the dining room appeared to have received some attention, although from whom I knew not. Nevertheless, the used crockery and cutlery had all been removed; no empty wine bottles stood sentinel over napery, only randomly scattered crumbs bore witness to the table’s former condition. Ellen Pardoner and I sat at the head of the inordinately long refectory table and I began my interrogations.

  ‘The professor seems an interesting fellow to be so far from civilisation, does he not?’

  Naturally, the woman chose to reply with a question. ‘Do you consider us quite so uncivilised here in Northumbria, Mr Moffat?’

  ‘Even Alnwick is hardly Vienna or Berlin or any other of the groves of Academe friend Jedermann claims to have attended,’ I replied, a little sharply.

  Miss Pardoner appeared to have recovered some of her poise, for the telltale corner of her mouth had risen once again. ‘Oh, I doubt the professor has misled us to any extent in the matter of his scholarship.’

  I tried another tack. ‘But why here? Why not London, or Edinburgh? What could possibly have brought him here? Was he summoned by Coble?’

  She sighed, a tutor before a particularly obtuse student.

  ‘Why would you go to a wild and relatively isolated place, Mr Moffat?’

  ‘I would not,’ I said.

  ‘But you have,’ she rejoindered.

  ‘I have come for profit, as you well know, though I doubt I shall see any great quantity of it. It is beyond belief that anyone associated with this absurd notion of “Collection” is motivated by any sort of pecuniary gain.’

  Miss Pardoner ignored my peevish tone and offered, ‘Not all advantage is monetary, sir.’

  ‘Humbug! Miss Pardoner. I will have an answer.’

  My palm smarted a little but the sound of its contact with the wood of the table was distinctly gratifying. That Miss Pardoner did not flinch was less so.

  ‘The professor is carrying out
important research.’

  ‘Indeed?’ It was my opportunity for the sardonic smile. ‘Of what kind?’

  ‘Scientific, historical and religious, Mr Moffat.’

  Her fervour demonstrated that I had been mistaken in considering her incapable of any utterance devoid of irony. I informed her that whilst I found such pursuits noble in the abstract and the singular, in practice and combination I believed that no good could come of them.

  Miss Pardoner looked down at her hands for a moment or two, seemingly intent on finding a smut or fault on her soft skin, ‘There are others who believe the contrary, Septimus Coble having been one of them.’

  Since I cared not a fig what Coble had believed, I merely asked, ‘Jedermann, does he speak many languages so well as English?’

  His English was at times – as I had noted previously – so very near perfection as to be that of an educated native son. The odd cadences and Bohemian consonants were barely perceptible. It was evident to me, however, that certain humours caused him to fall more often into pitfalls, grammatical and syntactic. Miss Pardoner informed me that: ‘the professor is more than proficient in most modern European Languages, although his native German owes more to Bavaria than Prussia, I would say.’

  This I absorbed with some incredulity, believing Miss Pardoner no more able to differentiate between a Münchener burgher and a Prussian Junker than I myself. In any event, I changed the object of my enquiries.

  ‘Scientific research, you say?’

  ‘Oh yes, matters arcane and little known even among—’

  She stopped, and of a sudden her hands became once more of particular interest.

  ‘Indeed, outwith the publications of the Royal Society for example?’

  For answer I received a nod.

  ‘Come, Ellen! Surely the man is not some... alchemist?’

  Her head came up sharply. ‘The professor has an interest in such things, yes... But there are other more important areas of scholarship for him.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Vitrolium,’ she gave out sullenly, as if revealing a secret vice.

  ‘And what might that be?’

  Miss Pardoner straightened her posture as if about to give a recital, which perhaps she might have been.

  ‘V.I.T.R.I.O.L.V.M. that is Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem Veram Medicinam. Visit the interior of the Earth; by rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone.’

  I laughed.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Jedermann believes he has found an original manuscript which explains the manifestos.’

  ‘Manifestos?’ Such lofty subjects truly did not interest me.

  Again her gaze fell to the hands in her lap; she spoke with her head down in answer to the question I had not posed. ‘The Rosicrucian Manifestos.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The document he has found was written by John Dee. The greatest mind of the Elizabethan Age.’

  I disdained to inform her that the mystical nonsense that I had heard at second hand whilst in the Edinburgh Asylum had led me to a quite different estimation of the man.

  ‘What has this to do with me?’

  ‘Do you not feel yourself meant for great things?’

  It seemed that Jedermann possessed sufficient charisma to render Miss Pardoner partial to – if not involved in – his bizarre researches. Or perhaps the reasons for Miss Pardoner’s partiality had more to do with her affection for Maccabi. It mattered not a whit to me. I resolved to do all in my power to break the conditions of the discretionary trust and wrest the control of my inheritance from the hands of this lunatic and his acolytes.

  We sat in silence for a while. Through the windows the reddening sky alerted me to the fact that the Jewish Sabbath would soon be over. No doubt still more food would be served as it had been on those occasions when Arabella had honoured the traditions in my company.

  The long dining room was appointed with a generous fireplace, an inglenook that would have accommodated my entire household and an inferno fit for Beezlebub himself. There was not a stick of wood, or smut of ash, in the voluminous grate. It had not been cold in the room during the Sabbath repast, which by custom had begun after sundown, and it was not uncomfortable now.

  Leaning to the side, toward Miss Pardoner’s seat, I laid my palm on the parquet floor. The wood was warm. It was not likely that Gibbous House was possessed of a hypocaust, although I supposed anything was possible. Miss Pardoner – after an uncharacteristic flinch at my proximity to her person – spoke. ‘It is steam, sir, driven through pipes under the floor. The professor tells me it is modelled on an innovatory system of the last century designed by Mårten Triewald. For a large greenhouse in Newcastle, in fact.’

  ‘And the engine?’ I queried.

  ‘Below, sir, the fire is below.’

  ‘I wonder that I have been excluded from that part of the house, Miss Pardoner.’

  ‘As have I, sir. Perhaps it was assumed you would have no interest in it.’

  She said this innocently enough. Since it might well have been true, I chose to let it pass.

  ‘In any event, whilst there is no lack of available wood for the fire, where are the strong of arm to feed the beast? Surely this is not in Cullis’s remit as well?’

  For answer I received a shrug.

  Miss Pardoner’s manner toward me had changed somewhat; I was most disappointed in this development – this demure and respectful aspect was not stimulating in the least. Provocation seemed best suited to my purpose.

  ‘Are you much in the company of Maccabi, Miss Pardoner?’

  ‘I am more in his company than in yours.’

  ‘Of late that is not so, surely?’

  ‘I should be more plain, Mr Moffat. I find your company diminishes me.’

  I laughed. ‘I think even the company of Satan himself would do little to diminish you, Ellen.’

  Her visage assumed a more familiar aspect.

  ‘That remains to be seen.’

  ‘Well, forgive me if I have put you out of countenance. I meant no harm. Shall we not share a friendly libation?’

  Her answer remained unheard as a drawn-out grinding sound filled the dining room. One would have thought it the progress of a capstone up the side of a pyramid, so loud was it. The noise appeared to emanate from the enormous fireplace. The soot-free stone of the rear of the inglenook drew back to reveal the professor. ‘A libation? A capital idea! Most capital!’

  He beamed at the both of us from the depths of the empty hearth.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  With an élan quite disproportionate to someone recently emerged from behind a fireplace, the professor’s tiny feet skittered across the parquet to a magnificent, if dilapidated, sideboard. The rich walnut’s topmost surface was a repository for tantali and decanters of every shape and size; a few dusty bottles stood guard amongst the undoubtedly valuable crystal. The professor surveyed the glassware with a gimlet eye then picked up the dustiest of bottles before announcing: ‘My friends, let us partake of the Elixir Ordinaire! No pale imitation from La Maison Pernod Fils for we three, let us sample Doctor Pierre’s original and best receipt and banish the woodworm from the soul by a generous application of the spirit of the wormwood.’

  The professor removed from a waistcoat pocket a silvered object remarkably like a spoon, of a size with one suitable for the consumption of a pudding save for the fact that there were several voids of rectangular shape in the metal of the bowl. From a long pocket of his frock coat he removed a paper bag and placed it on the sideboard.

  Opening a door below, which gave an agreeably musical creak, he removed three small stemless glasses. Glasses marshalled on the sideboard, he placed a white cube beside each of the vessels.

  He eyed both of us.

  ‘Sugar cubes: a splendid innovation, are they not?’

  He placed the not-quite-spoon over each glass in turn and poured a generous measure of a particularly foul-looking
liquid over a cube and thence through the voids in the spoon’s bowl. Handing each of us a glass, he said, ‘Absinthe! Aged and amber, the green spirit has departed but its strength remains.’

  It was quite the vilest thing I had ever tasted; Miss Pardoner’s aplomb while drinking it put me quite to shame, while the professor seemed to favour the Slavic method of dis-posing of the disagreeable taste of a spirit by throwing the entire contents of his glass at once – with venom – toward the back of his throat. He smacked his lips and said, ‘Another?’

  I declined politely and was rewarded with a sneer from both companions.

  At precisely that moment the door opened wide and Maccabi entered, followed by a comical entourage consisting of Mrs Gonderthwaite – bearing nothing – and two simple-looking fellows carrying vast covered platters of silver. These fellows had thus far not been in evidence at any time. Maccabi caught my eye and shook his head. Quite what he meant by that, I knew not.

  The two salver-bearers were as like as twins, and, furthermore, were sufficiently low of forehead to allow a criminal bent to their nature, according to the journalist’s theories. Certainly this facet of their appearance did little to commend a level of intelligence above that of a simian, any more than the clatter of the salver lids that both let fall to the floor in the act of presenting the evening’s repast. A large roast of beef filled the one to overflowing, a medley of vegetables and a prodigious quantity of potatoes covered the other.

  At this point we none of us were seated. I took my place at the head and gestured the hesitant Maccabi to be seated. Mrs Gonderthwaite’s back was already receding; the brothers primate, however, stood slack-jawed in mirrored pose on either long side of the table.

  ‘Out!’ I bellowed, and thereby ascertained that their capacity for communication reached the basest human level. Leave they did, turning cartwheels as they did so.