Gibbous House

by Ewan Lawrie

  The professor proffered a prayer in a language unknown to me. As he finished, I remarked that the fare seemed quite civilised. His voice was oleaginous.

  ‘You yourself decreed that this household should not run in accordance with ritual; I trust that you forgive me the prayer of thanks I offered for our victuals, even so?’

  For reply I gave him a grunt. Three of those seated looked expectantly from the heaped platters of food to the remaining person. Maccabi rose stiffly and began apportioning the food. He served it mechanically and without flourish, his movements driven by ratchets and gears, but smoothly nonetheless.

  As he filled Miss Pardoner’s plate he reached a zenith of graceful mechanisms, worthy of Merlin’s Swan, and I admired the control the man seemed to have over his emotions. Miss Pardoner began exercising her silverware with gusto ere Maccabi had reached his seat, but perhaps he did not notice, as his eye continued to be drawn by any other thing – sentient or otherwise – that it could find. He did not eat much of the first course and nothing at all of the second, as it turned out.

  The professor made several miserably unsuccessful gambits in the game of conversation but could find no partner or opponent around the table. The chink and chime of porcelain and cutlery were all the noise to be heard in the cavernous room and the rhythm of dinner aided me not as I pondered how to extract a fair copy of an ancient alphabet from the diminutive scholar. Un-summoned by any bell, the phantasmal Mrs Gonderthwaite appeared, flanked by her para-human acolytes, who bore further covered chargers. These serving dishes were laid down as gently as could be expected by such unskilled hands. Mrs Gonderthwaite threw out a skeletal, if imperious, finger toward the long sideboard and the two servants scurried gibbon-like to perform a pantomime involving the opening of several drawers and doors before the recovery of four dessert plates. The lady herself removed our dinner plates to a dumb waiter that I could not remember being wheeled into the room.

  Oyster plates were placed upon larger plates revealed by the removal of the main course. This corruption of the lately fashionable service à la Russe appeared to amuse the professor greatly, as he took delight in raising his oyster-fork and spoon from their correct position to the extreme right of his plate and winking prodigiously at me.

  We were not served oysters. To my surprise, all manner of other shellfish was revealed by the hairy paws of the silent servants, but no oysters. There were abalone, clams, mussels, winkles, cockles and scallops, all served on the shell. Maccabi’s platter apart, the mute fellows spooned generous portions onto the plates and their environs, allowing very little food to sully the linen or our clothing, and then withdrew.

  Mrs Gonderthwaite announced in a surprisingly masculine and sturdy voice for one so unsubstantial, ‘Only two courses.’

  She turned smart as a hussar to leave, but I stopped her, saying, ‘I hope our guest is provided for?’

  She did not deign to turn back, but gave a graceful nod over her shoulder before vanishing through the double doors.

  The crustaceans were cleared from our oyster plates with a minimum of fuss. The professor in particular went at his portion with a will that I found a little queasy, given his own crab-like attributes; I was only grateful that lobster, crayfish and the like had made no appearance at the table.

  Frustration, not surprise, was my lot on realising that our household staff would make no reappearance that evening: the prospect of despatching Maccabi to the kitchen with the crockery was once again tempting, but I scented better sport in having him in the room.

  The duration of the meal seemed an inordinate time to be without something to slake the thirst, and I was surprised that no wine had been forthcoming from the cellar or the sideboard. I was about to offer some liquid refreshment to the assembly when the professor once again sprang to his feet and tap-tapped to the long sideboard. He picked up a heavy crystal decanter; thumb and forefinger pincered around the neck, he eyed the contents as he held it up to the light.

  ‘Red. Bordeaux, who knows how it will taste?’ he said, as he found glassware and proceeded to fill it. He did not do so in the manner of a refined oenophile, rather poured great gouts into the bowls as though the decanter were a pitcher and the crystal goblets the meanest pewter tankards. He drained his own glass and refilled it before approaching the table with our own.

  ‘It is poor stuff,’ he said.

  He seemed awfully partial to such a poor exemplar of vintners’ wares, taking another great draught from his glass on taking his seat once more. Looking round at our dining companions, I noted that they were rapt in contemplation of the tiny figure. Perhaps he was the possessor of Mesmer’s animal magnetism; if so, I found myself completely immune to it.

  He sported a shirt of once-fine linen, whose collar was over-large to the extent that no amount of starch could possibly have held it upright. Naturally, the shirt itself was too voluminous for his diminutive frame. The procurement of a tailor’s services was not among the dispensations he made from the income he doubtless received from my estate. The trews, jacket and waistcoat had seen the benefit of needlework subsequent to that of their manufacture, but this seemed inexpert enough to have been his own handiwork. His garb was indefinably grimy in some way, yet there were no stains of the scholar’s blotted ink, the gourmand’s spilled morsels or the sweat of honest labour. Still, there was something odd about it, as if below the ring of his collar lurked a dully squamous patina over his flesh.

  He seemed provoked to a certain nervosity, by what I did not know. He fidgeted and wriggled like a child with a secret and I asked him, quite bluntly, what lay behind the fireplace.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  ‘There will be time for such later, Mr Moffat,’ he said, and I fancied I caught a glimpse of scaly skin as he slipped a finger into the collar of his not-quite-white shirt.

  Miss Pardoner clapped her hands and cried, ‘A game! A game!’

  Maccabi stared stolidly to his front. Jedermann bared his teeth in a gruesome smile and I noted he was in possession of a solitary canine, though it was of tolerable length, and it leant him the air of an aged wolf. He countered the proposal. ‘But what to play, Ellen? What to play?’

  ‘The cards, perhaps?’ she simpered, and I confess I felt an urge to beat the woman to her former boldness or let her die in the attempt.

  ‘I had rather die than play another hand of Whist,’ I said.

  Maccabi looked directly at me. ‘I had rather thought so, since your strength might more likely lie in speculation.’

  ‘Ach, I am not for the cards,’ said the professor, although whether excited or under some stress, I was not sure. ‘A parlour game, that is it!’

  ‘With respect, Professor, are we not a little above the Minister’s Cat?’

  The prospect of such entertainments filled me with horror.

  ‘What then?’ asked Miss Pardoner, and her expression reminded me that she claimed to be not yet one and twenty.

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt that the professor might have some idea. Edify us, Jedermann, do,’ I urged.

  The professor’s reaction was to begin bringing forth from the surprisingly numerous pockets about his person crumpled scraps of paper in various shapes and conditions. Having assembled a pyramid-like mound, he began to smooth out each and every one, apparently in order to peruse what might be written on them.

  The greater majority of pieces were immediately restored by means of re-crumpling to their former quasi-spherical states and re-sequestering in one or other of his pockets. For the rest there remained three sheets of a similar size: viz about that of a sheet from a reporter’s notebook. They appeared for the moment to be blank, as far as I could ascertain.

  The dwarf then began tearing small rectangular pieces from each of the three sheets, of a size that might contain one written word. He then wrote something on each scrap and turned them face down to the table. The fidgeting had stopped, though his eyes glittered, and he swept them over the company before letting out in a rus
h, ‘So! A game, a diversion, a pasatiempo, a bagatelle!’

  He paused and, still aglitter, his gaze passed over us again, before he added, ‘But edifying! Ameliorative! Improving! How very worthy! Moffat, you are truly a remarkable fellow.’

  The professor began an elucidatory ramble on the conduct of his diversion. Each word that he had written on the paper scraps came from a different language. He emphasised that the language might not be rendered in Latin script. Proposing to give each of us one in turn, he enjoined us to keep it concealed from the others. We were to hearken to his expert pronunciation of the word in isolation, then to his use of it in some witty aphorism or proverb, and finally we were to decide whether or not we held the mysterious word in our hand.

  It sounded uncommon dull for an entertainment, even by the abject standards of a parlour game. Nonetheless, there were only smiles in view from my companions. The professor slid a scrap in our respective directions, and we were obliged to rise and recover them to our seats. Jedermann then gave out what I presumed was a word in stentorian tones, although he was unable to prevent it sounding ridiculous:

  ‘Pea-yat!’

  I was none the wiser on looking at the paper carefully concealed in my palm.

  The dwarf’s voice filled the cavernous dining room once more with a longer chain of folderol which sounded something akin to: ‘Loo tche eemyet pee-yat vragov tchem sto drooz-yei lozh-nykh.’

  There was no mark on my paper indicative of Chinee, and so I remained convinced that the word was not mine. But this part of the game gave me great hope: the quotation of the word in context could not possibly provide any help to a player of it. Therefore, what purpose did it serve other than to gratify an overweening vanity on the part of the professor concerning his skill as a linguist? I was in great hope of turning this self-regard to advantage.

  Still less to the purpose was the professor’s no doubt erudite translation of this – so he claimed – ancient Slavic proverb as: ‘Better to have five enemies than one hundred false friends.’

  Both Maccabi and Miss Pardoner’s smiles had grown wider, indeed I believed that my ward’s shoulders were shaking slightly and she appeared to be at pains to maintain her self-control. On collecting herself a little, she announced: ‘The word is not mine.’ And with an unladylike snicker she revealed her paper. ‘Five’ was written in a skilled and legible hand.

  Maccabi’s smile became a smirk and I hated him for it.

  ‘Nor mine,’ he said and he revealed a word that I recognised, as Arabella had once written it out for me:

  пять

  It meant five.

  The colour rose to my cheeks as all three laughed when I turned over my paper to reveal

  I marvelled that there were only three others around the table and not five, which would have rendered the supposed proverb more apposite. The professor, noting that I was not pleased at being made the butt of their joke, attempted to cajole me to better humour.

  ‘Come, Mr Moffat, surely you agree our little charade was amusing. I had thought you would guess that the game was pure invention. In any case, I doubt you will ever forget the Russian word for five, to be sure.’

  Maccabi looked smug, Miss Pardoner more so. I did not respond directly, but asked instead with how many languages he was familiar.

  ‘Familiar? What does that mean? That I might recognise but not understand? That I might write but not speak, in the manner of Latin, Ancient Greek or Sumerian? Or that I might speak and not write, like Chinee or Hindoo?’

  It was typical of him to answer a question with another of his own. He was not finished, however; like many learned men he was inordinately fond of the sound of his own voice.

  ‘I confess to you all, by whichever criterion you choose to define “familiar”, I do not, in truth, know. I do know the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Latin and, as you saw, the Cyrillic alphabets, as well as many of the languages written in Latin or Cyrillic. Why do you ask, Moffat?’

  Here stood the chained and padlocked gate in my path: why indeed? The man had offered me an opportunity, by himself bringing up the matter of alphabets. I resolved to feign an interest in the cursed Collection, and in particular that part of it which took volume and parchment form.

  ‘I believe I should like, as the putative owner of such a fine repository of books as is contained in the Collection, to be the better equipped to peruse them. Oh, I do not expect to learn the cuneiform of the Sumerians, since no one has any clue what their tablets mean. No, indeed, I should merely like to know the origin of a work by sight of the script alone, and to be able to differentiate the Aramaic from the Hebrew, perhaps.’

  Miss Pardoner gave a snort, while Maccabi leaped up to offer his ’kerchief that she might wipe the Bordeaux from her upper lip and chin.

  The professor appeared not to notice and began, not altogether unexpectedly, to pontificate at length on the similarities and differentiating characteristics of the Hebrew and Aramaic scripts. Thankfully, and I did feel most grateful to the fellow, Maccabi kept our glasses charged through an infinitesimally detailed account of cursive strokes, descenders, ascenders and the development of the delineations of the latter from the former. In demonstrating their similarity he used a paper of the three scarcely used by the game and drew what he informed us were the Aramaic ‘Qop’ alongside the Hebrew ‘Kuf’.

  The one appeared as no different from the other save the Aramaic letter had the look of a child’s letter p, and the Hebrew an angular look more suggestive of its name. Taking advantage of a pause occasioned by the dwarf’s imbibing of another prodigious swallow of wine, I said, ‘Most fascinating, Enoch. Would you fashion for me a fair copy of the two alphabets that I might compare them at my leisure?’

  Miss Pardoner appeared to have less trouble with her wine on that occasion; she may have had a mote in her eye, though I imagine she winked at Maccabi.

  The professor dipped his pen and carved the twenty-eight Arabic letters from right to left on the thick vellum sheet he had chosen, blew on them in the absence of any sand and laid down the Aramaic letters beneath them.

  I thanked him and folded the stiff paper into a pocket.

  We were all startled when the doors to the dining room were thrown wide, and no less surprised when the detective stepped into the room. Assuming Mrs Gonderthwaite had answered some summons to the front entrance, I felt the tickle of anger that she should presume to usher the fellow to our table and not announce his arrival, much less inform us that he waited without. He was still in his uniform, but made the politeness of removing the top hat, which he carried uncomfortably under his arm. He eyed each of us in turn.

  ‘There is no doubt of it,’ he said.

  ‘Inasmuch as I, myself, am in doubt as to what you refer to, Constable, I should say there is considerable doubt of something,’ I replied.

  ‘It is murder, of course,’ Constable Turner elucidated.

  I was considering a response, when Maccabi blurted out, ‘Oh come, Constable, the man fell down the hill and took a blow from a rock. Very likely he was drunk. He often was.’

  The policeman gave Maccabi a look with which he seemed to take his measure and find him wanting in some degree.

  ‘A blow from a rock was surely taken by the poor sot, it’s true. It is only that I should like to know by whom the blow was given.’

  It was with some disbelief that I saw the colour rise in Maccabi’s face. What was the matter with the man? Did I but have such fellows about me in Cheapside, never would I have given the Peelers a second thought!

  Constable Turner, in an apparent leap to unrelated matters, enquired, ‘The scribbler, Allan, where is he?’

  The professor informed him that the reporter had met with an ‘unfortunable accident’, the misstep in his speech betraying – to me at least – his own nervousness in the presence of the law. Ellen Pardoner was darting looks from Maccabi to the professor and thence to the investigator. It appeared to me that the most cool of manner in the room were the m
an investigating the crime and the man who had committed it.

  Turner gave a nod and drew a deep breath through his nose. It was a magnificent specimen, worthy of a prizefighter at a fair, although perhaps not a good one. He released the breath, and it seemed that he had used this aspiration to calm himself or gird his loins for some prospective challenge. He said nothing.

  Against my better judgement, I posed a question of my own: ‘What brings you to the conclusion that the man was dealt a blow rather than the victim of an unfortunate accident, Constable?’

  ‘It is quite simple, Mr Moffat, the rock covered with blood is on the crown of the hill, whilst the unfortunate’s body was, as you saw, in the pond. It is most unlikely that he could have fallen against that rock with such force at the top of the rise.’

  He was right of course; I had been careless, but, truly, who could have expected any policeman to take an interest in an accident at Gibbous House?

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Turner looked expectantly at me. Being at a loss as to what expectation lay behind this regard, I offered to summon Mrs Gonderthwaite. ‘I presume you have not dined, Constable? You are come too late to share our meal, but if you require some sustenance I will ring for the cook.’

  He replied curtly, ‘Bread and cheese, sir.’

  I made my way to a fabric bell pull beside the large hearth, only to be intercepted by the professor carrying the hand bell from the dining table.

  ‘This one, Moffat, the other is not functioning.’

  The professor’s eyes darted to my hand hovering beside the brocaded fabric of the bell pull, and he ran a familiar finger around his oversized collar. I took the hand bell from him and shook it violently. It made its customary unmusical sound. I bade the constable take his ease at table.

  In deference to my position, Maccabi restrained himself, and offered no contribution at this point. He appeared uncomfortable, however, and once more was to be observed from the corner of the eye, continuously squirming under the obsidian gaze of the policeman. Even the professor seemed inclined to keep his counsel, apparently relieved at ensuring my use of the correct bell.