Gibbous House

by Ewan Lawrie

  I followed her to the library, where Hepplewhite awaited. Of the policeman, however, there was no sign.

  The coroner, though not tall, was rendered less so by a marked stoop. It was all I could do to look him in the eye, in fact. His dress was uncommon shabby, with altogether too much grubby linen emerging from his coat sleeve, and his boots had long been strangers to any kind of blacking. I adjudged him a man of about sixty years, although his movement seemed vigorous still. Pince-nez adorned his handsome nose, and his hand flicked rapidly and often at the tattered black ribbon hanging from their side. He held out a surprisingly calloused hand, and I surmised he was a country doctor rather than any rarified medical specimen.

  ‘Hepplewhite,’ he barked.

  ‘Moffat,’ I returned.

  ‘Where is the cadaver?’ He fiddled with the filthy ribbon.

  ‘It remains undisturbed, where the fellow drew his last.’

  I waited for him to ask the whereabouts of the policeman, but he did not. The man merely looked up at me expectantly. Signalling Mrs Gonderthwaite that she was to light our way, we made our way to Edgar Allan’s room.

  The skeletal housekeeper selected the appropriate key from a bunch with no hesitation, although I could see nothing especial to mark it out from the others. The lock opened smoothly, as though it had received frequent and thorough oilings. Carrying the candlestick before her, she led us to the bedside. Even in the dim light of the candle, poor Allan’s rictus remained as alarming as before. His limbs and body had stiffened in the pose occasioned by the violent spasms preceding his demise.

  Hepplewhite grunted and poked at the corpse with a bony finger. Beckoning Mrs Gonderthwaite with the same, he moved around the bed to look at the body from the other side.

  ‘A drinker, Mr Moffat?’ he asked.

  ‘No more than some.’

  ‘Hah, and more than others I’ll be bound!’ The bony finger peeled back a lifeless eyelid and he nodded.

  ‘An apoplexy, no doubt. Had he,’ a pause and a look to either side, ‘means?’

  The physician imbued the words with a lubricity such as a Cheapside whore might save for a drunken earl.

  ‘I haven’t the slightest notion, Doctor. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Arrangements, dear fellow. We shall have to make arrangements.’

  It seemed to me that the man had no more interest in the cause of Allan’s expiry than in the Eastern Question; perhaps that was why the policeman’s absence had thus far remained unmentioned by him.

  ‘Constable Turner believed that there were some suspicious aspects in the matter,’ I began diffidently.

  ‘Nonsense!’ the man bellowed upward. ‘If that were the case, why then is the numbskull not here?’

  With that the quacksalver thumbed his waistcoat pockets and jutted his jaw up at me as if daring me to gainsay him.

  And it was true that I could not.

  We repaired once more to the library, and I dismissed Mrs Gonderthwaite to whatever nocturnal pursuits she enjoyed. Despite the early hour, the coroner was looking wistfully at the sideboard with its variety of libations fair and foul.

  My watch showed that it was yet four of the morning. I looked vainly for the absinthe; perhaps the professor had taken it to his private apartments. I dearly hoped so. For spite, I poured the coroner a measure of the professor’s foul bitters. I took a glass of jerez out of courtesy.

  ‘So, Dr Hepplewhite. What now?’ I enquired.

  ‘We must expedite the burial, Moffat. We could learn much from the customs of others.’

  ‘You know so much about them? I find that strange.’

  The man’s face coloured. ‘I buried Septimus Coble!’

  I may have affronted his dignity, but I believed his blushes to be more indicative of a lie. The interruption of the professor prevented me from pursuing the matter. ‘Ah, I think we may relieve your concern in such matters.’

  Hepplewhite looked at him in dismay, sensing a rapidly disappearing opportunity.

  ‘Ah... hem... My fee, at least.’

  The professor smiled. It was not pleasant, merely a stretching of lips to expose the teeth such an avid consumer of green spirit deserved.

  ‘Oh no, Hepplewhite. You will receive both your fee and such monies as you would normally disburse on the disposal of a gentleman without family or means.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink on it,’ said the coroner, and he held out his empty glass toward me.

  I filled his glass and addressed the professor. ‘Ah, it is my belief that the law is quite strict on the disposal and interment of human remains, Professor. I hope no law will be broken under my roof?’

  He laughed. ‘Moffat, what do you take me for? Besides, the Anatomy Act has long since become law in your wonderful country.’ He looked nervously to the walls of books.

  I had followed the progress of the Anatomy Act of 1832 into law, with the interest of a professional, one might say, regretting the profitable business to which its passing had put an end shortly after my arrival in London in 183_.

  ‘I doubt you are a licensed anatomist, Jedermann,’ I said.

  ‘It matters not, I have a paper in Allan’s own hand containing instructions for the disposal of his body, in the event of his death.’

  He offered me a tattered piece of vellum. I did not take it from him, but viewed the contents from where I stood. The spidery script looked similar to the hand I had seen in the notebook belonging to the reporter. It had not been written with his beloved fountain pen, however. The professor thrust the paper at the coroner, who barely looked at it before stuffing it in a pocket.

  ‘Splendid,’ he said. ‘Everything seems to be in order. If I might trouble you for the sum of twenty guineas?’

  I turned my back on the both of them.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  From the vantage point of an armchair as tired-looking as I undoubtedly was, I watched the dwarf and his confederate, heads close, hugger-mugger, whispering at the other end of the room. The subject of their susurrations was undiscernible by me and I confess I did not care.

  Truly, I felt a stifling lethargy in the vast and rambling house that I had never felt in the attic rooms of Cheapside. It was an effort to keep track of the clock and calendar under the weight of the grotesquery encountered at every turn. To be sure, meals arrived more or less as expected, at least with regard to the time and place, if not in their manner. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that I had been at Gibbous House for a lifetime and not a matter of days. Perhaps the demise of Allan would have put me in better countenance if I myself had had a hand in it. I wondered which of them had truly committed the crime. The servants? Not without instruction to do so. Ellen? I could not decide whether I hoped it were so or not. Maccabi? No, I felt there was a hollow at the heart of him, some scruple that would have prevented him taking a life. Unless, of course, Miss Pardoner asked him to do so. The Professor? Much more likely, but why?

  Beyond the French windows the mulberry dawn stained the sky. My brown study had lasted more than an hour. Perhaps I had slept. Perhaps the ennui had overcome my senses. There was something I needed; it would not have been wise to seek it within the grounds of Gibbous House. Not a second time.

  In the full light of day the coroner left, surprisingly without breaking his fast. Cullis, stoic and mute, handed the him up into the driver’s post of his own chaise, which was in no better condition than the horse in its traces. I enjoined the professor to accompany me to the dining room. He clacked his broken bell, honoured me with a malicious grin and we awaited the insubstantial Mrs Gonderthwaite.

  The dwarf, from the perch fashioned by the box balanced on his chair, cocked his head at me and raised an eyebrow. ‘So, Mr Moffat, I have work, the Collection. What are we to do with you?’

  The goblin seemed set on provocation, but I would not give him the satisfaction.

  ‘I am master of quite a considerable estate, am I not? I should think that would be quite sufficient employment for a gent
leman,’ I said.

  ‘We will pass gently over the matter of gentry, Mr Moffat. However, did you not understand the terms of the legacy? You can sell nothing!’

  The mouth offered another variation on a smile no less mirthless than the earlier grin.

  ‘Nothing? What about the inn? At Seahouses?’

  He squirmed atop his ludicrous seating arrangement.

  ‘Ah, the mute... John Bill... ’

  Such papers as I had read insisted only on the giant’s being kept in employment and I told him so, before continuing, ‘In addition, I could not find the inn entailed as part of the Collection nor the property of the estate. I have need of the fellow here, I think. What I do not require is the ownership of a fisherman’s tavern.’

  ‘Ah, very well. You may be right. I will check the appropriate papers.’ The pitch of his voice rose.

  ‘You will not,’ I said.

  Perhaps he cursed himself for allowing me to interpret it as a question. Whatever the case might have been, I felt a little uneasy at his unexpected capitulation and sure that he was hiding something else.

  The dining table was in some disarray post the cavalcade that the serving of breakfast entailed in Gibbous House. As usual, the fare had been unaccountably fine from kidney to kipper. Equally fine at that moment, to my eye, was the figure of Miss Pardoner, hindered though it was by her own unfortunate eye for colour. This same orbis ocularis caught my own.

  ‘Well, Mr Moffat, it is a fine day: I imagine you will be busy,’ she said ‘I am informed by the good professor that I am completely at liberty, free from obligation or duty.’

  ‘Perhaps you have some vigorous and manly activity in mind for your unexpected leisure?’

  Maccabi, opposite me, gave the young lady a look of warning or murderous intent. Perhaps of both.

  ‘I rather thought we might take a trip to Alnwick, you and I.’

  It was most satisfying to receive a similar look from Jedediah Maccabi for my pains. More pleasure still accrued in the issue of instruction to prepare whatever carriage and beast might conceivably manage the twenty or so miles – without mishap on the part of one and expiry on the part of the other. My faithful retainer left the table with commendable alacrity, evinced by the shattering of his glass as his coat-tail knocked it to the floor.

  The professor was blessedly silent. Perhaps I had bettered the midget at last.

  ‘Well, Miss Pardoner, if you would be so good as to prepare yourself for the chaise, I shall await you afront the house, in a quarter-hour, shall we say?’ I said.

  Her eyebrows quite reached the fringes of hair that reflected her disregard for the finer points of cosmetology.

  ‘I am as ready to depart as yourself, Mr Moffat. We might await the carriage together outside.’ She smirked.

  ‘It is indeed a fine day,’ I allowed.

  I turned to bid the professor adieu, but he was rapt, carving something in the fine, if scarred, wood of the table. Peering at it closely, it was revealed as pure nonsense:

  ‘x²≈ -1 if p ≈ 1.’

  The dwarf looked up, knife pointing at my heart. Then he drew the knife twice across the equation in a savage cross of negation.

  Miss Pardoner’s complexion suited the late-spring sunshine. She seemed to lift her face toward it as though she were some exotic tropical bloom. Cullis was holding the reins on the chaise when it limped around the corner. He drew the light carriage to a halt and leaped down, surprisingly nimbly. Lifting a hand to where a forelock might once have been, he turned on his heel, taking care to spit as he did so.

  I handed my ward up to the seat. It was gratifying that a chaise had turned out to be available. Miss Pardoner and I sat uncommon close, for the carriage seated only two – and those of long acquaintance. Being on the point of laying on with the switch in an effort to persuade the cadaverous jade to effect our forward momentum, I was somewhat surprised, and not a little pleased, to feel the young lady’s hand on my thigh.

  ‘Please, Mr Moffat, let us take a turn around the outside of the house. The track is reasonably kept.’

  My face must have betrayed some emotion, for she continued, ‘Fie! Mr Moffat, I shall not eat you, I wish merely to point out something about the house that you may have omitted to remark.’

  Ellen Pardoner removed her hand, but a playful smile lingered on her face. I persuaded the nag to movement and the tiny chaise set out along the track in circumnavigation of the house. My attention and efforts were concentrated, I confess, solely on keeping the miserable specimen in motion. The young woman again laid her hand on me. ‘Stop, Mr Moffat. You should look.’

  She held a long arm outstretched toward the house, finger pointed at one of the towers of the east wing. In common with every aspect of Gibbous House, the cloister between the towers of the wing did not run true. Not only the three towers of the east, but also the four spires of the west wing were visible from our vantage point on the track.

  ‘Do you but count them, sir, and be mindful of their number.’

  Perhaps I gave the horse a harder tickle than it deserved, but thankfully it moved forward at a quicker pace. She had not finished.

  ‘And count the entrances to your fortress, sir.’

  I had counted twelve by the end, when I drew the chaise to a halt before the main entrance to the house.

  She looked intently at me, saying nothing.

  I toyed with suggesting that this could be our fortress, but impatience moved me. ‘Miss Pardoner, I should like to be on our way,’ I began.

  ‘Seven and twelve, Mr Moffat, imagine! Would it surprise you greatly to discover that there are fifty-two windows and that they contain in sum three hundred and sixty-five separate panes of glass?’

  ‘My dear young lady, it would not surprise me if this house had a bell tower and hippopotami in the mansard roof. Now may we at last depart?’

  Her lip protruded somewhat. ‘Gibbous House is a Calendar House, Mr Moffat. A rare thing. There is power in numbers.’

  ‘A Calendar House? What is... ?’

  Then I remembered the seven towers or spires, twelve entrances and the fifty-two windows with their three hundred and sixty-five panes of glass.

  ‘I see, according to the days of the week, months of the year, weeks in the year and so on? What is the point of that?’

  I ignored Miss Pardoner’s knowing smirk and persuaded the bag of bones to forward momentum once again.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  The ride to Alnwick passed in relative silence, and, pity though it was, Miss Pardoner’s hand made no more assaults on my dignity. I drew the chaise to a halt in front of the Old Cross Inn in Narrowgate, and handed her down.

  ‘Some luncheon is in order, I think,’ I said.

  She brightened a little at the prospect and I received as close an approximation of a simpering smile as her strong features would allow.

  Robson being in attendance, I wasted no time in instructing him to find livery for the chaise and its attendant beast. He in turn despatched a lout possessed of a low forehead the equal of his own.

  ‘What delights has your dear mother available today, Robson?’ I enquired.

  ‘Mutha’s deed,’ he replied.

  ‘I am so sorry to hear it, Robson. Was it sudden?’

  He laughed, offering an unpleasant view of his gappy teeth.

  ‘Ay it was, fowerty yeeahz gone.’

  I remembered how little I had understood the fellow on first meeting him and enquired merely after the available vittles.

  They proved more than adequate: a vast game pie and a brace of pigeon washed down with ale. Miss Pardoner savoured her own with a smacking of the lips that I found less than genteel, but all the more stimulating for being so.

  Robson cleared the dishes, letting only a few pie crumbs sully our apparel. Miss Pardoner again tested the boundaries of decorum by sprawling somewhat in her chair and ask-ing, ‘So, Mr Moffat, what diversion is planned for our visit to Alnwick?’

  ‘
My purpose here, Ellen, is twofold. I plan to hurry Maccabi’s Jewish tailor along in the matter of my wardrobe.’

  I took a draught of beer and the woman’s impatience got the better of her. ‘And the second?’

  ‘We are in need of more staff at the house, no matter what the professor says,’ I replied.

  She laughed. ‘I do not think any person would be so desperate as to seek employment in Gibbous House, Mr Moffat.’

  ‘We shall see, Ellen. Our second port of call is the Aln-wick Gaol.’

  The young woman betrayed no great discomposure at this intelligence. No doubt the tic in her left eyelid was occasioned by the somewhat fœtid atmosphere in the inn.

  I paid Robson with the last of my dwindling funds. The weather being as clement as before, my ward and I walked arm in arm along Narrowgate through the Market Square and along Bondgate until we reached a mean bow-windowed shop next to the Globe Inn, immediately before the Hotspur Tower itself. The weathered sign hanging over the door read ‘E. Salomons, Gentleman’s Tailor’.

  As Miss Pardoner crossed the threshold, a minuscule bell tinkled absurdly, with little hope of overcoming the racket of the machine behind which the eponymous stitcher was toiling. My ward looked around the cramped shop, her curiosity clearly aroused by the inordinate number of military uniforms hanging from rails and piled in heaps wherever the furniture allowed it.

  The tunics were the madder red of Her Majesty’s proud regiments of foot. Miss Pardoner’s clumsy inspection of one engendered the toppling of a particularly towering heap. Salomons gave a start such as might have been deemed an apoplexy had it but lasted a few moments longer.

  ‘Gai kukken afen yam,’ he said, once he had calmed himself.

  ‘We are a little far from the sea for that, Mr Salomons,’ I replied.

  Once again I felt grateful for the education in matters Semitic that my late wife Arabella had afforded me, it being most pleasing to inform the tailor that I would not be accepting his invitation to void my bowels into Neptune’s kingdom.