The Lamplighter

by Anthony O'Neill

  “Mr. Canavan,” she answered, “and the Professor.”

  “Professor? What professor?”

  She hesitated. “Thomas McKnight, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh.”

  Groves could recall no such man from his visit to the University and was suddenly convinced she was lying. To provoke him, perhaps; to make him jealous.

  “He has questioned you, I suppose, this professor?”

  “He believes I harbor hidden memories.”

  “That’s what he believes, is it?”

  “He believes he can make me divulge my secrets.”

  “Aye?” Groves snorted. “Well, there are many ways to divulge a woman’s secrets.”

  He took a tentative step forward—little more than an inch—but to his relief she did not rise up defensively.

  “Do you know who I have spoken to, woman?”

  No answer.

  “Does the name Hettie Lessels mean anything to you?”

  She averted her head, but the recognition was clear enough.

  “Hettie Lessels,” Groves repeated with relish. “The woman remembers you, all right. And Abraham Lindsay?”

  She looked further stung by the name.

  “That’s right.” Groves inched even closer, surprised by his own boldness, but then she had given no indication that she was about to turn on him. “Do you know what they said? What they said about you?”

  She was barely audible. “What did they say?”

  Groves twisted the truth adventurously. “That you despise them for what they did to you and that you are hunting them down for their sins. Aye.”

  She did not deny it.

  He slid a trembling hand into his greatcoat pocket and withdrew the examination of conscience, thrusting it at her like a cutlass. “You remember writing this, do you, woman?”

  She kept her hands clasped in front of her, not wanting to accept the evidence. He tossed it at her and it spiraled to the floor like a loose feather.

  “From your convent? Your letter to the devil? Do you not remember that?”

  She stared at the settling sheet.

  He risked stepping so close that he was practically breathing on her. “You have some pact with him, is that it? He does your bidding because of this pact?”

  She backed away.

  “You employ him for revenge, is that it?”

  “No…” She pressed against the wall as though for protection.

  “When will it end, woman? What will it take?”

  “You have no evidence….”

  “Aye?” Looking down on her cowed form Groves could barely tolerate his own excitement. “What do you call the testimony of my witnesses? Abraham Lindsay and the widow Lessels. What do you call that?”

  “They have not—”

  “What?”

  “They have not spoken….”

  “They have not spoken, have they? And yet I have heard them with my own ears.”

  “They have not spoken!” she insisted.

  “And how could that be?” he asked, nearly spitting on her. “Why do you think I might lie?”

  “They would not make statements—”

  “Aye? And why is that?”

  “Because they would not want to damn themselves,” she said finally, forcing it out, and sagged with the effort, so that he had to thrust his hand out to prevent her from collapsing. He squeezed her forearm, almost crushing her delicate bone, and drawing her to her feet he noticed that her sleeve had fallen back on her wrist, the whiteness of the skin there startling in contrast to her sooty hands, and—he could not be sure, for he had his back to the lamp—there seemed the remnant of something there, a wound, and he met her eyes for the first time. She regained her senses just enough to squirm free, dragging her sleeve over her hand and staring at him challengingly now, daring him to say something, to divulge this terrible secret, and he found himself suddenly enervated, staring back into her eyes and seeing the Wax Man’s terrible spark, and he felt himself falling into her, being absorbed by her, and the blood surged in his head and his tongue struggled to conduct words, but he was oddly paralyzed…

  The door burst open.

  He was still staring at her, transfixed, when Evelyn finally broke the contact. Emerging from the spell, Groves turned to see a breathless Pringle looking at them in wonder, and he felt curiously ashamed.

  “What is it?” he snapped.

  “Mr…. Mr. Lindsay, sir,” Pringle said, still coming to terms with Evelyn’s presence, and not sure if he should go on.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s made a move, sir. By cab. You asked to be informed….”

  Groves took an inordinate length of time to digest the news. “Aye,” he said eventually, as though he had expected nothing less. “So I did.”

  And in truth he welcomed the excuse to escape, for his head was still pulsing and his lungs felt uncomfortably parched: Evelyn left too little oxygen in her proximity for another to breathe. But he had breached her defenses and weakened her for the next assault, he assured himself of that, and he would most certainly return to finish the battle.

  “Let’s…let’s be off, then,” he said, and headed away at once—leaving Pringle to spare one last glance at the downcast Evelyn before pursuing the Inspector down the stairs.

  Canavan stared at the pages incredulously. “All the books…” he whispered. “All incomplete?”

  “Most are missing a few pages, and at the very least a few words.”

  “Which…which books are most intact?”

  “The Science of Nervous Sleep. Braid’s Neurypnology. Teste’s Practical Manual of Animal Magnetism. Anything related to hypnotism and its associated subjects. Evelyn clearly has been reading extensively on the matter in recent days.”

  “But why?” Canavan asked, already dreading the answer.

  “So that we might be prepared,” the Professor answered, and chortled mirthlessly. “Don’t you see? Here in this library we have all the answers. The reason Shand’s Wynd appears on no map. The reason we were able to face the Beast while we believed Evelyn could not be asleep. The reason we seem to have been specifically summoned. Even the reason my true identity has always eluded me. Here, in this murky library, lie all the answers.”

  Canavan stared at him, awed but still needing to be convinced.

  McKnight duly produced the apple. “Tell me what you see.”

  Canavan shook his head. “An…an apple.”

  “But as a symbol? What do you see?”

  Canavan struggled. “The forbidden fruit…”

  “A true theologian’s answer.” McKnight smiled. “The apple with which the serpent tempted Eve. The symbol of all we were never meant to have but which we grasped anyway through temerity and impertinent curiosity. The icon of the unknowable, and lines which should not be crossed.” He raised the fruit and regarded it contemplatively. “But it is also, is it not, the symbol of Isaac Newton’s universal gravitation and the immutable laws of science. Of everything we have learned and believe we have mastered—the single most important symbol of the Enlightenment. A truly significant irony, is it not? For though it has taken us many eons, we can now measure with great accuracy the speed with which an apple might have fallen from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden.”

  He lifted the red and green orb to the space between them. He fanned out his fingers until it was held by only his thumb and forefinger, then paused and released his hold entirely.

  The apple, without any visible means of support, hung in midair, completely unmoving.

  Canavan stared at it in astonishment.

  “I believe we have an important duty to perform,” the Professor said, and the apple finally dropped.

  That Evelyn had so easily slipped past him was a source of great embarrassment to Pringle, but oddly Groves did not seem in the mood to chasten him. Instead, the Inspector had his eyes set and his mouth sealed, and for a while seemed absorbed in his own musings, or
working his way through the aftereffects of some serious shock.

  “The news arrived while you were upstairs, sir,” Pringle explained hopefully as they rattled down Castle Terrace in a westbound cab. “Mr. Lindsay dispatched a messenger to the home of Hettie Lessels, summoning her to a meeting at a certain address in Atholl Crescent Lane.”

  “Atholl Crescent Lane…” Groves finally muttered, still staring ahead blankly. “The Mirror Society.”

  “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  But Groves did not answer. “So we head there now?”

  “That’s right, sir. It was agreed that the widow Lessels should proceed as instructed to the meeting, secretly accompanied by her police escort. At about the same time Mr. Lindsay left his own premises. They would be there by now, I should think.”

  “Together again…” Groves said, nodding somberly.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  But Groves fell silent.

  Outside, a torrential blast of rain was lashing the streets and surging in the gutters; sheets of lightning flashed around the Castle ramparts. They swung into Rutland Street with the cab wheels sluicing through gurgling streams, and swept past the square to the corner of Atholl Crescent Lane. Here they were greeted by a lantern-bearing constable in a streaming waterproof.

  “They’re inside, sir,” the man said, leaning into the cab. “Some sort of meeting.”

  “How many?” Groves asked.

  “Three, far as we can tell. Lessels, the one called Lindsay, and someone else.”

  Groves and Pringle looked down the winding lane, where three cabs were stationed in close proximity to a house with a glowing lamp case over its door. The cabdrivers were inside their vehicles, out of the rain, clearly instructed to hug the building closely.

  “Did you get a look at the third person?” Groves asked.

  The constable shrugged. “Couldn’t make him out too well, sir.”

  Groves eased himself out of the cab, straightened his back, and strolled as casually as possible down the lane, the cabmen all the time watching him suspiciously. Approaching the house with the radiant lamp, he judged himself most fortunate, for he was well acquainted with the couple that resided in the opposing residence—a clock maker and his wife who owed him favors (“The Hour of Judgment”)—and would certainly be admitted without hesitation. He rapped confidently on the door.

  Inside he quickly explained his requirements, whereupon he was cordially led to an upstairs storeroom filled with dismantled timepieces and directed to a window affording a splendid vantage point. Concealing himself behind the musty drapes, he first surveyed the cabs to ensure that he could not be seen, then looked into the brightly lit upper-level room across the lane, where he discerned three figures seated around a table, their features difficult to distinguish through the cascading rain.

  “Who owns the place?” Groves asked the retreating clock maker.

  “Henry Proudfoot, the solicitor. He rents it out.”

  “The upper floor?”

  “The upper floor’s been a club room for as long as I can remember.”

  “Used often?”

  “Very rarely.”

  Groves strained his eyes but could only make out a harried-looking woman, who would have to be Hettie Lessels, and a white-haired figure that was presumably Abraham Lindsay. The third party—a larger, smartly attired man—was clearly agitated, rising and walking around the room throwing up his arms, to which Lindsay appeared to have no response.

  Groves stood watching for endless minutes, his only company a black cat that curled around his legs persistently. He was convinced that he would recognize the third figure if he could steal a clear glimpse, but the rain continued pelting unabated, and he challenged himself not to lose patience. He assured himself that his strategy was sound. He was accelerating toward the triumphant moment when the whole city, the entire Lothian region, would bow before him in gratitude.

  Twenty minutes elapsed and the cat finally withdrew in frustration.

  Another fifteen minutes and finally it looked as though Hettie Lessels had risen and was dabbing her cheeks. The distinguished-looking man was drawing on a coat. Even Abraham Lindsay seemed to have roused himself.

  Wasting no time, Groves hastened down the stairs, slipped into the lane, and watched as the first cabman guided his vehicle as close as possible to the front door. There was a flash of light from inside the house and Groves glimpsed the Lessels woman almost leaping from the hallway into the open vehicle, which bounced with the sudden application of weight. The cab took off without delay and, as though executing a military maneuver, the second one immediately drew up in its place. The front door creaked open again.

  Groves stepped forward.

  The rain had eased, but a steamlike mist was curling off the cobbles.

  The distinguished-looking gentleman—an immense and florid figure in a spotless Chesterfield overcoat—bustled out the door and was in the process of stepping into the cab when his eyes alighted on the watching Inspector.

  Groves frowned, squinted, and his lips parted in surprise.

  The other man seemed momentarily seized by indecision, unable to decide if he should glare or skulk, and he froze fatally.

  Suspended in this awkward moment, grasping for a reaction and wreathed in mist, the two men only belatedly became aware of an advancing cacophony of hooves, a blast of withering air, and a hiss like that of a wounded buffalo.

  Their heads swung around, their eyes struggled to focus, but it was all too late.

  They had a mere second to register a great demonic juggernaut bursting from the fog and hurtling down the lane toward them.

  No reflex could possibly be adequate.

  In one continuous and strangely balletic movement the great crimson-skinned Beast swept past Groves, drove between the cab and the door, collected the distinguished-looking man in its talons, ripped out his gullet like chicken gizzards, tossed aside the body like a little girl’s doll, and careered up the dark lane before vanishing in a whorl of silk and steam.

  His heart smashing in his ears, Groves watched the horses rear up and the cabs peel away to reveal the Right Honorable Henry Bolan, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, flopping around like a dying sturgeon in the garish light of a bracketed lamp sprayed red with his own blood, as outside McKnight’s cottage Canavan watched the stars melt from the sky, and in her little room in Candlemaker Row Evelyn awoke screaming.

  Chapter XX

  DEEP IN THE GULF of Princes Street Gardens, Canavan held out his hand and felt a snowflake land and melt on his palm, the cool water draining through his fingers. He kicked at a ridge of black leaves and heard them squelch and scatter. His eyes swept from the colored lights of the street—red tobacconists’ lanterns, blue pharmacy lamps, illuminated Christmas baubles—and across the deep-set gardens to the arabesque of shining windows in the Old Town skyline. He saw flitting shadows and flapping washing. He smelled the tang of reeking chimneys. He heard lusty shouts and songs. He hunted for a single false note, a simple lapse in this meticulous reconstruction. But the overlay was so immaculately rendered and aligned that it was practically undetectable.

  He passed a bandstand where two vagrants huddled shivering in the cold. Were they real, or a demonic illusion? The train quitting Waverley Station and puffing eastward—made of atoms or dreams? The intonations of organ music from one of the High Street kirks—real sounds, or echoes reverberating in some vast cerebral chamber? The whole of Edinburgh itself—a genuine city, or a projection of a young lady’s unconscious?

  McKnight had always been on a headlong rush to the truth, and Canavan had always said that intuitive knowledge was the path to God…so why did he now find the truth so hard to accept? Everything pointed to it unwaveringly. The titles in McKnight’s library, the twin Bibles, their encounters with the Beast when they assumed Evelyn could not possibly be dreaming…

  It was too painful to believe, because it robbed him of a personal destiny, the one indulgence he had so
ught from God. Because it meant that he had not chosen martyrdom but had it assigned to him. Moreover, if he answered not to the Lord but to a tormented young woman, then what did it mean to feel pity for her? To love her? To sacrifice his life for her? What did it mean to have no identity?

  He watched his misted breath rise like chimney smoke into the darkness. He felt a cruel gust of wind sting at his cheeks. He could even taste mustard lingering from McKnight’s generous dinner. Never at any stage had he felt more alive. And yet he had never at any stage existed.

  “This whole library,” McKnight had said, gesturing around him, “the shelves and everything on them…all of this is simply a projection, a metaphor for her mind, her memory. This entire cottage is just a fantasy. The streets we walk in are immaculate re-creations of real streets. The air we breathe is the abstraction of dreams.” He was looking at Canavan directly, and, sensing the potential impact of the revelation, he put out a hand both to steady his companion and to draw him closer to the truth. “And you and I,” he whispered, “the two of us…I fear that we, too, are just figments of a truly extraordinary imagination.”

  At some indeterminate point, he said, in the darkness of concealed memories, Evelyn’s mind had been so violently assaulted, so deprived of natural outlets, that it had swollen internally, feasting on reason, knowledge, and all the senses of recognition, and assembled entire refracted cities and populations of archetypes more nuanced than living creatures. It had objectified its own aspects and assigned voices and faces to them, and harbored and nurtured them, and furnished them with lives, memories, and characteristics…and all this in the shadow world of the imagination, cut off from temporality, in a separate consciousness as vast as Edinburgh and as deep as hell.

  “The Beast himself comes from the underworld, from some subterranean realm we have only glimpsed, but at least he has the supernatural power to burst into reality, to scratch messages on walls, tear pages from Bibles, and strike men down in the street. We, I regret to say, have no such power. But then we were never conceived for such a purpose….”