by Matt Stanley
There must be some information with especial significance to him. The fact that there are three consecutive issues suggests a story that continues and develops. My first thought: a crime he has committed just prior to leaving shore and whose investigation he is anxious to follow. Yet I have been unable to find his name in any of the police columns. Nor have I seen a story continuing for three days that seems in any way connected with him.
My next thought: somebody sought to communicate with him through the public notices. A clever man would have worked out a code whereby three raincoats or half a ton of coal for sale could be read as a concealed message. But I have not noticed any curious patterns in these notices, which, for the most part, are repeated for a week or so.
Could it be that there is a story that concerns a family member? Or perhaps he simply has an urgent interest in that artic expedition, that terrible fire in Bristol, the trading price of wool or hessian. Was he interested in the sailing of some important vessel? The possibilities are endless.
I know I shouldn’t read so. But a minim of morphia calms my mind and I can apply all of my faculties to the task at hand. Patterns will eventually emerge from the sea of words. These are my Cuthite constellation maps. I read. I seek a line through the labyrinth.
A hint to the soporific… Paragon, Temiscounta, Chrysolite, Luna… Robert Tait, a youth whose countenance betrayed a mixture of guilt and fatuity.
Rotation of the earth made visible… The frontals are of rich silk of the ecclesiastical colours… Man boiled to death in vapour bath at Bains de la Samaritaine… Six Ojibeway Indians sang war songs.
The infuriated ox created no small consternation… Sailed 27th: Phoenician Sproat, Anemone, Ariel, Gitana, Sultana… The vegetarians congregated to assist in the almost mystic rites of their soiree… Aeronaut Madame Palmyre Garneron took her disastrous flight.
The aggregate number of eggs from hens, ducks and other poultry cannot be less than 1,500,000,000. Sudden death from excitement…
I have four hours of absolute security each night in which to discern the secret truth of Mr Adamson. An answer lies somewhere in those three papers…
TEN
The principal was first to see the cutter coming out today and has been a tyrant over the cleaning of the lantern. Mr Adamson and I have been hard at work this morning while the principal sat in the light-room feverishly reading over provision book and ship log, watch notes and weather charts.
The commissioner is to spend one night only in the lighthouse and conclude his business during the first afternoon. That will mean each of us sitting with him for an hour or so in his room and discussing all matters related to our work. Thereafter, he will apply himself to the records and compare them with notes he made on last year’s season. Has Ripsaw used more butter than it should? Is the lantern burning too much oil? How many pints of small beer have been consumed against the national average?
The principal has been especially careful with the oil measures. I watched him briefly in the oil store applying graduated gauging rods to each cistern and corroborating numbers with his log. He checked every measure – one gallon, half gallon, quarter gallon, pint and half pint – and even the drip-pan where they hang, ensuring that not a single drop has gone to waste. I thought of Mr Fowler measuring medicines by the drachm and grain and minim.
Mr Adamson joked, as we cleaned the brass, copper and glass, that the commissioner was visiting us solely to recall the principal to a shore posting. But for all his joking he, too, seems worried. We are in uniform and he has not complained once.
* * *
The commissioner is a corpulent gentleman with a bloated red face, an effusion of curly blond hair, and the gout. He limps and grunts as he limps. He arrived in a black humour because the sea had washed his lower trousers on landing and he had been nauseous for the whole trip. Climbing the steep steps between each floor caused him to breathe laboriously and pant “Lord. Oh, Lord!” at every trapdoor.
We had prepared a breakfast for the commissioner but his stomach would not permit him even to drink some tea. Instead, he retired with the principal to the commissioner’s room, there to discuss the order of business for the afternoon.
Mr Adamson continued nervous. For him, as for many lighthouse-men, the whole of worldly existence is a bipartite thing: tower and shore. The commissioner’s arrival had thrown that certainty into confusion and doubt. The shore had come to the tower. We may be under constant observation through the telescope’s glassy eye, but we can close the window shutters, avoid the lantern and burrow deeper out of sight. Not now. Now our covering rock is raised and we blink up at the deity that controls our fate.
The commissioner had been with the principal for perhaps half an hour when I decided to ascend to the library from the kitchen. It was on the stairway between bedrooms that I encountered Mr Adamson eavesdropping on the conversation.
“What are you doing?” I whispered.
He fixed me with a lethal glare and held a finger to his lips. I continued past him to the library.
I was not planning to read. It seemed to me that a better place to listen to the secret conversation might be the cupboard by the window in the library – a false cupboard that is in fact merely a door covering the space where a metal chimney passes up from the kitchen stove to the cupola. More importantly, the gap around this chimney passes through all bedrooms and the commissioner’s is directly below the library.
I opened the wainscot door and stood close by the chimney pipe. The voices were distorted but audible:
“And Assistant Keeper Adamson – he remains sober?”
“Yes, Commissioner. He is always very keen with his beer at supper, but there has been nothing of what occurred previously.”
“And his comportment, generally?”
“He can be difficult. Petulant. Childish. Antagonistic. Prior to the arrival of Mister Meakes, he did not speak to me for nearly two weeks. He is recalcitrant at every Sunday service. There was also an incident where he obliged Meakes to crank the lens for almost a whole watch – I suppose as some form of childish initiation. I have written reports on all of these situations.”
“Then this punitive posting has done little to calm him.”
“I fear not. It may have made him worse.”
“I see. I see. Well, I will talk to him now. Will you fetch him?”
I closed the cupboard door and went quickly to the marble-top table lest the principal appear at the door. I imagined Mr Adamson similarly dissimulating innocence.
I heard voices and the commissioner’s door closing. The principal descended to his room and I heard the distinctive creak of his partition. Still, I waited a few minutes before approaching the cupboard once again to listen.
“… Why you did not speak to Principal Bartholomew for two weeks?”
“He said two weeks? It may have been a day or two.”
“There is no difference, Mister Adamson. The keepers are required to communicate at all times. You know the regulations.”
“He’s a martinet.”
“He is your superior… But I see from your smirk that you think otherwise.”
“Is it not time for him to go ashore? He’s old.”
“That is not your decision. Rather, it is you who should be on shore. You are clearly unfitted for the work. Now that Mister Meakes is able to do his watches alone, you will return to shore with me tomorrow and a replacement will come out the same day.”
“Wait. Wait. I can’t go back to shore—”
“You can and you will.”
“You don’t understand…”
The creak of the principal’s partition signalled his approach and I was obliged to sit at the table once again. Somebody had left a volume there: the book of weather predictors. It was open at the chapter on cloud formations and four sooty etchings showed on-coming storms. There was an inky smudge on the left-hand exterior margin. A smudge, or an illustrated figure? A lurking, diminutive figure in silhouette.
> “Mister Meakes? The commissioner will see you now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I see you are studying cloud forms. Very good. Perhaps you have discerned that fog may be coming. A certain diffusion in the air. Let us hope not, for the commissioner’s sake.”
“Sir. The book was already open and…”
But he had turned and was descending. I followed him down to the commissioner’s room.
It was almost exactly as Mr Adamson had described: a bourgeois parlour or the reading room of a gentleman’s club (I imagine). There was indeed carpet on the floor and plaster mouldings in the vaulted roof. An oil painting of the lighthouse amid an angry sea hung over a bed with a carved headboard. And, yes, heavy damask curtains with lace trim framed each window. The air was blue with pipe smoke – something the principal normally forbade.
The man himself seemed larger when seated, his head resting on a ring of pale fat around his neck. His nose was bulbous, red and veiny, like something that might cling to the rock below us. He gestured to the other seat at his table and I sat.
“Mister Meakes. I have heard commendable things about your apprenticeship so far at Ripsaw. You are a quick study and reliable. These are qualities to be prized in the lighthouse service.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He turned and took a sheaf of papers from a leather case on the bed, grunting as he did so. He put on a pair of half-moon glasses and squinted at a page, more for theatrical effect, I thought, than to remind himself of anything.
“Nevertheless, there a couple of irregularities in your application that we need to address.”
“Irregularities, sir?”
“Indeed. They primarily concern your recommender: Mister Fowler. Your paternal uncle, I understand.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“Are you aware of the recent unfortunate circumstances concerning Mister Fowler?”
“No, sir… May I ask what circumstances?”
“Then, forgive me. I’m afraid I must be the bearer of grievous news. Mister Fowler has been found dead.”
His expression was one of sympathy, but he was also watching me quite carefully.
“Oh! Dead? But how? He was the healthiest man I knew!”
“Apparently, he was murdered: bludgeoned about the head, partially dismembered and bundled into a seaman’s chest that was found half-submerged in the river less than half a mile from his home.”
“Oh! Oh! It is horrible…”
“One of his patients is suspected. I understand that some of them are prone to violent outbursts. A man called Tibbotson was found to have a bloodied cudgel concealed in his bed.”
“Oh! Mister Fowler…” I could barely speak for weeping.
The commissioner seemed caught between his impulse to console and the matter at hand. The latter was victorious.
“It’s just that… Well, the letter he sent in reply to our questions about your character seems to be dated after he must have died. Our investigator has discerned that Mister Fowler had been missing for some days before the discovery of his body. Can you explain how that might have happened?”
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir. It is difficult to think… This news is… Might not he have written the wrong date in error? It is easily done. A busy man as he was… Constantly pulled away from his desk for some emergency or other…”
“It is possible, of course. But you understand: these are important documents. The Commission does not permit just any fellow to enter the service.”
“I understand it, sir. And I am grateful to have been chosen. I hope my work here shows my suitability for the position.”
He was no fool, the commissioner. He continued to watch me carefully.
“Your uncle was a physician. Is that right?”
“Yes, sir, and very well respected… Forgive me my emotional state. He wrote a book.”
“And he kept a house for the insane.”
“No sir. His was a house for gentlemen with nervous complaints.”
He steepled his fingers. “I fear I cannot see a difference.”
“Well, sir, a gentleman with a nervous complaint retains the power to manage himself personally, professionally and domestically. He may have problems, but he can usually control how he appears or behaves. He may seem odd sometimes, but on the whole is not a danger to others. The insane, however, can make no such choice. They are victims of their own erratic, uncontrollable and usually unwitting behaviour. A mental illness is properly an illness of the mind, but insanity is an infirmity of the brain. The former may be cured, the latter rarely so.”
He smiled then, as if he had caught me in a lie.
“You seem to know a lot about it, Mister Meakes.”
“I was very close to my uncle.”
“Indeed, you lived with him – in this house for eccentrics?”
“After the death of my parents. Yes, sir. But adjacent to the house. Not with his gentlemen patients.”
“It is interesting.” He leaned back. “Your distinction between the eccentric and the mad is a fine one. By your definition, many men among us could be said to have nervous complaints.”
“That is true, sir. Sufferers are often the students of language or science. They are the imaginative, the speculative, the extravagant. They are the amative, the unoccupied, the deserted, the onanistic and the oppressed. The nervous man typically has a high degree of mental capability, though he is easily excited or distracted.”
“And how does one treat such a fellow, to cure him?”
“There are many ways, sir – some of them barbaric. Restraints, cold showers, beatings. Solitary incarceration. But these are not the work of the modern physician. Mister Fowler sought to diminish excitability and irritability – to avoid extravagant ecstasies such as music or theatrical performances. His answer lay in seclusion, tranquillity, muscular exertion and habitual activity. If the mind is prone to excessive activity, we must distract or disperse that activity by other means. A man must be occupied whenever possible – not allowed to spend too much time inside his own thoughts, nor overstimulated by things around him.”
“And would you say that a lighthouse-man’s duties might fulfil these requirements for seclusion, habitual activity or occupation?”
“It rather depends on the individual case. I suppose it might. But the physician would have to know the man and approve.”
“As your uncle approved you?”
“Indeed, he approved me for this position, sir. But I was never a patient in my uncle’s house.”
He looked at me over the top of his half-moon spectacles. “I don’t believe I have suggested as much. Tell me about your muriate of morphia.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“You have a bottle of such medicine here with you in the lighthouse. Why?”
Mr Adamson. The snake. The Judas. So he had been stealing my morphia! He must have tried to bargain for his own position with this illicit knowledge.
“It helps me sleep, sir.”
“Are you aware that Commission regulations forbid possession of all intoxicants and soporifics?”
“I know that spirits are prohibited, sir.”
“Was this substance given to you by your uncle?”
“He suggested it, sir.”
“As a treatment?”
“No, sir. As an aid to sleep.”
“Sleep is not your purpose here, Mister Meakes. We need you to be alert and observant during the watch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will take that bottle of morphia. Do you have it with you now, or will you fetch it from your room?”
“I have it, sir.” I handed him the bottle.
He looked at it, opened it, sniffed it, and put it on the table between us: my guilt exemplified.
I thought about telling the commissioner how Mr Adamson had also been taking the morphia and was thus as culpable as I. But he would soon be leaving the lighthouse. Would the same fate now be mine?
“Yo
u have the makings of a fine keeper, Mister Meakes.”
“I think so, sir.”
“But I must tell you that our investigations will continue. The date on Mister Fowler’s letter casts everything in doubt. Our investigator will go over all of the details of your application with a fine comb. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If there is anything you would like to tell me now, it would be better for you later, should any further irregularities come to light.”
“I can think of no irregularities, sir. Nor do I understand the confusion with the date. I believe I was not with my uncle when he received the letter. I stayed in London after my meeting at the Commission.”
He nodded. “We will talk again. It may be before your next posting at a catoptric house, or when you return to shore. I do not anticipate visiting Ripsaw again until the summer.”
“Yes, sir. And my apologies, sir, about the morphia.”
Another nod. He stood with a grunt. “And now I must make my tour of the house with Principal Bartholomew. I leave you to your liberty.”
I stood also. For a moment I considered whether this was my opportunity to tell him about the words on the privy wall, or Mr Adamson’s secret cache of newspapers, or Mr Spencer’s curious log entry, but such things suddenly had a dubious ring to them. But my impulse was to keep my counsel and to continue with my work. That was the best way to proceed. That’s what Mr Fowler would have suggested, God rest his soul.
ELEVEN
The commissioner may be with us for longer because the fog now envelops Ripsaw quite completely. The principal was right. I watched its approach through the library windows, creeping slowly from the open sea – a colossal wave of milky vapour. We are now imbosomed without firmament; uncertain which, in ocean or in air.
It is a curious sensation to look out and see nothing but white wraiths swirling and inveigling about the column. We perceive nothing and cannot be perceived, neither from shore nor from the sea. Two hours remain before dusk but the principal has set the fog bells going and their periodic toll is a timid, tinny noise amid the muffling fog. We will soon light the lamp, though its beam will be reflected and baffled by the fog – no more effective than a knife cutting smoke.