by Matt Stanley
I have been reading the book by Mr Allan Poe, a strange, dark tale on which I have not been able to concentrate fully. I think about the absence of my morphia. Mr Fowler did tell me it was a temporary solution: a means of transition. He said it was not strictly necessary – merely an aid. With a clear mind and an avoidance of agitation, I should be able to sleep perfectly well without it.
I think, too, about Mr Adamson’s betrayal. His removal from the lighthouse ought to satisfy me, but it seems he will not be leaving quite yet. Principal Bartholomew believes the fog will continue into tomorrow, meaning the cutter can’t come out. We are thus in a condition of hiatus here. The usual patterns have been disturbed. The commissioner’s presence has created an imbalance and the mood inside the house is altered.
The principal, too, seems preoccupied. I wonder if the Commission has requested that he finally returns to shore as Mr Adamson had suggested to me that first morning – away from his weather charts, his storm-tube, his leeches and his anemometer. He has spent years accumulating data in this place that, for him, is one great instrument. He knows the earth beneath his feet will be his undoing.
* * *
The first watch was mine and the vista from the lantern was phantasmic. What is usually a crystal frame of sky and sea had been transformed into a case of pale light – white in every aspect, pressing, breathing, against the panes. There was no sense of height or space or distance. The house seemed weightless, airborne. Meanwhile, the suffocating vapour acted on the atmosphere in such a way that the reef was sometimes silent, sometimes echoing spectrally about the tower like someone calling from inaudible distance. The perpetual birds had abandoned us entirely.
The effect inside the lens was yet more disorienting. White magnified. White distilled. White refracted. One had to circle the lamp apparatus only once to lose all sense of compass points.
It was inside the lens, lighting the lamp, that I first became aware of the shadow. Initially, I took it merely for the distortion of the astragals amid concentric rings of glass. But then I noted it was moving even if I was not, always at the periphery of my vision. I turned and it was gone. I focused on the wicks and it flitted darkly about the lantern.
I remembered Mr Spencer’s log entry. He had seen something like a figure, but on the balcony rather than in the lantern.
And there it was again. And again.
Whenever I turned to see it, it was gone.
I entered the lantern space around the lens and waited. Nothing. Nothing but the moving disc of light illuminating galactic dusk.
“Oh!”
I started as the shadow erupted from the fog before my very face. It was a great tawny owl, its wings spread wide, its talons open. It gripped the pane’s exterior and perched there uneasily, settling itself, its beak tapping gently at the glass. Evidently, it had been caught amid the fog and lost its bearings.
It gazed upon me with its jet-black eyes. A large face. An old man’s face. It seemed to want to communicate with me, if only I could interpret the fixity of its stare. It had some urgent message for me. But what should I make of this fabled animal’s many contradictions? Presager of death. Protector. Archetype of wisdom and foresight. There was something in its manner… A memory of a man I’d known…
“Mister Meakes? Are you aloft?”
The commissioner.
“Yes, sir. In the lantern. I will come down.”
He was panting in the light-room, leaning against the table.
“Is everything all right, sir?”
“Yes, yes. Though it seems I may not be leaving tomorrow if this fog persists.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought I would go out on the balcony. My doctor tells me I should walk to alleviate my gout. I’m not sure I believe him, but…”
“Very well, sir. I will be here in the light-room for another three hours.”
He took out his pipe and went to the balcony door, leaving it ajar. There was no wind at all so I did not bolt it in place. Moments later, I smelled his tobacco.
I went back to the lantern but the owl was gone. I waited for the light to beckon it again, but there was nothing – only the occasional shadow flitting through the fog. Perhaps it would return. I leaned against the panes and took out my book: The Collected Shakespeare. Macbeth.
It was the owl that shrieked, that fatal bellman, I read, Which gives the stern’st good-night. The obscure bird / clamoured the livelong night. / Some say, the earth was feverous and did shake.
Regicide. Good King Duncan visits Macbeth’s castle as a guest, bestowing gifts and garlands, and is slain without pity in his bedchamber. Macbeth’s wife admonishes his horror: The sleeping and the dead / Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil.
I must have read the whole play by the time Mr Adamson came to relieve me. He was his jovial self.
“Meakes? Where are you?”
“Above. In the lantern.”
“Well, come down. I don’t know why I bother if they’re going to take me back to shore. I might as well stay in bed.”
“I suppose so.”
“You’re happy, aren’t you? Admit it.”
“I should tell you, perhaps, that the commissioner is on the balcony. He went out to smoke and to move his foot, he said.”
“He’s out there now?”
I nodded.
“Well, I am here. You are relieved. Go to bed or whatever you do with yourself.”
I returned my book to the library and went to the bedroom, grateful that it was a quiet night without waves or birds to prevent my rest. It was also an opportunity to continue studying the hidden newspapers for whatever clue they held.
So much information! If a savage from some mid-Pacific isle should find himself in possession of The Times or The Penny Illustrated News, what must he think of a culture that produced so many words each day? A newspaper is like a net that catches everything with indiscriminate greed, from the cost of coffee to the latest accident. There is enough to send a rational man insane if he were to consider every piece of information significant.
Stout doeskin trousers. Beaver paletots. Rich Genoa vest. Inn to let, Whitsunday next. Very fine Westphalian hams, superior to those shipped at Rotterdam. Rostok, 24th – Tallow dull and low.
Peas, white. Flour, best. Ditto, feed. Messrs Lumsden, Gildawie and Urquhart.
Some wretch with a diabolical intention placed a trunk of workmen’s tools on the railway lines. Havre, 5th – cotton brisk…
* * *
I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke on the floor to the light-room whistle. It was blowing in my room and then in the principal’s room. Some emergency must have occurred. I took my watch-cloak from its hook and ascended. The principal was already ahead of me on the stairs.
“He’s gone,” said Mr Adamson. “The commissioner has vanished.”
He appeared nervous and was perspiring, though the light-room was always somewhat chill from the open windows.
“Explain,” said Principal Bartholomew.
“Meakes said he was out on the balcony smoking, but when I went out there for a… To take a stroll, there was no sign of him.”
“Are you sure you didn’t miss him in the fog?” said the principal. “It is as dense as I’ve ever seen it.”
Mr Adamson scowled. “Not so dense I’d miss a man of his size in so small a perimeter.”
“And he did not come in from the balcony at any time?”
“That’s what I’m saying. Unless Meakes is lying…”
“He came up on my watch and went out to smoke,” I said. “He was still outside when Mister Adamson relieved me.”
“Very well. Very well. We will go out on the balcony. I will take the weather side, you the lee side, Mister Meakes. We will circle to enter the same door we exited. You remain right here, Mister Adamson.”
The fog was indeed exceptionally thick, curling lazily and cold on the skin. One could barely see the railing for the milky
opacity of it. I walked slowly with my arms outstretched, shuffling my feet over the hob-nailed surface. The fog embraced me and passed through my open fingers. But there was no sign of the commissioner.
“Is it possible,” said the principal, “that he returned from the balcony and you simply didn’t notice? Perhaps you were reading, Mister Meakes. Perhaps you were sleeping, Mister Adamson.”
“I resent that implication,” said Adamson.
“I am sure not,” I said. “The commissioner tended to pant and grunt. I would have noticed.”
“Then there is nothing to do but search the house,” said the principal. “I feel sure he is here somewhere.”
We descended together. The library was empty. The commissioner’s bedroom also was empty, though the door was open. A lamp was lighted within and all appeared normal.
The principal entered his bedroom alone and returned within a moment to say that it was empty. The same was true of mine and Mr Adamson’s.
I thought the kitchen was a likely contender, but it, too, held nobody and no sign. The provision store: empty. The coal and oil store: empty.
We three stood finally in the cold dungeon of the water store. It could not be clearer: the commissioner was not inside Ripsaw lighthouse. The principal was paler than usual.
“The main door?” said Mr Adamson. “Maybe he wanted to… I don’t know, look at the sea?”
We opened the first door and passed into the vestibule. We unbolted the great exterior door and beheld a wall of shifting fog.
“Commissioner!” called Mr Adamson.
“Commissioner!” called Principal Bartholomew.
There was a moan: a low and mournful thing, as if a man was lying broken on the reef. There was a groan: half sigh, half expression of pure hopelessness. There was a bubbling snuffle: the last throes of a man slowly drowning face-down in a rock pool.
The sounds seemed to come from the air rather than the sea – spirits caught and lost in aether. After reading Macbeth, I felt the black chill of witchcraft breathing at my neck. Would the gore-dripping commissioner’s head appear bobbing at our feet?
“That sound. It is his ghost!” I said, unwittingly.
“No, Meakes,” said the principal. “That is the seals’ call.”
“But where is the commissioner?”
“We must assume he has fallen from the balcony,” said the principal. “The boat will come tomorrow morning to collect him. I will have to write a report.”
He appeared as horror-stricken as the Thane of Glamis (now of Cawdor). In the fog’s pallid luminescence, we three might have been a coven casting spells. The great lighthouse tower was a massive shadow rearing upwards, we at its darkest extremity.
TWELVE
I have slept hardly a wink for thinking about the commissioner’s disappearance. There is a tense and brittle atmosphere within the house. Principal Bartholomew keeps saying, “There will be dire consequences. There will be dire consequences.”
The search did not end last night. Like a confused old relative who pats his pockets again and again for a tobacco pouch that is not there, we went up and down the lighthouse in the futile hope of finding that corpulent man. When one has looked in all of the places something should be, one has no choice but to look where it should not be. Sherlock Holmes said something along those lines. This morning, I caught Mr Adamson peering into a kitchen cupboard and we both recognised the absurdity.
We agreed that as soon as the light permitted, and if the fog had lifted, we would scan the reef with telescopes for any sign of the commissioner. Such a thought was ridiculous, of course. The scouring tides would not permit even his weight to remain atop the rocks.
Well, the fog has indeed cleared and the sea is a field of lead. The three of us have been circling the balcony in vain. Principle Bartholomew has not raised the signal ball, indicating that all is not well at the house. It was unnecessary. The cutter is coming out regardless to collect the commissioner. We watch it approach even now. Principal Bartholomew knows he will have to tell them what has happened.
* * *
Mr Adamson and I descended the ladder to secure the cutter’s ropes.
“Where is the commissioner?” called the skipper from the foredeck.
“He is not here,” said the principal at the door.
“What do you mean?”
“He has vanished. We… We cannot find him in the lighthouse.”
“Vanished? Did you say vanished?”
“He has gone. Perhaps he fell…”
The skipper turned and spoke to one of his crew. It seemed as if he was corroborating what he thought he had heard.
“The commissioner is dead?” he called, finally.
“I cannot say… We cannot find him. We must assume…”
Glances were exchanged. The first mate approached the skipper and said something we couldn’t hear. The skipper nodded.
“The commissioner’s documents,” he called. “A leather case. Can you fetch it?”
“I will go!”
We waited, Mr Adamson and I, as the principal ascended to the commissioner’s room. The boat rocked. The reef hissed and gurgled. The straining ropes dripped. We felt the accusing stares of the crew upon us – we who had accepted the esteemed guest into our house and carelessly lost him to the void.
At the same time, we knew what details were in that leather case: my muriate of morphia; Mr Adamson’s return to land; whatever it was that had made the principal so worried. Even if the commissioner did not return, his verdicts would. Then another cutter would come at the first opportunity with replacements and retribution.
I am sure we thought the same: a keeper may be lost like a handkerchief or an umbrella. A slip from the rocks. A gust from the balcony. Asphyxiation in the privy. Such things happen in the lighthouse service. But a commissioner? That cannot happen. That must entail an investigation and penalties.
The principal appeared at the door. There was a hectic cast to his face. His white hair was stuck to his forehead with perspiration.
“The case?” called the skipper.
“I can’t find it. It’s not in his room. It is not anywhere. Perhaps he had it with him when…”
The skipper shrugged. He had done his job. Now the Commission would take up the matter. The headquarters in London and Edinburgh would become involved. Our names would be discussed in chambers.
But the light had to keep burning. That was the first rule. We would have to stay at the house until a solution was found. The light was our sanctuary. It needed us and, for the time being, we needed it.
* * *
“Where is that case?” said the principal.
We were in the library. The cutter was still visible between the lighthouse and the shore.
“He must have had it with him,” said Mr Adamson.
“Mister Meakes?” said the principal.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did the commissioner have his case with him when he arrived in the light-room last night?”
“No, sir. I am sure he would not have been able to climb the stairs with it. I believe Mister Adamson carried it when the Commissioner first arrived at the house.”
“That’s true. I did.”
“Very well. Then there is but a single conclusion: one of you two took it.”
“What?” said Mr Adamson.
“Sir… I can assure you—”
“Mister Meakes – you had an opportunity to enter the commissioner’s room after your watch. He left his door unlocked. Mister Adamson – you had an opportunity to take the case when I was on my watch.”
“And you?” said Mr Adamson. “What were you doing while we two were on our watches?”
“I am the principal of this house—”
“Where were you?”
“—and I will not have my integrity questioned by you, Mister Adamson.”
“Then let us consider motive if integrity is not the question. Perhaps the commissioner wanted you to return to s
hore—”
“I will not discuss the private matter of my meeting with him.”
“And you don’t want to return to shore duty. Or to retire.”
“So… So what do you suggest happened, Mister Adamson? That I took his case and tossed it out of the window? Why? He could simply have rewritten his notes. I had no clue that he had gone missing. That happened on your watches. Hence, there was no advantage in my taking the case.”
“Who says it was taken while the commissioner was aloft?” said Mr Adamson.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who’s to say that you didn’t take the case after his disappearance was discovered? We were looking for his body when we searched the house – not for his case. In the confusion, you had many opportunities to dispose of his notes. Or perhaps it occurred to you to hide them when you went up to get them for the skipper.”
“And you, Mister Adamson? What did those notes say about your situation?”
“That’s a confidential matter.”
“No, it is not. As Principal of this lighthouse, I had to countersign the commissioner’s recommendation that you be taken to shore as soon as a replacement could come and that you be released from the lighthouse service as someone entirely unfitted for the responsibility.”
“What about him?” said Mr Adamson, jerking a thumb at me. “He’s very quiet all of a sudden. What did the commissioner write about him?”
“He… Well, he said he was pleased with my work,” I said.
“He was asking questions about your family. He had his suspicions.”
“You were listening at the door?” I said.
Principal Bartholomew turned fully to Mr Adamson. “Or you read about it in the notes. Either way, you have now incriminated yourself.”
“He had illicit morphia,” said Mr Adamson. “I discovered it and told the commissioner. I didn’t read about that in any notes. I know it for a fact.”