Gibbous House

by Ewan Lawrie

  I rose from my chair. Maccabi did the same, but seemed momentarily torn. We made our courtesies to Miss Pardoner and, as we turned to leave, I remarked that the professor was on the dining-room table, a foot-stamping rage worthy of the flax-spinning dwarf in the tale by the Brothers Grimm.

  Of course, liquidating assets was not simply done. I had to recover the notarised papers from my room. The lists of effects were generally arranged under headings of whichever room they might be in, but that was not to say that some item had not been moved. Therefore, however methodical we might have been, there was nothing for it but to check each item we inspected against the list.

  There were not a few disappointments arrived at, despite the promise of these pages. A sixteenth-century chest bearing some heraldic devices was listed as being in the professor’s chamber, whilst it plainly was not. On discovering it, I found it contained a mountain of male intimate apparel in less-than-pristine condition. Maccabi had high hopes of a pair of Sheraton satinwood chairs, until these items were to be found beneath ‘Kettles, large, copper, two’ on page sixteen of the kitchen inventory.

  At last we came upon an item that was not listed as being in any location in the house: a French commode. The curves were beautiful, and the whole was veneered in a quite delightful Japanese lacquer. Despite my suspicion that its designer might well have been Van Risamburgh, it would only have fetched, at best, a dozen guineas – were we even able to find a buyer.

  Far more gratifying was the discovery of a drawerful of sovereigns beneath those containing paper and gimcrack jewellery.

  ‘Not a word, Maccabi.’

  ‘Not a word, Mr Moffat.’

  I gestured to him to fill his pockets and began to do likewise. On the arrival of Mrs Gonderthwaite in the atrium, I closed the drawer as seemly as I could manage. She seemed more animated than I had ever seen her, nostrils flaring to such an extent that they seemed gaping voids quite disproportionate to the rest of her face.

  ‘Mr Moffat,’ she enunciated carefully, voice taut as a piano string, ‘there are two’ – the hesitation was deliberate, but not one of deliberation – ‘persons in the kitchen. They claim to be in employment here. Is it really possible that these are the new servants you mentioned?’

  At the last her voice seemed to rise above high-C.

  ‘It is no idle claim, madam. I would have thought you glad of the help. Put the woman to work and send the man through to us.’

  Although plainly less than overjoyed by the prospect of these subordinates, her anger did not affect her gait. The woman merely floated off as she always did, borne aloft this time on a cloud of disapproval.

  It was a matter of more moments than strictly necessary before the dull-wit James Bill made his appearance. I indicated to the two of them to transport the commode to the exterior. Even though as many sovereigns again as had made their way into pockets various remained within, James Bill lifted it with tremendous ease and a cacophonous rattle of coins. It fell to me to open the door while Maccabi looked on, gape-mouthed as a dolt.

  ‘Maccabi, a cart if we have such a thing, something larger than the chaise if not.’

  He went, mouth still lolling, to the rear and through the kitchen to the outbuildings.

  I stood outside with James Bill. There was little prospect of, or point in, conversation. Thankfully, Maccabi was relatively swift to return, particularly so in light of the conveyance on which he did so.

  The cart’s two wheels had not the benefit of spokes or iron rims. The wood was rough and unfinished and I doubted not that the bench seat to the front had already inflicted grievous wounds on Maccabi’s posterior. The taciturn Bill clearly had more sense than I had given him credit for, since he manhandled, although it were not so strenuous, the commode into the rear of the cart.

  ‘The gatehouse, Maccabi,’ I said.

  He gave me a quizzical look and I answered it so. ‘Indeed, no, I prefer to walk.’

  It was a measure of quite how poorly the vehicle was made that I was waiting at the side door of the gatehouse ere Maccabi brought it to a halt in front of me. Again, James Bill set to without prompt and the commode was as quickly on the ground as Maccabi. The door was not locked. I pushed it open and made for the door behind which Heathfield Cadwallader kept his rigid vigil. The key was yet in the lock so I turned it and beckoned the two of them to follow me. It required the two of them to manœuvre the piece through the narrow door. As it happened, Maccabi was to the fore, and was entering the room with his back to its contents. A question which had been in my mind for some time was answered by the thud as Maccabi fell to the floorboards in a dead faint.

  Looking quickly around the room, I noted the same plain furnishings as before; it seemed the room had remained undisturbed since I had stumbled upon Heathfield Cadwallader. I opened the sovereign drawer in the commode, handed one to James Bill and began removing the remainder to the drawers beside the chair in which Cadwallader’s effigy had been enthroned.

  James Bill continued worrying at the gold coin with his blackish teeth for a few moments before secreting it in a pocket. The commode drawer was empty at last and I turned to look at the inert form of Maccabi. It was clear he would soon run to the jowly dissipation that was oft the fate of large-framed, golden-locked fellows, for with his physiognomy in relaxed state the firm jaw-line hinted at an incipient surrender to gravity. On my giving him a nudge with a toe of my boot, he began at last to stir.

  Bolting upright, he seemed fit to swoon once again, on sight of Cadwallader.

  ‘It’s... it’s... ’ he spluttered.

  ‘Indeed it is. For ever preserved in his youthful glory,’ I said.

  He would never look older. Something in the preser-vation process had tanned his hide to leather, making it seem like the dried skin of a bat’s wing. His head appeared as devoid of life as those of the wax-figures on display in Baker Street.

  ‘Come on, Maccabi, there are matters to attend to at the house,’ I said, handing him up and propelling him through the door of Cadwallader’s sanctum.

  On locking the door behind us, I pocketed the key, where it gave a satisfying clink against an unknown amount of gold coin.

  Maccabi wisely decided to convey to James Bill that it had fallen to him to drive the cart back to wherever it had come from. So Maccabi and I set off on foot in a silence conspiratorial, if not companionable. Nevertheless, he was not long comfortable in it, and soon addressed me more civilly, and indeed less formally, than at any previous time. ‘Moffat, what manner of thing was it? It looked like him, but... ’

  His voice fell away, and it was clear that either the fellow had been completely oblivious to Cadwallader’s fate, or he should have been making his fortune at the City of London Theatre in Bishopsgate.

  ‘Well you know what happened, Jedediah. Are there not hundreds of other specimens of this handiwork in the house?’

  It was a little cruel, true, to badger him thus, but I simply could not believe that he was unaware that the professor was more than a malevolent midget. He made no reply and the glum look that settled on his features had the same effect as his earlier unconsciousness.

  We were met at the door by Miss Pardoner. There was a high colour in her cheeks and her breath came shortly. ‘Oh! Jedediah!’ she exclaimed. ‘The professor would like to see you, in the withdrawing room.’

  This was most interesting, because the withdrawing room was the very room I had been unable to find since arriving at the house. Short of climbing through the window from the outside, I could see no way of penetrating its mysteries – and I worried that since I could not find my way into it from the interior, I would no more be able to leave it. Besides, I did not wish to break any more expensive glass panes than absolutely necessary.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘I should like to speak with the professor.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Moffat, he was most explicit, Jedediah.’ Miss Pardoner seemed quite agitated.

  ‘May I not go where I will in my own proper
ty?’

  I did not raise my voice, although I would have been quite justified in doing so.

  ‘Please, Mr Moffat, I must speak with you, alone.’ She stamped a foot and, like most coquettish affectations, it did not suit her.

  This remark put a quite different complexion on the matter, as did the dark looks that Maccabi darted at myself and the young lady as he turned out of the furniture-crowded atrium into the dining room and beyond.

  With her almost customary presumption, Miss Pardoner seized my arm and dragged us both to my left, toward a phalanx of furnishings that obscured any possible entry to the disused – save by the felines – west wing. Slightly to the right of the centre of the wall stood an armoire large enough to house the clothing of a giant. It too had been an object of interest to me when Maccabi and I perused the list of entailment. Lighter in colour than mahogany, it nevertheless boasted that noble wood’s fulgent appearance. Each door was adorned with a finely turned handle, one of which Miss Pardoner laid hold of in a savage manner and pulled toward herself with equal ferocity. She entered the gigantic closet, dragging me behind her.

  Imagine my disappointment when we immediately exited the rear of this wardrobe in like manner to find ourselves confronted with the door to the west wing. She turned to me. ‘Mr Moffat, it is not pleasant, and the odour is unfeasibly strong, but it is the only way... ’

  ‘To ensure we are undisturbed and safe in confidentiality?’ I laughed and she gave me a look of pity before leading me into the disused part of the house.

  I had been low and mean in Cheapside; I had been in the company of pure-finders, sewer-hunters and the mud-larks of the Thames, but never had I suffered an assault on my olfactory organ such as was effected by the crossing of that threshold. Still worse, no sooner had we set foot in the first room – and it was not obvious what the purpose of this room might be – than a hissing and spitting began, as though a herd of cattle were roasting on a hundred broaches.

  My understanding of what my ward had to tell me was not helped by her insistence on whispering, although there were none to hear but several hundred cats. What I did glean led me to believe that the cats were not, in fact, listening. I failed to hear a single one of them laugh.

  It was about my vellum parchments. The letters alongside my name that Ellen had begun to decipher earlier were symbols from the Kabbala, as understood by a group she referred to as the Order of the Rosy Cross: this much I knew already.

  The other sheet was more phantastical still; it referred to an interpretation by John Dee of the meaning of both V.I.T.R.I.O.L.V.M. and The Chymical Wedding. The writer intimated that the reanimation of corpses was not only possible but might even have been achieved. Furthermore, the text hinted that a party so resurrected might enjoy remarkable longevity. The name of a certain Comte de St Germain was mentioned in this context. I recalled that he had been a cause célèbre in London a century ago. I remembered from Giacomo Casanova’s memoirs that he had thought the Comte ‘The King of Imposters and Quacks’, who had once claimed the ability to melt diamonds. There seemed to be much from this second sheet indeed. I admit I was brought up short by Galvani and his experiments on animal electricity. Later, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was mentioned as though it were not a work of the most unlikely fiction. The resurrection of Osiris and the book of Thoth merited a note in the margin,

  ‘Reassembly of parts? Impossible, there must be another way.’

  I began to think that the professor’s plans for me might mean more inconvenience than I thought, but since I was not entirely sure of the extent of Miss Pardoner’s involvement in the matter I merely said, ‘Really, Ellen, I have never heard such nonsense in my life.’ The laugh escaped from my lips despite the seriousness of her demeanour.

  ‘What is it that you think he does here, Mr Moffat?’

  Quite simply, I had to confess that I had not the slight-est idea.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The young woman’s eyes were watering quite as much as my own. I had been hoping that we were about to retrace our steps and leave through the Pantagruelian wardrobe. However, Miss Pardoner broached a new subject. ‘About the Madwoman,’ she said.

  ‘Madwoman?’ I asked, surprised by this rare incidence of the butterfly mind. In my experience, many women were surprised that we males were quite unable to read their minds or make similar grand leaps of intuition, when they themselves possessed so great a talent for the association of incongruous ideas. She had hitherto seemed above such things.

  ‘The woman in the House of Correction!’ Again that stamp of the foot was unconvincing.

  ‘What about her?’

  It was difficult to maintain elocutory standards while attempting not to breathe. Consequently, Miss Pardoner obliged me to repeat myself before replying, ‘She worked here, before.’ Her eyes glittered in the darkling gloom and, I suspected, not entirely due to the feline stench.’

  ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘The usual thing, was it?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes, quite usual. The professor dealt with it.’ A sniff escaped her.

  ‘Well, a satisfactory ending, I would have thought.’

  ‘She went quite mad, began to carry a wax doll, a hideous thing, it looked as though it had been fifty years in an attic. It was a representation of a newborn infant. She took it with her everywhere, heaven knows whence it came, perhaps it formed some part of the Collection.’

  She stopped for an understandably short breath. ‘She refused to work, began following Jedediah wherever he went, demanding that he acknowledge his child. Eventually, a ruby ring was found amongst her effects in her room. The professor melted the doll down for candles.’

  ‘And you feel sorry for her?’ I asked.

  ‘Whatever for? The ring was mine, Mr Moffat.’

  At last we escaped the rank atmosphere of the west wing. I believed the best solution would have been a significant number of faggots and some judiciously applied lucifer matches. It was probable that the stench clung to my new clothes and I believed I would not readily forgive my ward for it. We went swiftly to the library; I was in need of drink to clear the smell from my nostrils.

  The professor and Maccabi were doubtless still about their business in the withdrawing room.

  I turned to Miss Pardoner. ‘Some of the professor’s green fairy?’

  ‘Yes, even that would taste better,’ she retorted.

  ‘Yes, it might, but it would be a damned close thing. I have a better idea.’

  I consulted the cardinal’s learned work on the Forty Virtues once more and withdrew the dwindling supply of Armagnac from its hiding place.

  The professor seemed to be possessed of supra-natural ability to sniff out a spirit almost ere the cork was drawn, since he and Maccabi appeared before the first drop was poured into the glass.

  ‘Marvellous, marvellous, just the thing!’ he said, and he hurried with his peculiar gait to furnish his companion and himself with suitable vessels. Resignedly, I charged the extra two glasses and was fortunate to husband the liquid sufficiently well to cover the bottom of my own.

  I had remained standing, as much to keep the diminutive professor at a disadvantage as to allow such air as was circulating in the library to dissipate the rank stench of the west wing. As ever, the dwarf affected not to notice, although I noted his chest seemed to inflate to improbable proportions.

  ‘There are additions to our household,’ I informed the professor, although surely Maccabi had told him.

  Before he could answer, there was the sound of scrambling along the flooring. Clearly Job’s canine habits encompassed the full range of traits; his hair was sticking up at the rear like the ruff of an angered setter and the manner of his stretching, whilst still on all fours, suggested he had slept in the sunlit parts of the library for the entire afternoon.

  Maccabi looked on aghast as Job came to heel at my side. The professor, however, leaned over the boy and patted his head. Job snarled and growled at him. My admonitory ‘Down, boy!�
� might have been more forceful, but my heart was not in it. Besides, it was possible that the odour of felines was responsible for the dog-boy’s tetchiness.

  ‘How shall we pay?’ asked the professor.

  ‘That is not your concern, not now,’ I replied.

  The dwarf moved a hand across his face. I noticed a patch of skin on the back of it, furfuraceous, as though he had spilled some dangerous fluid and had not made sufficient haste to wipe it away.

  ‘And yourself, Professor, what diversions have you enjoyed in my absence?’ My eyes were still on the hand, now fiddling with his collar.

  ‘Diversions? My times have been dedicated to the work.’ He glanced at Maccabi as he uttered the final word.

  ‘What is it that you do, Professor? Aside from hoard a miscellany of unnecessary proportions?’ I asked.

  ‘You would not understand, Mr Moffat,’ he replied, his grammar recovered along with his composure.

  I did not pursue the matter further. The fellow would have fabricated some nonsense, and I was sure the exercising of his imagination in such a task would have given him a modicum of pleasure at my expense.

  ‘What poor apology for sustenance will appear before us this evening, I wonder?’ I asked of no one in particular.

  It was improbable that our table would return to its former standard anent its quality before we had settled our accounts.

  Maccabi gave a smirk. The professor merely declared, ‘There will be meat tonight.’

  I could not account for the shudder I gave on hearing this.

  The table once again was laid for service à la Russe, in the house style. To whit: there appeared to have been some confusion as to what constituted a knife and what a fork; consequently a random selection of both could be found on either side of the large under-plate. It was safe to presume that Mrs Gonderthwaite’s simian offspring had been charged with preparing the table.