by Ewan Lawrie
‘Mr Moffat, good day once again!’
The man was as transparent as polished glass. He moved a hand to wipe some drool from the side of his mouth and my stomach heaved as I saw why he had used both hands to obscure any view of his trouser front.
I returned his greeting.
‘Are you quite well, Mr Moffat?’ the strumpet asked, smirking.
‘Indeed, I am. The better for seeing yourself.’
I was grateful that my own tailoring was more generous than that of the professor for, despite my recent use of Maccabi, Miss Pardoner had provoked a familiar reaction with her impudence.
Clapping my hands, I instructed Maccabi to serve us with libations ad libitem. It was pleasing to note he did not demur, although Miss Pardoner gave him a strange look. I wondered if she was surprised or disappointed. Jedediah served my own jerez last and I hoped for his own sake he meant no insult by it. In any event, as I was the host that was as it should be. He returned to the long board and served himself a port, which he drained at a draught before recharging the glass.
‘Professor,’ I began, ‘are all of your family as travelled as yourself?’
‘Some wander, some do not.’ His syntax had returned with his composure.
‘I wondered, perhaps, is it quite impossible that I might, at some distant time, have encountered a sibling of yours? Travelling, as some might put it, incognito?’
Miss Pardoner gave a slow wink.
‘I doubt it, Mr Moffat. I doubt it very much.’
Which statement, in its linguistic perfection, indicated that he was telling the truth, or was at least entirely comfortable in the lie.
However, Miss Pardoner’s ocular hint had persuaded me that an encounter with Rudolf Jedermann had been entirely possible. I wondered if it might also be possible to draw out the dwarf on the subject of his half-brother – or at least to gain some inkling of the alternative plans that man might have for me.
‘Rudolf, your brother,’ I began.
He interrupted with something that might have been ‘Stiefbrüder’.
‘Quite,’ I continued. ‘Rudolf, an important man, no doubt?’
‘If you think fame for its own sake important,’ he replied.
‘Well respected. Not given to scatter-brained schemes?’ I asked.
‘No, he is a practical man, but most unscientific.’
‘How so? Is it not possible to possess both qualities?’
He snorted and scampered to the decanters, pouring himself a generous volume of the first thing he laid a hand on. He cut a quite ludicrous figure, his over-generous and grubby shirt collar had all but escaped the confines of his jacket; the cloth of said shirt hung so low as to emerge from the tail of the same. The overall impression was of an urchin who had burgled the contents of a gentleman’s press.
He gulped. ‘Entirely so, Mr Moffat. Unless you are a superstitious peasant.’
I wondered how his relative would have reacted had he heard this insult.
‘I assume he continues to dismiss your... ’ I hesitated, ‘experiments.’
‘He would, did he but know anything of me, or my research. I have told you, I have not spoken to him these last twenty years.’ It was the whine of a bullied boy.
‘Yet you know something of him?’ I countered.
‘How could I not? They talk of him all over Europe.’ I heard the bitterness in his voice.
‘What is it to you?’
‘He is famous, fêted throughout Europe. He preys on the foolish; did the name he pretended to in Vienna not hint at the tomfoolery he spreads among the credulous?’
I remembered he had mentioned the Comte de St Germain.
He nodded his head with vigour. ‘Himself a famous charlatan. My brother repeats the Wonderman’s outrageous lies in salons and ballrooms and people believe him a great philosopher and scientist.’
It was most satisfying to see the little man struggle with a rage greater than himself, aware that there was nothing he could do to relieve it at that time.
Just then, Miss Pardoner said, ‘You share an interest in the Rosy Cross, Professor. You have told me that at least.’
‘We are in agreement about some things, not others,’ he replied.
‘Ah,’ I said. ‘“As above, so below”!’
The professor’s eye yellowed visibly, as though suddenly jaundiced by sheer malevolence.
‘That is one thing about which we are agreed.’
He turned on his heel in a miniature parody of dudgeon and scuttled from the room.
The young woman turned to me and declared, ‘I should not provoke him if I were you.’
I silenced Maccabi’s snort of laughter with a look, and replied to her, ‘Provocation of the mite will change nothing regarding his intentions, but it may distract him from his preparations for them.’
I lifted my glass to the both of them, drained the inferior jerez and strode out of the French windows into the fresher air of the flagged area outside.
The day was sunlit, hazy. It occurred to me that I had not seen Job Catchpole for the best part of a day, upright or on all fours. In the distance I could hear loud whistles and wordless calls. Over the rise a flock of sheep appeared, their progress too purposeful not to be under the guidance of a shepherd. As famine follows feast, Cullis, brandishing a shepherd’s crook a good cubit taller than he, ambled over the horizon. Darting around the rearmost ovines, nipping at their heels, was the dog-boy. There seemed little point in trying to reform his strange behaviours; I was sure he would have occupied Edinburgh’s Medical Superintendent for many years.
The sheep, Cullis and his helper came to a stop at the edge of the flagstones. Cullis removed a battered piece of millinery that fell between cap and hat, but likely began life as neither. Clearing his throat, he said in his scarcely penetrable accent, ‘Ah thowt wuh could eat wunnathuh sheep.’
‘A splendid idea, Cullis. See to it,’ I replied.
Again, he tugged at nothing in the area of where a forelock would have been had he yet been blessed with sufficient hair. The flock set off toward the rear of the house and its dilapidated outbuildings. I hoped Cullis would not be dilatory in supplying Mrs Gonderthwaite with the mutton.
For want of other diversions, I followed shortly after. Job, on two legs for once, held Cullis’s crook and kept the sheep at bay on the far side of the small courtyard. The bleating of the sheep was loud indeed, and even at a distance of some yards I could see their eyes rolling. Given the time of year, the dearth of lambs was most perplexing. In fact there had been only the one, as far I had been able to ascertain.
In the courtyard itself, the giant Bill held the sacrificial lamb before his chest. Clearly, it would not be mutton after all. The beast was struggling mightily, but to no avail. The lamb’s own chest, abdomen and loins were presented toward Cullis, who once again was wearing the blood-blackened apron. Before him was the wicked blade I had seen a few days earlier. It seemed as though the struggling sheep’s eyes followed the blade, which glinted in the milky sunlight.
It was ruthless – and hardly quick. There was little doubt that Cullis’s method of despatch was brutal. The noise of the animal’s suffering, however, was outmatched by the distress of the rest of the flock, which finally dispersed in all directions as the chosen one breathed its last. As drenched in the blood of the sheep as Cullis was, nary a drop had fallen on the giant imbecile, whose expression had remained vacant throughout. I reflected that some, more squeamish than I, would have considered an absence from that evening’s dinner.
That repast was not indelibly marked on my memory. It must indeed be true that tastes are quickly jaded. The oddities of Gibbous House had already palled for me. Despite the poetaster Cowper’s assertion that variety was the spice of life, it seemed to me that an incessant flow of the unusual was equally as boring as the slow trickle of the undifferentiated. Prior to bidding the assembled company good night, I informed Maccabi that he would be driving myself and all who cared to ac
company me to the Coble Inn in Seahouses on the morrow. Even a visit to a shoreside inn would provide relief from the oppression I felt in Gibbous House. Besides, it seemed the most quotidian component of my inheritance – and I was in sore need of something, anything, of the mundane.
Chapter Forty-seven
Having unwillingly broken our fast on oatmeal, Miss Pardoner and I stood afront the main entrance to the house. It was a little cooler than it had lately been, although the sun was brighter in the sky. Maccabi rounded the corner with a din one might have associated with a blacksmith at his anvil. He sat in the driver’s seat of a four-wheeled carriage: it could have been a calash – if its condition were due to age – but its lines bespoke a barouche, albeit one that had long remained unused in a particularly filthy location.
This vehicle was being drawn by what might loosely have been termed our last pair of horses. The one withered jade familiar from previous excursions marched in tandem with a healthier looking specimen a full three hands shorter. This beast was healthier in so far as it consisted of a quite considerable amount of flesh; its swaying could conceivably have been occasioned by the effort required to hold up the enormous barrel of its gut. This horse had the misfortune to be on the off-side of the traces and was quite disturbed by the periodic clank of the metal wheel rim against the steel-shod mudguard.
Maccabi stood straight-backed and with far more dignity than the dilapidated state of the carriage warranted.
I was about to hand Miss Pardoner up to the seats in the rear, when the professor burst pell-mell from the house. ‘Wait, wait. I shall come too! Yes, I will,’ he bellowed.
He scuttled to the off-side. It was exceedingly difficult not to laugh at his attempt to swing himself aboard, and using the mudguard as purchase resulted in an ignominious fall. This, however, removed the cause of the incommodious din made by the vehicle when in progress, so the little man did not suffer in vain. Maccabi applied the switch to the withers of the horses and, after a glare from the wall-eyed bag of bones to the left, the carriage trundled northward toward Seahouses.
The faded paint on the board outside the Coble Inn described a beached fishing vessel with nets spread on a sandy shore quite unlike the rock-strewn beaches to be found not twenty yards distant. The door to the one-room alehouse was ajar and, judging by the din emerging from it, the enterprise was somewhat more lively than on the occasion of my last visit. We stepped back as a brawny fellow cartwheeled out of the entrance, gouts of blood threatening our clothing as he did so.
I nodded at Maccabi, in the hope that he would precede us all and clear a safe passage to the counter. The professor, however, had other ideas, letting out a childish laugh as he barrelled through the door and the mêlée on the other side of it. This at least allowed us to make our own way through, since the dwarf had laid about him with mean little kicks to the shins of the combatants. The stature of their assailant not coming up to their expectations, he made his way to the bar unscathed: we received many puzzled looks from inebriated dolts who were quite unable to reconcile the blows received with our passage moments afterwards.
John Bill stood behind the counter, rhythmically tapping a keg whilst observing the mayhem on the public side of the bar. I reached the counter and held up three fingers before turning to Miss Pardoner and raising my eyebrows. She continued the dumb show by holding up first three fingers on her left hand and then the index of her right, before turning it to her own bosom. John Bill, clearly more conversant with such intercourse than I, clattered four tankards on the counter. I felt this clatter more through the vibration of the counter than of my tympanum, since the brawl had continued after the brief hiatus caused by our arrival.
The mute landlord of the Coble Inn produced a large tin plate and a ladle from under the counter. He made sufficient noise with these to attract the attention of the rest of the clientele, who then floated away like driftwood on an ebb tide.
All save one. A hunched figure, the man was swarthy and vaguely familiar. His topcoat was cunningly cut to make the least of the hunch of his back. His cracked voice was instantly known to me, but it was left to his words to reveal to me whence I knew it. ‘Hah, I cut a gibbous figure, don’t I, Scotchman? Nearer home than you ought to be, now, I’ll warrant.’
The professor’s smile was quite queasy; Maccabi had turned most pale. Miss Pardoner said, ‘Septimus, Septimus, you look so lively for one who has passed away.’
The man smiled. ‘You are mistaken in me, miss.’ He pointed a crooked finger toward me, ‘I’m sure this gentleman will acknowledge my identity.’
He looked familiar, that much was true. Dislocation was the problem, or perhaps attire. As when meeting a bare-buttocked bishop in a brothel, the incongruity delayed recognition. At least until he said, ‘Ha, Scotchman! You have evaded the catchpoles, at least.’
I laughed. ‘I doubt the Northumbrians will care much for the Fantoccini, my friend.’
The professor continued to look shifty and sick by turns; Maccabi attempted an interjection that was rendered unintelligible by a stutter. Miss Pardoner revealed some indignation with a stamp of her not-quite-dainty foot.
‘Septimus Coble, will you stop this nonsense. I know you, you are known to all, save—’ she broke off and jerked her head in my direction. It was not a gesture redolent of society.
The man’s accent was not so strong as I remembered it, although there were traces that could have been attributed to Romania or the Romany. He was somewhat better dressed, which perhaps gave the lie to his guise as an itinerant street entertainer. Still, there was something else that seemed at odds with my recollections. As he spoke, I fancied for a moment that his diction was more careful, as though there were some problem with his jaw.
‘My lady, were I this Septimus Coble I should know your name, it seems. Why not tell me it, and I will pretend to the title for your sake?’
This gallantry was undermined by a large gout of spittle and the alarming sight of his dentures shooting forth from his mouth. He caught them deftly in his hand and replaced them.
‘Mr Ash’s vulcanite is not the match of Josiah’s porcelain, I fear,’ he said, shaking his head. That may have been the case, but his difficulties perhaps accrued from the likelihood that he was not the first owner of the dentures. Furthermore, he had evidently not been in the habit of wearing them long.
‘I am Ellen Pardoner, as well you know, since I have been more than a little time in your household, sir.’
‘Enchanted to meet you, Miss Pardoner,’ the man replied, taking her hand in a most presumptive manner. The young woman removed it sharply from his grasp before the withered lips touched her flesh. A guttural laugh issued from between the vulcanite teeth, which briefly emerged once more from the thin mouth.
Miss Pardoner’s eyes darted from side to side and, most uncharacteristically, it appeared that her bosom was heaving. Maccabi’s expression was now that of a beagle mesmerised by a fly. The professor was chewing his lower lip, still unaccountably silent. I seized the moment. ‘How then shall we call you, sir?’ I asked.
This provoked a fit of something between coughing and laughing. On recovering himself – and his teeth – he announced, ‘My names are legion,’ before laughing, for want of a better word, demonically.
‘Perhaps you might furnish us with your preference for convenience’s sake?’ I ventured.
Miss Pardoner let out a snort. On turning to the others of our company she must have viewed the expressions of the professor and Maccabi in much the same way as I, for her eyebrows rose and her mouth formed as pretty a facsimile of the letter ‘o’ as ever had been seen. The stranger winked at one – or all – of us:
Wise Solomon, Puck or Harlequin,
these am I, mayhap their kin:
dearest Bill says what’s in a name?
I concur and say the same.
This last word was somewhat strangled in expression as my hand had grasped the villain’s throat and was squeezing mightily.
‘A name, sir. False or true, but a name I will have.’
One last squeeze accompanied the last word of the ultimatum. This time the man failed to catch his dentition as it fell and it pleased me greatly to kick it to the corner.
‘Sholomum, Sholomum Coh-wem,’ he sputtered, already feeling the want of his ill-fitting teeth.
The professor’s eyes widened, most likely at the coincidence of the initial letters of the fellow’s name. Maccabi turned a shade most unbecoming to the blond of his coiffure; I fancied I could see the working of his mind in the darting of his eyes hither and yon. It seemed uncommon slow in producing much enlightenment, as his brow remained knotted for several moments after I enquired of Mr Cohen as to his business in Northumbria.
‘No bishness, shir,’ Cohen said, examining the floor about him for his dentures. ‘A trip fo’ pleshur shimply.’
Miss Pardoner handed him his teeth.
‘And to visit distant relatives,’ he went on.
The professor seemed relaxed for the first time since we had laid eyes on this familiar – to the others, at least – stranger.
‘What relatives?’ the dwarf asked.
‘Distant relatives. Far from here, or not so far, my dear.’ The man giggled.
Perhaps he was mad; I had long thought that there was nothing madder in the world than a poet – and his own tendency to rhyme evinced their least-appealing characteristic. Besides, if the fellow had suffered in one of the professor’s experiments, who would not be driven mad by being one moment dead and the next alive? It seemed preposterous that any such experiment should ever have succeeded.
Having drained my own tankard, I waved it at the company and at the mute landlord. Miss Pardoner despatched what must have been a three-quarter-full pot with some panache, a single stray drop requiring rescue by her nimble tongue thereafter. I waggled my tankard in Cohen’s face; he smiled and nodded, but not too vigorously.
