The Lamplighter

by Anthony O'Neill

  Spotting his visitors he discarded his pipes like a toy and swept down the crimson-carpeted steps to welcome them, bowing deeply before McKnight and kissing Canavan on both cheeks with puckered equine lips. Rising to his full height, he looked down on them, smiling, and relinquished two decades of despair.

  “It really has been too long,” he said sincerely, for all the world like an old soldier greeting battle-scarred comrades at a reunion.

  The walls had sagged, and the roof was in places open, exposing the spars, but of all the rooms in the lodge this one had survived in perhaps the best condition, and she knew every inch of it in memories more deeply branded than any stigmata. She moved forward, swaying uncontrollably, her eyes fixed on the decayed, shivering figure watching her from beneath the still-severe brow.

  “You must administer His wrath, child,” the old man croaked, commanding even in contrition. He watched approvingly as Evelyn pulled apart the drawstrings of her purse, and he closed his eyes in preparation for oblivion. “Come and soothe away my bitter pain,” he whispered, “for I am weary of the struggle.”

  Evelyn stood over the wrinkled form and slowly removed the weapon, her movements dictated as though by some higher force.

  Individually they could not have done it, but united their power was beyond measure. Using a thorn-wood staff and a candelabrum as large as a scepter, they levered back the already parted blocks so that there was just sufficient room for Leerie to squeeze through.

  The whole edifice shook as though in an earthquake, there were showers of plaster and gold dust from the vaulted ceiling, and great cracks snaked up the walls and enmeshed in splintering webs. The very foundations were beginning to crumble.

  Leerie looked back and regarded his collapsing castle with a hint of regret.

  “Will you miss it?” Canavan asked.

  The lamplighter considered. “Once I’m relieved of this form,” he decided confidently, “and free to walk outside her nightmares, it will not take me long to secure a new asylum.”

  “Another part of the world? Another immense imagination?”

  The lamplighter smiled, as though he already had a destination in mind. “I would like to stay in Edinburgh and look over Eve awhile,” he replied. “Though I think this time a simple seedy imagination will suffice.”

  A chandelier exploded at his hooves.

  “There are moments for fond memories and speculation,” McKnight observed, “and there are times when it is best not to tarry. May I suggest that we make haste, gentlemen, before we are buried in rubble?”

  He spoke not in reproach, however, but with genuine affection, and indeed for all of them there was a transcendent sense of accomplishment. As they departed the huge citadel, the walls of the old world collapsed behind them in great ungodly heaps of marble and plaster, and a new landscape opened up before them, illuminated as though by the sun, with horizons that were practically limitless.

  At least twenty minutes had passed without a cry, a whimper, or any perceivable sound at all, and Groves instructed a strangely peevish Pringle to cover the rear of the lodge while he circulated around the forecourt warily, suddenly fearing that she had committed her crime and then taken off into the skies, or disappeared into a pit, or vanished like the Beast into a knot of heated air.

  But when at last he saw her, materializing dazedly through the doorway like a ghost, he actually yelped with excitement. “There!” he cried, to alert Pringle, and immediately he was springing on her and wrapping her up before she could spirit herself away, though in truth she was not in the least bit defensive or protesting.

  “What have you done?” Groves breathed. He attempted to cuff her, but his own hands were shaking with excitement, and she was holding fast to something, her fist was closed around it, and he observed that she was no longer clutching her purse.

  “Pin her arms, laddie!” he ordered when Pringle appeared, and, taking hold of her forearm, he tried with all his might to pry open her fingers.

  She was astonishingly resistant, even in her stupefied state. He grunted and cursed but finally managed to uncurl her fist and disarm her of her terrible weapon, which fell into the tangled grass. But it was so small he almost lost sight of it. He foraged around and snatched it up and found it almost breaking apart in his hand. He stared at it, frowning in disbelief.

  A blunted stick of white chalk.

  He looked at Evelyn, then at Pringle, and then at the lodge.

  “Hold…hold her tight,” he breathed, and, gulping, he plunged into the darkness.

  He ascended the staircase at a reckless speed, possessed of an urgent need for discovery. He needed, in truth, a corpse—a man with his throat slit, his chest blown open, his head lolling and spilling streams of blood. And yet in all the time Evelyn had been inside he had heard not a gunshot, not a gurgle or even an impulsive squeal—nothing. And the only thing he heard even now, as he rounded the landing, was an insane cackle that turned his dreams to vapor.

  He arrived at the open doorway and stood there for a full minute, gasping, trying to make sense of it all.

  Abraham Lindsay, former governor of the Fountainbridge Institute for Destitute Girls, was seated beside his dying lamp, laughing with the euphoria of a punishment greater, even, than death. Existence.

  Groves looked around the room with astonishment and despair.

  The floor and the blackened walls—all the available surfaces—were festooned with figures meticulously rendered in chalk. Fire-breathing dragons, monstrous butterflies, fantastic griffins, capering fairies, frowning goblins, mischievous trolls, bearded wizards, and grinning lamplighters…and all of them turned in on Abraham Lindsay, surrounding him, closing in on him, daring him to imprison them again and feel the sting of their vengeance.

  Epilogue

  IT WAS A MOMENT to savor. Facing a polished doorknob set in a paneled door, Professor Thomas McKnight—snugly attired in tweed, with a cherry-wood pipe in his mouth and a substantial meal in his stomach—drew on a pair of luxurious suede gloves, flexed his fingers delightedly, extended his hand slowly, and—with the utmost diligence, so as not to blemish the brass with a single stain—took hold of the gleaming knob and swiveled his hand with clockwork precision. The oiled bolt withdrew with a ready click, his heart quickened and his nerves fluttered, and he simply stood there, breathing the warmed air, before pressing back the door on his newly renovated and lavishly appointed abode.

  It was beyond the limits of his wildest dreams. A cavernous library greater than anything in London, the Vatican, or historical Alexandria. Glassed cabinets, polished mahogany bookcases, and sturdy oaken shelves swept ten storys high and half a mile deep, complete with spiral staircases, ladders on greased rails, and carpeted balconies that trailed into infinity. There were reading carrels, escritoires, cozy armchairs, blazing hearths, silent clocks, drinking fountains, innumerable writing utensils, reams of blank notepaper, a row of magnifying glasses…even a pipe rack. And all of it illuminated with more lamp cabinets and gas mantels than there were stars in the firmament. He might never leave.

  He exhaled heartily, surveying both the gold-embossed spines already arranged on the shelves and the crates spilling over with folios, quartos, octavos, and priceless manuscripts waiting to be catalogued. He barely knew where to begin. But as the appointed curator he had a lifetime, and he doubted his excitement would ever wane.

  His only regret was the absence of Canavan, with whom he might have shared his sense of satisfaction, his great triumph. But he consoled himself with the thought that Evelyn had installed his friend in a place of even greater magnitude, and even more beauty, than this majestic repository of knowledge.

  On a Boxing Day of cerulean skies and thundering church bells, Evelyn Todd roamed the streets and alleys of the Old Town, as she had done every Sunday, to feed the city’s strays with chopped meat provided by Arthur Stark.

  It was difficult to explain, but this morning, despite the fact that she was still under nominal investigatio
n—though clearly the Sheriff and Procurator Fiscal gave little credence to Inspector Groves’s increasingly flaccid accusations—she felt unusually content, giddily so. She moved not furtively or sheepishly but with true assurance. The dogs, which had previously accepted her proffered morsels and quickly recoiled, now lingered at her side and sniffed her repeatedly, as though to verify that this was in fact the same person. The reliant strays had always gladdened her heart, but to this point she had felt shielded from any expression of pleasure by some antiseptic force. Now she dropped to her haunches, genuinely welcoming of the attention, and in response the dogs circulated around her with ears flat and tails dancing. She put out her hand and scratched the neck of a tousled mongrel, which tilted its head gratefully.

  Emerging from a workhouse door nearby, a broad-shouldered man ambled up the wynd and, seeing her thus encircled, smiled and tipped his hat. Their eyes locked, however briefly. Then one of the strays peeled off to follow him, and when it brushed his leg he briefly lowered a hand to ruffle its head before turning into the festive street and making off into the sunshine.

  Evelyn rose and looked after him as the dog trotted back to her side. There had been a shared communication, she was sure of it, and she found herself hoping that the stranger would reappear and explain himself or flash another smile. But a minute passed, the dogs nudged at her, and she squatted down again to resume her ministrations, dismissing the hope as a fleeting absurdity. There had been no recognition, she assured herself, and in any case she had no time for such frivolity.

  But in the back of her mind, in some steadily brightening recess, she could not help wondering if she might one day find a man onto whom she could project the divine qualities of the one wrapped in the warm petals of her heart.

  39. Higher authorities than I have their own opinions, and it is not for the likes of me to question them, and though they had retired the case, and were happy to think of the murders as unsolved, I continued to follow Evelyn Todd the Wax Woman of my own accord, and when she slept, I began to notice an old man lurking in the street outside her building, a lamplighter, who once even had the cheek to wink at me, as if we were well acquainted.

  40. I followed this bold leerie, with his deceptively friendly features, but he disappeared before I managed to track him to his home, and neither did I see him again in any of the lamplighter assemblies, so that my suspicions grew, and have since been consolidated.

  41. Strolling in the vicinity of Queen Street Gardens last February, Evelyn Todd was recognized by the former matron Hettie Lessels, who others have decided is mad, and this unfortunate woman, briefly taking leave of her senses, issued a cry of alarm and tried to attack the former foundling, and scratch her to the ground, only to fail due to the swift intervention of the man whose description closely matches the lamplighter I have already mentioned, and who whisked Miss Todd to safety before vanishing without a trace.

  42. This incident was noted by several witnesses, and I saw it myself at the very same time, in a dream of remarkable clarity.

  43. I believe that this lamplighter has been Miss Todd’s protector, her guardian angel, and that he was embroiled deeply in the sinister goings-on that for some weeks beset the Modern Athens, and I will follow him to Hades if necessary to solve this terrible mystery.

  44. Be sober, be vigilant, said the saintly Piper McNab through the Epistle of Saint Peter, because our adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, and as a humble servant of the Lord I can do no better than to repeat this admonition, for the lesson of this whole bloody episode is that while we are all carved in the image of God, we can never be certain where the Evil One might lurketh.

  THE LAMPLIGHTER

  My tea is nearly ready

  and the sun has left the sky;

  It’s time to take the window

  to see Leerie going by;

  For every night at tea-time

  and before you take your seat,

  With lantern and with ladder

  he comes posting up the street.

  Now Tom would be a driver

  and Maria go to sea,

  And my papa’s a banker

  and as rich as he can be;

  But I, when I am stronger

  and can choose what I’m to do,

  O Leerie, I’ll go round at night,

  and light the lamps with you!

  For we are very lucky,

  with a lamp before the door,

  And Leerie stops to light it

  as he lights so many more;

  And O! before you hurry by

  with ladder and with light,

  O Leerie, see a little child

  and nod to him tonight!

  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON,

  A Child’s Garden of Verses, 1885

  Acknowledgments

  Of the innumerable writers whose works on Edinburgh I consulted I am particularly indebted to Robert Louis Stevenson, James McLevy, James McGowan, J. W. McLaren, Alisdair MacGregor, Charles McKean, E. F. Catford, George Baird, J. M. Barrie, Thomas Speedy, Sandy Mullay, and David Masson. For matters of the mind I tip my hat to Ernest Geller, Seth Pringle-Patterson, Robert C. Solomon, James Hillman, Jacques Maritain, Mario Praz, Philip J. Davis, Walter E. Houghton, George Frederick Drinka, Alan Gould, Henri F. Ellenberger, Robert Van de Castle, and Peter O’Connor. For diabolical substance I bow deferentially before Rossell Hope Robbins, Alice K. Turner, R. Love Thompson, Piero Camporesi, Alan E. Bernstein, and Sir Walter Scott. And for miscellaneous subjects I thank Molly Weir, Mary Peckham Magray, Catriona Clear, R. W. Munro, J. A. R. Stevenson, and Bella Bathurst.

  In Edinburgh I was graciously assisted by Patricia and Donald Watt, Eddie McMillan of the Lothian and Borders Police, Ann Nix and the good people at the Edinburgh Room of the Central Library and the National Library of Scotland, and Pam McNicol of the Edinburgh City Archives. I further wish to acknowledge the gracious help of Carl Harrison-Ford, Jean Curthoys, Linda Funnell, Mark Gibson, Doctors A. Chin and J. G. Kendler, Guy Carvalho, and T. C. Macleod. And for obvious reasons Rose Creswell, Kim Witherspoon, David Forrer, Mark Lucas, Annette Hughes, Sadie Chrestman, Shona Martyn, Joan Deitch, Emma Kelso, John McGhee, Tegan Murray, and my astute editors Colin Harrison, Flora Rees, and Rod Morrison.

  About the Author

  Anthony O’Neill is the son of an Irish policeman and an Australian stenographer. He lives in Melbourne.