The Somnambulist: A Novel Page 5

  “Something’s happening. Can’t you sense it? Some great crisis is upon us.”

  Moon stopped dead in the street and turned to face his tormentor. “Must be your imagination, Mr. Skimpole. Too much cheese before bedtime.”

  “I could make you…” Skimpole spoke lightly. “Mr. Gray.”

  Moon said nothing.

  Skimpole’s pale face contorted itself into a semblance of a smile. “You’ll help me.”

  Moon smiled back with excruciating civility. “Even I have some scruples. You’ll have to put a gun to my head before I’ll help you.”

  He strode away and Skimpole watched as he melted into the distance. “It may come to that,” he said softly. Then, more firmly: “It may yet come to that.”

  The following day did not start well. The ape Moon had used in his set for the past two years fell unexpectedly ill and was prescribed by his veterinarian a rest cure of indefinite duration. The zoo sent a replacement but he was an obstreperous troublesome fellow with none of the natural talent of his predecessor. Asked to caper with enthusiasm, he gibbered listlessly; required to materialize with style and panache, he limped onstage with all the eagerness of a condemned man queuing for his final meal.

  It was with relief, then, that Moon returned home at the end of the show, the Somnambulist choosing to linger upstairs a while longer in an attempt to cajole some semblance of a performer from the recalcitrant chimp.

  When Moon let himself inside, Speight was dozing uneasily on the steps. On hearing his arrival, Mrs. Grossmith hurried out to greet him. “There’s somebody waiting for you. I said it was late but he did insist.”

  “Who is it?” Moon lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is it the albino?”

  Someone out of sight laughed uproariously.

  Moon walked into the kitchen to find an ungainly figure sprawled in his favorite armchair.

  “Albino?” The visitor laughed again. “Really, Moon, I swear your friends get odder each time we meet.”

  Moon allowed himself a small smile. “Inspector.”

  Detective Inspector Merryweather got to his feet and shook Moon warmly by the hand. “Pleasure to see you again. I only wish that one day we might meet under happier circumstances.”

  As Mrs. Grossmith retired discreetly to her room, Moon produced a bottle of whisky and a set of glasses, sat opposite his guest and poured them both a generous draught. “I take it this is a professional visit?”

  “’Fraid so. I apologize for the lateness of the hour but I’m at my wits’ end.”

  “You mean you have a case for me?”

  “You’ve seen the headlines?”

  “The Honeyman business? I’ve followed your lamentable lack of progress with no little disappointment, Inspector. I’d hoped by now that you might have learnt something from my methods.”

  “We’ve done our best. But take my word for it, it’s the strangest one yet. The most baffling case of my career.”

  Moon arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t they all?”

  “This one’s special,” the man insisted. “There’s something queer about it, something grisly and gothic and bizarre. So you see why I thought of you.”

  “It sounds perfect.”

  Merryweather laughed again, another raucous, splenetic bellow. “Mrs. Grossmith told me you were bored. You know, by rights, I shouldn’t be here. My colleagues don’t approve. They think I’ve got rather an idée fixe about you. Still, that business in Clapham—”

  The conjuror flinched.

  Well, they’re not so inclined to turn a blind eye any more.”

  HELLO INSPECTOR

  Merryweather had always felt oddly discomfited in the presence of the Somnambulist, and on the giant’s entrance the inspector’s natural good cheer was immediately muted.

  The Somnambulist sat down, tore off his tie and poured himself a tot of milk. He had just raised the glass to his lips when Moon got to his feet and turned to the inspector. “Well, then,” he said impatiently, “I want to see where it happened.”

  An hour later, the three of them stood at the top of the tower where the late Cyril Honeyman had taken his final, ignominious curtain call. The window through which he had fallen had not yet been repaired and the room was bitingly cold. The smell of decay congealed in the air, its source a table stacked with putrid, long-abandoned food — what was once a great feast made stinking and corrupt.

  “My apologies for the smell,” Merryweather said. He was wrapped up in a thick woolen coat, a black slab of scarf knotted about his neck. “There was a bottle of champagne here as well but the boys polished that off days ago.”

  Moon ran a finger along the table, stained gangrenous and gray by dust and mold.

  “What was this place?”

  “No one’s quite sure. We think it might be some sort of water tower. Disused,” he added rather desperately. “Can’t find it on any maps. Doesn’t seem to exist officially.”

  “I don’t think it’s a water tower, Inspector.” Moon stood by the window, gazing absently down at the street. “I think it’s a watchtower.”

  “Sorry about the mess. The Met boys seem to have trampled your evidence half to death.”

  Brandishing his chalkboard, the Somnambulist tapped Moon on the shoulder.

  SUEISIDE

  Moon dismissed the suggestion with a brusque wave of his hand.

  “You know the reputation of this district,” Merryweather said. “Given the food and the bed, we think he may have been lured here.”

  Moon hardly seemed to hear him. “I should have thought that was obvious.” He knelt at the foot of the shattered window and picked up some broken pieces from the floor. “See the way the glass has fallen. If Honeyman broke the window when he fell, I would expect to find glass only outside. There’s far too much in here for that to have been the case.”

  Merryweather furrowed his brow. “What are you implying?”

  “That someone — or something — broke the window from the other side. From outside the tower. Something got in.”

  “Impossible. No one could possibly climb this high.”

  “Curious, isn’t it?”

  Merryweather sighed. “Will you take the case?”

  Moon did not reply.

  “I don’t understand. You’ve been longing for something like this. Something knotty, you said, something complex, like the old days. Something with the stamp of real criminal ability about it. By rights, this ought to be a dream for you.”

  “Dream?” Moon repeated absently and began to shift the glass shards about the floor, rearranging them in a fresh pattern free of any discernible order.

  “Will you take the case?”

  Moon gave a distracted nod. “Against my better judgment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that there is something wrong here, Inspector. It means that this is no ordinary crime, that is has some larger meaning. That we’re only on the edge of something terrible.”

  Merryweather laughed. “Good God, do you always have to be so gloomy?”

  Moon gazed unblinkingly back, silent and solemn, shaming the inspector into silence.

  The Somnambulist pulled a childish face and wrote another message.

  FRIGHTENED

  Moon did not smile. “You should be,” he murmured. “We all should be.”

  Chapter 6

  The murder of Cyril Honeyman was the sixty-third criminal case to be investigated by Edward Moon. It was the nineteenth in which he had enjoyed the assistance of the Somnambulist and the thirty-fourth sanctioned by Merryweather and the Yard.

  It was also to be the last of his career.

  He began, as was his custom, by immersing himself in the minutiae of the killing, by haunting the murder scene and trawling the streets for clues, interviewing witnesses, speaking to the most tangential of bystanders. But despite his diligence these efforts bore little fruit. It was as though the evidence had been somehow erased from existence, the ground of his inquiries s
wept clean, become a blank slate, a tabula rasa. He spent long days in the Stacks but could find no trace, not a shred of a clue on the Honeyman affair, nothing to shed light on the man’s demise.

  At the end of the first week, more out of courtesy than any real belief it would materially aid his investigation, he and the Somnambulist visited the parents of the deceased. They lived in a large country house, miles beyond the furthest reaches of the city and isolated by several acres of green and pleasant land.

  An hour after their arrival, during which time they had been left to wait in the hallway as though they were little more than common tradesmen, a retainer shuffled out to inform them that his master and mistress — already severely inconvenienced by their presence — felt able to receive only one guest. The Somnambulist was happy to forgo the pleasure and so, shortly after, Moon was ushered into a draughty office.

  The Honeymans sat at the far end of the room, enthroned behind a great oak table. Neither of them got to their feet when he entered but gestured silently for Moon to sit several feet away. When he explained the purpose of his visit (having to speak more loudly than was natural because of the distance between them) they reacted without any visible sympathy. Mr. Honeyman, a gray-faced, harassed-looking man trussed up in pinstripe, explained that they had already told the police everything they knew and that this kind of intrusion was certainly unwarranted and probably illegal. Moon retorted that he did not represent the police, going on to remark (somewhat immodestly) that he had a better chance than anyone of bringing the case to a successful conclusion. The man blustered and harrumphed in reply until his wife intervened, fixing Moon with a basilisk gaze.

  “My son is dead. We have answered all these questions before. My husband and I are satisfied that the police are doing everything in their power to settle the matter. And we most certainly do not require the services of an amateur.” She spat out that last word with some vigor, as if trying to dislodge an awkward piece of gristle trapped between her teeth.

  “My wife is a devout woman,” Mr. Honeyman added mildly, as if that explained everything.

  They rose to their feet and filed silently from the room. Evidently, Moon’s audience was at an end.

  The Somnambulist was waiting outside, standing by the fish pond and engaged in a conversation with a gardener about the finer points of tree surgery. The giant turned away and wrote Moon a message.

  CLOOS

  Moon shook his head morosely. “Nothing,” he said, and stalked away into the foliage.

  Later, aboard the train, he sounded almost angry. “Could it just have been random? Motiveless malignancy?”

  The Somnambulist shrugged in response.

  “But it seems so premeditated. There’s something planned about it. A sense of… theatre. Grand Guignol. This is not the work of a common hoodlum.” He fell silent, brought out his cigarette case and, to the exasperation of his fellow travelers, proceeded to fill the carriage with thick, acrid smoke.

  The following evening, Moon and the Somnambulist were invited to a party.

  Their hostess was Lady Glyde, a valuable patron in the early days of the theatre and the woman largely responsible for introducing Moon to high society. Her house in Pall Mall was an ugly, ostentatious place, a shrine to wealth and vulgarity, a warren of interlinking rooms and chambers which, despite their considerable size, tonight brimmed almost full.

  A manservant took their coats and hats and led them through the teeming throng into the drawing room. A string quartet were plucking their way through some baroque sonata or other but were all but drowned out by the babble of conversation, the tinkle of polite laughter, the chink and clink of glasses, the sounds of insincerity. The servant stood at the doorway and announced, with the po-faced solemnity of a pastor reading the last rites: “Mr. Edward Moon and the Somnambulist.”

  The volume dropped momentarily as heads swiveled and turned to ogle these new arrivals. Moon — once the toast of the best soirées in London — offered his most dazzling smile, only to watch his fellow guests glance at him briefly with glazed indifference before returning to their conversations as though nothing of any significance had taken place. A decade ago, dozens would have dashed forward, jostling to the front to be the first to greet him, to shake his hand or fetch him a drink. Many would have asked for autographs. Today, there was only the barest flicker of interest before he was dismissed by the herd.

  The servant thrust drinks into their hands and vanished, abandoning them to the uncertain mercy of the mob. The Somnambulist gave Moon a warning nudge as a dumpy, pugnacious-chinned woman pushed her way toward them.

  “Mr. Moon!”

  The conjuror raised his voice in order to be heard above the tumult. “Lady Glyde.”

  She reached them at last, clasping Moon’s hand with all the feverish pertinacity of a drowning woman. “Edward,” she gasped. “I’m quite sure I don’t know who half these people are.”

  The conjuror laughed politely and even the Somnambulist’s face cracked a dutiful grin.

  “You have drinks?”

  “Thank you, ma’am, yes.”

  She looked curiously at the Somnambulist. “You always choose milk?”

  He nodded.

  “Come with me,” she said, “there’s someone you simply have to meet.” And she thrust her way back into the scrum, her new companion trailing reluctantly behind. “Are you engaged on a case at present?” she called back.

  Moon told her.

  “Really?” She seemed genuinely fascinated. “I gather the papers speak of little else. It must be quite a challenge, even for you. Are you very close to a solution?”

  “I’m quite lost at present,” Moon admitted. “I’ve yet to find a suspect.”

  “Well, if anyone can crack the case, I’m sure it’s you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “I must say, you’ve recovered wonderfully well from that dreadful business in Clapham. Most unpleasant. A lot of men in your position might have given up after that. Thrown in the towel.”

  Moon did not have time to respond before Lady Glyde stopped beside a small group of women gathered about a young man holding court. Moon caught a little of what he was saying — from the sound of it, something unnecessarily contentious about America.

  Squat, freckled and sporting an ugly shock of ginger hair, the fellow cut an unprepossessing figure amongst Lady Glyde’s social elite. Stoop-shouldered and stuffed into an ill-fitting tuxedo, he seemed an alien there, an interloper, a moth amongst the butterflies. His face was made up of an unusually revolting set of features and he appeared to be missing a finger on his left hand.

  “Enjoying the party?” asked Lady Glyde.

  The ugly man beamed. “It reminds me of a marvelous little soirée I went to once before in Bloomsbury…” — he paused before delivering his punch line— “in 1934.”

  Moon took an instant dislike to the man. Lady Glyde giggled in a manner quite unbecoming for her age.

  “Mr. Moon,” said Lady Glyde, with the air of an impresario introducing a music hall act. “Meet Thomas Cribb.”

  “We’ve already met,” Cribb said quickly.

  Moon glared. “I doubt it.”

  “He won’t remember me, but I know Edward well. In fact, I think I’d go so far as to say we’re friends.”

  Lady Glyde laughed and Moon eyed the man with a good measure of confusion. The Somnambulist’s reaction, however, was unexpected. On seeing the stranger a kaleidoscope of emotions crossed his face — what almost seemed like recognition, then suspicion, then anger, then rage, then fear. He turned away, and disappeared back into the party. Nobody saw him leave.

  “Mr. Cribb,” said Lady Glyde, “it sounded as if you were having the most fascinating conversation when I arrived.”

  “Oh yes. Go on, do,” squealed one of the women, and the others chattered their empty-headed approval.

  Cribb made an unconvincing dumb show of embarrassment before bowing, inevitably, to their demands. “I w
as speaking of America,” he explained, “of what she will achieve a few short years from now.”

  “And what is that?” one of the women asked. “Civilization at last?” She snorted at her own waggishness.

  “She becomes a great power,” Cribb said soberly. “A mighty nation that eclipses our own. Our empire withers and dies.”

  With the exception of Moon, everyone laughed at this. Lady Glyde all but whooped in delight. “Oh, Thomas,” she gasped. “You are wicked.”

  The man gave what he mistakenly believed to be an enigmatic smile. “I’ve seen the future, madam. I’ve lived it.”

  Thomas Cribb was an enigma.

  As is often the case with men like that, there are innumerable rumors and theories about his origin. He may have been a genuine eccentric, a man with simply no conception of his oddness. He may have been a professional charlatan, a canny self-publicist who had started, disastrously, to believe his own press. More plausibly, he may just have been someone who made up stories to get invited to parties.

  He claimed to have knowledge of the future, to have lived there and seen the city a century from now, but whether anyone actually believed this is irrelevant. What mattered was that his stories granted him a color and theatricity which would otherwise have been quite beyond his grasp. Whenever he spun those yarns, women hung on his every word for what was almost certainly the first time in his life. Middle-aged widows like Lady Glyde adored him. He had cut a swath through polite society and become a fixture at these events, where he was regularly brought on as a kind of semi-comic turn. Above all, they made him interesting.

  The is the outside possibility that he was something altogether more significant, but I’ll come to that in time.

  I met him only once or twice and, frankly, thought very little of the man. But I insist you make up your own mind.

  Once Lady Glyde, whispering huskily into his left ear, had told Moon exactly who and what Cribb claimed to be, the detective was so singularly unimpressed that he called the man’s honesty into question.

  “Mr. Moon!” his hostess exclaimed in mock indignation. “I believe every word he’s told me.”