Gibbous House 101

Once more the policeman fell silent. I found it difficult not to offer to ensure the guinea found its way to the surviving brother, but surmised that the policeman would rather see to this himself. Maccabi, still uncomfortable in the presence of the law, stammered:

'B-but do you have your suspicions? Surely we are not under them?'

Not we, but certainly Maccabi must have been by then.

At that point, Mrs Gonderthwaite appeared in answer to the summons of the cracked bell. The two heteroclite specimens moved in harmony behind, although to what purpose, I could not tell. There was something vaguely familiar about their simian features, as though, had they been drawn by a more expert hand, they would have resembled a human of my acquaintance. I addressed the cook:

'Constable Turner will have a fresh loaf and some cheddar.'

No sooner had I said it than I wished for something more outlandish, since, on previous evidence, almost anything could be produced from the bare pantry as if from a magician's sleeve.
The woman and her hominid acolytes departed to conjure the victuals from the thinnest of air in the kitchen. I enjoined the Professor to provide the company with a libation of his choosing, the greensome foulness excepted. He skipped lightly to the task and with an eye for Maccabi's reaction, I enquired of Turner;

'Shall we each of us then expect an Inquisition? I wonder which of us is in a position to claim alibi? Certainly I have enjoyed a modicum of my own company of late, with none to vouch for me. I expect others are more fortunate.'

Maccabi composed his features quickly, but not before two lines in his brow briefly indicated a pondering of choices. The policeman, strangely, replied thus:

'Oh, I am not concerned about such things. After all, how can we know when the fellow met his fate, morning or night? A diary of no-one's movements would help my investigation. Besides, my opinion is that what has occurred is that rare thing; a motiveless crime.'

It now fell to me to feel less than comfortable; perhaps there was more to the marvel of detection than I had heretofore thought. It mattered not; for at that moment the constable's sustenance arrived in a most peculiar manner. The doors swung wide, but there was no sign of the cook. Instead, the pair of near primates came in at quite a lick, the one holding a large round loaf upon his head and the other rolling a gigantic cheese before him in the manner of a child with a hoop and a stick. They stopped short at the table, near the Policeman's seat, composed themselves in crude imitation of the most obsequious of footmen and laid the comestibles before our guest. They gave him an animalistic showing of teeth, which may have been a smile, and withdrew. The policeman gave a tiny smile of his own and said:

'I wonder which of the brothers is the father​? There is but little of Mrs Gonderthwaite in them save perhaps about the eyes. Well, they are short an uncle or a father, in any event.'

The Professor gave a shrug, Maccabi gave one of his own, although with some stiffness about it. On Miss Pardoner's face I espied a not unexpected smirk, as she informed Turner and myself:

'At the risk of indelicacy, I am given to understand that -as to the paternity of the two- Mrs Gonderthwaite is undecided, much as she has long been undecided in the matter of the relative charms of the two possible candidates.'

What exercised my mind was my inability to imagine what the two imbeciles would do with a guinea.