Gibbous House 22

Άδηζ Άδηζ Άδηζ Άδηζ Άδηζ

Taking the pen proffered by Maccabi, who seemed to have produced both it and an inkwell from behind his coat-tails, I signed ‘Moffat’ with a flourish. It was a model of authenticity. Brown’s smile did not reach his eyes and he siezed this last document with unseemly haste, I felt. The ink, unblotted by paper or sand, ran freely, creating unlikely shapes on the vellum. The notary began to take the pains with the papers which he had encouraged myself so to take. In such degree was he absorbed that I could feel his very presence withdraw from the room, as it were. Maccabi caught my eye and raised a sardonic brow over his own. I lifted my regard and - to avoid any nausea- fixed my eye to study a canvas nailed behind Brown’s right shoulder.

The edges of the canvas were curling and appeared singed somewhat. The colours were dark and the draughtsmanship and use of colour seemed familiar in style, as did the content. The painting depicted a room such as I had visited during my frequent sojourns at the Chaste Maide, in Chiswick. Such houses as would contain such rooms were easily found. A moll, dressed in fashions over a century old, was being attended by her maid, an old and syphilitic jade. The bed was her only major piece of furniture, and a cat posed suggesting the moll's own posture. A witches hat and birch rods on the wall suggested either black magic, or, much more likely to my mind, that her profession required her to indulge some tastes out of the common. On the wall I behind her I noted the artist had captured the very tawdry tints of portraits torn from ballad broadsheets: I fancied I could scry the appellation MacHeath under the one, and Sacheverell under the other. It would have pleased me to know what the artist Hunt and his stagecoach companion would have made of the symbolism of the two philtres of quack salve on the shelf above the likenesses. For myself it proved my diagnosis of the moll’s attendant. The painting seemed part of a narrative series, it appeared to me. When Brown’s grating voice brought me once more to myself , I was on the point of remembering just whose hand I recognised in the painting, but never I did.

‘Ah… Umm.. Moffat. Did you want to repair at once to your…um.. ahh...property, Maccabi will be delighted to accompany you.’

‘That won’t be necessary, Brown. I’ll find my way easily enough.’

‘Oh but it will,’ Maccabi interjected smugly. ‘You will recall signing my contract of employment, sir? I did not wish to leave the house after so long as its factotum, and am overjoyed that you are desirous of my continual employment as such.’

I could have fed the insufferable prig his eyeballs with a Coburg pattern spoon.