Gibbous House 30

I awoke in Harbinger’s overstuffed armchair in the vestry. By the light of a guttering candle, I learned that it was a little after 4, according to my recently acquired timepiece. The nightmare had been as ever it was, save for a small detail. Up to this occasion, my eyes would spring open just after I had looked down at the corpse’s empurpled face; a solitary drop of blood meanwhile having navigated the contours of my head, would splash onto the sightless eyeball of the man who was no longar Moffat. This time, however, as the dream ended, I found that the drop of blood fell on a face still more well known to me; mine own.

There were three empty bottles of the dreadful wine, when Harbinger arrived at a little after seven. Nevertheless, my disposition had neither improved nor worsened. I had spilled a little of the noxious fluid on the fabric of his chair, a heavy woven material the colour of dried blood with embroidered fleurs de lys. The chair was in no way damaged as to value thereby. The piping voice invited me cordially to a kedgeree breakfast in one hour in the cottage. I was free to avail myself of the cottage’s amenities for my toilet, should I so desire. The clergyman eyed the empty bottles of wine, but said nothing. Picking up the communion chalice from the floor I threw it to him, noting with pleasure that a few drops of the liquid splashed the white of his collar as he fumbled the catching of it.

‘Ah well, only fitting that priestly vestments be stained with the Blood of Christ, Reverend?’

For answer the vestry door slammed shut.

Breakfast was served in a dining room that would have been most commodious for a troupe of circus dwarves, if they had numbered less than six. We three gentlemen seated ourselves at the lilliputian table in chairs of corresponding size. Miss Pardoner hovered by the sideboard on which rested a copper chafing dish better than any of the thin silver plate owned by the parish in the church next door. The kedgeree was a fine example, but the fish though smoked, was not haddock. I complimented the household on the fine flavours of the dish.

‘Miss Pardoner prepared it.’ Harbinger said. ‘I fear I shall miss her skill in the kitchen, when I return to my bachelor state.’

I raised an eyebrow: ‘In the kitchen?’

Harbinger coloured and began to choke on a fishbone. Maccabi struck him several hearty blows between the scapulae. My ward, far from running from the room in lachrymose dudgeon, gave me the benefit of an icy rage:

‘Were I but a man, sir, I should have satisfaction of you. Though I doubt you would treat a man as you have just done me.’

‘Perhaps.’ I said.

The colour in her face made her suddenly attractive, and I thought the prospect of having her under my dominion was more pleasant still. It amused me too, that she felt I regarded any honour worthy of defending in so chancy an affair as a duel. The very notion seemed as outmoded as dancing a gavotte and just as pointless, in my view.

‘In any event, your talents in the kitchen are to be commended, if this be a sample of them. What is the fish? Do tell.’

I smiled at her, and finally drew a murderous look from Maccabi, who seemed more affronted by the pleasantry than my insult to the girl. With remarkable self-possession Miss Pardoner replied:

‘The fish were Craster kippers, Mr Moffat. Smoked herring, locally caught, locally cured. As Northumbrian as the Coquet river.’

’As you yourself?’ I asked.

‘Sadly, no. I belong here as little as you yourself do, sir.'

Yes, I savoured the prospect of future days with Miss Ellen Pardoner.