Gibbous House 35

Budle Hall- a featureless block of a house with all of the straight lines and none of the distinguishing marks of the relatively new Palladian style - was some half an hour behind us. Rounding a corner we came quite suddenly upon an estate wall stretching as far as the eye could see. I held my peace although impressed by the seeming extent of my property. Maccabi stole a glance to the rear and I was glad I had kept my composure. A few furlongs further we stopped at a Gatehouse. What had once been a building appropriate to its function as the entry to a large estate was alarming in its dilapidation. Not a pane of glass remained in the windows visible from our vantage point on the carriage. There were slates on the roof, but they appeared to have been dropped from the hand of a giant onto the rafters and left where they fell. Birds’ nests were visible through the holes in the roof, but nary a living creature stirred or gave sound. It was as sorry a place as ever I had seen.

Maccabi, his mood apparently improved, leapt jauntily from his seat, producing a large ring of keys from somewhere about his person. A representation of a coat of arms adorned the gates: party per bend sinister, a unicorn rampant was the charge in one field and the other lay bare. Whether the unicorn was proper or some fantastical colour I could not say. I doubted that it was the crest of any family at all. The key turned surprisingly easily in the lock given the rusted and buckled nature of the ironwork of the gates. He swung them wide with a flourish, made only slightly ridiculous by the discordant screech of the gates’ making. Retaking his post as driver, he drove the phaeton within. He did not secure the gates behind us. The drive was sweeping; curving and rising up an incline that was injurious to the horse’s well-being. I looked upward to the crest of a hill. What I could only assume was a dome to rival St Paul’s appeared to rise from the crest of the hill itself. It looked like nothing more than the grey hump of a gargantuan crookback.

Maccabi gave his unattractive laugh:

‘Your demesne, Mr Moffat. Fitzgibbon House.’

‘Fitzgibbon?’ I queried.

‘Look at it, sir. Just one of the reasons for its more customary name.’

This sight was as nothing to the horror that awaited on the other side of the hill.

Haply, the disrepair into which the gatehouse had fallen was not quite so in evidence. However, Fitzgibbon House was a conglomeration of architectural styles with no regard to harmony or beauty. By far the greater part seemed to have been completed when the most ridiculous extravagances of the Baroque style were in vogue. The dome itself was vast and, far from forming the hub of the house, strayed disconcertingly from the centre. Indeed, there was nothing of symmetry about the design. The east wing boasted towers three in number enjoined by a cloistered walk, the west had four spires of differing heights and construction. The materials of construction appeared to have been chosen by a magpie. Verdigrised copper on one spire, moorish tile on another. Sandstone on that wall, yeoman brick on this.

The monstrosity had been designed by – or for - a lunatic.