Gibbous House 48

But Arabella Coble was already part of my past by that time. What profit was there in thinking of her? Perhaps I would peruse her journal in an idle moment should one arise, but there was no hurry. I felt I should stir myself from the dining room and take some exercise. Perhaps I could circumambulate the house and quell the queasiness I felt whenever I contemplated its design. In truth I was unused to superstition's hold; but there was something unnatural about the arrangement of the building, as if it were as much a trompe l'oeil as the hall of mirrors paper on the gallery leading to the bedrooms. I was resolved. Taking a last draught of port direct from the decanter, I made my way to the furniture crammed lobby.

Of course, I was not in possession of any keys. No matter, I considered that it would be interesting to discover who answered the bell on my return. I swung the door wide and looked out into a starlit night. Turning left I passed the front of the west wing. I peered in the dining room window. The view to the interior was somewhat obscured by yet another item of exotic bric-a-brac; it appeared to be an orrery, although the number of planets was plainly incorrect, since a celestial body unknown to man was stationed outwith the orbit of the newly discovered Neptune. Even so it was a beautiful thing, if tarnished, and I wondered that it had not caught my eye during dinner. The next two windows also looked in on the dining room, and the second of them presented me with a sight as like to stop the heart of any disposed to afreets and phantasms. Some large furnishing blocked the view into the room, but it stood some feet back from the glass. Directly behind the grubby window stood a skeleton, displayed, I supposed, for the benefit of students of medicine. I hurried on my way.

In common with the asymmetry of the towers of both the west and east wings, the windows were not placed equidistant along the wall. Again, it seemed as if the architect had been intent on offending every tenet of aesthetics regarding his profession. He appeared to have delighted in odd numbers and an absence of motif or repetition. For example, the windows would be at random any one of mullioned, sash ,oriel, celestory and even, memorably, stained glass. The latter type of window enjoyed a run of three into the vivarium and I was more than grateful for that.

But the most disconcerting of all were two windows which appeared to offer insight into a room through which I had not passed. The withdrawing room I had previously noted as being difficient. The windows were the more expensive double hung sash rather than the singles of the taxidermical room. It contained two chaises-longues, a sopha and a rather grand chesterfield. A long sideboard provided place for cordials suitable to the most refined of ladies. There were two paintings on the walls, after Gainsborough and Reynolds, or perhaps by those two themselves, strangely -and ironically- close, given that each had been anathema to the other whilst alive. The room could not possibly have existed, but there it was, visible from outside the building, plainly sited betwixt the vivarium and the library.