Gibbous House 66

Miss Pardoner was not in evidence, I was unsure as to where she might be. For no other reason than a want of anything better to do, I thought I might take a promenade along the drive to the Gatehouse. The day was fulfilling its early promise. The April sun was high overhead and the drive descended between the rolling hillocks and unsupervised ovines. The panorama was the epitome of bucolic paradise; 'Et in Arcadia ego sum' would have been appropriate indeed - but for the unfortunate lack of shepherds.

The gatehouse looked scarcely better from the rear aspect. A trellis enlivened the darkened sandstone and provided a home for several dull-coloured avian specimens that were the only evidence of life in the building that I could see.

The rear elevation was possessed of the remnants of a door, the boards warped and cracked so that tongue had long parted company with any groove. Its colour had once been green from the scraps of paint that clung to the weathered wood. I found it a little humorous that someone, in the distant past, had locked the door. I removed a board at a time and entered the ruin. Evidently the birds outside did not have sole possession of the building. One step over the threshold and I was greeted by a multitudinous flapping of wings and a screeching which might be associated with vermin. Such the bats were, I supposed. Some flapping of my own dispersed them to their inverted perches in the rotten timbered rafters. It was a single story building, the room I had entered was – or had been – a scullery. Through a void doorway I saw a sitting room; sopha rotted and chewed by some or other fauna. Once inside the sitting room I saw that it was furnished with a window to the front and a door to another room on the side wall. It seemed in reasonable condition – and it was locked. Once more there was something of dissonance between the outward dimensions and the internal disposition of the building. The scullery, the only room to the rear of the building was considerably smaller than the sum of the area of the two rooms to the front, however tiny the locked room might prove to be.

On the wall opposite to the entry to the mysteriously sealed room was a door to the exterior, presumably to enable the erstwhile gatekeeper to felicitate access for visitors to the estate. Apparently it had been some time since any had visited. I was on the point of leaving when the toe of my boot met with a hard object which slid rattling along the floor. A large and rusted ring holding one solitary key lay on the floorboards, half hidden by the remnants of the sopha's skirts. I picked it up, it appeared to be a key for a mortice lock and of an appropriate size to allow access to the sealed room. It was disturbing to note that -aside from a modicum of dirt, dust and damage from rodent teeth- the door was in infeasibly good repair in comparison to every other part of the building.

The key turned slickly and I opened the door.