The Somnambulist

Chapter 11

Beneath the city, the old man dreams.

A phrase surfaces from the ether and forms itself in his mind.

“All poets go to hell.”

A strange sentence but one he is certain he has heard somewhere before. Or read, perhaps. Even written it himself.

He dreams that he is back again in his bedroom at Highgate. Dr. Gillman is there, and someone else, a dwarfish figure who hangs back amongst the shadows that crouch malevolently at the edges of the room. Then the stranger steps into the light — the dark figure reveals itself — and the dreamer laughs with relief: it is a small boy not more than ten years old. He recognizes him now. The child has a name and in the dream it swims determinedly toward him. Ned. But the boy’s surname proves elusive and the dream shifts again.

He is on a beach, shoeless, wriggling his toes in the sand, feeling it rear up around his feet and work its way into the crevices of his skin. The wind catches playfully at him, flapping his coat like a cape, and almost succeeds in tipping the hat from his head. He watches an elderly woman stand at the edge of a wooden platform which has been wheeled out into the surf. She totters arthritically down to the shallows, squealing in matronly delight as the cold water touches her for the first time. The old man laughs and suddenly Ned is with him, his hot little hand clasped in his, and he laughs, too, though neither of them is quite sure why. Ned grips his hand tighter and they walk on.

The years roll back but the scene remains the same. The dreamer is on the beach again but now no longer old. The boy has disappeared (doubtless yet to be born) and instead, another man is by his side, someone the dreamer feels certain is important, significant to so many lives beyond his own. They are paddling together, breeches rolled up above their knees, shoes abandoned on the shore and guarded by an anxious entourage. The water laps hungrily at their calves and the dreamer grins at his companion. Suddenly the truth of it hits him. The Prime Minister. Could it be? Too fanciful, her decides, and shifts uncomfortably in his sleep. Could it be that he once paddled with the PM in the sea at Ramsgate?

Ramsgate? When did he remember that?

Probably not. Dreams lie.

The Highgate room again. Gillman and the boy. As usual the old man is talking, rambling incoherently on through another protracted anecdote. “All poets go to hell,” he says, and the child listens intently, but Gillman seems bored — he’s heard it all before, and more than once. Even in his own dreams the old man is aware of his reputation for garrulity.

Then he remembers. “All poets go to hell.” Something said that to him once. Something less than human, not quite alive, its voice papery and insidious like wind through dry leaves.

And then he is young again, still a student, along in his lodgings with this thing that has promised — for a price — to tell him certain secrets. “All poets go to hell,” it says, its eyes like burning coals, and maddeningly, the old man knows that this is all it will ever say, repeating ad nauseum and infinitum this same perplexing phrase.

Forty years later he tells the story and Gillman laughs as if it’s just another yarn, another little story outrageously embroidered, but the old man thinks — the old man knows — that this, this is the one.

Above him, as he sleeps, the city roars turbulently on.

There was a faint scent about Mr. Cribb that Moon had never noticed before — not altogether unpleasant, not the smell of perspiration or the musky stink of an unwashed body but something altogether more unusual, comforting, redolent of age and must and damp. He smelt like leaves in October, Moon realized. Of Autumn.

They had walked some distance from the hotel before either of them noticed they were being followed.

“Friend of yours?” the ugly man asked, nodding discreetly toward a stolid gray-suited gentleman skulking half a street behind them.

“My valet,” Moon explained. “My keeper. Skimpole won’t let me out without him.”

Cribb waved with his left, four-fingered hand and, rather sheepishly, the man touched the brim of his bowler in reply.

“How are you finding Mr. Skimpole?”

Moon grimaced.

“I promise you. By the time this is all over, you’ll have come to respect him.”

Moon surprised himself by laughing. “I suppose you’ve seen it all before. In the future.”

“Never forget,” Cribb insisted, comically grave, “I know the plot.”

The detective rolled his eyes.

“Of course, there are rules about this kind of thing, but I can tell you this: Skimpole does not die happy.”

“Shame,” said Moon, sounding anything but upset, at which Cribb unexpectedly roused himself to the albino’s defense.

“He’s not an evil man. He acts from what he believes to be honorable motives.”

The corners of Moon’s mouth turned themselves up into a sneer. “Monsters always do.”

“He’s not a monster.”

Moon looked about him and saw that he was lost. The familiar streets had slipped away, the alien and unknown reared up in their place. “Where are we going?”

“Docklands,” Cribb said, striding on. “Don’t ask me why. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Is there a good reason why we can’t hail a cab?

“To understand the city you need to feel her soil beneath your feet, to breathe her air, to sample her infinite variety.”

“You know you’re a remarkably irritating man.”

“It has been mentioned, yes.”

They walked on, oddly content in one another’s company, though dogged the whole time by Mr. Skimpole’s familiar.

“What’s your earliest memory?” Cribb asked at length.

Moon looked sharply at the loping, lopsided figure hunched beside him, this gawky Virgil to his reluctant Dante. “Why?”

“It may be important.”

“My father,” Moon said, “waking me in the night, shaking me awake to tell me my mother had gone.”

Cribb all but rubbed his hands together in glee. “Wonderful!” he chuckled.

“And you?” asked Moon, fairly irritated by his companion’s reaction. “Your earliest memory?”

Cribb frowned. “I sincerely doubt you’ll believe me.”

“Please.”

“I remember the streets in flames. The city visited again by pestilence and fire. The great stone cracked. I am old and I am dying.”

“You’re old?”

“It’s… complicated.”

“I’ve just realized,” Moon said with a start.

“Yes?”

“You really believe all this, don’t you?”

Cribb would only smile in reply, and they walked on.

“I imagine you’ll have met Madame Innocenti by now,” he said a while later.

“Who told you that?”

Cribb brushed the question aside with a languorous wave. “I’m not in league with the Directorate if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“It had crossed my mind.”

“Well, banish it forever. What did you make of her?”

Moon’s throat felt itchy and dry and he swallowed, unwilling to reply.

“You spoke to the Fly, didn’t you?”

“Truthfully? I’m not entirely sure who I spoke to. It was uncanny.”

“You’ll see her again,” Cribb said firmly. “And next time you’ll know the truth of it.”

“How much further?” Moon glanced behind him. “I think our friend’s getting tired.”

“Almost there.”

As they strolled on, the familiar turrets of Tower Bridge loomed into view and beyond them the wharves, warehouses and shipyards of the docklands. They seemed to Moon to resemble some industrial Baghdad, with its blackened spires, its grimy ziggurats and its smog-choked minarets. The Thames threaded her way amongst them, a discarded ribbon, dirty gray, strewn across the landscape.

“Walk closer.”

Ignoring a legion of forbidding notices and signs and heaving themselves over innumerable gates and fences, they eventually clambered down beside the river. Moon wrinkled his nose at the omnipresent smell of decay, treading as carefully as he could along the bank as the filth and muck of the Thames oozed over his shoes.

“Mud,” Cribb said, sounding just as he had on London Bridge, as though in the midst of delivering a sermon. “Glorious mud-”

“Have you got a light?” Moon asked, fumbling unsuccessfully in his pockets for a cigarette.

Cribb ignored him. “We’ve passed through the city’s bowels. Now we walk the span of her intestine.”

“Charming metaphor.”

“A century from now all this will be torn down, this testament to industry, toil and sweat. In its place great temples are built, monuments to wealth and avarice and power.”

Moon gazed in front of him, not really listening. A gull screamed overhead.

Cribb chattered on. “London is an inhibitor. You understand? She trammels and diminishes her inhabitants. The city is a trap.”

“What’s happening there?” Moon asked, pointing to what appeared to be a large marquee perched incongruously a few feet from the riverbank.

“Really, Edward. You can be infuriating at times. I’m trying to tell you something important.”

Cribb tutted in irritation but Moon had already left him and he was forced to break into a run to catch up. He was amused to note Skimpole’s man struggling along behind them, his shoes and trousers already sodden with the slimy jetsam of the river.

Moon reached the tent. Its canopy flapped noisily in the wind as though some great bird were trapped beneath the canvas, cyclopean wings beating frantically in an effort to escape. He peered inside and saw that the ground within had been thoroughly excavated, the soil potholed, cratered and covered with little marker flags, the earth itemized and ordered. What caught his attention, however, was a group of men — grubbily genteel, their clothes stained by silt and mud — gathered around a large spherical object placed on a table in the center of the tent. Moon moved closer and it took a moment to acclimatize himself to the sheer peculiarity of the sight, to accept that what he was seeing was real.

He was looking at what appeared to be an enormous stone head, too large and unwieldy for one man to lift unaided, caked in dirt and river mud but otherwise intact. Giggling and chattering like schoolchildren abandoned by their teachers and left to run riot in the classroom, the men were all far too excited to take much notice of his intrusion.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“British Museum,” one of them hissed. “You press?”

“Yes,” Moon lied fluently, and the man nodded distractedly in greeting.

Cribb finally caught up, breathless, a flush of color in his cheeks, its shade an exact match to his hair.

Moon ignored him and spoke to another of the men. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s quite remarkable,” the man replied giddily. “It’s got to be…” He turned to one of his colleagues bent over the head, which Moon now saw was made from some primitive sort of metal. “What do you think? Pre-Roman, at least.”

“Has to be at this depth,” his colleague replied.

“Look at the craftsmanship,” the man breathed. “The sophistication.”

“Who is it?” Moon asked as the man began to gently wipe the head clean of mud.

“Dangerous to theorize ahead of the facts but I might venture some supposition… a local leader, perhaps? Head of the tribe?”

“Seems too grand for that,” said another, the most elderly of the group. “Too regal.”

Then a young man spoke up. “A god, perhaps?” His voice was squeaky with nerves. “A king?”

“Wait,” said another. “There’s a name.”

As the mud was wiped away from the bottom of the head, a three-letter word emerged.

The young man read it aloud. “Lud!” he cried. “The founder of London, King of the city.”

“Impossible,” said one.

“I can’t believe it,” said another.

“Lud?” Moon pressed closer as the rest of the clay was brushed aside and he felt an acute, vertiginous sense that he had walked willingly into a trap. The head’s features began to swim queasily into view — something disturbing and familiar brought inexorably into focus. The face revealed at last, several present gasped.

“Here,” the old man said, belatedly suspicious. “Which newspaper did you say you were from?”

Moon ignored him. “It can’t be,” he murmured.

The bronze head was clean, history wiped away to reveal — calcified and perfectly preserved — an effigy of the first king of London. Lud unveiled.

And Edward Moon could only stare hopelessly down at it, biting hard on his lower lip in an effort to stop himself from crying out, as the unforgettably ugly features of Thomas Cribb gazed sightlessly back across the centuries.

He turned to confront his companion, but, as though in some marvelous illusion, the ugly man had disappeared, vanished back toward the river, leaving nothing behind to prove that he had ever been there at all, nothing to say that he wasn’t merely a figment of the city’s imagination.

When Moon returned to his hotel, he found Mr. Speight waiting for him in the street outside. The tramp was dressed in his usual filthy suit and his face was covered with fresh sores, only partially hidden by his riotous, scratchy beard. A bottle of something yellow bulged from his jacket pocket and he had propped up before him his trademark placard:

SURELY I AM COMING SOON

REVELATION 22:20

“Afternoon,” he said, ebullient but not yet quite drunk. The doorman gave him a dirty look and Speight nodded back. “This one’s been trying to turn me out for hours.”

“What are you doing here?” Moon was so bewildered that he felt half-convinced the man before him was a mirage.

“I’ve tracked you down,” Speight said proudly.

Moon blinked, still not entirely certain that this exchange was really happening. “What can I do for you?”

“To be honest… money. Since the theatre… I’ve had nowhere to doss down. Things have got difficult. You were always so kind to me-”

Moon cut him off, reached into his pocket and passed the man a pound note. “Here. Spend it wisely.”

“Actually,” Speight admitted, “I’ll only spend it on drink.”

Moon pushed past him and clambered up the steps to his hotel. “Frankly, Mr. Speight, just at the moment, I’d happily join you.”

“Something the matter?” Speight seemed genuinely concerned.

“Have you ever had everything you ever believed in ruined in a few hours?”

“Can’t say I have, sir, no.”

“Have you ever seen all logic and reason dissolve before your eyes?”

“Again, sir — I’d have to say no.”

“Have you ever been thrust into the most acute existential crisis by the sheer impossibility of the truth?”

The beggar gave Moon an embarrassed look. “P’raps you’d better have a lie-down, sir. Thanks again for the cash.”

With a heavy sigh, the conjuror stepped inside.

Six hours later, slumped at a table in the far corner of the hotel bar, a bleary-eyed Moon watched Arthur Barge shamble amiably past. The detective crooked his little finger and beckoned him across. “Mr. Barge?”

The human toby jug beamed. “Good evening to you.” He walked across to Moon, tripping over a stray barstool as he did so.

“I’ve been meaning,” Moon said with that ponderous solemnity unique to the seriously drunk, “to have a word with you.”

“I suppose this is about me and Mrs. G. She’s a wonderful woman, sir. A real lady. Frisky like, though, when she wants to be.”

Moon steepled his fingers. “Mr. Barge, Mrs. Grossmith has given me years of faithful service. I am not entirely without feeling and I’ve no wish — to dabble for a moment in the vernacular — to see you break her heart.”

Barge chuckled. “Are you asking me if my intentions are honorable?”

“Yes,” Moon said, unsmiling. “How did you know?”

Barge blustered, “Rest assured. I’ll do right by her.”

Moon finished the last of his drink. “You’d better. If I find you’ve mistreated her in any way…” He paused, unable to think of a sufficiently menacing threat. “Believe me,” he finished feebly, “I’ll get you.”

Barge looked back, astonished at this sudden burst of aggression so ineptly delivered. “Sorry if I’ve offended you. Really. I don’t know what I’ve done, I’m sure.”

Moon glared impatiently. “I’ll be watching.”

“I love her,” Barge said meekly, then walked to the exit, narrowly avoiding spilling several patrons’ drinks in the process. He struggled with the door, fruitlessly trying to tug it open when it would have submitted to the gentlest of pushes. Only the entrance of the Somnambulist afforded him an opportunity to escape. He stopped to whisper his thanks but the giant stomped grumpily past without acknowledging him.

When Moon saw his friend, he groaned and pushed aside a few of the legion of empty glasses lined up before him in a vain attempt to disguise the quantity of his drinking. The Somnambulist, however, was in no mood to be fooled. He pulled a stool up to the table, lowered his vast form upon it and wrote furiously on his blackboard, the ferocious tap of chalk on board sounding to Moon like the dull roar of distant cannon fire.

WARE WERE YOU

Moon squirmed. The Somnambulist gesticulated angrily at the message.

“Out,” Moon said and stumbled to his feet. Faltering, he floundered and, his balance unsteady, fell heavily back onto the chair. The Somnambulist ignored these pratfalls.

CRIBB

“Yes,” Moon admitted, a chink of emotion in his voice.

DONT TRUST

Moon looked up. “You recognize him, don’t you?”

STAY AWAY

“I don’t understand. Why won’t you tell me what you know? Why won’t anyone tell me what they know?”

TRUST ME

Moon sighed.

PLEESE

The Somnambulist frantically underlined the word.

Moon clutched his head. “Very well. If it makes you happy. I shan’t see him again.”

The Somnambulist nodded gravely.

“But you promise one day you’ll tell me why?”

The giant shrugged.

“Fine,” spat Moon. “If that’s the best you can do.” And he staggered up and lurched from the room.

Once he got to his suite, in a vain attempt to counteract the effects of the alcohol, her forced himself to consume three glasses of water before collapsing helplessly onto his bed. In the seconds before he passed out he watched, too weak to stir, as Skimpole’s man peered into the room, realized his condition and pulled the door discreetly shut. His last thought was a drunken conviction that the strange events which had filled his life since Cyril Honeyman had fallen from the tower must have a pattern, that they shared some undiscovered connection, were bound together by an invisible plot. He could see only the tiniest part of its design — like looking at a single filament of a spider’s web through a microscope — but he felt certain that all he needed was to step back, gain some perspective and watch as everything came into focus. He tried to keep hold of the idea but he was befuddled by drink and it leapt and wriggled away from him, struggling frantically like a mackerel on a hook until, in the end, he gave in and the darkness came to claim him.

Sleep did not come so easily in Newgate.

Barabbas stank and he knew it. Matters have come to a terrible pass when the stench and toxicity of one’s own perspiration are enough to make one nauseous. Owsley had procured him many favors, but it seemed that a decent bath was beyond even him.

Barabbas yawned, scratched at his shaggy beard and shuffled his elephantine bulk across those few paces that measured the floor of his cell. It was quiet now as the clock moved into the slow hours of the night — the only time when the shrieks and lamentations of his fellow inmates died down. The next cell was currently occupied by a member of a fundamentalist Methodist sect who occupied his time in endless repetitions of the Lord’s Prayer, occasionally interspersed for variety’s sake with a small selection of the better known psalms. The man must have fallen asleep shortly before midnight, exhausted and hoarse from his day’s labors, as Barabbas had heard nothing from him for almost an hour.

“Meyrick?” he hissed. “Are you there?”

Owsley’s face appeared between the bars. “Always,” he murmured, his tone that of a patient mother soothing a particularly obstreperous child.

Barabbas sighed — a rattling, skeletal sound. “I’m bored. Do you have any conception of what it’s like for me in here? The miserable, numbing tedium of it all.”

Owsley’s voice was as obsequious as ever. “Yes, sir, I do sympathize.”

“A man of my brilliance incarcerated in a space not fit for beasts. A coruscating intellect penned in with criminals with nothing to do but wait. It’s one of the great tragedies of our age.”

“Indeed, sir.” Was there a hint of resignation in Owsley’s voice? A glimpse behind the disciple’s mask, a momentary revelation of a man long-suffering, put upon, resentful? Perhaps.

“When will Edward come again?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“When he comes, I’ll-”

“Yes, sir? What will you do?” Just the faintest undertone of sarcasm, barely detectable.

“I’ll tell him everything.”

This had an unexpected effect on the listener. A thoughtful pause, then the carefully worded reply: “I should not advise such a course of action.”

Barabbas spluttered. “I don’t ask for advice. Yours is not to reason why.”

Owsley, unruffled but insistent: “You would regret it.”

“You are my creature. Never forget that.”

But his disciple did not reply, and the prisoner heard only soft footfalls as Owsley padded away down the corridor in discreet abandonment of his post.

“Meyrick!” Barabbas shouted, but still the footsteps receded frustratingly into the distance. “Meyrick!” he screamed, desperate and confused at this sudden, inexplicable dereliction. “Come back!”

Too late. He heard the faint rattle of keys, then the uncaring clang of the iron door as Owsley left the innards of the gaol and headed back toward the outside world.

“Meyrick!” Barabbas rattled the bars of his cell in despair, then threw himself onto the stone floor, on the brink of tears. He heard a loud rustling from the next cell — a moan, stumbling footsteps, followed soon after by the first, familiar words of Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I cry to thee…”

At last Mrs. Puggsley’s establishment was shutting up shop after twelve exhausting hours of business. Mina (always the darling of the salon) had been in great demand, and after dealing with her last john of the night she was grateful to walk downstairs to the reception room, hoping to sit with the other girls, gossip, chat and share a glass of wine or two. She was surprised, then, to find no trace of them but only Mrs. Puggsley, who sat on her usual chair, her vast buttocks drooping gelatinously over the seat. A prim, precise, pale-skinned man stood over her.

Puggsley gave a weak smile. “Mina, my dear.” She coughed, and as her enormous frame shuddered in sympathy, she wheezed like a worn-out steam train bound for the scrap heap. “I’ve sent the other girls away.”

“Away?”

Mrs. Puggsley shuffled uncomfortably. “For their safety.”

“Where?”

No reply. Mina transferred her attention to the pale man. “I’ve seen you before,” she said boldly. “You’re a friend of Mr. Gray, aren’t you?”

“Oh, we’re old pals,” he answered and smiled the way Brutus might have smiled the day he wielded the blade.

Mina began to fiddle absently with her beard, a nervous habit from childhood she had never quite managed to suppress. “What’s going on?”

Mrs. Puggsley turned toward her. “Please,” she said gently. “Go.”

“Tell me what’s happened,” Mina protested, despising herself for the plaintive quality in her voice.

“I’m afraid it’s bad news,” the pale man said smoothly. “Your usefulness has come to an end.”

Puggsley made a strange, uncharacteristic snuffling sound.

“I’ve decided to close you down. A terrible pity. But needs must…”

Mina looked at her employer, hoping for a denial, for some shred of hope, but the woman was unable even to meet her gaze.

“You’ve been a great help. Mrs. Puggsley says you were quite his favorite. The details you supplied were invaluable.” He paused to readjust the pince-nez that perched ridiculously on the tip of his nose. “It would be no exaggeration to say that there are those in the highest echelons of government who are grateful for your assistance.” He gave an oleaginous smile. “Take heart. Even a wretch like you can serve King and country in your way.”

“Get out,” Puggsley said to Mina, hoarse now, almost whispering, not bothering to hide the desperation in her voice or stem the rising tide of hysteria.

“I suggest you take your mistress’s advice. In a few minutes’ time this place will be in flames. The Directorate has scheduled it for demolition.”

Mrs. Puggsley did not move.

“My credentials as an arsonist are impeccable. You might say I’ve an eye for catastrophe.” He smirked again but, still silent, Puggsley did not stir. Mina gazed at this tableau in horror.

“Do you know,” the pale man said conversationally, “I fancy I can already smell the smoke.”

Mina turned and ran, fleeing out into the street, bent almost double with sobbing, tears stinging her face and trickling down her beard.

She left Goodge Street and was some way toward Tottenham Court Road when she saw the smoke, stopped and thought of going back. Her loyalty was about to win out over her instinct for self-preservation when a gang of men rolled rowdily out of a nearby tavern and began to point at her and laugh. Her decision made for her, she did her best to ignore their derision and hurried onwards in the hope of finding some sanctuary in the city. As she walked she felt a cold, implacable certainty that, whilst the pale man was even now returning home, Mrs. Puggsley had never left her chair and sat there still, the flames licking about her feet, toying with her hungrily, her great fat frame shuddering and sweltering in anticipation of the inevitable roast.

Moon woke three hours after he had lost consciousness, stumbled to his feet and vomited copiously in the basin. He washed the worst of it away and as the yellowed water spiraled down the plughole it seemed to mock him, chuckling quietly. He sank back onto his bed and surrendered himself to the pain, the interior of his skull assailed by battering rams, limbs rubbery like blancmange, mouth Sahara dry.

When he opened his eyes again, the physical pain had subsided but the tempest in his head was worse than ever. All at once the events of the past few months seemed to round upon him, jeering and ridiculing, crowding out his thoughts. He looked at the spotless, soulless luxury of his bedroom and under the influence of an ineluctable compulsion began — quite deliberately and with clinical precision — to smash it all up.

Mr. Skimpole arrived an hour later, perspiring, ill-tempered and smelling faintly of smoke. He was greeted at reception by the hotel’s manager and by the man he had assigned to watch Moon. What they had to tell him did not raise his spirits.

He knocked at Moon’s door but, predictably, got no reply. He tried again (still no answer), then gestured to his man to break it down. Ignoring the shrill protestations of the manager, the fellow did so in a single attempt.

“Mr. Moon?” Skimpole called out irritably. “Please come out. I’m not in an especially patient mood.”

Moon emerged, not entirely without guilt, from the bathroom.

The suite was almost unrecognizable — glass strewn indiscriminately about the floor, lamps smashed, curtains gouged and torn, paintings brutalized and defaced, the carpet pulled from its fitting and thrown against the wall like a great wave lapping at the corners of the room.

Skimpole’s tone was careful and even but masked a controlled fury. “What have you done?”

“You’re holding me against my will.”

Skimpole sighed. “We’re on the same side. I acted as I did only because you left me with no other choice. Most of us would kill to live in this kind of luxury. You should see my house. This is a palace by comparison.”

“It’s a prison.”

The albino looked exasperated. “I know you had a difficult time of it yesterday. Clearly you’ve had some kind of falling-out with your new friend. Mr…. Cribb, is it?” Skimpole turned to his man to check the name. “Well, then. I’ll have this room cleaned up and we’ll say no more about it. Surely you want to solve this case as much as any of us?”

“One condition: get rid of that ghoul.” Moon pointed toward Skimpole’s man. “I can’t abide being followed everywhere. It’s not even as though he’s very good at it.”

“Very well. But that’s my only concession. You must stop acting like this, Edward. All I ask is for you to solve this one problem and then you can go back to your old life. If Madame Innocenti is correct we have just eight days left.”

Moon collapsed into the room’s only surviving chair. “If she is correct,” he muttered. “If.” He groaned. “In the past few days I’ve seen things I know shouldn’t be true, things against the order of the world. Things that have no place in a rational universe.”

“May I offer some advice?” Skimpole said gently. “You should do as I do whenever I’m confronted by the weird, by the uncanny, by the unexplained.”

“What’s that?”

“My job.”

Skimpole turned to leave and, as he did so, the Somnambulist appeared behind him in the doorway. Seeing Moon and the carnage which surrounded him, the giant shook his head sadly, pushed past the albino and moved slowly away down the corridor. Moon did not even try to stop him.

When he finally emerged from his bedroom, the events of the past few hours were already receding happily into the past. His encounter with Cribb had the unconvincing quality of fiction about it, like something that had happened to someone else entirely. He washed, shaved, combed back his thinning hair and started gratefully for the Stacks.

The Archivist, at least, seemed pleased to see him. “Heard you’d been recruited,” she said, once Moon had been ushered down into the basement by another nameless librarian. “Government work, is it? Mr. Skimpole’s boys?”

Moon had learnt years before not to be surprised by the Archivist’s apparent omniscience, but even he could not help but be startled by the coolly authoritative manner with which she delivered the specifics of his predicament.

“Yes, ma’am. Do you…” He hesitated.

“Yes?” The woman’s sightless eyes seemed to swivel curiously in his direction.

“Do you know Mr. Skimpole, ma’am? Does he… come here?”

The Archivist turned away and began to search a shelf stacked high with moldering copies of Punch, jaundiced WANTED posters and creaking, leather-bound encyclopediae. “Now, now,” she chided. “You know I have to be discreet.”

“What you mean by that, I suppose, is ‘yes’?”

“I can’t prevent you from drawing your own conclusions.”

“No,” Moon said pensively. “You can’t.”

“What are you looking for today?”

“Anything you have on a Madame Innocenti. Clairvoyant in Tooting Bec.”

The Archivist said nothing, disappeared and returned shortly after with two slim volumes. “This is all I have. Seems she’s fallen foul of the law once or twice before.”

Moon thanked her and took them. “Archivist?”

“Yes?”

He paused uncertainly. “Have you ever heard of a man named Thomas Cribb?”

There was no reply. Moon had convinced himself that she had not heard him and was about to repeat his query when the Archivist spoke again, an unfamiliar, quavering tenor to her voice. “One moment. I may have something for you.”

When she returned she was pushing a trolley piled high with records, reports, ledgers, dossiers and sheaves of what looked like nineteenth-century newsprint. She wheezed her way toward him, gripping his shoulder with surprising force to steady herself. Half a dozen pamphlets and a vast, dictionary-sized volume toppled from the trolley.

“What is this?”

“This?” The Archivist gasped for breath. “This is just the beginning. I’ve five times this amount waiting for you.”

“Surely this can’t all concern Mr. Cribb?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Moon picked up some of the records and stifled a sneeze at the clouds of dust that mushroomed from the pile. “How far back do these go?”

The Archivist swallowed hard. “Over a century. Seems your friend has been with us longer than you thought.”

The silence that followed, tense and oppressive, was broken only when Moon lit a cigarette, fumbling desperately in his pockets for box and lighter like a man deprived of tobacco for days. He told me later that it was the only time the Archivist had ever asked to join him, her aged, knotted hands shaking with quiet, unspoken desperation.

When Moon returned home the Somnambulist sat waiting for him. Rows of empty glasses stained with milky residue snaked their way along his table, the detritus of a long and lonely evening.

Even more than Moon, the giant had been damaged by the destruction of the theatre — the ancien regime had passed away, but under Skimpole’s new republic Moon was at least given mysteries to unravel, missions to fulfill, the ongoing puzzle of the Honeyman business to divert him, whilst the Somnambulist had sunk into what might in any other man have seemed a profound melancholia. Communication between them had always been fragmentary at best, conducted via sign, gesture and the staccato correspondence of the chalkboard, but Moon had begun to suspect that the giant missed the performances — his nightly dose of spot-lit approbation — far more than he would ever admit.

He risked a pallid smile and the Somnambulist nodded sullenly back.

“I saw Speight yesterday. He seemed well. By which I mean, of course, not exactly well. But much as he always was.”

The giant shrugged theatrically.

“I’ve spent the day in the Stacks. Uncovered a good deal on Madame Innocenti.”

The giant shot him a reproachful look, sulky, like a child refusing to eat his greens. Moon pressed on regardless. “It would appear she’s not been entirely truthful with us. Her real name is Ann Bagshaw. Before she became a prophet she used to be a seamstress — had a little shop by the Oval.”

The Somnambulist scribbled something on his board and Moon, relieved at last to be getting some response, leant forward to read it:

SEE HER AGAIN

“Ah, yes. Well, Mr. Skimpole’s arranged for us to attend another of her soirees tomorrow. Perhaps things will become clearer then.”

The Somnambulist drained his final glass of milk, gathered chalk and blackboard to him and, with ponderous dignity, pulled himself to his feet.

“See you tomorrow?” Moon called out hopefully. “For the seance?”

The Somnambulist loped grumpily away, heading for his suite. They had not shared a room since the theatre blaze — a hotel as exclusive as this seemed to draw the line at bunk beds.

In the morning, a gruff kind of rapprochement took place. The Somnambulist scrawled what might generously be construed as an apology, Moon plied him with further assurances and it was in the spirit of uneasy truce that they set off after lunch for Tooting Bec.

Madame Innocenti was waiting for them on the steps of her shabby house. “Gentlemen,” she said, all smiles. “So pleased you’ve come back to us.”

Moon bowed his head and said politely: “Mrs. Bagshaw.”

The woman froze and Moon saw a look of fear pass across her face, but she recovered her composure almost immediately and walked into the house as though nothing had happened. As they moved down the corridor and toward the seance room, Innocenti’s husband lurched from the shadows where he had obviously been eavesdropping, and shot them a look of pure animosity.

The seance took place exactly as before and Moon even recognized some of the same faces — Ellis Lister and the widow Erskine. With them were an elderly couple and a grim-faced, lugubrious man in mourning for his wife. In other words, the usual parade of misfits and delusionals desperate for their pain to be soothed away by the coos and sweet nothings of their hostess.

After half an hour or so of meaningless socializing, handshakes, introductions, tea and biscuits, the seance began in earnest, everything exactly the same as before — Madame Innocenti at the head of the table, the swift assumption of her Corcoran voice, those same nebulous, artfully worded missives from the spirit world. She turned first to Mrs. Erskine. “To whom do you wish to speak?” she asked, in the Spaniard’s familiarly punctilious tones.

“My boy,” Mrs. Erskine said, her voice weary and thin. “My little ‘un. Billy. Sixteen when he died.”

“Billy?” Corcoran whispered. “Billy? Is there a Billy Erskine amongst the spirits?”

Pause. Then, predictably: “Mother? Innocenti managed a passable impression of a young man’s voice, cracked and unsure of its register.

“Billy?” Mrs. Erskine asked, pain and hope intermingled in her voice. “Billy, is that you?”

“Mother! Why have you come to me now? I’ve been here so long. I’ve been waiting.”

Mrs. Erskine sobbed. “I’m sorry, Billy. Can you forgive me?”

“Will you join me soon? It’s warm here and soft. You’ll like it, Mother, I know you will.” His voice had acquired a plaintive, wheedling tone. “But what’s happened to you, Mother? You seem, so old.”

Erskine sobbed again and Madame Innocenti murmured: “Mother, I love you.”

This exchange continued for what felt like hours and Moon felt himself on the verge of nodding off into a light doze when he heard the mention of his own name.

“Mr. Moon?” It was Innocenti in her Corcoran persona.

“Senor,” Moon replied. “Such a pleasure to meet you again.”

“I wish I could say the same. Seven days to go and you haven’t done a damned thing.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“In little more than a week this city will be set ablaze and you’ve done nothing to stop it. The spirits are afraid, Mr. Moon. London is in great peril.”

“So people keep telling me.”

“Honeyman was a hook. You’ve taken the bait and you don’t even realize it. You’re being used.”

“Go on.”

“Underground.” Corcoran’s tone became more forceful. “Danger underground.”

“Danger?”

Madame Innocenti arched her back. Moon and the Somnambulist felt her hands begin to tremble violently, as though galvanized by some invisible force. “The death of the city approaches,” she chattered. “The poet dreams uneasy in his cot. The conspiracy moves against you. The sleeper wakes.”

Despite his skepticism, Moon found himself enthralled. “What do you mean?”

“Skimpole is a pawn. You are their target. And it is you who are to blame.”

Moon and I discussed Madame Innocenti’s warnings at length. Of course, they sounded every bit as recondite and oracular as one might expect but they were also astonishingly accurate on a number of key points. Moon argued for a time — trying more to convince himself than me, I fancy — that she might have obtained the majority of the details from Skimpole, Lister or someone of that ilk, but in the end we were forced to accept that Madame Innocenti may well have been the real thing.

Innocenti opened her eyes and what happened next took even Moon by surprise. Later, no one could be entirely certain what they had seen and witnesses disagreed on all but the most basic facts. Moon himself believed the Innocenti’s eyes suddenly turned a profound shade of scarlet, others that they had become green or an iridescent yellow, and Mrs. Erskine insisted (though her testimony, as you will shortly discover, is not entirely to be trusted) that they turned a ghastly black. The color itself, of course, is not important. What is significant is that something remarkable, something unquestionably preternatural, took place.

The medium screamed and fell to the ground where she lay in deathly silence. Some present even claimed to have seen tendrils of smoke emerge from her mouth and nostrils, as though some terrible engine were exhausting itself within her.

The spell was swiftly broken. Mrs. Erskine, a septuagenarian at the very least, leapt — genuinely leapt — to her feet and bounded around the table toward the psychic, whereupon she pulled the woman to her feet and slapped her hard in the face.

“Ann Bagshaw?” Erskine said, declaiming her words like a policeman collaring a suspect.

Madame Innocenti relaxed and her eyes returned to their everyday shade. “Not any more.”

Mrs. Erskine turned to the other guests. “Ladies and gentlemen, forgive my intrusion. I represent the Vigilance Committee.”

There were rumbles of disapproval from the faithful at this, but Mrs. Erskine went on, “This woman’s name is not and never has been Madame Innocenti. Her name is Ann Bagshaw.”

The woman’s husband moved forward to protest but she waved him meekly away.

“Today I apparently spoke to my late son,” Erskine said. “But I have no son, living or dead. If Mrs. Bagshaw is to be believed, I conversed this afternoon with a boy who never existed.”

Innocenti recovered and seemed to direct herself not to her accuser but to Edward Moon. “What happened was real,” she insisted. “The warnings were real.”

There was such consternation and general bedlam at this that Moon had to shout to make himself heard. “Please. You’ve not been told the whole truth.” A hush fell upon the room as everyone, psychic and punter alike, turned to listen. “Our hosts may not be exactly who they claim to be, but neither, I fancy, is Mrs. Erskine.”

The old woman muttered something under her breath.

“Look at her hands, ladies and gentlemen. Too supple, too smooth and unlined. Too youthful, I fancy, to be real.”

Erskine glared, pushed past Ann Bagshaw and dashed from the room at a speed quite impossible for a woman of her advanced years. They heard her clatter through the house and escape out into the street, like a rat making its obligatory exit from some leaky and waterlogged old hulk.

Moon turned to his friend. “Keep everyone here until I return. I’ve just realized who we’re dealing with.”

Outside it had begun to rain heavily and before Moon had run for more than a few yards he was sodden and drenched. Ahead he could see Mrs. Erskine dashing desperately through the rain, seeking sanctuary in the murky streets and mews of Tooting Bec.

The action of the chase took no more than five or six minutes but it seemed to both of them to last for hours. As the rain pelted down in unforgiving sheets, Moon could see no more than a few yards in front of him, but dashed on regardless, pushing past umbrellaed pedestrians, pursuing Erskine by sheer instinct, a tracker dog after a scent.

He finally cornered her in an alley. Like weary boxers after the final bell, they stood panting and embarrassed at his anticlimactic finish to their flight. Mrs. Erskine’s make-up had been all but obliterated by the rain — dye, powder and greasepaint streaked down her face, its thick lines of color lending her the appearance of a clown caught in a thunderstorm. From behind the remnants of Mrs. Erskine a much younger woman peered out — in her early thirties, not quite pretty (she had too large a nose for that), but the hint of a pulchritudinous figure was apparent in the sopping, clinging silhouette of the old lady’s clothes.

Moon stared, his suspicions confirmed, and caught somewhere between shock and elation, he felt violently sick. “It is you!” he cried. “Oh my dear. You’ve come back to me.” He sank to his knees. “Oh my darling. Oh my angel.”

She looked down, her eyes cold and devoid of pity. “You’re embarrassing yourself,” she said. “Get up, Edward.”