The Somnambulist

Chapter 5

Edward Moon was bored.

He had been smoking for hours, lying stretched out on the couch in a corner of his study, enveloped by the tobacco fog which blanketed the room, thick and suffocating as a nicotine peasouper. He yawned and extended a languorous arm for another cigarette.

Mrs. Grossmith bustled in, a half-glimpsed figure amongst the fug. “Mr. Moon?” she asked in a querulous voice which suggested that she stood in her usual posture of disapproval, hands on hips. The atmosphere was too hazy to be certain, but from his long experience of the woman, Moon thought this entirely likely.

“Bored again?”

“I’m afraid so.” He lit the cigarette and settled back into the couch. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“You get bored,” the housekeeper said sternly, “the way other men get the clap.”

Moon gave a thin-lipped smile. “Very good.”

“You’ll have to stop smoking in here. Given that we live in a house without windows, I absolutely refuse to tolerate it a moment longer. You’ll poison us all if you carry on like this. You’re a positive menace.”

The conjuror blew out a long gray stream of smoke. “You’re not the first to have said so. But I must confess that coming from you it stings a little more.”

“Be reasonable.”

Ruefully, he stubbed out the remainder of the cigarette and got to his feet. “No doubt you’re right. Besides, I think I’m starting to get bored with ennui.”

Mrs. Grossmith snorted disapprovingly. “You’re quite impossible when you’re like this.”

“And you’re a saint to put up with me.”

“Can’t you get out? Go for a walk. Take some air.”

Moon seemed unconvinced but Grossmith persisted. “It’d do you good. This atmosphere can’t be healthy.” She gave a phlegmy, melodramatic cough.

“Perhaps I shall go out for a while.”

Mrs. Grossmith sounded pleased. “You can’t expect a mystery every week.”

“Can’t I?” Moon looked disappointed, like a child on Christmas morning who wakes to find his stocking filled only with a farthing and a bruised orange. “You know, I long for a world where violent crime is so commonplace that I’m kept in constant employment.”

“A strange wish.”

He sighed. “Not that villainy is what it was. The age of the truly great criminal is past. Since Barabbas… Mediocrity, Mrs. Grossmith. Mediocrity as far as the eye can see. A case in point: You remember the robber the Somnambulist and I foiled a couple of years ago? The man who’d planned to burrow his way into the Bank of England but ended up digging into the sewers instead?”

“I remember, sir.”

“His name escapes me at present. Can you recall it?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“You see? Forgettable. All of them — to a man — forgettable.”

Mrs. Grossmith forced a smile. “This boredom will pass, sir. It usually does.”

“Yes,” Moon almost whispered to himself. “I know the remedy.”

“You’re going for a stroll, then?”

“That’s right. For a stroll.”

Moon walked away and Grossmith heard him move through the house, trotting spryly up the hidden steps, past the rhododendrons, out onto the street.

The Somnambulist ambled in from the kitchen, an enormous jug of milk in one hand. He gave Mrs. Grossmith a quizzical look and gesticulated a brief message.

“Where’s he gone?” she asked. “Is that what you mean?”

The giant nodded solemnly.

She sighed. “I think we both know the answer to that.”

The Somnambulist did not reply but, head sunk low onto chest, milk cradled to his bosom, made his way mournfully back toward the kitchen.

After exchanging a few slurred words with Mr. Speight (who had wedged himself into what looked like a surprisingly comfortable position on the steps), Moon left the Theatre of Marvels and headed toward a disreputable district of the city, well known to him and to those others who shared his regrettable predilections. It was a route he knew by heart and he covered the distance in less than an hour, having no desire to hail a cab. He needed this time alone to prepare himself. Indeed, so intent was he on his journey that he entirely failed to notice that for its final fifteen minutes he was most expertly followed.

His destination was a dilapidated flat at the end of an alley a few minutes’ walk from Goodge Street, in that unprepossessing area of the city still a decade or so away from being known as “Fitzrovia.” The shutters of the place were tightly drawn but an enticing glow escaped at their edges. Looking quickly about him to make certain he was alone, Moon knocked six times in a precisely ordered pattern. As he waited, he was certain that hidden eyes were watching him from the other side of the door, and felt a profoundly uncomfortable conviction that somewhere within the house he was the subject of scrutiny and debate.

The door opened at last. An enormously fat woman stood before him, bathed in greasy yellow light, reeking of cheap perfume. Titanically vast, she relied upon a walking stick to support her stupendous bulk. “Mr. Gray!” She beamed. “It’s been too long.”

Moon shuffled his feet uncomfortably on the doorstep.

“Bored again?”

He nodded sheepishly and the woman gave a low, blubbery laugh. Hobbling forward, she ushered Mon over the threshold and closed the door behind him.

Inside, the air was thick with incense and the smell of desire. Moon walked into a large reception room, opulently and lavishly furnished, dripping with the trappings of immoral wealth. He moved swiftly across it to sit in one of half a dozen luxuriously upholstered chairs. This was a place and procedure he knew horribly well.

The woman gave a coarse smile. “We’ve got a new one in tonight.”

Of all the brothels in London, Mrs. Puggsley’s was by far the most distinguished, catering as it did to a select and discerning clientele. The men who patronized her establishment came there for services which could not be provided by any other of the city’s houses. They had special, unique tastes — preferences which, to the innocent, unjaded eye of the reader, may seem distasteful and even repugnant. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“Does she have a name?”

“Mina,” the woman purred. “You’ll like her.”

“And Lucy? Mary? Where are they tonight?”

“They’re with other clients at present. Why don’t you meet our Mina, Mr. Gray? I promise you shan’t be disappointed.”

Moon winced inwardly as Mrs. Puggsley used his pseudonym again. He was certain she had realized long ago that it was an assumed name, and in his darkest moments feared even that she had stumbled upon his true identity. He wondered occasionally if she used “Gray” to tease and taunt him, as a way of telling him she knew.

He nodded. “Show her in.”

Puggsley gave an oleaginous bow. “Settle back, Mr. Gray. Relax. See your darkest dreams come to life before your eyes.”

Six soft taps came at the front door, the same code Mr. Moon had used moments earlier.

“Excuse me.” Puggsley waddled across the room, peered through a small hole bored at eye height and let out a wet, gurgling giggle. “It’s Pluck.”

She unbolted the door and admitted her latest customer, a short, balding, well-fed man with painfully pockmarked skin. The madam spread wide her arms in a florid gesture of introduction. “Mr. Gray? Meet Mr. Pluck.”

Warily, the two men shook hands. Pluck’s handshake was moist and feeble and Moon was barely able to resist the impulse to wipe away the stranger’s dampness from his palm.

“Charmed,” he said acidly.

“Gentlemen, talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back shortly with a little slice of paradise.” With a final bow and a chubby flourish, Mrs. Puggsley disappeared from the parlor and vanished into the bowels of the house. Pluck pulled up a chair.

“I love it here,” he confided. “Come whenever I can. Whenever I can afford to, you understand. You know, before I discovered this place I thought nobody on earth felt the same way as me, I thought I must be ill. You understand, Mr. Gray? I thought I was a freak.”

“Quite so,” Moon said vaguely.

“Course, I knew you’d understand. We’ve prolly got a lot in common. This hobby of ours, for one. Tell me — when did you realize that you shared our… inclinations?”

Moon, having no desire to dignify the man’s question with an answer, took a cigarette from his pocket and lit up. For courtesy’s sake he offered his neighbor the same. Happily, Pluck accepted, and for a few moments there was just smoke and blissful silence.

“I hear there’s a new girl,” Pluck said between puffs. “Any idea what she’ll be like?”

“None.”

“Seems we’re about to find out.” Pluck managed a rough approximation of a light laugh — an awful, anxious, scraping sound.

Mercifully, Mrs. Puggsley returned at that moment, rolling back into the room with her usual mastodon grace. In her wake was a most unusual woman who nonetheless, at first sight, appeared wholly unremarkable. She was fetching enough (one would expect nothing less from the Puggsley stable) with a pleasingly symmetrical face and a smooth, attractively dimpled complexion. She was dressed in a filmy white gown tied at the waist by a slender piece of cord, clasped tight enough to accentuate her natural curves. But what marked her out from the legions of similarly pretty but unassuming women one passes every day on the street was that she also sported a monstrously bushy black beard.

“Is it real?” Pluck asked, his voice hushed and reverential.

Mrs. Puggsley was scandalized. “Mr. Pluck! What do you take me for?”

“May I touch it?”

Puggsley turned to the girl. “Mina?”

She nodded and simpered with practiced coyness. Pluck reached out to her facial hair and stroked, eyes half-shut, transported in bliss. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. Mina gave a smoothly professional smile which suggested she was well used to this kind of compliment.

Moon yawned. “Anything else?”

“You always want more, don’t you, Mr. Gray?”

“I pay you for it.”

Puggsley ushered Pluck back to his seat, then untied the cord around Mina’s waist, gently slipping away her gown to leave the girl naked before them. Her body had a ripe, plump sensuality but was not in itself remarkable.

Dangling between her breasts, however, was something extraordinary — a curious deformity, a grossly pink piece of flesh which bore a ghastly, visceral resemblance to the severed arm of an infant. It flopped and twitched slightly as they stared, almost as if it were aware of their fascinated attention.

Moon licked his lips. “Magnificent.”

“Gentlemen.” Puggsley beamed with pride. “She’s yours for the asking.”

Moon and Pluck smiled wolfishly as one.

“What am I bid?”

Pluck named a sum most likely equal to his wages for a week. Without hesitation, Moon doubled it. Pluck suggested a modest advance, only for his opponent to instantly double the offer again. Crestfallen, the little man admitted defeat. “She’s yours.”

“Use her well,” Mrs. Puggsley said sternly.

“I’ll use her as I please.” Moon took Mina by the hand and led her from the room, heading for a boudoir on one of the upper floors of the house. As he left he could hear Puggsley doing her best to cheer up the loser.

“Bad luck, sir. But I’ve plenty more as would love to meet you. The seal girl will be free in an hour. The pinhead’s ready now. And if you’re happy to wait a bit, we’ve got a new Siamese coming in later.”

Edward Moon disappeared upstairs and heard no more. And for the next three luxurious hours he gave himself up to the caresses of a bearded lady.

Moon stepped out of Mrs. Puggsley’s house, gingerly pulled shut the front door and looked cautiously about him. Mistakenly thinking himself unobserved, he waked to the end of the alley and turned left into Goodge Street, starting for home. The pavement was deserted, eerily silent, and his footsteps rang out loudly as he walked, but he had gone no more than a few yards before the still of the night was interrupted by a discreet, dry cough. Moon turned to see a man standing close behind him.

He was neat and small and fussy in appearance, with a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez balanced precisely on the tip of his nose. His complexion was chalky and unusually pallid; his hair pure white.

A look of grim recognition crossed Moon’s face and he nodded with icy politeness. “Mr. Skimpole.”

The albino gave a curious bow. Despite his faintly comical appearance there was something threatening about him, a tangible air of menace.

“I didn’t see you,” Moon explained.

“People rarely do.”

“And how long have you been following me?”

Skimpole brushed the question aside. “Give my regards to Mrs. Puggsley.”

“What do you want?”

The albino stared impassively at him, the lower halves of his eyes magnified weirdly by the pince-nez. “I need your help.”

Moon snorted in reply and began to walk away.

Skimpole hurried after him. “Wait.”

“I’ve refused before. My answer has not changed.”

“There is a plot against the city. Some conspiracy has been set in motion. The Directorate needs you. Your country needs you.”

“Find another stooge.”

“Something’s happening. Can’t you sense it? Some great crisis is upon us.”

Moon stopped dead in the street and turned to face his tormentor. “Must be your imagination, Mr. Skimpole. Too much cheese before bedtime.”

“I could make you…” Skimpole spoke lightly. “Mr. Gray.”

Moon said nothing.

Skimpole’s pale face contorted itself into a semblance of a smile. “You’ll help me.”

Moon smiled back with excruciating civility. “Even I have some scruples. You’ll have to put a gun to my head before I’ll help you.”

He strode away and Skimpole watched as he melted into the distance. “It may come to that,” he said softly. Then, more firmly: “It may yet come to that.”

The following day did not start well. The ape Moon had used in his set for the past two years fell unexpectedly ill and was prescribed by his veterinarian a rest cure of indefinite duration. The zoo sent a replacement but he was an obstreperous troublesome fellow with none of the natural talent of his predecessor. Asked to caper with enthusiasm, he gibbered listlessly; required to materialize with style and panache, he limped onstage with all the eagerness of a condemned man queuing for his final meal.

It was with relief, then, that Moon returned home at the end of the show, the Somnambulist choosing to linger upstairs a while longer in an attempt to cajole some semblance of a performer from the recalcitrant chimp.

When Moon let himself inside, Speight was dozing uneasily on the steps. On hearing his arrival, Mrs. Grossmith hurried out to greet him. “There’s somebody waiting for you. I said it was late but he did insist.”

“Who is it?” Moon lowered his voice to a whisper. “Is it the albino?”

Someone out of sight laughed uproariously.

Moon walked into the kitchen to find an ungainly figure sprawled in his favorite armchair.

“Albino?” The visitor laughed again. “Really, Moon, I swear your friends get odder each time we meet.”

Moon allowed himself a small smile. “Inspector.”

Detective Inspector Merryweather got to his feet and shook Moon warmly by the hand. “Pleasure to see you again. I only wish that one day we might meet under happier circumstances.”

As Mrs. Grossmith retired discreetly to her room, Moon produced a bottle of whisky and a set of glasses, sat opposite his guest and poured them both a generous draught. “I take it this is a professional visit?”

“’Fraid so. I apologize for the lateness of the hour but I’m at my wits’ end.”

“You mean you have a case for me?”

“You’ve seen the headlines?”

“The Honeyman business? I’ve followed your lamentable lack of progress with no little disappointment, Inspector. I’d hoped by now that you might have learnt something from my methods.”

“We’ve done our best. But take my word for it, it’s the strangest one yet. The most baffling case of my career.”

Moon arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t they all?”

“This one’s special,” the man insisted. “There’s something queer about it, something grisly and gothic and bizarre. So you see why I thought of you.”

“It sounds perfect.”

Merryweather laughed again, another raucous, splenetic bellow. “Mrs. Grossmith told me you were bored. You know, by rights, I shouldn’t be here. My colleagues don’t approve. They think I’ve got rather an idee fixe about you. Still, that business in Clapham-”

The conjuror flinched.

Well, they’re not so inclined to turn a blind eye any more.”

HELLO INSPECTOR

Merryweather had always felt oddly discomfited in the presence of the Somnambulist, and on the giant’s entrance the inspector’s natural good cheer was immediately muted.

The Somnambulist sat down, tore off his tie and poured himself a tot of milk. He had just raised the glass to his lips when Moon got to his feet and turned to the inspector. “Well, then,” he said impatiently, “I want to see where it happened.”

An hour later, the three of them stood at the top of the tower where the late Cyril Honeyman had taken his final, ignominious curtain call. The window through which he had fallen had not yet been repaired and the room was bitingly cold. The smell of decay congealed in the air, its source a table stacked with putrid, long-abandoned food — what was once a great feast made stinking and corrupt.

“My apologies for the smell,” Merryweather said. He was wrapped up in a thick woolen coat, a black slab of scarf knotted about his neck. “There was a bottle of champagne here as well but the boys polished that off days ago.”

Moon ran a finger along the table, stained gangrenous and gray by dust and mold.

“What was this place?”

“No one’s quite sure. We think it might be some sort of water tower. Disused,” he added rather desperately. “Can’t find it on any maps. Doesn’t seem to exist officially.”

“I don’t think it’s a water tower, Inspector.” Moon stood by the window, gazing absently down at the street. “I think it’s a watchtower.”

“Sorry about the mess. The Met boys seem to have trampled your evidence half to death.”

Brandishing his chalkboard, the Somnambulist tapped Moon on the shoulder.

SUEISIDE

Moon dismissed the suggestion with a brusque wave of his hand.

“You know the reputation of this district,” Merryweather said. “Given the food and the bed, we think he may have been lured here.”

Moon hardly seemed to hear him. “I should have thought that was obvious.” He knelt at the foot of the shattered window and picked up some broken pieces from the floor. “See the way the glass has fallen. If Honeyman broke the window when he fell, I would expect to find glass only outside. There’s far too much in here for that to have been the case.”

Merryweather furrowed his brow. “What are you implying?”

“That someone — or something — broke the window from the other side. From outside the tower. Something got in.”

“Impossible. No one could possibly climb this high.”

“Curious, isn’t it?”

Merryweather sighed. “Will you take the case?”

Moon did not reply.

“I don’t understand. You’ve been longing for something like this. Something knotty, you said, something complex, like the old days. Something with the stamp of real criminal ability about it. By rights, this ought to be a dream for you.”

“Dream?” Moon repeated absently and began to shift the glass shards about the floor, rearranging them in a fresh pattern free of any discernible order.

“Will you take the case?”

Moon gave a distracted nod. “Against my better judgment.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that there is something wrong here, Inspector. It means that this is no ordinary crime, that is has some larger meaning. That we’re only on the edge of something terrible.”

Merryweather laughed. “Good God, do you always have to be so gloomy?”

Moon gazed unblinkingly back, silent and solemn, shaming the inspector into silence.

The Somnambulist pulled a childish face and wrote another message.

FRIGHTENED

Moon did not smile. “You should be,” he murmured. “We all should be.”