The Lamplighter (27 page)
Authors: Anthony O'Neill
“This is madness,” Groves decided, though in truth he desired most of all to be away, for with each passing moment he felt more in the presence of some contagion, some being truly beyond human jurisdiction. Each of Lindsay's hints seemed calculated to urge him closer to a revelation that he could barely contemplate, but this was something he wanted to extract from Evelyn herself, and indeed it was a scene he had written countless times in his head. “I shall come back,” he warned, “and I shall bring the entire constabulary with me, if that is what it takes to make you talk.”
Lindsay shook his head. “I will not be leaving the city, Inspector. Though I will certainly advise the others to take that course.”
“What others? The Mirror Society?”
But again Lindsay did not respond, and Groves posted a constable outside to check for any movement. If the Society was to be drawn together one last time he wanted to know immediately: it could prove most illuminating. He returned promptly to Central Office, fetched a package of letters freshly delivered from Ireland, summoned Pringle, and now stood in the gloomy passage outside Evelyn's corrugated door, recalling with distaste the she-devil of his unmentionable dream, battling whole armies of nerves, and raising a tight first to deliver the Fearsome Knock of Inspector Groves.
RAT-TATTA-TATTA-TAT.
Canavan was as pleased as he was awed. For all its surrealism, the Beast was too real, too temporal, to be denied, and this must surely exonerate Evelyn, even in the eyes of the skeptical McKnight. Because she surely could not have been dreaming, or even sleeping, so soon after leaving the Crypt of the Poets in such an agitated state. So the Beast did not live entirely in her imagination, as the Professor believed. The Beast was not harbored exclusively in her dreams. It was alive in Edinburgh, and an entity in its own right.
He claimed this not as a victory for himself or for theology, or even as a certainty. Science might still have an answer. Philosophy, too, though it would require McKnight to seriously reorganize his theories. It was no victory at all, in fact, because their adversary was incarnate, with a dwelling place all its own, and to defeat it would require a truly biblical confrontation.
When he arrived at McKnight's cottage it was with a lingering quiver in his skin, but no one who had so recently looked into the eyes of the Beast could expect less. He was confident he would find the Professor similarly shakenâthe pallor of his face after stumbling out of the Cowgate was that of a man who had stared into the Abyssâand indeed Canavan prepared himself to be as magnanimous as possible in victory. It was the least he could do for a friend who might well be shattered.
He was surprised and a little alarmed, then, to find McKnight exuding an atmosphere of grim satisfaction. Ushering Canavan to the kitchen, he chuckled repeatedly and fatalistically under his breath, for all the world as though he had made a discovery that was everything he had always suspected and everything he had always feared.
“Time to eat,” he said first, and directed his guest to a table where he laid out a most generous meal but absentmindedly jumbled the order of courses, so that mutton was followed by soup, fruit by fresh bread, and the singing brass kettle ignored entirely. He paced around the room distractedly and with great energy, his own plate steaming but untouched.
“I'd be obliged if you'd join me,” Canavan said at one point.
“Hmm? Very well,” McKnight responded, though he seemed to have misunderstood, for he disappeared for a moment and returned from his library with two black books, which he placed on the table in front of his still-dining friend.
“Recognize this volume?” he asked.
Canavan swallowed. “Your Douai Bible. The one I had at Drumgate.”
“Are you quite certain?”
Canavan dried his fingers and reached across to flip the book over and examine the spine. There was clear scuffing where the book had hit the watchtower floor.
“Entirely,” he said.
McKnight smiled. “Then what about this one?” He placed beside the first an identical black book, scarred and scuffed in precisely the same places.
Canavan shrugged. “Another Bible.”
“This is the Bible I lifted from Evelyn's shelf,” the Professor explained. “The same as my volume in every aspect.”
Canavan conceded the point but saw little relevance. “I'm sure it's a popular edition,” he noted, “and prone to being damaged in the same way.”
McKnight turned each book to the Gospel According to St. John, Chapter Eight.
“Take a look,” he urged, andâa little uneasily nowâCanavan did so, reaching over his unfinished meal and fingering the ragged ends of the torn-out pages as McKnight watched expectantly.
“Identical,” he agreed.
“Indistinguishable,” McKnight contended.
Canavan shrugged again. “At a cursory examination.”
But the Professor would not have it. “The sliver of page left in the binding of each book is precisely the same. Down to the minutest visible fiber.”
“You've examined it with a microscope, I suppose.”
“I have.” McKnight smiled.
Canavan felt an unsettling in his stomach. “Such is not impossible,” he argued valiantly, “in two books that have been cut, so to speak, from the very same cloth. And torn, perhaps, by the very same person.”
“By the very same devil.”
Canavan remembered the face in the Cowgate wynd. “Possibly⦔ he said.
“The two books are exactly the same,” McKnight said, closing them together and putting one atop the other. “Identical in every respect. They are not just similar. They are the
same
. There is only one book. Not two. Only one.”
Canavan sighed, staring at the two books pointedly, as though to reiterate the evidence of his eyes.
McKnight smiled sympathetically. “Do you remember,” he asked, “the wynd into which we chased the Beast?”
Canavan coughed. “Of course.”
“Shand's Wynd. I noticed the name on the way out. Have you heard of it before?”
Canavan thought about it. “No⦔
“Would it surprise you to learn that, having scoured every survey map of the area in great detail, I can find no evidence of any such wynd? Any close, any streetâanything with that name?”
Canavan was defensive. “Not all maps are complete. And most quickly become obsolete.”
“So you believe its omission proves nothing?”
“I believe it proves little.”
“And the Bibles?”
“Even less so.”
McKnight picked up an apple. “Then follow me,” he said, and turned for the library.
He knocked again.
In his pocket he had two letters. The first was from Head Constable Curran of the Monaghan Police, detailing some of Evelyn Todd's previous brushes with the law. An incident involving a man who had escorted her home to her lodgings, only to be violently repulsedâ“with animal force”âwhen he made some intimate advances. An unproven allegation that she had smuggled out the harried wolfhounds of a well-known lord. A childhood charge of stoning the stained-glass windows of the local church. As well, there was Curran's full report of his visit to the St. Louis Convent and his interview with Mother Genevieve Berthollet. Very much like the clergymen Groves had recently encountered, the nun proved initially hesitant, but under pressure seemed relieved to divulge the incriminating details. Evelyn Todd, she claimed, had been a challenging girl, for the most part superior to her sisters in industry, humility, and commitment, but prone to erratic and inexplicable outbursts that were all the starker in contrast to her natural bearing. In the blink of an eye she could switch from piety to tormented grief, and occasionally to the most virulent invective. The last, though infrequent, seemed triggered chiefly in moments of the deepest devotion and was sometimes accompanied by paroxysmal blackouts. Her subsequent acts of contrition were sincere and self-punishing, and for a long time her behavior was tolerated and rebuked with only prayer.
But then the Mother Superior discovered an unsolicited “examination of conscience,” copied many times over in Evelyn's own hand. Groves presently had a copy in his possession.
An impure attraction draws my heart to him and removes it from God. I delight in the prospect of being part of his Empire. It flatters me to think that he elects to be inside me, and protects me from those who might harm me. I know he wishes me no harm, and I remember that he was once an Angel, and his only misconstrued sin was Pride. There are moments when I cannot tolerate the harsh words raised against him, and in these moments I feel great difficulty in reconciling my Being between the Adversaries. I must choose to give my heart to the Redeemer, and divide my mind between my powers of reason and the Will of the Other. I wonder however if my Temple is large enough for all these inhabitants. It seems increasingly likely that a forced eviction will be required, but I am alone, as I always have been, and I fear I must act with my own secret armaments.
Curran had appended a note:
When confronted by Mother Berthollet, Miss Todd claimed to have no recollection of writing this letter, though she did not deny it was in her hand, and in a state of delirium later, she recanted, and she claimed that the one she spoke of in the letter was not some secret lover, as had been supposed, for such confessions are not uncommonâbut the Lord Lucifer himself.
And now Groves knocked again, insistently, and in time with his heart.
RAT-TATTA-TATTA-TAT.
But there was still no response. He looked suspiciously at his companions, grateful for the opportunity to vacillate and wondering if he had done just enough to withdraw without losing face. He knocked just one more time, to be certain. Nothing.
He was about to turn when Pringle produced a stock of skeleton keys and, as the Inspector watched in alarm, methodically turned them out one after another and inserted them into the simple barrel lock. Groves was on the verge of delivering some note of protest, disguised as a warning, when the younger man released the bolt and pushed the door back on the awful gloom.
All three men stood tensed, half expecting some batlike monstrosity to spring out. The constable lit his lantern and directed the beam into the tiny room. Nothing. Groves summoned the courage to crane his head forward investigatively, but it was not bitten off. Pringle stepped all the way in, but was not swooped upon. The others, following his example, squeezed in behind him.
The room was meticulously neat and well dusted, its books primly lining the shelves, its utensils arranged like a surgeon's blades. The only anomalies were a certain scorched-air smell, like that of lightning on a humid breeze, and the insistent scuttle of a rat in the roof. Pringle found a match and applied it to a slush lamp. Further brightened, the room could barely have appeared less threatening.
“She's not home,” Groves breathed, as relieved as he was disappointed.
“Where could she be, sir?” Pringle asked.
“Who can say?” Groves tried to imagine her engaged in some sinister activity: stewing a potion in a vat, dancing at a sabbat, conspiring with her incubus. But the simple truth was she was just not there, and he resolved to make the most of the opportunity.
