Gibbous House 91

I left him abed. He had raised matters that would bear consideration. I resolved to accost Miss Pardoner in her chamber, or wherever she might be, to glean some further intelligence concerning the crab-like curator of the Collection.

Hesitating momentarily before the teal of the door, I reflected how little such colours, - which I had noted she liked to affect in her dress - suited her colouring. I should have preferred to see her in rich burgundies, carmines and the shining black of Norwich bombazine. I gave the signal knock of a seasoned molly-house visitor and received for answer the alarmed cry:

'A moment, if you please!'

A moment it proved to be: Miss Pardoner appeared at the door, her hispanic colouring greatly ameliorated by a certain flush. She motioned me in a little breathlessly, a curious conical item of polished hardwood in her hand. She saw me eying the curiosity and held it up for display, demonstrating a screwing motion of the base, the upper part of the cone separated and, by a convoluted contraption involving a transverse expanding bar, continued to widen as each half was forced apart from the other.

'It is a glove stretcher, Mr Moffat.'

She gave me a look that quite dared me to challenge her. I did not. The item was not unfamiliar to me: Arabella had owned one, and it was indeed purposed for stretching the fingers of a lady's glove. However, my late wife had demonstrated other - more imaginative - uses on occasion. Furthermore, I noted that Miss Pardoner's remarkably tidy chamber evinced no sign of any glove. She herself sat on her bed and pointed to the chair before her toilette. I nodded my thanks and turned the delicate seat toward her. Miss Pardoner had not secured or even closed the chamber door after my entry.

'Miss Pardoner, I come in search of conversation, nothing more. We may adjourn to one of the public rooms if you would prefer, the library perhaps?'

To my surprise she nodded vigorously. I was disappointed that she thought so much of decorum, as I had believed her above such things.

We did not repair to the library, after all. To my utter astonishment, the dining room appeared to have received some attention, although from whom I knew not. Nevertheless, the used crockery and cutlery had all been removed; no empty wine bottles stood sentinel over napery; only randomly scattered crumbs bore witness to the former condition of the table. Therefore, by mutual consent, Ellen Pardoner and I sat at the head of the inordinately long refectory table and I began my interrogations thus:

'The Professor seems an interesting fellow to be so far from civilisation, does he not?'

Naturally, the woman chose to reply with a question:

'Do you consider us quite so uncivilised here in Northumbria, Mr Moffat?'

'Even Alnwick is hardly Vienna or Berlin or any other of the groves of Academe friend Rothschild claims to have attended.' I replied, a little sharply perhaps.

Miss Pardoner appeared to have recovered some of her poise, for the tell-tale corner of her mouth had risen once again:

'Oh, I doubt the Professor has misled us to any extent in the matter of his scholarship.'

I tried another tack:

'The fellow is a Jew, as is Maccabi, as was Coble. Why here? Why not Manchester, or London? What could possibly have brought them here?'

She sighed, a tutor before a particularly obtuse student:
'Why would you go to a wild and relatively isolated place, Mr Moffat?'
'I would not.' I said
'But you have.' she rejoindered.
'I have come for profit, as you well know, though I doubt I shall see any great quantity of it. It is beyond belief that anyone associated with this absurd notion of a “Collection” is motivated by any sort of pecuniary gain.'

Miss Pardoner ignored my peevish tone and offered:
'Not all advantage is monetary, sir.'
'Humbug! Miss Pardoner. I will have an answer.'
My palm smarted a little but the sound of its contact with the wood of the table was distinctly gratifying. That Miss Pardoner did not flinch was less so.
'The Professor is carrying out important research.'
'Indeed?' It was my opportunity for the sardonic smile. 'Of what kind?'
'Scientific, historical and religious. Mr Moffat.'

Her fervour demonstrated that I had been mistaken earlier in considering her incapable of any utterance devoid of irony. I informed her that whilst I found such pursuits noble in the abstract and the singular, in practice and combination I believed that no good could come of them.