Lady Glendinning gave him a chilly smile. “Will you help me?”
Moon took the woman’s hand and kissed it. “Madam,” he said, “it would be an honor.”
Edward Moon and the Somnambulist lived, rather improbably, in a cellar beneath the theatre. They had converted the basement into a comfortable living space with the result that two bedrooms, a well-equipped kitchen, a drawing room, a considerable if hopelessly cluttered library and all conceivable conveniences lay below the Theatre of Marvels. Needless to say, their audience remained entirely ignorant of this subterranean domesticity, this sunken home-from-home.
Moon said goodbye to Lady Glendinning with a promise to visit her the following day. The prospect of relief from boredom cheered him no end and as he strode toward the strategically placed rhododendrons which masked the wooden steps leading down to his lodgings, something like a smile hovered discreetly about his lips.
As usual, Mr. Speight sat, or rather slouched, upon the steps.
Speight was a derelict, a pauper whose presence Moon had long tolerated, allowing him over time to become something of a fixture. Unkempt and raggedly bearded, the man was hunched inside a filthy suit, a stack of empty bottles nestling miserably by his feet. Propped up beside him was the wooden placard which he spent his days carrying through the streets of the city. Its message had begun to fade but it still read, in thick, gothic letters:
SURELY I AM COMING SOON
REVELATION 22:20
Moon had never asked Speight why he found it necessary to carry this notice wherever he went nor why he had chosen that particular piece of scripture as his motto. Frankly, he rather doubted he would have understood the answer. Speight slurred a bleary “Good evening.” The conjuror responded as politely as he was able, stepped over the vagrant and let himself indoors.
Inside, beside a pot of tea simmering automatically on the stove, Mrs. Grossmith was waiting for him. A diminutive, maternal woman, she took Moon’s coat and poured him a cup of Earl Grey.
Moon sank gratefully into his chair. “Thank you.”
She shuffled deferentially. “A successful performance?”
He sipped his tea. “I think they liked it.”
“I see our Mr. Speight’s outside again tonight.”
“As he surely will be till the End. You don’t mind?”
Mrs. Grossmith sniffed disparagingly. “I suppose he’s harmless enough.”
“You’re not convinced.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Frankly, Mr. Moon… he smells.”
“Should I invite him in? Offer him a bath? Is that what you’d like?”
Grossmith rolled her eyes in exasperation.
“Where’s the Somnambulist?”
“I believe he’s already retired to bed.”
Moon got to his feet and placed his tea, not half-finished, upon the table. “Then I think perhaps I should join him. Goodnight, Mrs. Grossmith.”
“Your usual breakfast in the morning?”
“Make it early. I’m going out.”
“Something interesting?”
“A case, Mrs. Grossmith. A case!”
Moon walked through to the bedroom he shared with the Somnambulist. They slept in bunk beds, Moon on top, the giant below.
The Somnambulist had changed into a set of striped pajamas (due to his excessive size, these had to be produced for him bespoke) and was sitting up in bed, chalk and blackboard by his side, engrossed in a slim volume of verse.
He was also entirely bald.
Every morning, using an especially tenacious brand of spirit gum, the Somnambulist applied a wig to his scalp and false whiskers to either side of his face. Each night before bed he removed them. On this point, I wish to make myself absolutely, unequivocally clear: the Somnambulist was more than simply bald — he was utterly hairless, unnaturally smooth, billiard ball-like in his depilation. It was a secret he and Moon had guarded fiercely for years. Even Mrs. Grossmith had only found out by accident. The giant was not without his own, unnatural vanity.
As Moon entered the room, the Somnambulist put aside his book and looked up with drowsy eyes. His bald pate shone comfortingly in the gloom.
The conjuror was barely able to contain his excitement. “We have a case!” he cried.
The Somnambulist smiled lethargically, but before his friend could explain any further he rolled over, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
His dreams, their precise contents and nature sadly beyond my jurisdiction.
Chapter 4
The next morning, the body of Cyril Honeyman, almost unrecognizably contorted after its unwinnable struggle with the laws of gravity, was laid to rest at a small private service attended by close family and a smattering of theatrical acquaintances. Moon, meanwhile, was racing off on a wild-goose chase — an unfortunate missed opportunity and a sad misjudgment which, as things turned out, were to cost more than one innocent life.
It might be of some trivial interest to learn that chief amongst the Somnambulist’s many idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes was a passion for milk — not a fondness, you understand, or a liking for, nor even a mere partiality, but a passion. He guzzled whole pints of the stuff at a time, pouring it down his throat long after his thirst had been assuaged and, in all the years he had spent with Moon, had never once shown the slightest interest in any other beverage. He drank compulsively, it seemed, bibulously, as though he could not live without it.
It was far from unusual, then, that when the detective got out of bed and slouched through to the kitchen he found the Somnambulist at the breakfast table with three large glasses of milk lined up before him. On his entrance, the giant took a big, slurpy sip from one of the glasses, splashing his drink in a broad white swathe across his upper lip. Moon motioned discreetly toward the spillage and watched, indulgent, as the Somnambulist wiped it away.
“I’m going out presently,” he said, tussling with teapot and kettle. “Thought I might drop in at the Stacks. See what I can dig up on this Glendinning business.”
The Somnambulist inclined his head in a manner which made his lack of interest abundantly clear.
“Would you like to visit the scene of the crime?”
A half-hearted nod.
“We’ve an appointment with Lady Glendinning at noon. Meet me by the library gates at eleven.” Moon gave his friend a stern look. “And by that I mean eleven sharp. This is important. We can’t afford to be late.”
The Somnambulist rolled his eyes. Moon poured himself some tea and disappeared back to their bedroom.
As usual, Mrs. Grossmith had laid a freshly ironed copy of the Times upon the breakfast table that morning, its headline shrieking something about the savage execution of a fat actor in the seamiest district of the city. Unfortunately, those words were almost wholly obscured by a large bottle of the Somnambulist’s milk, with the result that Edward Moon, his mind hopelessly aflutter with the Glendinning business, had glanced at the paper once and then given it no further thought.
Some time later, he left the house alone and hailed a cab to the West End where he made his way directly to the Reading Room of the British Museum. Despite the earliness of the hour the place was filled almost to capacity as people reserved their seats for the day, their crumbling volumes heaped before them, hoarded as fiercely as dragons would their gold. Moon recognized a few of his fellow regulars and they exchanged polite, noncommittal nods. For many of them the Reading Room was a second home, the eternal hush of the place, its tangible atmosphere of scholarship, a sanctuary from the relentless clamor of the city.
He presented himself to one of the librarians, a sandy-haired, neatly scrubbed young man freshly down from one of the universities.
“I’m here to see the Archivist.”
The librarian looked at him uncertainly, then glanced warily about. “You have an appointment?”