Jonathan Barnes - The Somnambulist

“She becomes a great power,” Cribb said soberly. “A mighty nation that eclipses our own. Our empire withers and dies.”

With the exception of Moon, everyone laughed at this. Lady Glyde all but whooped in delight. “Oh, Thomas,” she gasped. “You are wicked.”

The man gave what he mistakenly believed to be an enigmatic smile. “I’ve seen the future, madam. I’ve lived it.”

Thomas Cribb was an enigma.

As is often the case with men like that, there are innumerable rumors and theories about his origin. He may have been a genuine eccentric, a man with simply no conception of his oddness. He may have been a professional charlatan, a canny self-publicist who had started, disastrously, to believe his own press. More plausibly, he may just have been someone who made up stories to get invited to parties.

He claimed to have knowledge of the future, to have lived there and seen the city a century from now, but whether anyone actually believed this is irrelevant. What mattered was that his stories granted him a color and theatricity which would otherwise have been quite beyond his grasp. Whenever he spun those yarns, women hung on his every word for what was almost certainly the first time in his life. Middle-aged widows like Lady Glyde adored him. He had cut a swath through polite society and become a fixture at these events, where he was regularly brought on as a kind of semi-comic turn. Above all, they made him interesting.

The is the outside possibility that he was something altogether more significant, but I’ll come to that in time.

I met him only once or twice and, frankly, thought very little of the man. But I insist you make up your own mind.

Once Lady Glyde, whispering huskily into his left ear, had told Moon exactly who and what Cribb claimed to be, the detective was so singularly unimpressed that he called the man’s honesty into question.

“Mr. Moon!” his hostess exclaimed in mock indignation. “I believe every word he’s told me.”

“You disappoint me.”

Moon stayed for another hour or two, mingling half-heartedly with the other guests, yearning all the while to continue his investigations. The Somnambulist, meanwhile, had found himself an empty chair and a jug of milk and had settled down for some serious drinking.

Moon quit the party as soon as politeness allowed, upon which Lady Glyde took barnacle-like hold of his arm to escort him to the door. They passed Cribb on the way.

“Goodbye, Mr. Moon. I shan’t see you again.”

“I suspect I’ll stand the disappointment.”

A sly grin. “But you misunderstand. This may be the last time I see you but it most certainly is not the last time you see me. A deal has to happen yet before you see the back of me.”

The conjuror just stared. “You’re gibbering.”

“I’m a two-legged contradiction, Mr. Moon. You’ll learn.” Cribb gave an oddly wistful little smile, bowed his head once and disappeared back into the crowd.

“Quite something, isn’t he?”

“I’m glad he amuses you,” said Moon, as Lady Glyde squeezed his arm a little tighter than was really necessary. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me. I must go.”

“So soon?”

“I’ve work to do.”

“See you again?” she asked hopefully.

Moon offered a final, tight half-smile. “Goodbye, ma’am.”

His obligation for the evening satisfied at last, Moon stepped out into the night.

He had gone barely five paces before he was stopped by a voice, whining and almost familiar. “Edward!”

He turned around. Someone stood silhouetted at the doorway — the ugly man.

“What do you want?” asked Moon, not bothering to hide his irritation.

Cribb grabbed the conjuror’s left hand and clasped it in his. It was almost certainly his imagination but Moon could have sworn that the ridiculous little man actually had tears bulging in his eyes.

“Mr. Moon.” He trembled, his voice thick with feeling. “Edward.”

Moon did his best to extricate his hand but Cribb held it tight. “Please, let me speak. Let me say this. We’ve been through so much together.”

“Nonsense. We’ve barely met.”

“Oh, we’ve faced death together, you and I. We’ve looked the worst this city has to offer in the eye and lived to tell the tale. I’d like to say what an honor and a privilege it has been to know you. To…” Choked with emotion, Cribb stopped, gasped in desperate lungfuls of air. Recovering his composure, he finished forlornly: “To have been your friend.”

Moon assumed the man was drunk and tugged his hand away.

“You don’t understand me now. But you will. I promise. You’ll regret this. You’ll regret not saying goodbye.”

Moon strode swiftly away. The ugly man chose not to follow but, sadder and more solemn than before, turned and walked slowly back inside.

As if by instinct, Moon returned to the site of the murder.

Despite the lateness of the hour the streets were filled with the same human flotsam that had accosted Cyril Honeyman on his final journey. But at Moon’s approach, they drew swiftly back, aware perhaps that he was not a man to trifle with. The conjuror barely noticed them as he moved, wraithlike, through the alleys and backstreets of the place, heading inevitably for the tower.

He could feel the weight of the past pressing down upon him as he walked, the waters of history closing about his head. He found himself recalling the notion of genius loci , that fanciful conviction that a place itself materially affects the individuals who pass through it. If this place had any tangible effect upon its inhabitants, then it was surely a malign one. The topography of the district had a uniquely malevolent quality; it seemed to draw to its bosom all that was most loathsome in the city, most monstrous and sinful. The place had a hunger to it; it craved sacrifice.

Moon reached the silent hulk of the tower, made his way to the top and found it entirely deserted. It was clear that no transients has pressed the place into service as an impromptu boarding house — in an area beset by poverty of the most acute and pernicious kind, this fact ought to have surprised him, though, strangely, it did not.

The summit was bare now and cleared of rancid food and Moon mused again on the particulars of this troublesome case, the suspicious paucity of physical evidence, the tantalizing sense he had of something greater lurking just beyond his grasp. He sank to the cold floor, fumbled in his pockets for cigarette and lighter and sat and smoked as the night slipped away, cross-legged, eyes tight shut, like some latter-day Buddha waiting patiently for he knew not what.

Mrs. Grossmith’s many years of service had inured her to her employer’s eccentricities, practically immunized her against his quirks and idiosyncrasies. Consequently, her near-hysterical reaction on Moon’s return home was no small cause for alarm.

“Mr. Moon!” she wailed. “Where have you been?”

“That’s no business of yours.”

“No need to be rude,” she snapped.

There was a long pause. Moon sighed. “My apologies. What is it? What’s the matter?”

“There was a man here for you. All night.”

“Who?”

“Gave me the proper chills, he did. Right upset me. He was a little man. All small and white.”

“An albino?”

Grossmith scrunched her face up in a frown. “I think that’s the word.”

“What did he say?”

“Just that he wanted to see you and that it was important.” She reached into her apron pocket and passed him a small white rectangle of card. “He left you this.”

Moon glanced down. “It’s blank.”

“I know. I asked whether it was a mistake but he said no, that you’d understand. I don’t mind admitting I was worried. What kind of a man leaves a card like that?”