Mark Gatiss - The Vesuvius Club

I pulled at the bell and ran a finger under my stiff collar.

Presently, the gates juddered open, squealing as they were hauled over ground thick with a sediment of dead leaves.

«Good evening,» I said to the ancient butler who emerged around the edge of the gate.

«Good evening, sir. Mr Box, is it? Sir Emmanuel is expecting you, sir.»

«You’re English?»

«Naturally, sir. As are the entire staff. My name is Stint. Might I advise you to loosen your garments, sir?»

«Beg pardon?»

«It is a trifle warm within, sir,» he wheezed.

He was like a column of smoke in livery. Pale eyes, pale face, wispy white hair and whiskers. To my very great surprise he appeared to be shirt-less beneath his threadbare uniform.

Stint kicked the front door to open it, so swollen was the woodwork. Once inside, he ushered me down a stifling corridor, the once-bright blooms of its wallpaper faded into bleak greys. Piled high in heaps all along the walls, their cloth bindings waxy with age, were hundreds of books.

«It’s very…um… dark, Stint,» I said at last, removing my coat.

«No lamps, sir.» He shook his white head mournfully. «Sir Emmanuel does not care for the light, you see. I have been trying to persuade him as to the virtues of the electricity. But that, as they say, will be the day.»

The room I now entered was fat with books. They lined the walls, covered the floor, hung around in tottering heaps in the shadowed corners. The combined mass of ruddy old leather and faded gilt should have lent the room a jolly air, but the fire blazing in the hearth made the place like a hot-house.

The firelight illuminated the figure of Emmanuel Quibble, swathed in black like some behemothal spider. The impression was reinforced by a number of mahogany reading-stands that projected from his chair on telescopic appendages thus allowing him to consult as many as eight or nine volumes at any one time.

He wheeled himself forward with one china-blue hand. The other, inevitably, clutched a book over his blanket-covered lap. He was probably sixty-odd yet contrived to look twice that. What little hair he had was of an almost translucent blond, as though old straw had been carelessly applied to his scalp with gum. Forever in the habit of licking his lips, an angry red halo had developed around them and his eyes were nigh on invisible behind a pair of ancient, filthy, thickly lensed pince-nez.

Chuckling at the sight of me, he held out his hand and I gingerly gripped the perished-apple knuckles.

«Sir Emmanuel,» I cooed. «It is indeed an honour.»

«Of course it is! Lucifer Box, eh? Can’t say I’ve heard of you. You’re some sort of painter, I gather. I do not normally grant interviews but I was told you had something that might interest me,» he said, adjusting his spectacles. «Well, pray be seated. Do not mind those volumes. Move them along. There is a very pretty space there by Bleasdale’s Tales of Surgical Misadventure . There now!»

I squeezed myself into a chair by the roaring fire.

«Are you cold?» he asked, suddenly.

I was already perspiring horribly. «Quite comfortable, thank you.»

Quibble shook his head mournfully. «It is like a tomb in here. I can never get warm. The servants complain that I stifle them but how can they object to a fire in December!»

«It is July, sir,» I said carefully.

«Is it?» He began a high cackling sound, exposing tiny peg-like teeth. «Perhaps I am too cold-blooded. My doctors tell me I have a thin hide.»

I smiled indulgently. «I wonder you don’t have yourself dust-jacketed.»

«What’s that?» He cupped a withered hand around his ear.

«You ought to equip yourself with a dust-jacket, Sir Emmanuel,» I shouted. «Like one of your famous collection.»

He liked that and cackled some more. «Capital idea! I know just the men for the job. Grindrod and Spicer of Camden Town. Let me see. Hmm.» He extended his stick-like arms before him and looked them up and down as though contemplating the measurement of a suit. «Yes, blue card with calf-skin end-boards. I think I should go very well just above your head, Mr Box, between Patterson’s Pathology of the Goitre and Rabelaisianism . Can I tempt you with a Madeira? No? Then perhaps we shall eat.»

He rang a little glass bell. I lifted my Gladstone and took out the book that Miracle had sent me. Quibble eyed it hungrily.

«What is it? Let me see!»

I lifted the volume and held it up to the firelight. The title glinted like gold in a stream.

Quibble let out a little cry and wheeled himself towards me with feverish speed.

«It isn’t? Can it be? Daniel Liquorice !»

«It is.»

I placed the book in his shaking hands. «I believe it is somewhat scarce,» I said blithely.

«Scarce?» Quibble almost shook with pleasure. «It is practically unique. Daniel Liquorice ! In my hands!»

With great care he opened the book and raised it close to his bespectacled face. «„Being an account of the journey of an itinerant gentleman in His Majesty’s East Indies“,» he read. «Heggessey Todd’s lost masterpiece! Where did you find it, Mr Box? Where?»

He wriggled in his chair like a wormy baby, his tongue flashing around his raw mouth in a little circle.

«I have my sources,» I said, tantalizingly. «Perhaps we can come to terms over dinner.»

«Yes, yes! Naturally. You must be fed!»

He rang the bell again with renewed urgency. A servant came to the door. Quibble barked orders at him then turned again to me.

«Mr Box, would you mind?»

He waved a skinny hand at his wheeled-chair. I rose and began to push him through into the dining room.

Paintings of what appeared to be Quibble’s ancestors were just visible behind yet more staggered heaps of books, varnished eyes staring out in mute appeal, as though their owners were drowning in yellowed paper.

I pushed the wizened man to the head of the table where he sat cradling Daniel Liquorice as though it were a child. «Name your price, my dear sir. I have dreamed of owning this book since»

«It’s not money I want, Sir Emmanuel,» I murmured. «But information.»

«Information?»

I walked to the opposite end of the table where I found my chair being pulled out by another servant. Dressed, like Stint, in rather mouldering livery, a patina of dust covered his dulled silver buttons and epaulettes. He was a tall young lad with a pebble-smooth face and close-cropped hair. His eyes were very blue under dark brows as bold as strokes of charcoal.

He turned to the soup tureen and placed the lid gently at my side, fixing me with a look I can only describe as impudent. He smiled.

«Evening, sir,» he said, ladling beetroot soup into the dish before me. The voice was throaty from tobacco. Another relic from Blighty, it seemed.

«Good evening,» I said.

He bent low, suddenly, till his face was right by mine. He smelled of honey. «Charles Jackpot, sir.»

Then, bless me if he didn’t wink. «But you can call me Charlie.»

I SAID nothing and turned my attention to the beetroot soup.

The nosh was dusty but passable. The soup was followed by a kind of salmon pastry and, after my new acquaintance, Mr Jackpot, had cleared this away, by an absolutely magnificent goose. Quibble clearly remained insulated against Italian notions of cuisine.

Eschewing the grimy napkin, I sucked the grease from my fingers as the servant cradled the dishes in his arms. He didn’t speak, merely fixing me with the same impudent gaze. In the glow of the fire he had the face of a Renaissance saint. It was most unnerving.

Clearing my throat, I wiped the dust from Quibble’s best crystal and poured myself a generous glass of plonk. I watched Charlie Jackpot as he loped back, with what I can only call a swagger, towards the kitchens.