Mark Hodder - The curious case of the Clockwork Man

“I don't want to discuss my daughter, let's have that clear from the outset.”

“Very well, sir,” Burton replied. He noticed that Arundell's face was haggard and careworn, and felt a pang of guilt as they made their way into the club's dining room.

The Athenaeum was crowded as usual, but in keeping with its reputation as one of the bastions of British Society, the members restricted their voices to a civilised murmur. A low buzz of conversation enveloped the two men as they passed into the opulent dining room and were escorted to their table by the maitre d’. They ordered a bottle of wine, deciding to take a glass before commencing their meal.

Arundell wasted no time with niceties. “Why has Lord Palmerston taken an interest?” he asked.

“I really don't know.”

“You haven't enquired?”

“Have you ever met Palmerston?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know how blasted tight-lipped he is, and I don't mean the surgery!”

Burton was referring to the Eugenicist treatments the prime minister had received in an attempt to maintain his youth. His lifespan had been extended to, it was estimated, about a hundred and ten years, and his body had been stretched and smoothed until he resembled an expressionless waxwork.

“He's evasive, that's true,” Arundell mused. “As are all politicians. Goes with the territory. But I'd have thought he'd at least give you something to go on.”

Burton shook his head. “When he offered me my first commission, last year, it was simply a case of ‘look into this,’ then he left me to it. This is the same. Perhaps he doesn't want to plant any preconceptions.”

“Maybe so. Very well, how can I help?”

“By telling me about the Tichborne family curse and their prodigal son.”

Henry Arundell tapped his forefinger on the table, gazed at his wine glass, and looked thoughtful for a few moments. He raised his eyes to Burton and gave a curt nod.

“Tichborne House sits on a hundred-and-sixteen-acre estate near the village of Alresford, not far from Winchester. The Bishop of Winchester granted it to Walter de Tichborne in 1135, and it was, just a few years later, inherited by his son, Roger de Tichborne, a soldier, a womaniser, and a brute. It was his treatment of his wife as she lay dying from a wasting disease that brought about the curse.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“What sayest thou, Physician Jankyn? Shall the bitch die this night?”

Squire Roger de Tichborne threw his riding crop onto a table and dropped into a chair, which creaked beneath his considerable bulk. There was a sheen of sweat on his brow. He'd been riding with the hounds, but the one fox he and his colleagues had flushed out had been a mangy little thing with no fight in it. The dogs had brought it down in a matter of minutes. He and the men had vented their frustration in a tavern. He was now drunk and in a foul mood.

He yelled at his valet, though the man was less than fifteen feet away: “Hobson! Dost thou stand there a doltish idler? Get these accursed boots off me, man!”

The valet, a short and meek individual, hurried to his master's feet, knelt, and started to tug at a boot.

“Well, Jankyn? Answer me! Am I to be free at last, or wouldst the filthy harridan dally?”

Physician Jankyn, tall, bony, and gloomy in aspect, wrung his large hands nervously, his mouth twitching.

“The Lady Mabella be sore stricken, my lord,” he announced. “Yet she may bide awhile.”

Hobson, gripping de Tichborne's left calf, looked up and said: “My Lady doth wish to see thee anon, sire.”

De Tichborne pulled back his right leg and, with a vicious grunt, sent his heel thudding into his valet's face. Hobson yelped and tumbled backward onto the floor, blood spurting from his nose.

“Pardieux! That's the case, is it?” de Tichborne snarled. “Get thee upstairs, thou whimpering dog, and tell the harpy that I'll see her at my own convenience and not at hers, the hell-spawned witch! Get out of my sight!”

The valet clambered to his feet and staggered away across the opulent parlour, knocked into the corner of a table, almost fell, and stumbled out of the room.

“So thinkest thou she'll tarry, hey?” de Tichborne enquired of the medical man. He bent and started to yank at his boots. “For how long, pray? Hours? Days? Weeks, may God preserve me?”

“Weeks? Nay, my lord. Not a week-nary a day. I have it that she'll live but the night through and will be taken by sunup.”

Finally liberating his right leg, de Tichborne flung the riding boot across the room. It hit a wall and dropped to the floor.

“Praise be! Fetch me a draught, wouldst thou, Master Physician? And take one for thyself.”

Jankyn nodded and moved from the fireplace to a bureau upon which decanters of wine stood. He filled two goblets and took one over to de Tichborne, placing it on an occasional table beside his host's chair.

The squire's second boot came free and followed the first through the air. It crashed into a vase atop a cabinet, shattered the ornament, and fell to the floor amid the fragments.

“Fortune grant me a single boon: to be free of that damnable nag by the morn!” the aristocrat muttered.

He took the wine and downed it in a single gulp, then jumped to his stockinged feet, pushed past the doctor, and crossed to the bureau to pour himself another.

“Prithee, repair to the library awhile, Physician. I shall take me up to see the whore.”

“But my lord!” Jankyn protested. “The Lady Mabella is in no fit condition to receive!”

“She'll receive her damned husband, and if the effort should kill her, thou canst aid me in quaffing by way of celebration!”

Jankyn moistened his lips, hesitated, nodded unhappily, and, with goblet in hand, shuffled out of the parlour through the door that led to the library.

Casting a sneer at the elderly physician's back, de Tichborne turned and also left the room. He paced to the reception hall, retrieved his shoes, buckled them on, and stamped up the broad, sweeping staircase to the gallery above. Here he stopped and emptied his goblet. He tossed it over the balustrade and wiped his mouth as the tin vessel clattered on the tiled floor below. He proceeded along a corridor to his wife's bedchamber.

One of her nurses, sitting outside the room, stood as he approached the door. She curtseyed and moved aside.

He ran his eyes appreciatively over the girl then pushed open the portal and entered the dimly lit room without announcement.

“Art thou living, wife?”

There came movement from the large four-poster bed, and a tremulous voice, directed at the two nurses who sat beside it, said: “Leave us.”

“Yes, ma'am,” they chorused, and bobbing at the squire as they passed him, they hurried out to join their colleague in the hallway.

De Tichborne closed the door after them.

“Come thou here,” the Lady Mabella whispered.

He paced over to her and looked down in disgust at her wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and long white hair.

The eyes that looked back at him were of the blackest jet.

“I have but a short time,” she said.

“Hallelujah!” he responded.

“Drunken sot!” she exclaimed. “Hast thou no mercy in thy soul? Art thou in truth so barren of feeling? There were times-distant, aye-when thou held me close to thy bosom!”

“Ancient history, old woman.”

“’Tis so. I shall be well rid of thee, Roger, when I pass, for thou art a brute and a whoremonger!”

“Say what thou wilt. I care not. So long as thou go to judgement by morn!”

The woman struggled to push herself into a sitting position. De Tichborne watched coldly, not raising a finger to help. Finally, she managed to drag herself up a little and rested back on her pillow.