James Blaylock - The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

It was a damp and foggy morning, getting along toward late — the sort of morning when every sound is muffled, and even though there are people out, there’s a sort of curtain between you and them and you walk along the damp cobbles in a gray study, lost in thought. I strolled down the waterfront, thinking that Sterne Bay was just the sort of place to spend a few leisurely days, maybe bring along a fishing rod. Dorothy would love it. I would propose it to her as soon as we got back. The thought of proposing it to her, of course, was calculated to rid me of some of the guilt that I was feeling, out on holiday, really while Dorothy was stuck up in London, trapped in the old routine.

Then I thought of poor St. Ives, and of Alice, whom he had loved for two short years before that awful night in the Seven Dials. Thank God I wasn’t there. It’s a selfish thing to say, perhaps, but I can’t help that. The man had lived alone before Alice, and has lived alone since. And although he’ll fool most people, he doesn’t fool me — he wasn’t born to the solitary life. He’s been worn thin by it. Every emotional shilling was tied up in Alice. He had put the lot of it in the savings bank until he had the chance to invest it in her, and it had paid off with interest. All that was gone now, and the very idea of a romantic holiday on the water was impossible for him to bear. He’s been disallowed from entertaining notions that other people find utterly pleasant and common…

And just then, as I was strolling along full of idle and sorrowful thoughts, I looked up and there was a three-story inn, like something off a picture postcard.

It was painted white with green gingerbread trim and was hung with ivy vines. From what I could see, a broad veranda ran around three sides of it. On the veranda sat pieces of furniture, and on the willow furniture sat a scattering of people who looked just about as contented as they had any right to look — a couple of them qualifying as “old salts,” and very picturesque. There was a wooden sign over the stairs that read THE HOISTED PINT, which struck me as calculated, but very friendly and with the right general attitude.

I stepped up onto the veranda, nodding a hello in both directions, and into the foyer, thinking to inquire about rates and availability. Spring was on the horizon, and there would be a chance of good weather — although the town was admirably suited to dismal weather too — and there was no reason that I shouldn’t simply cement the business of a holiday straightaway, so as to make Dorothy happy.

She would love the place; any doubts I might have had from the street were vanished. There were wooden floors inlaid with the most amazing marquetry depicting a whale and whaling ship — the sort of work you don’t see anymore — and there were potted plants and a great stone fireplace with a log fire burning and not a piece of coal to be seen. A small woman worked behind the long oak counter, meddling with papers, and we talked for a moment about rooms and rates. Although I didn’t like her very much, or entirely trust her, I set out finally for the door very well satisfied with the inn and with myself both.

That’s when I thought I saw my rubber elephant lying atop a table, half hidden by a potted palm. I was out the door and onto the veranda before I knew what it was that I’d seen — just the bottom of him, his round feet and red-painted jumbo trousers. It was the impossibility of it that made it slow to register, and even by the time it did, by the time I was sure of it, I had taken another step or two, half down the stairs, before turning on my heel and walking back in.

The woman looked up from where she dusted at furniture now with a clutch of feathers. She widened her eyes, wondering, perhaps, if I hadn’t forgotten something, and I smiled back, feeling like a fool, and asking weakly whether I didn’t need some sort of receipt, a confirmation — implying by it, I suppose, that her bookwork there behind the counter wasn’t sufficient. She frowned and said that she supposed she could work something up, although…And I said quite right, of course but that as a surprise to my wife I thought that a little something to put into an envelope on her breakfast plate…That made her happy again. She liked to see that in a man, and said that she was anxious to meet the young lady. When I glanced across the room there wasn’t any elephant, of course, or anything like it.

I don’t doubt that you’re going to ask me why I didn’t just inquire about the woman and her son, who carried a rubber elephant with enormous ears. There would have been a hundred friendly ways to phrase it. Well, I didn’t. I still felt like half a fool for having blundered back in like that and going through the song and dance about the breakfast plate, and I was almost certain by then that I hadn’t seen anything at all, that I had invented it out of the curve of a leaf and the edge of a pot. It was a little farfetched, wasn’t it? Just as it had seemed improbable to the captain of the downed ship that the nonsense in his log ought to be taken seriously.

I had imagined it, and I told myself so as I set out toward the pier again, where, just like that, I nearly ran over old Parsons, the secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences, coming along with a bamboo pole and creel in his hand, got up in a woolen sort of fishing uniform and looking as if even though he mightn’t catch a single fish, at least he had got the outfit right, and that qualified him, as the scriptures put it, to walk with the proud.

I was surprised to see him. He was thoroughly disappointed to see me. It was the company I kept. He assumed straight off that St. Ives was lurking somewhere about, and that meant, of course, that the business of the Royal Academy was being meddled in again. And he was right. His being there said as much. It was an altogether unlikely coincidence. If I had looked at it from the angle of a practicing detective, then I’d have had suspicions about his angling outfit, and I’d have concluded that he was trying too hard to play a part. He was up to something, to be sure.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

I gave him a jolly look, and said, “Down on holiday, actually. And you, going fishing?”

Foolish question, I guess, given what he looked like, but that didn’t call for him to get cheeky. “I’m prospecting ,” he said, and held up his bamboo pole. “This is an alchemical divining rod, used to locate fishes with coins in their bellies.”

But just then, when I was going to say something clever, up came a gentleman in side whiskers and interrupted in order to wring Parsons’s hand. “Dreadfully sorry, old man,” he said to Parsons. “But he was tired, and he’d lived a long life. Very profitable. I’m happy you could come down for the funeral.”

Parsons took him by the arm and led him away down the pier pretty briskly, as if to get him away from me before he said anything more. He had already said enough, though, hadn’t he? This man Piper was dead, and Parsons had come down to see him buried.

It was a full morning, taken all the way around. There was a half hour yet before I was to meet St. Ives and Hasbro back at the Apple. I was feeling very much like a detective by then, although I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was I had detected, besides this last bit. I decided that wasn’t enough, and went across toward the ramshackle icehouse, a wooden sort of warehouse in a weedy lot not far off the ocean.

I went in at a side door without knocking. The place was cold, not surprisingly, and I could hear the hiss of steam from the compressors. The air was tinged with the smell of ammonia and wet straw. The jolly captain wasn’t hard to find; he confronted me as soon as I came in through the door. He seemed to be the only one around, and he was big, and he talked with an accent, stretching out his vowels as if they were made of putty. I won’t try to copy it, since I’m no good at tricking up accents, but he was full of words like tarnation and fleabit and hound dog and ain’t and talked altogether in a sort of apostrophic “Out West” way that struck me as out of character in a sea captain. I expected something salty and maritime. I made a mental note of it.