With impossible strength and apparently impervious to pain, the thing pushed aside the last of the glass and thrust its way into the room. It squatted athletically beside the actor and leered malevolently up at him, like some maleficent vision from Bosch stepped, still wet with paint, glossy and glistening, from the canvas.
Mrs. Honeyman smiled again. “My the Lord have mercy on you.” She nodded at the creature, which leapt obediently to its feet and moved toward its victim, forcing him back against the shattered window. Honeyman screamed in anguish and mortal terror. He tried to mouth some final plea but before he was able to speak the monster was upon him, pushing him further and further back until, with a final, deceptively gentle shove, Honeyman disappeared through the window altogether and sailed out into the cold, merciless air.
He screamed all the way down. Seconds later, the creature followed suit, leaping out of the room, scuttling down the tower, darting away into the night.
Upstairs, Mrs. Honeyman and the fallen woman linked hands.
“God be with you,” said one.
“God be with you,” echoed the other.
Hand in hand, they left the tower and vanished into the city.
Cyril Honeyman was still alive when they found him, his dying moments witnessed by a cluster of curious residents and a single police constable. It passed into local legend that his last words were also that of his final character:
A ham, then, to the last.
Chapter 3
I do not like handsome men.
Mostly this is jealousy, I know — this instinctive hatred of mine, this old, irrational animosity. When I compare my swollen flesh and pockmarked features with the supple frames of the young and the beautiful, I find myself achingly wanting. Even today, I am quite unable to look upon a comely youth without wishing to beat his exquisitely proportioned face into a bruised and bloody pulp.
So you can scarcely imagine my joy when I realized that Mr. Edward Moon was losing his looks.
All that silken hair, those perfect cheekbones, that preternaturally well-defined jaw — Moon had once been elegance personified, style and dash incarnate. But now, past forty and barreling toward his sixth decade with what felt to him like indecent haste, his appeal seemed at long last to have faded. His hair had started to thin and the keen observer could discern the first few flecks of gray. His face, already sagging and crinkled, had begun to display an inclination toward corpulence, had lost its handsome lineaments as the testimony of his sins and vices wrote itself across his features in lines and furrows and wrinkles.
The night Cyril Honeyman tumbled to his messy death, Edward Moon was dining with acquaintances (not friends, you’ll notice, never that) at a party in an especially fashionable part of Kensington, surrounded by some of the most prominent of the city’s chattering classes. Time was when he would have sat amongst them as their most honored guest, the evening’s star attraction, but nowadays his hosts seemed content merely to tolerate him, inviting him (he strongly suspected) chiefly out of habit. A few more years and he would be dropped from these gatherings altogether, his name erased from the guest lists, become a non-person, an also-ran.
Moon swiftly found himself tiring of their company, and at the end of the meal when the women retired to giggle and gossip and the men lit cigars and reached for the port, he excused himself from the table and strolled out into the garden, leaving his companion to fend for himself indoors.
Moon had once enjoyed a reputation for dressing exquisitely, his wardrobe always just that vital inch ahead of fashion. But now, as his dapperness ebbed away, he had begun to look lost in the new style, had become increasingly to resemble a leftover from the last century, a relic from an earlier, mustier age. His Savile Row jacket had seen far better days and his shoes, handmade and paid for with several months’ earnings, were grown scuffed and weary. He wore a black armband, still in mourning for the Queen though she had passed away some months before. He was a creature of the old century as surely as she.
The year stood just on that cusp of the seasons when winter begins to clench its fist about the days, and the trees, robbed of their leaves and color, stand stark sentinel like empty hat-stands. The air was clammy and chill; fog had stretched itself out from the lower parts of the city, and illuminated by light streaming from the house, the garden shimmered and shone with a strange luster. Moon strolled away from the building, the long, damp grass soaking his shoes, the bottoms of his trousers, the tops of his socks. He lit a cigarette and inhaled with relief as the smoke percolated through his lungs.
“Mr. Moon?”
There was a man standing behind him, one of the dinner guests, an American whose name Moon had already allowed himself to forget. The tip of the stranger’s cigar glowed angrily in the half-darkness. “Enjoying the evening?”
Moon ignored the question and took another drag on his cigarette. “What can I do for you,” he asked at length. “Mr….?”
The American gave a lopsided smile. “Stoddart.”
Moon smiled smoothly, meaninglessly back. “Of course.”
“I have a proposition for you. I publish
Moon shook his head.
“We’re a periodical — not entirely an unfashionable one, if I may say so. In the past I’ve commissioned some of your most prominent authors. Arthur Doyle contributed-”
“A hack, Mr. Stoddart. A journeyman.”
The American tried again. “Oscar Wilde-”
Moon gave an expansive yawn, refusing to be impressed. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’d like you to join them.”
“I’m not a writer. I have no stories to tell.”
The publisher tossed aside his cigar and ground out what was left of it with the toe of his boot. “But you do, sir, you do. I’m not asking for a work of fiction. I’m in pursuit of something infinitely more engaging.”
“Oh?”
“I want your autobiography. A life of such vigor and color as your own should make for compelling reading — would even, I fancy, have some considerable historical value.”
“Historical?” Moon grimaced. “
Stoddart chose his next words very carefully. “Let’s not be coy. We both know your best work is behind you. Since Clapham your stock has fallen considerably.”
Moon was defiant. “There is still one last great case.”
The man persisted. “You owe your public the truth. Our readers want to know how you solved the Limmeridge Park Murders. How you tracked down the Fiend. The Adventure of Smugglers’ Bay. The so-called Miracle of Mile End. Your rumored involvement in the Crookback Incursion of Eighty-eight.”
Moon eyed his inquisitor suspiciously. “I wasn’t aware that incident was public knowledge.”
“Name your price,” the publisher replied and suggested a sum which even today would amount to a small fortune.
Moon reached the house and turned back to face the American. “My past is not for sale, Mr. Stoddart. There. You have my answer.” He slipped inside and pulled the door shut behind him.
He strode through to the billiard room. His companion sat alone and silent, a glass in one hand, a smoldering cigar in the other, a wide smile spread blissfully across his face.
Moon spoke curtly to their host. “Get me a cab. The Somnambulist and I are leaving.”
