Ghosts by Gaslight (15 page)

Susan hoped he never would.

Afterword to
“The Curious Case of the
Moondawn Daffodils Murder”

The genesis for this story came from a recent visit to London. I had just flown in from Australia, and one of the first things I did was to have my hair cut at an old barbershop in Mayfair, at least in part just to stay awake and stave off jet lag. While my hair was being cut I wondered who else might have sat in that same chair over the years. As the barbershop has been in business since 1875, my thoughts naturally turned to the late Victorian era, and of course, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. Following my tonsorial shortening, I walked through the Green Park. It was the wrong time of the year for daffodils, and there were no sinister wielders of silver razors, but from that haircut and a short walk in the park, a story idea was sown.

—G
ARTH
N
IX

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe was born in 1931 and served as a GI in the Korean War. After many years working as an engineer—both a practicing one and an engineering journalist—he turned in 1984 to full-time fiction writing, having already laid the basis for an acclaimed creative career with his early masterpieces,
The Fifth Head of Cerberus,
Peace,
and four-volume
The Book of the New Sun
.

Subsequent works, always extremely ambitious and highly praised, have included
The Urth of the New Sun,
There Are Doors,
The Book of the Long Sun,
The Book of the Short Sun,
The Wizard Knight,
and three linked novels set in Ancient Greece and Egypt:
Soldier of the Mist,
Soldier of Arete,
and
Soldier of Sidon
. Wolfe’s major story collections are
The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories,
Endangered Species,
Storeys from the Old Hotel,
Castle of Days,
Strange Travelers,
Innocents Aboard,
Starwater Strains,
and
The Best of Gene Wolfe
. His most recent novels are
The Sorcerer’s House
and
Home Fires
.

Gene Wolfe has lived in Barrington, Illinois, for many years, with his wife, Rosemary, and a dog called Bobby.

G
ENE
W
OLFE
Why I Was Hanged

[The following account was supplied by a man who owns a great many books but searches fearfully for another, a yellowing pamphlet he may already own. In looking for a quite different title, he stumbled upon this remarkable narrative, which he had never read and could not recall buying. He read it, and says he remembers it almost word for word.]

M
Y NAME IS
James Brooks. I was brought up in service and trained by my father, himself a valet of some distinction. At the age of eighteen I had the good fortune of obtaining a position with an elderly gentleman, of a good Yorkshire family, whose valet had died. I served him faithfully, and as I believe skillfully, for upwards of three years, at which time he himself closed his eyes for the final time, much mourned by his relations. Young as I was and knowing far less than I then believed of the ways of the world, I hoped for a substantial legacy. He would, I thought, have inserted into his final testament some clause bequeathing a considerable sum to one styled by him
my faithful valet
. Conceive then, of my disappointment when the will was read. The clause I had so hopefully envisioned was indeed to be found there; but its wording cast all my hopes into that darkling pit from which they have never emerged. My master had accorded the not inconsequential sum of one hundred guineas to
my faithful servant Samuel Satterfield,
this Samuel Satterfield aforesaid having been, as may be supposed, the one whose passing had, as I thought, so greatly benefited me. My master’s testament had been written, it transpired, some ten years before his demise and had lain untouched in his solicitor’s box until the soil had been heaped upon his grave. Samuel Satterfield having predeceased his master, it was ruled that the sum vouchsafed him should go to his widow, an ill-favoured and ill-tempered hag who had begun life, as I have been reliably informed, as a scullery maid. In short, I received not a whit more than the stable boy, which was nothing.

Greatly embittered, I left domestic service and went to sea. My misadventures there I shall pass over in silence; but four years later, having suffered more than a sufficiency of horrid weather, bad food, and kicks from the mates, I resolved to return to my profession, registering with an agency that offered to supply domestic servants of good character to employers for a fee.

Months passed. My savings, never large, dwindled to nothing. I did whatever work I could find, and rough and dirty work it was for the most part. At last, when I had resolved to return to sea, which I must do or starve, the agency informed me that I was to appear for an interview with a prospective employer. It was only by the generosity of an acquaintance of my late father’s that I acquired decent clothing for the occasion, he having grown overstout for the trousers, shirt, and waistcoat that hung so slack upon my wasted frame. A jacket was, providentially, provided by the agency.

My employer-to-be was a young gentleman of fashion, high coloured and good humoured, and so clearly wealthy and well tailored that my gaze fixed upon him as a starving cur’s upon a beefsteak. After several prosaic questions regarding a manservant’s duties as I understood them, questions easy to anticipate, he inquired, “What do you know of foxhunting, Brooks?” The intensity apparent in his voice and the narrowing of his eyes showed me plainly that this question was of greatest importance: that the entire affair hinged upon my answer. I would gladly have proclaimed myself an expert if I could, but I knew that the most trifling enquiry would at once reveal any such imposture. “Nothing, sir,” I replied. “I fear that I know nothing at all of it.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” was my future employer’s rejoinder. “After discovering me ignorant of it, my last man would speak of nothing else. If I hadn’t discharged him, I should have been forced to throw him under a train.”

My joy was complete and perfectly unbounded, so that the latter part of his remarkable statement made but small impression on my mind at the time, though it was to return with great force.

He had commodious rooms in the West End, and in them I discovered items of apparel well suited to my duties, items abandoned, as it seemed, by my predecessor in his service. These I examined with delight and at once made my own. As soon as I could, I repaired my scant wardrobe from my wages and from the gifts, sometimes generous, accorded me by my master’s friends. I should mention that I was our entire staff, save for a fat and rather pleasant woman, styled the housekeeper but in fact a cook, whose services we enjoyed but three days per week.

Parliament adjourned, the season ended, and the heat and dirt of the city, which had been most mercifully swept aside, resumed. Wealthy families and single men of fashion alike retired to the country or the seaside, and we with them. My new master’s parents resided in Westmoreland, not far from this antiquated town of Windermere in which my life must end. The house is large and old, and in part ruinous. It is said to have been occupied for a time by Cromwell’s Roundheads, and boasts what is called a priest’s hole, this though in my judgment it looks more like a Necessary Closet. Here there was a large staff, at first distrustful but quickly welcoming when it was seen that I was adept at my duties and disinclined to shirk.

In London, I had gloried in my return to service, in light work I well understood and the entire absence of hectoring officers. Here my life was indeed delightful. I would, I resolved, hold to my post at all costs. My new master and I would grow old together; and should death come first for me I should bless him as I breathed my last. Little did I know what was to come!

There is not one of the visitations I endured that is not burned forever in my memory, but none is seared more clearly or more deeply than the first. I lay abed, having slept soundly, I believe, for some hours. Waking, I saw bending over me a maiden of mist whose hair was night and whose eyes were stars. Her hand moved toward my face—it stroked my brow, and I was conscious of no touch but only of a sensation of cold, as though I slept before an open window through which snow had blown.

I sat up, and she was gone. I rose and lit the gas, opened the door and looked out at the empty hallway, and in short did every foolish thing that may be imagined, all of them achieving every success that might be expected. That is to say, they availed nothing at all.

It may have been a week or a fortnight before she returned; I recall only that I had nearly been persuaded—this by my own arguments, for I had confided in no one—that the apparition had been a dream, the waking fantasy of an ill-ordered mind.

My master was in the habit of bathing before he retired each Saturday evening. Upon that occasion, his bath had not been ready at the accustomed time, this due to a mechanical difficulty with the apparatus employed to heat the water. He, being still rather in his cups, had berated me soundly for it, and had at last struck me a good, solid blow with his fist. I had suffered worse aboard the
Jack Robinson,
yet the injustice rankled. Thus I, who most frequently welcomed the embrace of Morpheus while the wick still smouldered, as the expression has it, lay awake that night staring at the ceiling, foolishly tormented. How might I have repaired the geyser, as the apparatus is styled? How might I have heated water upon the kitchen stove in more timely fashion than I had? Might I have lit the bedroom fire and employed that? And many more such questions, equally futile.

After lying sleepless for an hour or so, I chanced to glance to my left and beheld her melting through the door. Although dressed in nothing more substantial than an old linen nightshirt, I sprang from my bed. Indeed, I do not remember it, yet surely I did so, for I found myself standing and trembling before her. Should I have shouted? To this day I do not know; I know only that I was so unmanned by astonishment, and, aye, by terror, that I could not speak. My mouth opened, I believe. And closed, too, more than once. But not a sound did I utter.

I saw her as one sees moonlight, thin and lacking all substance, yet undeniably present. Did I think I dreamt? you ask. No, not that or any other thing; write, rather, that my mind was emptied of all thought, every thought having been driven out by fear.

She smiled, and my fear would have grown greater if it could. She gestured; at first I knew not at what, but when she repeated the gesture I saw it was at the stocking I had been darning while the light lasted. I had hurried the work, I confess, in the hope of completing it ere darkness fell; in that I had failed, and thus had left it, still incomplete, by the window, upon the only chair my room in that house afforded. When at last I understood what it was she indicated, I picked up the stocking and offered it to her. Let me say here, sir, and say now that there was no odour as of brimstone nor any such thing about her. Nor did she smell of grave-soil, decay, or the like. No, it was as though in that soft July I had winded a winter’s night, cold and silent.

She refused my stocking with a humble little gesture. Once, in Calcutta, I saw a child offer a beggar a stone; the beggar’s gesture was the same. “What is it you wish?” I asked. She seemed to endeavour to speak. No sound issued from her lips, not so much as a sigh.

“I shall do whatever you wish,” I told her, “but I must first know what it is.” By that time I was, I believe, regaining some shreds of self-possession. Fearfully, she indicated the darning needle, which was at that time still thrust through the worsted. I removed it and offered it to her.

She backed away, clearly frightened, and I recalled that the fairies were said, by those who feigned to credit them, to fear cold iron. I made as if to throw it out the window, but she hastened to prevent it. “What would you have me do?” I enquired, at which she mimed for me the thrusting of the needle into a forefinger.

I did. She bent and kissed my finger. The sensation was far beyond my meagre powers of description. At length she straightened up, licked her lips, and smiled. She had been moonlight before, as I have said. She was candlelight now, or rather, like the light of a candelabrum; she might almost have been a true woman, a living woman. You may think when you read this that you comprehend all that I have said, yet I beg leave to doubt it.

I offered my one poor chair, saying, “Will you not sit?”

“Thank you for speaking.” She smiled again. “Won’t you take it yourself? You must feel weak after giving so much strength to me.” The golden bells of an elfin steeple beyond Land’s End—should such a thing exist—could not have spoken more sweetly.

“I will sit on my bed if you seat yourself, madam,” I replied. “I could not possibly sit in the presence of a lady who was standing.”

“Then sit I shall!” She suited her actions to these words; and the old chair, which always creaked abominably when supporting my weight, uttered not a sound.

I asked whether she did not wish some service of me, for it appeared to me, my initial awe having passed, that she would scarcely have mounted two pairs of stairs to a garret save she desired my assistance.

“You are a gentleman,” she said, “which makes it all the better; but let me first say that I could not have entered this chamber at all had you not invited me in your dreams. Nor could I have spoken had you not addressed me.”

“You are welcome here at any time,” I told her.