Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [11]
He paused for thought. ‘Studied law, I believe. Here at Mortarhouse as well. Oh yes, he injured his ankle playing cricket in the college team; had to retire from the sport. Why?’
‘No matter.’
As I left the college grounds I reflected on the interview. I got the impression that Sowerden was hiding something, but I didn’t know what. Or why.
I left the spires to their dreams and returned to London.
* * *
THE ACCOUNT OF JOHN HOPKINSON (2)
I had not visited the house since Harries had moved in, and upon entering the conservatory I was surprised at the extent of the change. Most of the glass was blocked out, and tables and chests were adorned with haphazard pages of scrawled handwriting and weird collections of scientific equipment – bowls and tubes and beakers all linked together in extraordinary and disharmonious patterns. The centre of the room was all but filled with a long trestle table, with a few upholstered chairs (looted, I noticed, from a couple of the smaller bedrooms) scattered incongruously around it.
In one of the chairs, pen in one hand and a sheaf of notes in the other, sat the young figure of Richard Harries, like a worker ant in a cluttered nest deserted by its fellows. He was facing towards the concealed windows, so that I saw him side-on as I entered, silhouetted against one of the few unhindered panes of glass. His chin jutted forward slightly as he sifted through the papers, discarding some and holding on to others to reread, so that he appeared to possess a vaguely simian profile, which belied the expression of intense thought that wrinkled his brow. The tray of salad that Simpson had brought him lay untouched on the table.
After standing a moment taking in the changed decor, and noting appreciatively that the wall to one side of the door now boasted a large – and full – bookcase, I decided that Harries was not going to remark me of his own free will and coughed as loudly as I dared, oddly fearful of breaking the silence. Harries started, and looked up.
‘Ah, Hopkinson – there you are. Good.’
He went back to his notes, leaving me feeling embarrassed and alone on the other side of the untidy room. ‘Wait just a moment, and I’ll be with you,’ he continued at last.
Feeling for some reason that my presence was now legitimate, I turned my attentions to the bookcase and looked along the titles. They seemed for the most part to be scientific journals and books, not by any means of uniform shape, size or age, but apparently meticulously ordered.
Glancing down one shelf I noticed such names as Burdon-Sanderson, Darwin and Ferrier, but the book I was most attracted to had nothing to do, as far as I could tell, with physiology, evolution or the brain. I noticed it most, despite its being on the shelf above the one I was looking at, because the script on its spine ran counter to the others in the bookcase, thus making it harder to read. Added to this, the single word was not a title or, possibly, author’s name with which I was familiar. It said, in faded gold lettering up the old brown leather, Necronomicon. My curiosity enlivened, I pulled the book from between its shelf-fellows and opened it, only to find that it was not as I had suspected one of those annoying volumes that have the title stamped wrong side up along their backs, but had merely been replaced on the shelf upside down. I smiled and turned the book over, surprised at how free from dust it was compared with its companions.
A further surprise was that the text was in Latin. The language held no secrets from me of course, but I had not imagined Harries to be fluent in the tongue. Evidence perhaps of how I underestimated his abilities even at that late stage. I flicked through a few pages, then began to read a passage, translating it to myself as I went. While the style was odd to say the least, the content was by far stranger:
That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with the passing of strange aeons even death may die.
Fhtagn mglw, nafn
R’lyeh wgah nagh fhtagn.
I was still puzzling over the last few words, how they should be pronounced