The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [57]
‘Did you know her?’
Gibson-Hoare laughed. He threw back his head and his teeth were stained brown against thinning enamel. ‘Goodness me. Why don’t we get right to the heart of the matter?’
He was lonely. He might or might not be queer as well, Seaton thought, but the key to it was the loneliness. He didn’t see many people. And he enjoyed company, after his peculiar fashion. Seaton felt suddenly depressed, deflated. Because he knew now that Gibson-Hoare had not known Pandora. If he had, he would have answered rather than avoided the question. It would have given him more to say. It would have provided him with the company for longer in which to inflate and indulge his reminiscences.
‘She was a distant cousin,’ he said. He took his teacup over to the globe and took the stopper from a whisky-coloured decanter and poured an inch or so into his tea. He stirred it and sipped. ‘I never met her. I never even knew about this house until I inherited it in 1963. But in the twenty years I’ve been here, if there had been hidden treasure, I’d have found it by now. All I have discovered is damp. And rodents, latterly. I’m keeping the death-watch beetles and woodworm at bay, but it’s altogether a terrible fag, domesticity.’
Seaton said nothing. He didn’t think inheriting a London house a plight he could sympathise with wholeheartedly.
‘She had no talent for it.’
‘For what?’
Gibson-Hoare chuckled his throaty smoker’s chuckle. He rummaged for cigarettes in a pocket of his dressing gown and found the packet. ‘Thought that would get your attention. For domesticity.’
‘How do you know?’
He proffered the pack with a cigarette clenched between his teeth. Seaton smiled and shook his head. Gibson-Hoare lit up with a large silver lighter shaped like a swan he took from the table with the tea things on it. He exhaled smoke, blue in the dusty sunlight in the room.
‘I didn’t meet her. But my late neighbour did. And he had some rum things to say about the hours she kept. And the noise she managed to generate. Always at night, apparently. She was a disruptive little soul, was our Pandora.’
‘Did she occupy the house alone?’
Gibson-Hoare smoked and picked something imaginary from between his teeth with a thumbnail. ‘I can’t imagine what possible business that can be of yours.’
‘None of it is my business, sir. And viewed one way, this visit, uninvited, is an intrusive and wholly unnecessary interruption.’
Gibson-Hoare frowned and smoked. Pacing back and forth across his rugs, he looked to Seaton like a character from one of those plays John Osborne’s work a mile down the King’s Road had made obsolete decades ago.
‘Viewed another way, my being here could be the first small step in the rediscovery of someone whose work should never have been forgotten. Pandora was a pioneer. She possessed technical brilliance and the courage to be original. Even Mr Breene commented on what a singular and gifted eye she had. And I’d say he’s an experienced judge, fairly grudging in his praise.’
Gibson-Hoare sat down. The frown had lightened to a more thoughtful expression. But he still didn’t speak.
‘These things have their own momentum, so they do. Who knows? If you can summon the necessary energy, in a year’s time you might find yourself curating a retrospective exhibition of your late cousin’s work.’
Gibson-Hoare looked skyward and Seaton read the look as one of patronised exasperation and feared he’d probably gone too far. But then he said, ‘There are some of her things here, still. One characteristic of families