The House of Lost Souls - F. G. Cottam [68]
He could hardly wait to read more. It was a quarter to nine. If he went home now and had dinner with Lucinda, afterwards he could read on in the Windmill for an hour before closing time at a table in the corner with plaintive soul ballads for a soundtrack. The thought filled him with an excitement and anticipation that made him realise afresh that this whole obsession was going far beyond what it had originally set out to be.
Obsession? Surely it wasn’t quite that, was it? It was fully dark now in the gardens. They would have locked the gates. He saw the torch of a passing policeman strobe against the black iron railings bordering the Millbank pavement. All it really was, was his journalistic curiosity, his instinct for his craft, turned to focus on an intriguing woman who had lived through a sometimes sinister and salacious time. But it was no longer anything to do with Lucinda, was it? He had to admit that much. Standing there, under the trees in the gathering darkness, Seaton suddenly thought it very important that he didn’t deceive himself about his motives, or let Lucinda down.
It went beyond Lucinda, this preoccupation with the mystery of Pandora Gibson-Hoare. But it had begun with Lucinda and with a sincere desire to help her. He would have to accomplish the essay somehow. And he would make the most plausible job of it he could. He could assimilate the Bob Halliwell information at least, suggest that the reclusiveness towards the end of Pandora’s life was a deliberate choice and not a consequence of penury. He could write up the Vogel and Breene connection, which proved how punctilious she’d been in the care of her equipment. She had pioneered the use of the first mass-production Leica and he could include the forgotten poignant fact that one of her cameras still awaited its owner’s lost touch in perfect working condition. He would ask Young Mr Breene about the technical limitations of those early Leicas and the film stock made for them. He was pretty confident Mr Breene would talk to him about such matters. He would write the dissertation as well as he was able to. He wouldn’t let Lucinda down.
He stood in the Victoria Tower Gardens in darkness. The great bell above the Commons to his left tolled, nine times. And Paul Seaton made that solemn promise to himself. He would not let Lucinda down.
7 October, 1927
Crowley is here! He arrived this afternoon with an Egyptian woman. I was excited to see him, after the collection of dull grotesques Fischer’s man has been ferrying here all day in the Mercedes. He recognised me instantly and acknowledged the fact with a raised eyebrow and a tightening of the lips that signalled: Your secret is safe with me. He has aged quite shockingly in the year since I saw him last at Brescia. Much of his hair has gone and his pallor is deathly. But there was mischief in his eyes. And he was flamboyant in a silk top hat and spats and morning coat, carrying a heavy silver-topped mahogany walking stick. He leaned on the stick, was obliged to do so, in shuffling up the steps to the house. And it was sad to think that he was agile enough once to climb in the Himalayas, amid those peaks on the roof of the world. All the damage done to him is self-inflicted. It was a pathetic thing to witness, nevertheless.
But I’m ahead of myself and should describe the house. Fischer lives amid ugly opulence. His walls are hung with lurid tapestries and lit by sconces fuelled with raw pitch. The floors are bare, flagged and covered in the skins of bears and big cats, trophies, I suppose. All the downstairs rooms are warmed by burning logs