Nannie turns to find a chair. The room is like a shipwreck. The red walls glower in the candle-light. The old woman patters her way between stalactites of tallow, boxes and old sofas. The Countess whistles and a moment later the room is alive with wings. By the time Mrs Slagg has dragged a chair to the dressing-table and climbed upon it, the Countess is deep in conversation with a magpie. Nannie disapproves of birds altogether and cannot reconcile the habits of the Countess with the House of Groan, but she is used to such things, not being over seventy years old for nothing. Bending a little over her ladyship’s locks she works with difficulty to complete the hirsute cornice, for the light is bad.
‘Now then, darling, now then,’ says the heavy voice below her, and her old body thrills, for she has never known the Countess speak to her in such a way before; but glancing over the mountainous shoulder she sees that the Countess is talking to a bedraggled finch and Nannie Slagg is desolate.
‘So Fuchsia was the first to find him, was she?’ says the Countess, rubbing her finger along the finch’s throat.
Mrs Slagg, startled, as she always is when anyone speaks, fumbles with the red hank in her hand. ‘Who? Oh, who do you mean … your Ladyship? … Oh, she’s always a good girl, Fuchsia is, yis, yis,
The Countess gets to her feet in a monumental way, brushing several objects from the dressing-table to the floor with her elbow. As she rises she hears the sound of sobbing and turns her head to the lavender roll. ‘Go away, Slagg – go away, and take him with you. Is Fuchsia dressed?’
‘Yis … oh, my poor heart, yis … Fuchsia is all ready, yis, quite ready, and waiting in her room. Oh yis, she is …’
‘His Breakfast will soon be beginning,’ says the Countess, turning her eyes from a brass clock to her infant son. ‘Very soon.’
Nannie, who has recovered Titus from the fastnesses of the bed, stops at the door before pattering out into the dawn-lit corridor. Her eyes stare back almost triumphantly and a little pathetic smile works at the crinkled corners of her mouth, ‘
Steerpike has been found at last, Fuchsia colliding with him as he rounds a corner of the staircase on his way down from the aunts. He is very sprucely dressed, his high shoulders without a speck of dust upon them, his fingernails pared, his hair smoothed down over his pasty-coloured forehead. He is surprised to see Fuchsia, but he does not show it, merely raising his eyebrows in an expression both inquiring and deferential at the same time.
‘You are up very early, Lady Fuchsia.’
Fuchsia, her breast heaving from her long run up the stairs, cannot speak for a moment or two; then she says: ‘Doctor Prune wants you.’
‘Why me?’ says the youth to himself; but aloud he said: ‘Where is he?’
‘In my father’s room.’
Steerpike licks his lips slowly. ‘Is your father ill?’
‘Yes, oh yes, very ill.’
Steerpike turns his head away from Fuchsia, for the muscles of his face cry out to relax. He gives them a free rein and then, straightening his face and turning to Fuchsia, he says: ‘Everything I can do I will do.’ Suddenly, with the utmost nimbleness, he skips past her, jumping the first four steps together, and races down the stone flight on his way to the Earl’s bedroom.
He has not seen the Doctor for some time. Having left his service their relationship is a little strained, but this morning as he enters at the Earl’s door he can see there will be neither space nor time for reminiscences in his own or the Doctor’s brain.
Prunesquallor, in his lime-green dressing-gown, is pacing to and fro before the mantelpiece with the stealth of some kind of vertical cat. Not for a moment does he take his eyes off the Earl, who, still upon the mantelpiece, watches the physician with great eyes.
At the sound of Steerpike at the door the round eyes move for a moment and stare over the Doctor’s shoulder. But Prunesquallor has not shifted his steady, magnified gaze. The roguish look is quite absent from his long, bizarre face.
The Doctor has been waiting for this moment. Prancing forward he reaches up with his white hands and pins the Earl’s arms to his sides, dragging him from his perch. Steerpike is at the Doctor’s side in a moment and together they carry the sacrosanct body to the bed and turn it over upon its face. Sepulchrave has not struggled, only emitting a short stifled cry.
Steerpike holds the dark figure down with one hand, for there is no attempt to escape, and the Doctor flicks a slim needle into his Lordship’s wrist and injects a drug of such weird potency that when they turn the patient over Steerpike is startled to see that the face has changed to a kind of chalky green. But the eyes have altered also and are once more the sober, thoughtful, human eyes which the Castle knew so well. His fingers have uncurled; the claws are gone.
