Free The Aylesford Skull by James P. Blaylock Page A

has informed me that you are familiar with the man who styles himself Dr. Ignacio Narbondo.”
    “Yes,” St. Ives said. “I’m not certain that anyone is familiar with him, not in so many words. I’m not convinced that he entirely knows himself. But I’ve had...dealings with him over the years.”
    “ Dealings ,” she said, as if she didn’t half like the word. “I’d warrant they turned out badly. William told you that he was once my son?”
    “I was astonished to hear it.”
    “Not many people have heard it, sir. I have no occasion to mention it. I myself put him out of my heart and mind thirty years ago, and in those years I haven’t spoken of him save to one person, Mary Eastman, whom he murdered in the churchyard early this morning, although I assure you that there will be no evidence that he committed the crime. I pray that you won’t judge me too harshly, Professor, or think me an unnatural mother. I loved him when he was a child, but by the time he was five years old he had ceased to be a child, and within a very few years he was scarcely human. A human devil, perhaps, and I use the term literally. Will you hear what I have to say?”
    “I’d be quite willing. And I don’t set up to judge anyone but myself, ma’am, although I make an exception for Dr. Narbondo. Your description of him is unfortunately accurate. I’m convinced, however, that he will go about his business and that you’ll be quit of him for another thirty years. I’m not sure that I can be of any use to you.”
    “I’m not half so certain on either point. But if he has gone off, then the peril is even greater. A glass of sherry for you?”
    “I can’t think of anything that would suit me more, thank you.”
    She gestured at the table, and St. Ives pulled back one of the heavy chairs and sat down. Almost immediately a girl entered the room carrying a decanter and small glasses without apparently having been called upon to do so. A hidden bell , St. Ives thought. Then he saw that the girl was apparently blind, and yet she walked straight to the table without hesitation. Her left arm was awkwardly contorted, held out in front of her and bent sharply at the elbow. She set the tray onto the table, and then, her elbow aimed sharply downward, she poured sherry evenly into the three glasses, her milky eyes staring dead ahead. St. Ives wondered whether the milkiness was caused by some sort of covering – circles of very fine oiled silk, perhaps, or milk glass lenses.
    “Thank you, Clara,” Mother Laswell said. The girl curtsied, turned, and walked back out again, straight toward the door, her arm bent in front of her, the tip of her elbow seeming to draw her forcibly along.
    “ She sees with her elber ,” Kraken whispered heavily to St. Ives. “I’ve seen her do monstrous strange things for a blind girl. She can play at cards, sir, one handed of course, and shoot a fowling piece into a target. It don’t stand to reason, but it’s what she does.”
    Mother Laswell nodded ponderously. “At Hereafter Farm we’ve got no grudge against reason, Professor, as long as it isn’t the only star in the firmament. But there are other ways of seeing, elbows included. As a man of science, a rationalist, perhaps a materialist, you no doubt disagree, but that’s the sort of strange company you’ve fallen in with this evening. I tell you this only because you will naturally have some fundamental doubts about what I have to say to you. I don’t take offense to that. Belief that comes too easily is a shallow and often foolish thing. Stubborn disbelief is much the same.”
    “On that point we agree entirely,” St. Ives said, discarding assumptions by the bucketful and wondering exactly what sort of company he had “fallen in with.” Not entirely the company he had expected. “I’m anxious to hear you out, Mother Laswell. I have the highest opinion of Bill Kraken, and if Bill tells me that you’ve got something vital to say, I don’t