A Red Herring Without Mustard

“Ah, yes.” He smiled. “The Hobblers. I knew you would ask me about the Hobblers. One should have been disappointed if you hadn’t.”

Could Mr. or Mrs. Pettibone have told him of my interest? Somehow, it seemed unlikely.

“Surely you don’t suspect that I am one of them?”

“No,” I said, struggling to keep up with him. “But I knew that your niece—”

Until that very moment I had nearly forgotten that Dr. Kissing was Miss Mountjoy’s uncle.

“My niece? You thought that Tilda was keeping me briefed on your …? Good lord, no! She tells me nothing—nor anyone else. Not even God himself knows what Tilda’s left hand is doing nowadays.”

He saw my puzzlement.

“One needs look no farther than one’s own hearth,” he said.

“Mrs. Mullet?”

Dr. Kissing coughed a wheezy cough—which reminded me uncomfortably of Fenella—and consoled himself by lighting another cigarette.

“It is common knowledge that you are situated, as it were, in close proximity to the estimable Mrs. Mullet. The rest is mere conjecture.

“One has not, of course,” he went on, “communicated personally with the good woman,” he said. “But I believe she is known far and wide for, ah—”

“Dishing the dirt,” I volunteered.

He made a little bow from his waist. “Your descriptive powers leave me in the dust,” he said.

I could easily grow to love this man.

“I know about Nicodemus Flitch,” I told him, “and how he brought his faith to Bishop’s Lacey. I know that there are still a few practicing Hobblers in the neighborhood, and that they still gather occasionally at the Palings.”

“To conduct baptisms.”

“Yes,” I said. “For baptisms.”

“A much more common practice in years gone by,” he said. “There are nowadays few Hobblers left of childbearing age.”

I tried to think of who they might be. Certainly not Tilda Mountjoy or Mrs. Pettibone.

“I believe poor Mrs. Bull was the last,” he said, and I noticed he was watching me out of the corner of his eye.

“Mrs. Bull?”

Was Mrs. Bull a Hobbler?

“Mrs. Bull, who lives in the Gully?” I asked. “The one whose baby was taken by Gypsies?”

I couldn’t help myself. Even though I didn’t believe it, the fearful words slipped out before I could think.

Dr. Kissing nodded. “So it is said.”

“But you don’t believe it.”

I was in fine form now, catching every shade of the old man’s meaning.

“I must confess that I don’t,” he said. “And I expect that you would like me to tell you why.”

I could only manage a stupid grin.

Although the rain was still beating down upon the umbrella with a monotonous drumming, there was a surprising stillness and a warmth beneath its protective cover. Across the lawn, the dreadful house that was Rook’s End crouched like a giant stone toad. In one of its tall windows—in what had once perhaps been the ballroom—two old ladies, in outlandish and outdated costumes, were dancing a stately minuet. I had seen this pair on my last visit to Dr. Kissing, executing their timeless steps beneath the trees, and now they had obviously spotted me.

As I watched, the shorter of the two paused long enough to wave a gloved hand and the other, seeing her partner’s greeting, came almost to the glass and made a deep and elaborate curtsy.

By the time I brought my attention back to Dr. Kissing, he was lighting another cigarette.

“Until last year,” he said, watching the smoke vanish into the rain, “I was still able to make my way to the top of the Jack o’Lantern. For a young man in tip-top physical condition, it is no more than a pleasant stroll, but for a fossil in a wheelchair, it is torture.

“But then, to an old man, even torture can be a welcome relief to boredom, so I often made the ascent out of nothing more than spite.

“From the summit, one can survey the terrain as if from the basket of a hot-air balloon. To the northwest, in the distance, is Greyminster School, scene of my greatest triumphs and my greatest failure. To the west, one has a clear view of the Palings, and behind it, Buckshaw, your ancestral home.

“It was at the Palings, incidentally, that I once asked the lovely Letitia Humphrey for her hand in holy matrimony—and it was at the Palings that Letitia had the jolly good sense to say no.”

“I’ll bet she lived to regret it,” I said gallantly.

“She lived—but without remorse. Letitia went on to marry a man who made a fortune adulterating wheat flour with bone dust. I am given to understand that they made each other very happy.”

A cloud of tobacco smoke made his sigh suddenly visible in the damp air.

“Did you regret it?” I asked. It was not a polite question, but I wanted to know.

“Although I scale the Jack o’Lantern no more,” he said, “it is not entirely because of my infirmities, but rather because of the increasingly great sadness that is visible from the summit—a sadness which is not nearly so noticeable from the lower altitudes.”

“The Palings?”

“There was a time when I loved to gaze down upon that ancient crook in the river as if from the summit of my years. In fact, I was doing so on that day in April, two and a half years ago, when the Bull baby disappeared.”

My mouth must have fallen open.