Yesterday Never Dies by Brian Stableford

Author:Brian Stableford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: possession, historical, fantasy, fairies, reincarnation
ISBN: 9781434443656
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

MAGNETIC INSPIRATION

Having filled his plate himself, Dupin attacked the cold buffet with grim determination, presumably having missed lunch. The others were more circumspect, as I was myself.

Slightly embarrassed by our final exchange in the drawing room, I sat down beside him and said, in a rather tentative fashion: “I tried to read Blaise Thibodeaux’s book.”

“But you found it hard going—something impossible to accomplish,” Dupin suggested, between mouthfuls of cold ham.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“There are forbidden books and there are forbidding books,” he said, as if trying to comfort me. “Some texts remain unread because they are so difficult to find, others hide in plain view, unread because they are unreadable. Alas, that does not necessarily mean that there is nothing in them.”

“You think there’s something in Thibodeaux, then?”

“I do now,” he admitted. “Far less than he thought, I don’t doubt—but something.”

“Do you think that what I saw last night really was this...Oberon thing? That it somehow followed me to your house, and briefly invaded Madame Lacuzon?”

“To the first question, probably. To the second—or at least the second part of it—probably not.”

“But I did see it in her eyes!” I protested, faintly.

“I did not,” he said. “Perhaps I was too slow in turning round. Or perhaps...you were mistaken.”

I was slightly insulted by that, but I understood his skepticism. “I rather wish I’d been mistaken about everything, especially the ghost,” I said. That would have saved me a nocturnal journey to the forest of Fontainebleau, at least, I thought.

“That is, indeed the core of the mystery,” he agreed. “Perhaps, if you had not gone to Chapelain’s box...but even then.... When Saint-Germain and Lucien came to yours, did you shake hands with either of them?”

“No,” I said, mystified by the question.

“And nothing passed between you?”

“Certainly not,” I said, slightly repelled by the thought—but then I had to correct myself. “Actually, yes. Saint-Germain demanded that I lend him my opera-glasses. He peered into Chapelain’s box, and then returned them. Why?”

“Your opera-glasses,” he repeated, thoughtfully. “Which you doubtless set to your eyes to watch the nuns’ ballet, immediately before you saw Thibodeaux’s ghost. Yes, that does have a certain ironic resonance.” Then he seemed to quiver, as if a frisson had run through him. “But I’m falling into the same trap as Thibodeaux, inventing connections and echoes where nothing probably exists but mere coincidence. I’m even forgetting to eat.”

As I watched him feeding himself, mechanically and rapidly, it seemed to me that what he had actually forgotten was the fact that he was eating, relentlessly nourishing himself while being somehow unaware of the fact. But consciousness, as he was so fond of remarking, is a refuge, whose very function is to exclude inconvenient awareness—and it is a refuge in which we huddle and shiver when illness threatens.

Like theaters, meals have their own etiquette, no matter how casual they may seem. Chapelain left the ladies chatting together and came to sit down with us, on Dupin’s left.

“I’m sorry about all this,” he said, to both of us.

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