SPANDRILL MAGAZINE - NO. 76.2
It was a dreary November evening, with the fog and the chimney-smokes blending and drifting in sooted sheets and skeins. Nets of filthy drizzle draped over the houses, smearing the mullioned windows of Basilisk Cottage.
I basked in the comfort of my own roaring fireplace. The blazing logs toasted my legs and their fireglow glinted in the filigree of the Leighley brandy-glass resting upon the nest of Malloche tables by the side of my favourite leathern Gatley armchair. I emptied the shining glass of its golden nectar, a finger of venerable Corsican Cognac, drew upon my oldest Meerschaum, settled in the plush of my dearest chair, and opened the morocco-bound volume of Pascal's Pensees with a sigh of deep content. Home at last in Basilisk Cottage!
But what was this! Such a caterwaul as had not assaulted my senses since my sojourn in the filthy dungeons of the Amir of Mujhazi! And now my lair was breached. Through the oak-panelled door fell Mrs Squelch, my ancient housekeeper, looking for all the insane world like a terrified scarecrow in a gale:
With studied calm I laid down my pipe and closed with a pregnant gentleness my slim Pascal. I should have expected such a violation. It was not in the fate of Gerard Ralf Campion to enjoy Basilisk Cottage just yet. No. My work was far from finished. Even here, at Basilisk, in the bowered seclusion of Chanterbury Varleston, though the 13th century bells of St Guillemot's sent their melancholy music through the mists and the thatched cottages were sunk in a hibernating reverie, - even here, beneath the brooding plateau of Wynchcomb Edge, there was evil for me to face.
Evil, manifesting in the hideous form of a hysterical housekeeper. Evil, in the shapes of bloated amphibia breeding in the dark spaces of the cottage walls. Swollen toads that, even now, as I contemplated the ravening visage of Mrs Squelch with its heavy strings of saliva hanging down, - toads that even now were squirming and slithering amongst the crumbling masonry. They must have gained access through the old Crimmick in the side-mead, I realised, cursing that I had not let Bream re-joint it last Dandlemas.
