Laboriously, Prunce stepped down from the carriage, her sleep sensitive eyes pinking and winking in the weak autumn sunlight, turned, and lowered the steps for her lambastic employers.
On their arrival at Doctor Paunchbulb’s premises, the ladies found the front door swinging wide on its hinges and a merry dance of autumnal leafy debris swirling in the entrance hall. Brave as all three considered themselves to be, none were keen on being the first to step into his eerily quiet surgery. Something inside was emitting a low, pitiful mewling, interspersed with urgent humming. Something was wrong. It was Dilligence who plucked up the courage to rap firmly at the inner door. When no reply was forthcoming, pushing the door further ajar, she stepped gingerly into Paunchbulb's rooms, her darting eyes bulging as she tried to take in all that her senses were being simultaneously assaulted with.
There on the polished wood floor, gibbering in a pool of discoloured saliva, lay Paunchbulb, curled into a grotesque parody of the foetal position, gently fondling himself. The poor man had clearly become at least double, if not triple unhinged, acquiescing to his most base desires, the applied light friction causing quite a stir, from which the ladies could hardly advert their eyes. At first, they suspected extreme inebriation, but there was something almost feral in his drawn, goggling mask of a face that instantly convinced them that it was not simply a lack of sobriety.
The air was positively ringing with… a most offensive fume, something that they could not quite put their finger on, yet one with which none were entirely unfamiliar. Old fish, dusty books, spent ginger nut and protracted convalescence were all vying for their attention.
'Is it, perhaps, buttered sarsaparilla?' offered Prunce innocently, covering her nose with a delicate sleeve, eyes smarting.
'No, no, I would liken it to the fumes from a cake of ripening cheese!' stated Dilligence with a ring of certainty.
'Well, it reminds me of last summer, when we discovered a clutch of diseased relatives living quite illegally in the summerhouse!’ chatted Constance. ‘They had to be forcibly removed by Constable Coldmeece, and even then we had to get Enoch Blebs of Blebs, Blebs and Bitelbrouwed Solicitors to have them legally renounced, to stop them getting back in! We had to deploy the stench-muffler round the clock for over a week!' No stranger to the fetors of the tainted library, Constance amicably associated this questionable aroma with the numerous emanations from her Aunt Monika and of course Norbury.
For Prunce, waves of repulsion and confusion jostled for position with sickened compassion, driving her to kneel down on the floor beside her Godfather, who was singularly unable to refrain from jiggling. She made a vain attempt to haul the inert Doctor out from beneath his double fronted desk, but succeeded only in dragging him into an errant puddle of tacky blue residue. There was little she could do but sit cradling his feverish head and administer frequent tepid sponging.
Dilligence, ever the amateur detective, occupied herself in rifling through the surgery’s numerous capacious cupboards, peering into disused pigeon holes and sorting through the Doctor’s personal effects and general ephemera.
Constance, judging herself quite dispensable, tottered outside, calling back that she would 'Summon Coldmeece'. She was still sitting on the retractable carriage steps 'catching her breath' over forty five minutes later, when the Constable finally arrived with a purposeful and self-important stride, still mopping the last frothy scrims of Wazzock's Piddle from his impressive moustache.
Coldmeece summoned the Whipple Van Buren Institute which, in turn, detailed its lunacy commissioners; Doctor Prout and Mr. Children, who beyond a shadow of a doubt, saw fit to return Paunchbulb forthwith to their infamous sanatorium.
A sizable crowd of professionals gathered, assessed what needed to be assessed, and made their various exits. First to depart was Constable Coldmeece, then Doctor Prout and finally Mr Children, taking with them the unfortunate Doctor Paunchbulb and his doting Goddaughter Prunce. The furore gradually subsided. Then, and only then, did Constance feel safe enough to step hesitantly back inside. She had only yesterday been reading in the papers about a dreaded new disease known as 'Brampton Eye', which could manifest itself in untold ways. It had proved itself to be a mortal and loathsome malady and one never could be too cautious; he had certainly looked like he carried a contagion.
Dilligence had volunteered both herself and Constance to stay behind at the surgery, to restore order to the rooms and ensure all was ship shape for morning surgery. This may well have been Dilligence's genuine original intention, but now, with her intrigue intensified, her primary objective was to probe a little deeper into Paunchbulb's back office. For her part, Constance was more than happy to nose through the patients’ privy notes, but aside from her own idle interest she could see little that could be gleaned from their medical dossiers.
'What are we looking for, exactly? Constance queried, flicking idly through some loose papers on Paunchbulb’s desk, in a pragmatic if flimsy attempt to appear benignly practical.
'I don't know exactly, but I'm certain that Paunchbulb knows something he's not letting on.... Perhaps it was the cumulative effect of myriad sub toxic doses.....' Mused Dilligence, giving each closet and drawer that came within reach a brief exploratory rummage.
Constance, who usually found herself of scant help in matters of 'the sciences', occupied herself by attempting to pronounce the elaborately handwritten labels detailing the unpronounceable contents of rack upon rack of sealed glass flasks.
'.....Individually wrapped Sanity Pads.....Eclectic Syllabub.....Tuppet Spice.....Embalming Fluid.....Buttered Sarsaparilla; oh! Prunce was right! Altered Blood.....Mermaid Foetus in Brine…..Figment of Enigma.....Avian Extracts- Starling Cloacal Secretions.....Lotion of Mucopus.....Holy foreskin…..Oil of Turpentine.....And a tiny, tiny hand in amber liquid, which he's neglected to label! I can't say I blame him. I mean! Really, who has the time?!'
She paused, aware that Dilligence had abruptly ceased her search. There, in a drawer, amongst grubby, long liberated cotton-balls, singed splints, a few saucy penny dreadfuls and other more dubious miscellanies, was an old and worn leather journal, held shut with a tightly wound grease-darkened leather thong.
Alas, Paunchbulb's journals revealed at even the briefest of browses, clear evidence of a seriously deluded and warped mind come far, far adrift. Thumbing haphazardly through the numerous skeins of parchment, it fell swiftly to Dilligence's mind that his derangements had been building to an alarmingly formidable head for over a decade. Over the years, his erratic handwriting changed dramatically in style from one disparate entry to the next; some days it soared with a distinct artistic flourish, others, all was in block capitals, firmly grounded, restrained even; some entries were forged in a strong black ink, many in pencil, a few in an unusual indigo blue. There was even one, which in Dilligence's educated opinion, appeared to be in blood. Skimming the entries at random, she read a few out loud.
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