- Episode 5: Mr Talbot Returns
Episode 5: Mr Talbot Returns
by Steve Wells
As told to Steve Wells over a glass of vodka distilled from fine motor oil taken from the sump of a 1914 Rolls Royce.
-o-O-o-
The Story so far.
On a visit to Lacock Abbey, Lionel Morland and the housekeeper Mrs Higgins have become trapped in the laboratory of the alchemist Mr Talbot. Meanwhile Lionel's daughter Julia has welcomed to the abbey a stranger, Dr. Cameron, with whom she discovered a secret passage.
-o-O-o-
Talbot had not returned. Lionel and Mrs Higgins had been in the alchemist's lair all night. They had shouted, but no-one could hear them. Then in a dark corner a darker square seemed to appear. Lionel could hear voices. He backed away from the black square.
"Who are you?" asked a voice hidden in the darkness. "Are you living or dead?"
Lionel screamed.
From out of the darkness a living thing seemed to be crawling. As it left the gloom it separated into two figures which resolved themselves into the figures of Dr. Cameron and Julia.
Later, over a cup of tea in the kitchen, they discussed the whys and wherefores of their strange meeting, of how Lionel and Mrs Higgins had become trapped and of how Dr Cameron and Julia had discovered them. They were just about to discuss the strange behaviour of Mr Talbot when they were interrupted by the sudden arrival of that gentleman himself clutching a newspaper, newly arrived from London.
"Have you seen the news?"
They looked blank.
He held out the paper so that they could read the headline. "Effingham disgraced". They read of how Julia's patron, Sir James Effingham, had never left England. Rather, he had used some paintings of flowers (the very paintings which he had bought from Julia) as a ploy to convince the authorities at Kew that he was a wildlife artist. The whole enterprise was part of an attempt to steal the secret plans of the new hot-house. After the success of the Crystal palace there was, it seemed, a black market in green house designs.
They would have read more but Julia, unable to cope with the thought that the brave Sir James was a dangerous criminal master mind, fell to the floor and started quietly to sing old folk songs.
And in his grave rain'd many a tear-"
By the time she started to offer "significant" flowers to each member of the company, Mr Talbot, for one, had recognised Ophelia's mad scene from Act IV of Hamlet. He would have intervened had not the actions of Dr. Cameron attracted his attention.
While the actions of the Doctor in what was clearly a medical matter could attract nothing but the greatest approbation, the extent to which the kiss at life was strictly necessary under the circumstances might, in medical circles, have raised eyebrows. When their lips parted it was difficult to tell whether the Doctor's unconventional medicine had indeed cured Julia of her temporary fixation upon the mad Ophelia, or whether Julia had dragged the Doctor along with her into an entirely new and distinctly more serious madness.
It was over a week before either the Doctor or Julia could be persuaded to do anything but looking into the eyes of the other. At breakfast it is not possible either to butter toast or to pour tea without at least glancing at the relative positions of butter and toast, teapot and cup. All meals were a continual sequence of accidents which the infatuated couple never noticed and which the others were left to clear up. A strategy was decided upon by which Julia and the Doctor were not called for meals in the hope that eventual starvation would bring them to their senses (or maybe just one sense between them).
top of page