For the past few years – in fact, ever since a copy of Mark Twain’s ‘Life on the Mississippi’ came ashore in an old sea-chest – the last Tuesday in every month has been designated as being ‘Poker Night’ in the snug of The Squid and Teapot. Don’t ask me why. There is no great significance to the last Tuesday in every month, except that it can never clash with Thanksgiving (which, except for the odd occasion, has been pretty much ignored on Hopeless, anyway). Although not a particularly exciting affair, the small handful of islanders who choose to play always look forward to poker night as an opportunity to put on whatever passes as their finery; for a fanciful few hours they can imagine themselves gambling on a paddle-driven steamboat, like those so famously evoked by the aforementioned Mr Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
Norbert Gannicox is no exception to this unwritten rule, habitually donning his much-coveted (though slightly too-large and badly sea-stained) Stetson, frilly shirt (that buttons-up the wrong way, on account of it having belonged to his mother), and bootlace tie (made from a real bootlace). Cards in hand, he likes to sit and sip a sarsaparilla or two, for despite being the proprietor of the Gannicox Distillery, Norbert has made it a rule never to touch strong drink, after finding his father drowned in a barrel of moonshine. On the evening of this tale, however, Norbert was panicking. His bootlace tie was missing. He had looked in all of the usual places, turning out drawers and cupboards in desperation, completely forgetting that he had asked his wife to secure a particularly noisy copper pipe which had developed an annoying rattle during the distilling process. A handy bootlace did the job admirably, and, with the pipe firmly secured, the annoying rattle, along with Norbert’s Tuesday-night neckwear, became a thing of the past.
It seems to be a universal truth that, whenever something goes missing, the subsequent search turns up all manner of long-lost items, except the one thing that you have been looking for. Once treasured possessions, generally thought to have been spirited away to whatever place it is that odd socks, teaspoons, broken scissors and loose change are given to migrate, will miraculously appear in locations previously ransacked a dozen times. Invariably, when you eventually find these things, the moment has passed and they have no importance whatsoever in your life anymore. While Norbert’s search did, indeed, throw up all sorts of half-remembered treasures, the battered old tin box he discovered, sitting in the back of a damp cupboard, was completely unfamiliar, and somehow unsettling. The box was closed tight, a thick crust of red rust welding the lid firmly in place. There was no opportunity to prise it open just then, however. Norbert was all too aware that time was getting on, and soon Bartholomew Middlestreet, the inn’s landlord, would be shuffling his venerable pack of dog-eared playing cards in readiness for the evening’s entertainment. All the same, all through the game his mind kept wandering back to the subject of the tin box, and he found it difficult to concentrate on his cards. Others noticed that he was distracted, and attributed this, and the fact that he had forgotten to wear his tie, to some temporary mental aberration, possibly caused by over-exposure to distillation fumes.
It was the following morning when Norbert eventually found time to get to grips with the box, spraying a fine patina of rust over himself in the process. His initial reaction, however, was one of disappointment; there appeared to be little of interest lurking within its depths. There were a few scribbled notes, all yellowed with age, that seemed to pertain to various, fairly primitive, methods of distillation. He found a letter addressed to Mr. Solomon Gannicox, of the New Gannicox Distillery, from Sebastian Lypiatt, whom Norbert knew to be a former landlord of The Squid and Teapot. There was also a somewhat unpleasant missive from someone called Reverend Crackstone, railing against the production of ‘The Demon Drink’.
As Norbert lifted the pile of papers out of the box, an envelope dropped on to the table with a resounding clunk. The contents sounded far too heavy to be merely paper. Excitedly, and with trembling hands, Norbert carefully removed the envelope’s red waxed seal. To his surprise he found an iron key nestling inside. The key was obviously old and quite ornate, unlike any Norbert that had seen before. The tin box had clearly been the property of his grandfather, Solomon Gannicox, the founder of the distillery, but why or how Solomon had come in possession of the key was anyone’s guess, and, more to the point, where was the door that it could unlock? Maybe there was another clue that he had missed, hidden somewhere among his grandfather’s papers.
Looking again, and instantly dismissing Reverend Crackstone’s offensive tirade, Norbert noticed that the letter from Sebastian Lypiatt made some intriguing references to Solomon looking after ‘the enclosed item’ which, apparently, was deemed to be a far safer option than it being housed within the walls of The Squid and Teapot. The distiller’s heart missed a beat. This was it, here was the lead that he had been seeking. Although, by no means a fanciful man, Norbert felt that here was an adventure in the making. The riddle of the key of Solomon would only be solved when, with the help of Bartholomew Middlestreet, the location of the door, and whatever lay behind it, was discovered.
To be continued…
(Key by Matt Inkel)
