The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 02]

by By Kim Newman

Ernest went quiet. He liked fanged monsters, giant squid, and evil Gods, but had a problem with animals. Once, the children were forced to go a long way round to avoid Mr. Crossan’s field. Ernest had come up with many tactical reasons for the detour, and Dick and Violet pretended to be persuaded by his argument that they needed to throw pursuers off their track.

  The three children were about together all the time this summer. Dick was down from London, staying with Uncle Davey and Aunt Maeve. Both were a bit dotty. Uncle Davey used to paint fairyland scenes for children’s books, but was retired from that and drawing only to please himself. Last year, Violet showed up at Seaview Chase unannounced, having learned it was David Harvill’s house. She liked his illustrations, but genuinely liked the pictures in his studio even more.

  Violet had taken an interest in Dick’s detective work. She had showed him around Lyme Regis, and the surrounding beaches and countryside. She wasn’t like a proper girl, so it was all right being friends with her. Normally, Dick couldn’t admit to having a girl as a friend. In summer, it was different. Ernest was Violet’s cousin, two years younger than her and Dick. Ernest’s father was in Africa fighting Boers, so Ernest was with Violet’s parents for the school holidays.

  They were the Richard Riddle Detective Agency. Their goal: to find mysteries, then solve them. Thus far, they had handled the Matter of the Mysterious Maidservant (meeting the Butcher’s Boy, though she was supposed to have a sweetheart at sea), the Curious Affair of the Derelict Dinghy (Alderman Hooke was lying asleep in it, empty beer bottles rolling around his feet) and the Puzzle of the Purloined Pasties (still an open case, though suspicion inevitably fell upon Tarquin “Tiger” Bristow).

  Ernest had reasoned out his place in the firm. When Dick pointed the finger of guilt at the villain, Ernest would thump the miscreant about the head until the official police arrived. Violet, Ernest said, could make tea and listen to Dick explain his chain of deduction. Ernest, Violet commented acidly, was a dependable strong-arm man... unless the criminal owned a sheep, or threatened to make him eat parsnips, or (as was depressingly likely) turned out to be “Tiger” Bristow (the Bismarck of Bullies) and returned Ernest’s head-thumping with interest. Then, Dick had to negotiate a peace, like between Americans and Red Indians, to avoid bloodshed. When Violet broke off the Reservation, people got scalped.

  It was a sunny August afternoon, but strong salt wind blew off the sea. Violet had tied back her hair to keep it out of her face. Dick looked up at Ware Cleeve: It was thickly wooded, roots poking out of the cliff-face like the fingers of buried men. The Tower of Orris Priory rose above the treetops like a periscope.

  Clues led to Orris Priory. Dick suspected smugglers. Or spies.

  Granny Ball, who kept the pasty-stall near the Cobb, had warned the detectives to stay away from the shingle under the Cleeve. It was a haunt of “sea-ghosts.” The angry souls of shipwrecked sailors, half-fish folk from sunken cities, and other monsters of the deep (Ernest liked this bit) were given to creeping onto the beach, clawing away at the stone, crumbling it piece by piece. One day, the Cleeve would collapse.

  Violet wanted to know why the sea-ghosts would do such a thing. The landslide would only make another cliff, further inland. Granny winked and said “never you mind, lass” in a highly unsatisfactory manner.

  Before her craze for terrible lizards, Violet had been passionate about myths and legends (it was why she liked Uncle Davey’s pictures). She said myths were expressions of common truth, dressed up to make a point. The shingle beach was dangerous, because rocks fell on it. People in the long ago must have been hit on the head and killed, so the sea-ghost story was invented to keep children away from danger. It was like a “beware the dog” sign (Ernest didn’t like this bit), but out of date—as if you had an old, non-fierce hound but put up a “beware of dangerous dog” sign.

  Being on the shingle wasn’t really dangerous. The cliffs wouldn’t fall and the sea-ghosts wouldn’t come.

  Dick liked Violet’s reasoning, but saw better.

  “No, Vile, it’s been kept up, this story. Granny and other folk round here tell the tale to keep us away because someone doesn’t want us seeing what they’re about.”

  “Smugglers,” said Ernest.

  Dick nodded. “Or spies. Not enough clues to be certain. But, mark my word, there’s wrong-doing afoot on the shingle. And it’s our job to root it out.”

  It was too blowy to go out in Violet’s little boat, the S.S. Pterodactyl, so they had come on foot.

  And found the ammonite.

  Since the fossil wasn’t about to hop to life and attack, Ernest lost interest and wandered off, down by the water. He was looking for monster tracks, the tentacle-trails of a giant squid most likely.

  “This might be the largest ammonite ever found here,” said Violet. “If it’s a new species, I get to name it.”

  Dick wondered how to get the fossil to Violet’s house. It would be a tricky endeavour.

  “You, children, what are you about?”

  Men had appeared onto the beach without Dick noticing. If they had come from either direction along the shore, he should have seen them.

  “You shouldn’t be here. Come away from that evil thing, at once, now.”

  The speaker was an old man with white hair, pince-nez on a black ribbon, an expression like someone who’s just bit into a cooking apple by mistake, and a white collar like a clergyman’s. He wore an old-fashioned coat with a thick, raised collar, cut away from tight britches and heavy boots.

  Dick recognised the Reverend Mr. Sellwood, of Orris Priory.

  With him were two bare-armed fellows in leather jerkins and corduroy trousers. Whereas Sellwood carried a stick, they toted sledge-hammers, like the ones convicts use on Dartmoor.

  “Foul excrescence of the Devil,” said Sellwood, pointing his stick at Violet’s ammonite. “Brother Fose, Brother Fessel, do the Lord’s work.”

  Fose and Fessel raised their hammers.

  Violet leaned over, as if protecting a pet lamb from slaughtermen.

  “Out of the way, foolish girl.”

  “It’s mine,” she said.

  “It’s nobody’s, and no good to anybody. It must be smashed. God would wish it...”

  “But this find is important. Toscience.”

  Sellwood looked as if that bite of cooker was in his throat, making his eyes water.

  “Science! Bah, stuff and nonsense! Devil’s charm, my girl, that’s what this is!”

  “It was alive, millions of millions of years ago.”

  “The Earth is less than six thousand years old, child, as you would know if you read your scriptures.”

  Violet, angry, stood up to argue. “But that’s not true. There’s proof. This is...”

  Fose and Fessel took their opportunity, and brought the hammers down. The fossil split. Sharp chips flew. Violet—appalled, hands in tiny fists, mouth open—didn’t notice her shin bleeding.

  “You can’t...”

  “These so-called proofs, stone bones and long-dead dragons,” said Sellwood, “are the Devil’s trickeries.”

  The Brethren smashed the ammonite to shards and powder.

  “This was put here to fool weak minds,” lectured the Reverend. “It is the Church Militant’s sacred work to destroy such obscenities, lest more be tempted to blasphemy. This is not science, this is sacrilege.”

  “It was mine,” Violet said quietly.

  “I have saved you from error. You should thank me.”

  Ernest came over to see what the noise was about. Sellwood bestowed a smile on the lad that afforded a glimpse of terrifying teeth.

  Teeth on monsters were fine with Ernest; teeth like Sellwood’s would give him nightmares.

  “A job well done,” said the Reverend. “Let us look further. More infernal things may have sprung up.”

  Brother Fose leered at Violet and patted her on the head, which made her flinch. Brother Fessel looked stern disapproval at this familiarity. They followed Sel
lwood, swinging hammers, scouting for something to break to bits. Dick had an idea they’d rather be pounding on something that squealed and bled than something so long dead it had turned to stone.

  Violet wasn’t crying. But she was hating.

  More than before, Dick was convinced Sellwood was behind some vile endeavour. He had the look of a smuggler, or a spy.

  Richard Riddle, Boy Detective, would bring the villain to book.

  * * * *

  II: “Qrs Ndps ja qrs Dggjhbqs Dhhbrbfdqjm”

  Uncle Davey had let Dick set up the office of the Richard Riddle Detective Agency in a small room under the eaves. A gable window led to a small balcony that looked like a ship’s crow’s-nest. Seaview Chase was a large, complicated house on Black Ven, a jagged rise above Lyme Bay, an ideal vantage point for surveying the town and the sea.

  Dick had installed his equipment—a microscope, boxes and folders, reference books, his collection of clues and trophies. Violet had donated some small fossils and her hammers and trowels. Ernest wanted space on the wall for the, head of their first murderer: He had an idea that when a murderer was hanged, the police gave the head as a souvenir to the detective who caught him.

  The evening after the fossil-smashing incident, Dick sat in the office and opened a new file and wrote “Qrs Ndps ja qrs Dggjhbqs Dhhbrbfdqjm” on a fresh sheet of paper. It was the R.R.D.A. Special Cipher for “The Case of the Ammonite Annihilator.”

  After breakfast the next day, the follow-up investigation began. Dick went into the airy studio on the first floor and asked Uncle Davey what he knew about Sellwood.

  “Grim-visage?” said Uncle Davey, pulling a face. “Dresses as if it were fifty years ago? Of him, I know, to be frank, not much. He once called with a presentation copy of some verminous volume, printed at his own expense. I think he wanted me to find a proper publisher. Put on a scary smile to ingratiate. Maeve didn’t like him. He hasn’t been back. Book’s around somewhere, probably. Must chuck it one day. It’ll be in one of those piles.”

  He stabbed a paintbrush towards the stacks which grew against one wall and went back to painting—a ship at sea, only there were eyes in the sea if you looked close enough, and faces in the clouds and the folds of sail-cloth. Uncle Davey liked hiding things.

  When Violet and Ernest arrived, they set to searching book-piles.

  It took a long time. Violet kept getting interested in irrelevant findings. Mostly titles about pixies and fairies and curses.

  Sellwood’s book had migrated to near the bottom of an especially towering pile. Extracting it brought about a bad tumble which alerted Aunt Maeve, who rushed in assuming the whole of Black Ven was giving way and the house would soon be crashing into Lyme Bay. Uncle Davey cheerfully kicked the spill of volumes into a corner and said he’d sort them out one day, then noticed a wave suitable for hiding an eye in and forgot about the children. Aunt Maeve went off to get warm milk with drops of something from Cook.

  In the office, the detectives pored over their find for clues.

  “‘Omphalos Diabolicus, or: The Hoax of ‘Pre-History,”‘ intoned Dick, ‘“by the Reverend Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood, published 1897, Orris Press, Dorset.’ Uncle Davey said he paid for the printing, so I deduce that he is the sole proprietor of this phantom publisher. Ah-hah, the pages have not been cut after the first chapter, so I further deduce that it must be deadly dull stuff.”

  He tossed the book to Violet, who got to work with a long knife, slitting the leaves as if they were the author’s throat. Then she flicked through pages, pausing only to report relevant facts. One of her talents was gutting books, discovering the few useful pages like a prospector panning gold-dust out of river-dirt.

  Daniel Sellwood wasn’t a proper clergyman any more. He had been booted out of the Church of England after shouting that the Bishop should burn Mr. Darwin along with his published works. Now, Sellwood had his own sect, the Church Militant—but most of his congregation were paid servants. Sellwood came from a wealthy Dorset family, rich from trade and shipping, and had been packed off to parson school because an older brother, George, was supposed to inherit the fortune—only the brother was lost at sea, along with his wife Rebecca and little daughter Ruth, and Daniel’s expectations increased. The sinking of the Sophy Briggs was a famous maritime mystery like the Mary Celeste and Captain Nemo: Thirty years ago, the pride of the Orris-Sellwood Line went down in calm seas, with all hands lost. Sellwood skipped over the loss in a sentence, then spent pages talking up the “divine revelation” which convinced him to found a church rather than keep up the business.

  According to Violet, a lot of folk around Lyme resented being thrown out of work when Sellwood dismantled his shipping concern and dedicated the family fortune to preaching anti-Darwinism.

  “What’s an omphalo-thing?” asked Ernest.

  “The title means ‘the Devil’s Belly-Button,’“ said Violet, which made Ernest giggle. “He’s put Greek and Latin words together, which is poor

  Classics. Apart from his stupid ideas, he’s a terrible writer. Listen... ‘all the multitudinarious flora and fauna of divine creation constitute veritable evidence of the proof of the pellucid and undiluted accuracy of the Word of God Almighty Unchallenged as set down in the shining, burning, shimmering sentences, chapters and, indeed, books of the Old and New Testaments, hereinafter known to all righteous and right-thinking men as the Holy Bible of Glorious God.’ It’s as if he’s saying, ‘this is the true truthiest truest truth of truthdom ever told truly by truth-trusters.’“

  “How do the belly-buttons come into it?” asked Dick.

  “Adam and Eve were supposed to have been created with navels, though—since they weren’t born like other people—they oughtn’t to have them.”

  This was over Ernest’s head but Dick knew how babies came and that his navel was a knot, where a cord had been cut and tied.

  “To Sellwood’s way of thinking, just as Adam and Eve were created to seem as if they had normal parents, the Earth was created as if it had a prehistory, with geological and fossil evidence in place to make the planet appear much older than it says in the Bible.”

  “That’s silly,” said Ernest.

  “Don’t tell me, tell Sellwood,” said Violet. “He’s a silly, stupid man. He doesn’t want to know the truths or anyone else to either, so he breaks fossils and shouts down lecturers. His theory isn’t even original. A man named Gosse wrote a book with the same idea, though Gosse claimed God buried fossils to fool people while Sellwood says it was the Devil.”

  Violet was quite annoyed.

  “I think it’s an excuse to go round bullying people,” said Dick. “A cover for his real, sinister purpose.”

  “If you ask me, what he does is sinister enough by itself.”

  “Nobody did ask you,” said Ernest, which he always said when someone was unwise enough to preface a statement with “if you ask me.” Violet stuck her tongue out at him.

  Dick was thinking.

  “It’s likely that the Sellwood family were smugglers,” he said.

  Violet agreed. “Smugglers had to have ships, and pretend to be respectable merchants. In the old days, they were all at it. You know the poem...”

  Violet stood up, put a hand on her chest, and recited, dramatically.

  ‘“If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

  Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.

  Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie,

  Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.

  Five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark,

  Brandy for the parson, ‘baccy for the clerk;

  Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

  And watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.’“

  She waited for applause, which didn’t come. But her recitation was useful. Dick had been thinking in terms of spies or smugglers, but the poem reminded him that the breeds were interdependent. It struck
him that Sellwood might be a smuggler of spies, or a spy for smugglers.

  “I’ll wager ‘Tiger’ Bristow is in this, too,” he said, snapping his fingers.

  Ernest shivered, audibly.

  “Is it spying or smuggling?” he asked.

  “It’s both,” Dick replied.

  Violet sat down again, and chewed on a long, stray strand of her hair.

  “Tell Dick about the French Spy,” suggested Ernest.

  Dick was intrigued.

  “That was a long time ago, a hundred years,” she said. “It’s a local legend, not evidence.”

  “You yourself say legends always shroud some truth,” declared Dick. “We must consider all the facts, even rumours of facts, before forming a conclusion.”

  Violet shrugged.