by George Mann
“They’re dangerous foes, Amelia,” said Newbury, in a conciliatory tone. “I’ll give them that much. We must remain vigilant. Nevertheless, I will not allow myself to be intimidated. There is a purpose to our journey, and I will not stand by and allow the petty concerns of a group of squabbling fools to delay us.”
“Very well,” said Amelia quietly. It was obvious there was no arguing with him. “I’m going to see to my room and ensure nothing is missing.”
Newbury gave a curt nod, but his expression was brooding. He remained standing over the armchair, staring at the seat cushion and the dubious treasure it contained. “I’ll stop them, Amelia,” he said. “I will.”
CHAPTER
10
The Natural History Museum was only a short walk from Veronica’s Kensington home, and so, despite the inclement weather, she struck out on foot. She huddled beneath her umbrella as she walked, her head bowed, her chin tucked into the folds of her scarf to stave off the chill breeze.
The rain had been persistent through the night, and now, in the early morning light, the pavements shone, slick and mirrored.
Veronica hadn’t visited the museum properly in years. She’d come once with Newbury to meet with the man she was now on her way there to see—Dr. John Farrowdene, a zoologist—but it had been over a decade since she’d last walked its expansive halls as a tourist.
As a child, Veronica had often visited the reptile gallery with Amelia, and together the two girls had conjured stories of the great saurian beasts whose skeletons now formed the rather staid and austere exhibits. The two sisters had breathed life into those dusty old bones, imagining a time when such wild monsters had roamed the earth, scandalising one another with tall tales of dinosaurs loose in London, feasting on their nanny or their teacher. Of course, back then she hadn’t known the truth—that there really were monsters out there in the dark corners of the world, monsters that wore many different guises. Sometimes, she longed for a return to that childhood naïvety.
She looked up to see that her destination was upon her. Even in the dull light of a rain-slicked morning, the Natural History Museum was an impressive sight. The red brick building gave every impression of being a hallowed place, a cathedral raised to the glory of science. Veronica hurried up the steps, under the recessed archway, and through the main doors.
The entrance gallery was cavernous and empty, and reminded her of the nave of a large church. Deep alcoves lining the walls on either side contained glass display cases filled with wondrous things. From just inside the door she could see very little, save for the immense form of a preserved polar bear and the fossilised shell of an enormous armadillo. At the far end, a grand flight of steps promised further treasures on the upper floor.
Farrowdene was waiting for her, perched on the end of a wooden bench, observing her quietly. He stood when he saw her looking. He crossed the gallery, his footsteps echoing loudly in the otherwise empty hall.
“Good morning, Miss Hobbes,” he said, extending his hand in greeting. He was a handsome man, in his mid-forties, with a ragged mop of a dark hair shot through with tiny bolts of grey. He had a healthy, tanned complexion and thin expressive lips, which described a tight but welcoming smile.
“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” she said, “particularly on such short notice.”
Farrowdene shrugged. “You are most welcome. I’m only glad to be of assistance.” He grinned. “Did you wish to head straight to the workshop, or did you have it in mind to take a walk around the galleries while you were here? I’d be only too happy to accompany you.”
Veronica smiled. “Alas, I fear that while the idea is most enticing, I’m all business this morning, Doctor. While there are people dying, I’d like to do all I can to get to the bottom of the matter, as swiftly as possible. We’d better press on.”
Farrowdene nodded. “Your dedication does you credit. Allow me to show you the way.”
He led them through an archway and along a wide corridor filled with the fossilised remains of ancient sea creatures. Veronica shuddered at the sight of them; she had always found the thought of such things unnerving.
Farrowdene’s workshop was, she recalled, far away from the prying eyes in the public galleries. Indeed, his position—and therefore the reason for his acquaintance with Newbury—was to collect, categorise, and research unusual, singular or otherwise inexplicable beasts or specimens. Inevitably, this meant he tended to end up assisting Newbury in matters of a sensitive nature, and much of Farrowdene’s work remained secretive and undisclosed to the wider scientific world.
“I’m surprised Sir Maurice is not accompanying you this morning,” said Farrowdene as they walked, an enquiring look in his eye.
“He is, unfortunately, otherwise engaged,” said Veronica, deciding it best not to give too much away. She knew Farrowdene could be trusted, but all the same, she needn’t disclose anything that wasn’t pertinent to the enquiry at hand.
“And Sir Charles?” ventured Farrowdene.
“Likewise,” said Veronica, “although he and I are working closely on this particular matter.”
Farrowdene nodded, assimilating the information. “Yes, I gathered as much from Inspector Foulkes. It’s a fascinating case. Terrible, but fascinating all the same.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “It was Inspector Foulkes who brought the … um … specimen.”
Veronica knew exactly what he was insinuating. She couldn’t deny it—it helped to think of the poor man as a specimen, at least for the duration of this exercise.
They walked in silence for a few minutes.
“I believe you hold a post at our sister institute,” said Farrowdene, pointedly changing the subject. “Assisting Sir Maurice in his anthropological work.”
“Quite so, although I feel I’ve rather been neglecting it of late. Other duties have kept me somewhat … preoccupied.”
Farrowdene laughed. “No need to be coy, Miss Hobbes. I know all about Sir Maurice’s work for the Queen.”
Yes, thought Veronica. But not mine. She smiled.
“Anyway, I’d imagine that most of those fusty old objets d’art have been around long enough that they can wait a little longer for your attention. Particularly when there are pressing matters such as this one,” said Farrowdene.
“My thoughts exactly,” agreed Veronica.
They’d come to the end of the gallery, where the skeleton of a massive, extinct elk had been arranged on a wooden plinth. Its antlers loomed over Veronica’s head. Behind the long-dead beast was an oak door bearing a nondescript little plaque that read: PRIVATE.
Farrowdene produced a hoop of keys from his belt. They jangled as he sifted through them until he found the correct one. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. “Through here,” he said. “You’re most privileged. This is the gallery that most people never get to see.” He smiled brightly.
Intrigued, Veronica did as invited and went first through the door, drinking in her surroundings. The corridor here continued for at least another two hundred feet, although it narrowed significantly, partitioned off to make way for a series of offices or workshops on the right-hand side.
There were no exhibits on the walls here, save for a series of black-and-white engravings of yet more fossilised sea creatures.
“It’s the first door on the right,” said Farrowdene. “Please, go in.” He locked the door behind him.
The door to the workshop was propped open, and Veronica went in, stifling a gasp of amazement as she took in the view on the other side. The room was so cluttered that she barely knew where to look first.
Glass cases had been aligned along one wall, and against another stood a row of mismatched wooden filing cabinets and specimen drawers. A workbench had been set up at the far end of the room, and on top of that, another large glass case, containing what looked like a sample of the revenant bloom. A young woman in a white coat, with thick, auburn hair tied back in a tight ponytail, was standing at a bench by the window, attending
to a microscope slide. She didn’t look up.
What was most astonishing to Veronica, however, was not the fact that this unseen workshop existed behind a locked door at the Natural History Museum, but rather the mysterious contents of the glass cases.
To her left, an enormous squid was suspended in a bubbling tank of water, its tentacles still writhing, pressing against the glass as if attempting to push itself free. Close by, the corpse of a bipedal lizard, with a narrow, sly face, and huge curved claws, was suspended in a tank of liquid preservative. It was almost as tall as she was, and covered in colourful, downy feathers.
She walked along the row of cases, peering in. Here, the remains of a human female, naked except for a thick pelt of soft grey hair; there, a fanged monkey with alarming red eyes and a mechanically reconstructed arm. Plague revenants, butterflies, birds with two heads, phosphorescent fish, insects as big as her forearm, a homunculus the size of a small child; this was a museum of the unknowable, the unviable, the bizarre. No wonder Newbury loved it here.
She looked up, and the specimens continued, stacked in rows, crowding every available space. Hanging from the ceiling were the dried and stuffed remains of a flying reptile with an enormous wingspan and a long, spear-like beak. It reminded her of the fossils she had seen out in the museum proper, but fresh and recently preserved, its flesh still leathery.
This was, clearly, the place where those specimens unfit to be seen by the public were preserved and studied. Farrowdene must have seen so much.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” said Farrowdene, coming into the room behind her and reattaching the ring of keys to his belt. “Welcome to my gallery of imagined beasts.”
“What are these things?” said Veronica.
“These are the things that aren’t supposed to exist,” said Farrowdene. “The nightmare creatures, the forgotten survivors, the failed experiments. This is where they find themselves, when people such as Sir Maurice, August Warlow or the museum’s field teams turn them up. I’m lucky enough to be the one who gets to study them afterwards.”
August Warlow. She’d not heard that name before. She filed it away for later recollection. “Fascinating,” she said. Her eyes were flitting from one specimen to another, from the mundane—organs suspended in jars—to the utterly incredible—a bat-like creature with a disturbingly human face.
The woman—clearly Farrowdene’s laboratory assistant, looked up from her work, smiled knowingly at Veronica, and then returned to her preparations without a word.
“This is Angela,” said Farrowdene. “I couldn’t do a thing without her.” He pointed to the glass case at the other end of the gallery. “Right, then. If you’d like to come this way, I’ve been carrying out some tests on the specimen in question.”
Veronica followed him across the gallery. She circled the case. Inside were the remains of a creature that had once been a man, now utterly consumed by the strange fungal growths that she had seen in both Stoke Newington and the laboratory beneath Scotland Yard. Here they seemed even more mutated, as if there was very little left of the host now, and the growths had continued to multiply after death.
“Is that…?” she began.
“Yes,” said Farrowdene. “I rather fear this is a sample of what’s left of Dr. Finnegan.”
Veronica choked back an appalled sob. “Shouldn’t we be wearing masks?” she said, suddenly conscious of the threat.
Farrowdene shook his head. “Oh no, do not fear, Miss Hobbes. The case is hermetically sealed. You’ll come to no harm here. Besides, it’s only infectious if you disturb the spore pods and it becomes airborne.”
“So what have you found?” said Veronica. “Anything at all that might be of use to us?”
Farrowdene looked pained. “Well … perhaps. It’s utterly fascinating. I can tell you that the infection is definitely fungal in nature, although of what variety or species I’m unsure.” He gave a resigned shrug. “I fear I’m more at home with the fauna of this world than the flora.” He rubbed his chin absentmindedly. “It’s clearly not native to the British Isles, however. I can tell you that much with confidence. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d suggest the Amazon, or the rain forests of Cameroon. One of those barely explored regions that’s often so profitable for a man in my line of work.”
“But why plague revenants?” said Veronica. “When we first encountered it, the spores had adopted a revenant as their host. Dr. Finnegan wasn’t infected until he carried out some work on the corpse in his laboratory. How could a thing like that have come into contact with an unknown species of fungus from halfway around the world?”
“Ah, you see, that’s the interesting thing,” said Farrowdene, suddenly animated. “The fungus appears to have a remarkable effect upon its host. The first stage of the infestation appears to be beneficial to the host. I’ve experimented with rats.” Veronica shuddered at the thought. “From what I can tell from my dissections, it appears the fungal spores actually begin to regenerate the host’s cells, presumably to help ensure the survival of the host into the later stages of colonisation.”
“Regenerate?” said Veronica. “In what sense?”
“In the sense that the revenant you found actually appeared to be healing.”
“Goodness,” said Veronica. “Then you’re telling me it might represent a cure?”
“It might seem that way,” said Farrowdene. “Of course, the second stage of the infestation is something else entirely. The fungus takes over. The regeneration is simply a function of the parasite’s growth. It then spreads quickly and relentlessly throughout the host’s entire body. In an already healthy subject we might be talking about minutes here, rather than days. The fungus works with whatever it’s got.”
“Surely you’re not implying it’s intelligent?” said Veronica.
“No, not in any sense that you or I would recognise,” confirmed Farrowdene. “Simply that it requires certain conditions in order to flourish, and it does whatever it needs to do to the host body in order to ensure them. Then, once the fungus has established itself and reached maturation, it blooms.”
“Like a flower opening in spring,” said Veronica.
“Precisely that,” agreed Farrowdene. “Erupting from the body to scatter its spoors in search of other potential hosts. It’s a simple cycle, really, and it spreads exponentially.”
“But that still doesn’t explain how the revenant was initially exposed to the fungus,” said Veronica.
“Quite,” said Farrowdene, “not unless someone was experimenting with a possible cure.”
“Of course!” said Veronica. “An experiment that’s gone wrong. That makes sense. It just seems so unlikely that a revenant in Stoke Newington might chance upon such an exotic strain of fungus of its own accord.”
“That would be my best guess,” said Farrowdene, “although as I mentioned, I’m no expert, and you can’t rule anything out. I suggest you take the advice of a botanist, someone who specialises in studying previously undiscovered species of plants. I can give you a few names if that helps?”
“A great deal,” said Veronica.
“Well, Gilbert Evans, William Stilwell, or Julian Wren to begin with. Hopefully, one of them might be able to shed some further light, but I’d wager that’s where it started—someone with the best of intentions, unaware of quite what they were setting loose.”
“Thank you, Dr. Farrowdene,” said Veronica. “You’ve been most helpful. I’ll take this news directly to Sir Charles.”
“You’re most welcome, Miss Hobbes. Most welcome indeed. In fact,” he lowered his voice, “if I might be so bold, it would be my honour to discuss the matter further with you, perhaps over dinner?”
Veronica felt her cheeks flush, hot and embarrassed. She tried to contain her grin. “Thank you for your kind invitation, but I fear I am previously engaged.”
Farrowdene laughed cheerfully, although the disappointment was evident in his eyes. “I hope Sir Maurice knows how very lucky he is, Miss Hobbes.”
Veronica raised a single eyebrow, but didn’t reply.
Farrowdene looked somewhat discomposed. “Well, you must feel free to stay, have a look around,” he said. “I can see you’re fascinated by the specimens on display here.”
Veronica glanced at Angela, who was grinning knowingly to herself as she set up her slide on the microscope, and sighed. It was true; she knew she could spend hours here, poking around amongst the strange exhibits, searching out the wondrous, unknowable creatures, but the case was pressing and called for her attention. “While I would dearly love to, Dr. Farrowdene, I feel the investigation must come first. If there’s a means to contain this horror,” she gestured to the malformed body in the glass case beside them, “then it must be found. I shall return to Scotland Yard forthwith.” She put a hand on his upper arm. “My thanks to you.”
Farrowdene inclined his head in acknowledgement. “Then allow me to walk you out,” he said, with a broad grin. “At least I know you do not have a previous engagement for that.”
Veronica laughed. “How could I possibly refuse?” She took his proffered arm and allowed herself to be led away.
CHAPTER
11
It had been over an hour and a half since the scheduled shift change, and Henry Sitton was beginning to feel rather put upon.
Everything had occurred just as it should have, up to a point—Jeffries had returned to their shared cabin, woken him and exchanged places with him on the bunk. Henry, still bleary-eyed and stumbling toward the front of the train, had passed Cornwell in the vestibule, heading off to change shifts with Clarence. This had become their routine, and Henry found a certain comfort in it. He knew where he was, and what had to be done. He’d filled the kettle and placed it on the hot plate, ready for when Clarence arrived.
But then Clarence hadn’t returned, and Henry had been forced to manage by himself for the past hour or so, building up the fire for the start of the shift.