by Tim Mason
Impersonating Owen’s rapid speech and taut voice, Huxley said, “‘Wrong, Wilberforce, wrong! It goes kingdom, phylum, class!’” Darwin and Huxley laughed. Darwin saw the little girl at the neighboring table staring at them, and he fell silent.
“I wish you all the best, Tom, and I shall await your report eagerly.”
Which is untrue. All this clamor feels utterly trivial. After Annie, what does not?
“The little dogs have been nipping too much at your heels, my friend,” said Huxley, rising from the table. “Your bulldog will set them to rights!”
After Huxley’s departure, Darwin remained seated at the breakfast table for some time. The little girl and her family left. As the servants cleared away the debris all around him, Darwin was aboard the ship again, preparing fossil specimens he’d collected on a trip inland to show the Beagle’s young captain and Charles’ friend for as long as the five-year voyage had lasted, Robert FitzRoy. He would present his treasures after their evening meal. He knew the captain would attribute his finds to the aftermath of Noah’s flood, but that did not diminish his excitement. There would be one initial moment of wonder on FitzRoy’s face, and that was what Darwin was so eager to see.
Seashells, FitzRoy! An ancient chambered nautilus! From high on a peak in the Andes!
15
Oxford
Time and the elements had creased the face and burned it a permanent brick-red shade. A lifetime at sea had left him looking older than his fifty-five years, and bitter disappointment had carved its own story on the man’s features. As he moved along St. Aldate’s toward Christ Church College, he attracted stares. Under any circumstance he would have looked out of place here: a white-haired old sailor navigating an unfamiliar landscape of black-gowned, smooth-cheeked young Oxford undergraduates. But today Robert FitzRoy, long-ago captain of HMS Beagle, was carrying an enormous Bible, hugging it to his chest and muttering furiously.
He had been more than the pilot of that damned ship, by God! He was descended from royalty, fourth great-grandson of Charles II on his father’s side (along an illegitimate line, of course, but still!). His mother was the daughter of the first Marquess of Londonderry and half sister of Viscount Castlereagh, by God!
FitzRoy had been assigned to the Beagle at the young age of twenty-six because its previous captain had blown his brains out in Tierra del Fuego. (Good God, it makes a man think!) It was a vital assignment: to chart the southernmost shorelines of South America. It was his idea to bring along a naturalist, no one else’s. It would be pleasant, he’d thought, to have intelligent companionship on board, friendship being something that one couldn’t afford to indulge with the junior officers, much less the crew. And it had been pleasant, for the most part. Darwin was three or four years younger than the captain, and FitzRoy had become quite fond of him, despite their occasional dustup. At the end of the five-year voyage, they had both been called upon to publish their observations. Darwin’s were clearly tending toward blasphemy and attracted great attention among the scientific elite. FitzRoy’s were ignored.
No matter. It wasn’t too many years before he’d been appointed governor of New Zealand. Of course the Maoris had cut up rough, and understandably so, with the British stealing their lands from them at such a pace. FitzRoy had run afoul of everyone, both white-skinned and dark. (Dismissed! Bastards might have had the grace to let me resign!)
He had soldiered on. Weather! So much of trade and commerce depended upon it. Was there not a way to predict what tomorrow might bring? Indeed, FitzRoy was making real achievements in the new field of weather forecasting.
But for what am I truly known? For helping that man formulate his beastly heresies! Good God, it’s almost more than a body can bear!
The young divinity student, David Gates, was hurrying to his tutorial when he saw the old man stagger and catch himself, leaning against the Gothic stone base of Tom Tower, Christ Church College. He was breathing heavily and clutching something to his chest—a large book, it seemed. David rushed forward to offer his assistance.
FitzRoy stared at the young man with alarm and suspicion. The folded barber’s razor in his trouser pocket felt suddenly huge to him, an obscenity.
Don’t be daft, thought the captain. The boy can’t see it, no one can.
“Thank you, young man,” he said, gruffly. “I’m quite well, there’s no need.” FitzRoy turned from David brusquely, rounded the corner into the passage, and thrust his head to the porter’s window. “I’m here to see the bishop, the name’s FitzRoy, Captain, retired.”
From behind, David saw the porter’s eyes flick dubiously over the man. No greater snob on earth, thought David, than the porter of an Oxford college.
“Excuse me, sir, but I’m on my way to see the bishop myself, might I escort you?”
“Just a moment, Mr. Gates,” said the porter, “the bishop’s tutorials have been canceled for the rest of the week, did you not get the notice?”
David blushed. He had spent the night sharing Jack Callow’s narrow bed in Jesus College, passionately and without sleep. No, he had not picked up the notice that the porter was now plucking from David’s own pigeonhole.
“Were you signed out at all last night, Mr. Gates?” asked the porter, but the old sea captain was already moving into the quadrangle, hugging his Bible, and David quickly followed him across the grass. The man was talking, to David or to someone unseen.
“I showed him every courtesy. I gave him the big cabin and took the smaller for myself. I was patient when he presented me with heresy; I explained to him his errors, but he wasn’t having it, was he?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said David, “but who is this?”
The old man stopped and looked at David as though he were an idiot. “Why, Darwin, of course! They think it’s enough to keep him off the list, but I say Darwin must die!”
“Good God, sir, that’s dreadful talk! Are you speaking of Charles Darwin?”
The old man sagged, staring ahead in confusion. “Who is that man there?” he said in a suddenly frail voice. “What’s happening?”
David saw with dismay that a Bulldog was dead ahead, emerging from the bishop’s staircase and approaching them across the quad. The Universities Act of 1825 had created a force of constables empowered to act as academic police in Oxford. As such, this unit constituted one of the oldest and most powerful police forces in the kingdom. Its members soon became known as Bulldogs because of their propensity to latch on and not let go. This Bulldog, a thick fence post of a man named Smuts, was upon them in a moment. To David’s astonishment he bowed to the sea captain. “The bishop and Sir Richard are expecting you, sir, if you’d like to come this way?”
“Why, yes,” said FitzRoy. “Yes, thank you.”
“Might I carry that for you, sir?” said Smuts, gently easing the huge Bible from the old man’s grasp.
David, now standing alone in the Christ Church quadrangle, thought again of the old man’s threats, and he was suddenly transported to his childhood. As a boy growing up in Orpington, the Darwin family were the “quality” whose big white house stood in the countryside nearby. David’s father was a haberdasher; David and his younger sister, Rebecca, had become friendly with the offspring of their father’s most illustrious clients, Charles and Emma Darwin. The Darwin children were imaginative and madcap playmates, and Willie and Annie Darwin were David’s favorites. Their father was the genial man who, despite being sickly, seemed to have the soul of a child; he was often eager to play. But Mr. Darwin also had the extraordinary reputation as “the man who’d sailed round the world.”
David Gates and Annie Darwin were the same age, and on Annie’s ninth birthday he and his sister had been invited up to Down House for the party. The afternoon was a breathless blur of games and cakes. Out of doors there were footraces and hopping matches and, indoors, a crazy wooden slide that Mr. Darwin had fabricated was put in place on the grand staircase. As the children slid shrieking down the polished wood, landing at
op one another at the bottom, Mrs. Darwin’s eyes brimmed with mirth while Darwin himself whooped with laughter. And then Annie had taken David by the hand, pulled him into a cupboard, and astonished him with a kiss.
In the months that followed, David longed to be invited back to the exciting house on the hill and counted the days until Annie’s next birthday. Then he heard she’d been taken ill. Eventually he learned that she had gone away with her father, although he didn’t know where. When he finally heard the grown-ups saying that Mr. Darwin had returned to Down House, young David set out immediately to pay Annie a visit, uninvited and entirely without permission, walking miles across the fields, picking a handful of springtime blossoms on the way. A wreath of black crêpe was hanging on the front door. As it happened, it was not a servant who answered his knock but Mr. Darwin himself. It was the first time the boy had looked into the face of a grief that had no remedy, and he never would forget it. The memory of Annie Darwin became for David the emblem of all that was fascinating and mysterious and fun about the female of the species.
This old sailor he’d encountered was likely senile, and the threats he’d uttered merely harmless ramblings, but David needed to be certain. He owed it to Mr. Darwin. Certainly his tutor, Bishop Wilberforce, would be shocked when he heard what the old man had said.
16
London
On the third day, the Chorister let Tom out of his coffin. The boy was soiled, starved, and too weak to stand. Decimus treated him with great gentleness, bathing him in the little enclosed garden behind the house with the help of John Getalong, who brought soap and buckets of hot water from the copper in the kitchen. They wrapped him in a thick towel and fed him a clear broth and afterward laid him in a bed softer than any Tom had known. When he awoke, Blinky helped Tom to regain strength in his legs, slowly leading him by the hand along the halls and up and down flights of stairs in the house, letting him rest and feeding him broth and then walking him again. Tom’s first real meal was more substantial, and the fourteen-year-old fell on it ravenously: a roasted chicken and boiled potatoes. Decimus served the boy himself while Hamlet and Mrs. Hamlet looked on. Tears of gratitude filled Tom’s eyes.
They put a chair for him in the garden. Sitting in the sun he felt his vision slowly return to normal, the blurriness of the first two days leaving him. Blinky sat at his feet, sometimes singing and sometimes chattering above the din of the London traffic, which penetrated to this tiny courtyard. She told him stories of her adventures in the big world and showed him her prized bracelets and timepieces.
“Tom,” she said, going through a pocket in her apron, “there’s something I want you to have.” Blinky’s hand emerged, holding a man’s gold ring. “Go on!”
“No,” he said.
“It’s too big, see,” said the girl. “When I put it on, it slips right off, but if you wear it, you’ll think of me wherever you may be.” She slipped the ring onto the ring finger of Tom’s left hand. “It’s like we’re married, Tom, isn’t it grand?”
Blinky had warnings for Tom as well. At the very top of the house, she told him, lived a woman who was all alone; it was forbidden to visit her.
“Do not!” said Blinky. “Do not try to call on Mary Do-Not! It’s her name, see? Mary Do-Not!”
“She must be lonely,” said Tom.
“Oh, very! She walks right here, in the garden, when she’s allowed. I see her from the window. She sighs and wrings her hands like anything, but always when we’re not here, always when she’s alone. It’s not safe otherwise.”
“Not safe?”
Blinky shook her head and lowered her voice to a whisper. “She makes people perish.”
“She does for ’em?”
“She doesn’t mean to, she likes people! She can’t help it, you see.”
But Tom was safe. He was among friends, and Decimus Cobb was his kind and merciful benefactor. Only one of the voices in Tom’s head was of a different opinion, and that voice—which whispered to him of his mother and their little room at the top of the Fortune of War—he must ignore at all costs.
Careful, Tom, or it’s back in the box with you! Master always said it with a smile.
Master brought beautiful clothing home to dress Tom in, along with a small traveling valise. He cut Tom’s hair and fitted him with a cap. The rest of the household applauded the new boy who stood before them, a gentleman’s son, scrubbed and shining. And very early on the seventh day, the Chorister took Tom out to teach him to kill.
Dawn, or just before. Tom held a basket of food for the prisoner, but the man was looking past him. “Been expecting you,” said Philip David Rendell.
“Turn round, Philip,” Master said.
Philip peered into the basket Tom was holding. “Sausage,” he said, and then, looking up at Tom, “you’re the new me.” Dutifully, Philip turned.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it.
Tom was sick in the street after they left the prison, but Master didn’t scold. He gave Tom a linen handkerchief and walked off ahead, not looking back at him, not checking on him, but Tom didn’t dream of running. He wiped his mouth and spat. The first rays of morning glinted off the tops of buildings, coloring them bloodred, but Tom didn’t think about their color. Just minutes from where he stood was the familiar intersection of Giltspur and Cock Lane and the Fortune of War, but Tom didn’t think about any of that either, not even for a moment.
Or it’s back in the box with you!
The boy turned round quickly, scanning the street, and was rewarded by a glimpse of John Getalong, perhaps twenty yards behind, hastily turning from him and pretending to study a shop window. Tom, in turn, pretended not to see Getalong.
Tom followed Master through the awakening streets, all the way to No. 4 Half Moon Street. John Getalong arrived just minutes later with a bucket of oysters. Master took a plate of them up to Mary Do-Not and then returned, beaming with pride on all his children. Breakfast was festive.
Inspector Field had been awakened by a hammering from below. He’d thrown on a pair of trousers and padded downstairs in time to see Bessie open the street door to Sam Llewellyn. An aureole of dawn circled the young Welshman’s head. A brougham waited in the street beyond, the horse stamping. From the expression on Llewellyn’s face, Field knew that someone was dead.
Minutes later, in Newgate, Inspector Field knelt in the cell beside the still form of Philip David Rendell. He lay curled on his right side, his knees drawn up, with his back to the door. The young man’s eyes were open and staring. His hands were at his own throat. From between his clenched fingers there issued a flow of blood that had pooled across the cell floor. Where Rendell’s left ear should have been was a glistening red hole.
“If it’s here, I want it,” said Field. Gingerly Llewellyn and Kilvert got down on hands and knees and began carefully searching the floor. The warder stood in the door, and behind him, a peering group of the morbidly curious. Field patted the body, which was still very warm, finding nothing. He delicately raised the checked napkin inside the basket at the body’s side, revealing two sausages and a quarter loaf of sodden, red-stained bread. He set the basket down on a dry spot of floor and stood.
“You say a child brought this?” he asked the warder.
“A boy and a man, sir, first thing this mornin’. Man said they was from the mission. We get lots o’ mission folk. Bring food to the prisoners, say a prayer, sing a hymn.”
“What did they look like, then?”
“Tall man, fair hair, deep-set eyes; the boy’s hair red or brown. Wore a cap. Maybe fifteen years old.”
“They were here rather early for mission folk, weren’t they?” said Field. “Before dawn, in fact?”
“I suppose you could say they were, sir.”
Field nodded. “The man didn’t slip you nothin’ for your trouble, I imagine?”
The warder looked Field in the eye and said, “Nossir.”
“Of course not,” said the inspector.
> “There’s no ear to be found, sir,” said Kilvert, still kneeling on the floor.
“Looks like he took it with him,” said Llewellyn, standing.
Field addressed the warder again. “Close this door up and let no one in until the coroner’s man gets here.” The small knot of onlookers sagged in disappointment as Field made his way through them, followed by his men.
“Well, Tom Ginty’s alive, anyway,” he said to them.
“This is not the sort of man one would wish to work for,” said Kilvert, “as Stevie Patchen and now Mr. Rendell might attest, were they able.”
“He’s bloody peculiar, I must say,” said the inspector. “So determined to cover his own tracks and yet he leaves his signature when he kills. Still, this proves Rendell wasn’t acting alone. He clearly had a confederate who needed to silence him, just like he silenced Stevie. Maybe now Commissioner Mayne will admit it’s a conspiracy. Sam, have you got your source at the palace in place?”
“Yes, sir. A royal horse groom, a mate of mine, Peter Sims.”
“A Welshman,” added Kilvert.
“Peter will send me word double quick,” said Llewellyn, “well before any move the royal family makes.”
“Kilvert, what do we know about the late Mr. Rendell?” said Field as they passed out of the prison gates onto the street.
“Not much,” said Kilvert. “Left his position and his rooms at Islington more than a month ago and for all intents and purposes disappeared.”
“Friends? Associates?”
“Friendless, sir. Even from his school days as a scholarship boy at St. Paul’s, mocked and derided. Strange boy, strange man.”
“St. Paul’s? He was a choirboy, then?”
“So it seems, sir.”
“If Rendell was friendless much of his life, I suppose it’s possible the killer knew him from choir school,” said Field with a shrug. “A master, maybe, or one of the choirboys. Judging by Rendell’s age, it would have been roughly fifteen, twenty years ago.”