by Tim Mason
“It shouldn’t be difficult to come up with a roster of St. Paul’s boys and masters from 1840 to 1845,” said Kilvert. “I’ll see to it this afternoon, sir.”
In time, the constable’s promise would return to haunt the inspector.
17
Oxford
From his place among the other undergraduates, David Gates watched them at the high table all through the meal. Bishop Wilberforce was conversing in a lively fashion with his guests: a sharp-faced middle-aged man with a beak-like nose—a scholar, perhaps?—and a ferocious-looking old gentleman with a bushy mane of white hair. The old sea captain who had said such disturbing things sat silently for the most part, his eyes darting over the assembled students and the magnificent trappings of the Great Hall of Christ Church College. Farther along the table, Henry Liddell, the dean, was deep in conversation with Charles Dodgson, the mathematics lecturer whom posterity would remember by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. The other senior scholars on the dais carried on volubly as they dispatched plates of kidneys and gravy.
What did his tutor’s guests have in common? The sea captain clearly seemed out of place, but he’d been staying in the bishop’s quarters for two days now, and each time David had tried to speak to the bishop he had been turned away. How could David let him know that he might be befriending a seriously deranged man?
After the pudding, the undergraduates all rose with a thunderous scraping of benches and remained standing while the great men processed out. Eventually David made his way through the exiting crowd.
“Dinkins!”
“Yes, Mr. Gates?” replied the head butler, a placid-faced older man.
“May I ask, Dinkins, who was that dining with the bishop just now?”
“Certainly, sir. My lord the bishop was hosting Sir Richard Owen, the natural philosopher, and Sir Jasper Arpington-Dix of the East India Company.” Dinkins’ face registered faint distaste. “And FitzRoy, sir. A nautical man.”
“I suppose the bishop has gone on to the Senior Common Room with the other masters?”
“No, sir. The bishop’s party will be taking their coffee in the bishop’s study, sir.”
David was pleased. The study was familiar ground to him; he met there weekly with the bishop. It shouldn’t be difficult to call him out for a private word. David crossed the quadrangle and climbed the bishop’s staircase. He entered the secretary’s office, just off his tutor’s study, unoccupied at this time of the evening. He could hear one of the guests, in the middle of a story. David would wait quietly for a lull in the conversation.
“Lancaster Castle is not a cheerful place at the best of times,” said Owen.
Wilberforce stirred his coffee, a faint smile on his face, and said, “One thinks immediately of the Lancaster witches, in Elizabeth’s time.”
Sir Jasper Arpington-Dix lit his pipe and settled back into a creased brown leather armchair, his walking stick across his lap. “It’s an ugly pile of rocks,” he said. “Have you ever been, FitzRoy?”
The captain, perched on his chair as though it were a hard wooden church pew, seemed startled to be addressed. He shook his head.
“Ugly or not,” said Owen, “it was a home to me at the time, a nineteen-year-old medical student assigned to the prison. The night in question certainly added to the castle’s gloom and menace. A storm raged, the wind howled, it was snowing and sleeting, a perfectly dreadful night. The cadavers were kept in an upper chamber. I had taken note of the negro man who had been hanged that morning and was determined to have his head.”
“Oh, dear me,” said Wilberforce, “whatever for?”
“To study his brain, of course! Late that night, when the castle was asleep, I made my way up to the room at the top, my heart fairly stopping at every creak on the stair, every howl and whisper of the wind.”
“Ghost story, is it?” said Sir Jasper.
“Rather more corporeal than spiritual, I should say,” said Owen. “Anyway, once I’d located my fellow it was the work of only a few minutes to remove the man’s head. My God, the thing was heavy!”
FitzRoy stirred suddenly. “They were happy to be slaves!” he shouted. “Told me so themselves!”
The other men glanced at each other. They were becoming alarmed by the sea captain’s outbursts. He’d been increasingly difficult ever since they’d broken it to him that Charles Darwin was not expected to make an appearance in Oxford that weekend, that he would be absent from the great meeting where his work would be debated. It had been reported in the press that Darwin was still at Richmond Spa for his health.
“Who was this, FitzRoy?” asked Wilberforce gently. “Where was this?”
“Tierra del Fuego, of course! Where white men go to blow their brains out!”
There was an embarrassed silence in the book-lined study, broken by the tock of a great clock and the tinkling of a demitasse spoon against china.
“At any rate,” said Owen finally, “I got the fellow’s great noggin into the sack I’d brought for the purpose, flung it over my shoulder, and headed down. Once outside I found everything coated in ice and the night black as pitch. I had barely started down the steep road to my rooms in the town below when I stepped on a slick patch and went down hard. Whereupon the negro’s head flew out of the bag and rolled all the way down the hill, me slipping and sliding after it!”
FitzRoy spoke up again. “‘Are you happy?’ I asked the natives. ‘Working for your master? Yes, they said, we are!’ But Darwin wasn’t having it. Didn’t matter what they said, according to him. Contradicted me in front of my own crew! I should have put the man ashore and left him there!”
Owen coughed and stood, moving to survey the bookcases, but Sir Jasper leaned forward toward the sea captain. “First things first, old man. We must get rid of the royal danger first, but by-and-by—”
“Careful, Sir Jasper,” warned Wilberforce. “Mind how you go. I am not and will not be a party to—”
Sir Jasper ignored the bishop. “By-and-by, FitzRoy, we’ll put that son of a bitch ashore one piece at a time, just you wait and see!”
“I mean to say,” shouted the captain, “for God’s sake, a man’s not an ape!”
“Wilberforce,” said Owen quietly, nodding toward the open door that led to the study’s outer office. “There’s someone there.”
Wilberforce frowned. “Who is that?” he called. “Who’s there?”
David Gates appeared in the door, ashen-faced. “I’m sorry, my lord. I had hoped to reschedule this week’s tutorial, sir. I’ll call again tomorrow.” He made a slight bow to the four unsmiling men who stared back at him, then turned and fled.
David and Jack Callow sat wedged in among the crowd at the back of the Bear, the venerable public house that, although it had existed in one form and another since the fourteenth century, the two young men considered to be their own discovery and private domain. They had met and become friends in their first year up at Oxford. The two of them were scholarship students from small villages and exulted in the heady atmosphere of university life in which they found themselves, so different from what they had known as boys. They went for long walks and argued fiercely about a variety of topics: the doctrine of the Trinity, varieties of ale, and rugby football, which they both played avidly. Over the long vacation they had not communicated once. In the first week of their second year, and with a minimum of discussion, they had become lovers.
“If I catch the night coach,” David was saying, “I should be able to reach Mr. Darwin by midmorning.”
“You can’t be serious,” said Jack.
“It’s mad, I know. But what if I do nothing and something terrible happens?”
“You’re basing these wild assumptions on a couple of outbursts from a clearly deranged old man.”
“I owe it to Mr. Darwin to caution him. I owe it to the memory of his daughter.”
“If you’re worried about this Captain FitzRoy, talk to the bishop.”
David stared into his beer. He
hadn’t told Jack that he’d already tried to tell his tutor; he hadn’t told him about the scene he’d come upon in the bishop’s study. He was reluctant to come out and say he feared his tutor might himself be involved in a conspiracy to silence Charles Darwin. This was Bishop Wilberforce, after all—a leader in the antislavery movement, a decent Christian man and David’s own tutor. And if he were wrong? He knew that if he were to make unfounded accusations against Wilberforce or his guests, he stood a real chance of losing his scholarship and throwing over his Oxford career for a future in his father’s village haberdashery. He glanced up into Jack’s concerned face and gave him a reassuring smile.
“I’ll be back on the Friday coach, you won’t even know I’m gone.”
As David and Jack rose and made their way through the crowd to the tavern’s door, the human fence post who had taken a seat near them when they first arrived watched them go. Smuts had removed the bowler hat that identified him as a Bulldog, but now he replaced it and made his way out also, hurrying back to Christ Church to make his report. Within the hour, a message had been dispatched by telegraph from Oxford to an address in London. Meanwhile, the night coach jolted David Gates, half dozing, along the dark country roads in a light drizzle.
London
It was nearly midnight. The young man from the Electric Telegraph Company hesitated, listening. Faintly, from within the house at No. 4 Half Moon Street, came the sound of a single voice singing, a woman’s voice or a child’s, high and pure.
Like from a church, thought the young man. Holy.
Even by day, the house at No. 4 had a shuttered aspect. Had it not been for the singing, the man from the ETC would have thought it abandoned. The streetlamp by the door was unlit. (The gaslight had been broken so often the lamplighter had stopped repairing it, never imagining that it was the householder himself who regularly disabled the lamp in the dead of night).
The young man on the step adjusted the strap of the large leather pouch he wore over one shoulder and tilted the envelope to catch the light from the lamp on the opposite side of the road. The address was correct, all right. Moreover, it was stamped urgent: for immediate delivery. He pulled the bell by the door and the singing stopped.
Within, little bells rang discreetly throughout the house. Decimus Cobb was the only occupant still up and active, working in his private chambers at the back of the first floor, shellacking and mounting specimens. He frowned at the tinkling spring-mounted bell above the door and hastily reached for a cloth to dry his hands.
Two floors above, Tom Ginty lay on his narrow bed, watching the bell on the wall above the door dance and then fall still. John Getalong, in the next cot, snored without interruption. As quietly as he could, Tom got out of bed and moved to the shuttered window. The louvers were nailed fast, but he had already discovered one loose slat that he could shift to give a thin glimpse of the street below. Now he gasped at the sight of a uniformed man on the step.
Peelers! he thought with a surge of hope and then realized that if it actually were the police calling, they’d be coming for him as much as for his master. A murderer, now and forever. Maybe it wasn’t a policeman. No, the uniform wasn’t right.
In the entrance hall, Decimus stared through the peephole in the door and then, with a sigh, slid the bolt, released the latch, and pulled open the door narrowly.
“Electric Telegraph Company,” said the young man. “Urgent for Mr. Cobb.” Decimus reached for the envelope, but the young man withheld it. “Be so good as to sign for it, sir?” he said.
Decimus’ right hand, behind the door, currently held a long, thin surgical knife. He stared at the delivery man for a moment. “It’s late,” he said. “Did you come out specially with this?”
“The ETC is open round the clock, sir. I got a half-dozen more to get out tonight.”
Decimus nodded and was carefully lowering the razor-sharp blade into a leather sheath in his trousers pocket when he noticed the young man looking past him. Decimus glanced over his shoulder and saw on the little table near the door a bloodstained hand towel and the ear he’d been working on.
Careless of me.
He turned back to the deliveryman who was staring in confusion at the shiny pink twist of flesh.
“Strange to see it out of context, isn’t it,” said Decimus.
Two floors above, Tom saw the young man disappear into the house. He heard the door swing shut and the bolt shoot into place. Quickly Tom closed the louver and laid himself down, shutting his eyes fiercely, his heart sounding like a drum in his ears.
Despite his alarm, he must have slept because Master was there, shaking him awake and then going away. It was still full dark. The clothes he was to wear were laid out at the foot of his bed. John Getalong’s bed was empty. Tom dressed himself and quietly descended the stairs to the kitchen where he found a cup of tea and a hard roll waiting for him. Mrs. Hamlet dozed on a stool in the corner. Master sat at the table, watching Tom. There was no sign of the uniformed man.
Tom sat. He blew on his tea and lifted it to his lips.
“The path is strewn with stumbling blocks,” said Decimus. Tom put down the cup in alarm. “One obstacle after another. Why must people move about so? It’s much better when they don’t move. Drink your tea.”
Tom quickly took a sip. It burned his tongue and his eyes watered. He ate a bit of hard roll, crunching down.
“What do we learn from the obstacles?” Master’s eyes were more than ever lumps of coal, thought Tom. “We learn that the obstacles are the path. That the road is the journey. Shall I tell you a story, Tom?” There was a silence. “Tom?”
Tom nodded vigorously.
“Long ago, when I was about your age, there was a man who pretended to be my friend. He was not my friend. He brought me to Italy to improve myself, so I did: I flung him from a tower. He tried to take me with him over the edge, he grabbed for me, but I wasn’t having it. I caught what I could of him and shook him free, shook him hard! Well, down he went. And there in my hand, what do you suppose I found? Tom?”
Tom shook his head.
“His ear was in my hand, Tom. Torn right off. And from that moment to this, everything has been so much better. I had all his gold in hand, so I continued the tour. Saw the world from Ghent to Petersburg, all before I was sixteen years of age. Did people raise eyebrows at this boy, all on his own? Let them. I was taken in charge by a presumptuous policeman in Bremen but not for long. Germany was a favorite. I lingered in Aachen, learning from a very fine surgeon there who taught me much but passed away abruptly. Alas. Where is he now? Tom, never collect too many souvenirs, you forget where you put them. Now finish your breakfast like a good boy.”
There was a sound of a key in the lock and footsteps descending the stairs. John Getalong entered the kitchen and Master looked up at him with eyebrows raised. The young man’s hands and face were dirtier than normal, and his trousers were wet and dripping on the floor. Tom thought he smelled of river.
“Right, then, that’s done,” said John. “Is there tea? I s’pose he’s goin’, not me.”
“That’s correct, John. You have had a long night; you owe yourself a lie-in.”
Tom didn’t want to think what Getalong had been doing in the long night. Tom cleared his throat and said, “Where?”
Master and John Getalong turned to Tom in unison, Master with a gentle, surprised smile and John with a jealous scowl.
“What’s that, Tom?” said Decimus.
“Where ’m I goin’? Sir.”
The master drew a slip of paper from his breast pocket and slid it across the table. Tom glanced down at it and up again at Decimus, his face flushing.
“Can you not read, Tom?”
“Nossir,” he lied.
“Not to worry, son,” said Master, taking back the paper and pocketing it. “You’ll discover the where and the what soon enough.”
Tom was able to read, though, thanks to the relentless drilling to which his mother had subjected him
for years. He had seen, printed beneath the banner of the Electric Telegraph Company:
gates david 19 yrs fair hair night coach to d currently richmond spa smite the loins of them that rise against him
“Let John go,” said Tom, and he knew at once he’d made a mistake. The master’s face turned to stone. He jerked his head in Getalong’s direction and John boxed Tom’s ear so sharply, he nearly cried out.
“Eat,” said the Chorister, so Tom pointed his face at his plate and ate.
18
Richmond
Decimus and Tom traveled through the night along the dark, damp roads in a one-horse gig, arriving in Richmond at dawn, long before the night coach was expected. There was time, Master said, to stretch their legs. Tom followed him into the churchyard, on a hill above the coaching inn. The grass among the graves was wet. As light began to touch the tops of trees, Master read the inscriptions on the stones: Beloved wife and mother, 1819. Lamented only son, 1792. Lux aeterna. We really must teach you to read, Tom. Oh, here’s a good one, dated 1770. Farewell, dear Friend, How doleful is the sound, How vast my Stroke, Which leaves a bleeding Wound.
Eventually they took a seat on a bench outside the inn. There was a wan, middle-aged gentleman already there waiting for the coach. He had smiled and nodded politely, and Decimus had touched his hat to him. Tom had been instructed never to speak, never to reveal his rough Cockney accent now that he was dressed as a gentleman’s son, so he avoided the stranger’s eyes.
The sun was burning away the mists, and the day promised to be fine. Tom wondered about Gates, David, fair-haired and nineteen, who was on his way this moment to meet D. Maybe Master would merely steal him, as he had stolen Tom. Maybe Gates, David, might become a friend of Tom’s, an ally in the frightening house. On the whole, though, Tom thought not.
Master and the gentleman on the bench checked their pocket watches at the same moment, and they acknowledged this with a smile. “Seems to be late,” said the man.