The Darwin Affair

by Tim Mason

  “What’s on your mind?” said Field guardedly, watching Mickie Goodfellow who was serving at the other end of the bar.

  The sergeant took a sip from his pint. “It’s that guest house in Oxford we looked into together. I’ve kept my eye on it ever since. The proprietress never returned. That got me wondering if it was because she knew the police had called, so I looked a bit further. Town records show the house is owned by a Mr. Donnelly Andrews, a church organist who went to London one day six years ago and never came back.”

  “So his wife started taking in lodgers?” said Field.

  “Never had a wife. According to those who knew him, Mr. Andrews was not at all in the marrying way, if you take my meaning.”

  “So who is Mrs. Andrews? A relative?”

  “No one knows, but I doubt it. When she failed to return, my boys and I had another look round. In a little room at the top of the house we found an old wardrobe, a smallish one. Crammed inside was a middle-aged woman. Fully dressed. Her skin was like leather, like one of the mummies at the British Museum.”

  Field nodded. “How many ears had she?”

  “How extraordinary you should ask! Her left one was off, and her teeth were in a glass jar, perched neatly on her shoulder.”

  “Good God. I wonder if it could be Philip Rendell’s mother. Cause of death?”

  “Not readily apparent, but the coroner is looking into it. Philip Rendell—isn’t that the chap who shot at the Queen?”

  “It is, it was,” said Field with growing excitement. He suddenly felt keenly sober.

  “Charlie?” said Goodfellow, standing just opposite them, a glint in his eye. “Everything all right?”

  In an instant the inspector recalled his altered state. There was no we in his life anymore, no team of fellow officers, and nothing to investigate. Only things to hide.

  “That’s right, Mick. All is well. Sergeant Willette, may I introduce my old friend, the landlord hereabouts, Mr. Goodfellow.” The two men shook hands over the bar. “Willette’s with the Oxford police.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Sergeant,” said Goodfellow in his most genial manner, “the best decision I ever took was to tempt this man here away from the Metropolitan and into my employ. The town’s loss is my gain, don’t you see? I’m making him a full partner in all my enterprises. Mr. Bucket is getting stinking rich at my expense, he is.” He reached across the bar and gave Field a playful punch to the jaw.

  Field bore it, expressionless.

  “Sets his teeth on edge,” chuckled Goodfellow, “to be called Bucket.”

  “The inspector created quite a stir on my patch not long ago,” said Willette. “Everyone’s still talking about him at Oxford.”

  Field was very still, staring off above their heads.

  “Good Lord,” said Goodfellow, seeing Sam Llewellyn make his way through the crowd to the bar. “You might have warned me, Charlie, that you were hosting a bloody policeman’s convention!”

  “Chief!” said the constable urgently. “I’ve found him. And Mrs. Andrews.”

  “I say, well done,” said Willette. “Who’s him, though?”

  “How do you do, Sergeant,” said Llewellyn. “Mr. Field, I’m quite sure our man’s name is Cobb. Decimus Cobb at No. 4 Half Moon Street.”

  “What’s all this?” said Goodfellow, all geniality gone.

  Field finished his whiskey.

  “Nothing to do with me,” he said, pushing away from the bar.

  “But, Chief . . .”

  “I am not your chief,” said Field evenly. “I am nothing to you, nor you to me.” He turned and edged through the customers, disappearing into the saloon bar.

  A moment later, Charles Field stood in the ice-cooled darkness of the room behind the funeral chapel, trying to breathe. When he was in trouble in the past, he would turn to his wife for answers. Now there was an endless, ever-changing row of corpses between him and Mrs. Field. Between him and the rest of the world.

  There was a popping sound and the gaslights slowly rose in the room.

  “Is that you, Mr. Field?” said the copper-haired woman. “I had just now put this light out. Come to see our newest arrival, have you?”

  “No, Mrs. Carmichael, I have not.”

  “Oh, but he’s a dear old thing, just in. Look at that head of white hair and that bushy white beard—positively aristocratic. Must have perished on the operating table, his throat is newly stitched up, you see? And they’ve patched over this ear.”

  Field slowly approached the bench where the elderly naked body lay.

  “From the expression on his face,” said Mrs. Carmichael, “he did not enjoy his surgery very much, but that’s not to be wondered at, is it? Gout, you see, they had his toes off.”

  “Who brought in this man?” said Field quietly.

  “Will Tailor, him and his lad. They just now left. Mr. Field, what are you doing? You can’t go in there!”

  Field yanked the black drapes aside and thrust open the door into the funeral chapel. He took in the sight of Reverend Carmichael dressed in his smalls, sitting at the pump organ, looking shocked. Then Goodfellow burst into the chapel, shouting.

  “Charlie! You listen to me!”

  Field pushed open the front door and ran out into the road. Both Giltspur and Cock Lane were crowded with street traffic: horse-drawn carriages, cabs, and individual horsemen.

  Sir Jasper had to have been brought on a cart.

  Giltspur led north, past St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to Smithfield Market, perhaps a hundred yards distant, and south to Holborn, the area’s major thoroughfare. Cock Lane was narrow and nearly choked with traffic; Field saw no cart down that way. He chose to walk south on Giltspur, moving briskly along the middle of the road toward Holborn, weaving in and out among the carriages. He realized that Sergeant Willette was trotting up abreast of him, followed by Llewellyn.

  “I say, Field,” said Willette, “what’s going on?”

  “Sergeant,” said Field, “would you kindly turn round and head up toward Smithfield? Just in case I’m wrong? We’re looking for a cart big enough to hold a coffin, or at least a corpse, driven by a tall slender man and a boy of about fifteen, ginger-haired.”

  “Same pair as you were looking for in Oxford, is it? What do I do if I find them?”

  “Stick with them but not too close.”

  Willette turned and headed toward the market.

  “Llewellyn, you come with me. Cobb, did you say? Not Tailor?”

  “Back when I was nothing to you, nor you to me, I believe I did mention a Mr. Cobb.”

  Suddenly Inspector Field was running. “There he is!”

  Llewellyn caught a glimpse, some distance ahead, of a cart moving toward Holborn, a tall slender figure driving the horses and a smaller figure sitting next to him. Llewellyn took off after them, dodging in and out among the horse-drawn vehicles while Field fought his way up the other side of the road.

  “Whistle, Sam!”

  The constable found the silver pipe in his tunic pocket and blew. The driver and his passenger glanced back over their shoulders, revealing the faces of a grizzled old farmer and his petite, elderly wife. The pair made the turn into Holborn and disappeared.

  A sick feeling lodged in Field’s belly.

  Willette.

  Field reversed direction, running north, and Llewellyn ran after him. Up ahead, just short of the market, Field saw a group gathering about a single figure who was shouting and pointing; it was Sergeant Willette, beckoning them urgently. The crowd arrayed itself in a discreet circle around the policeman, staring at him.

  “Come along, Field!” cried Willette. “They’ve just gone round there, the man and the boy, off toward Long Lane, I’d say. On foot, you see? Here’s their abandoned cart. The tall blighter struck me from it, or I’d have had him! Who is he, anyway?”

  Willette didn’t seem to realize that he was bleeding profusely from the left side of his head.

  “You can still get them, Mr.
Field! Go, go, go!”

  In the distance the inspector saw the tall blond man making his way smoothly through the crowded market precincts and, with him, the boy he recognized as Tom Ginty. The man glanced back over his shoulder, offering an indelible view of deep-set eyes, mesmerizing even at this distance.

  “Never mind them, old fellow,” said Field to Willette, drawing a handkerchief from a pocket. “Let’s step round to St. Bartholomew’s, shall we? Get you looked after?”

  Llewellyn was already at Willette’s right side, taking him by the elbow.

  “Why? The man knocked me down, that’s all.” He put a tentative hand to the side of his head. “Good God.”

  “Come along, sir,” said Llewellyn. “Just lean on me, if you will.”

  “What’s happened to me?” Willette stared at his left hand, which had come away covered in blood.

  “Here we go, Sergeant,” said Field, folding the handkerchief into a compress. The hospital is just along here.”

  “Good God, the dirty blighter took off my ear,” said Willette, then fainted dead into Llewellyn’s arms.

  Around the same time, at the Royal College of Surgeons, Sir Richard Owen waited impatiently. He’d had a message declaring that Sir Jasper Arpington-Dix had urgent business with him and was on his way. That was hours ago. Owen irritably passed the time by opening the afternoon post.

  Methodically he scanned the letters and assigned them different piles, to be read and dealt with later. He came to a small parcel done up in brown paper. A lovely mother-of-pearl box was within. Owen frowned, perplexed, and took up the wrapping again. There was no return address. He cast aside the brown paper and lifted the lid on the box.

  A normal thyroid gland has roughly the figure-eight shape of a butterfly. This one was swollen; a cancerous growth had grotesquely distorted its normal symmetry. Owen shoved the box away from him on the desk, stifling the wave of nausea he felt. In so doing, he caught sight of the accompanying note.

  Sir Jasper is indisposed. Yours apologetically, Decimus.

  Sir Richard Owen leapt to his feet but it was too late: he was sick all over his fine mahogany desk.

  30

  Sergeant Willette had lost a great deal of blood, as well as most of an ear, but the physicians who treated him at St. Bartholomew’s were confident of his recovery. It was nearly dusk when Field and Llewellyn, both of them stained with the sergeant’s blood, entered the Fortune of War and moved through the crowded room to the bar. Mickie Goodfellow watched them approach.

  “Careful, Charlie,” said Goodfellow.

  “Will Tailor is, in fact, a man named Cobb, is that right? Does business with you regular?”

  “Keep your voice down!”

  “You got his name writ on little tags in the back room, tied to people’s toes.”

  “You split on me, Charlie, I split on you, that was our deal.”

  “That deal only worked as long as I cared, which I don’t no more. You lot ain’t resurrectionists only, you lot are putting people to sleep!”

  Two constables entered the pub and made for the bar. “Good God,” said Goodfellow. “You’ll regret this, Charlie, I swear.”

  “We have an officer at St. Bart’s,” said Llewellyn, “wounded by your Mr. Cobb. It was the doctors who sent for the police, not us.”

  “So, Mick, you can tell us all about him fast,” said Field, “or I can take the constables back to meet your latest, a knight of the realm, cut to bits.”

  Goodfellow hesitated.

  “I’ll do it, I swear!” said Field. “Who’s Cobb to you?”

  His eyes on the approaching officers, Goodfellow spoke in a low voice. “Surgeon. With a sideline. Insane. I can’t cross him, Charlie. It’d be worth my life. I never told you nothing, right?”

  “Go on.”

  “He owns this whole show, Charlie. The chapel? Shepherd’s Rest is his. Then he bought me out, didn’t he. He took over the pub, Charlie, he’s my bloody landlord.”

  “You son of a bitch. You had me working for him.”

  “You oughtn’t to cross him neither, Charlie. He’s death dressed up like a man.”

  “How d’ you do, Mr. Field,” said the older of the two constables.

  “Passable, Mr. Peale,” said Field. “Listen, there’s a house in Half Moon Street we need to visit, and fast.”

  “Who’s this we?” said Constable Peale. “I believe you left the Metropolitan, sir.”

  “So you’ll have all the glory, won’t you, Peale. You and your young partner here can make the arrest. And Mr. Llewellyn, of course. It’s capital offenses, multiple murders, all yours.”

  “I dunno,” said Peale doubtfully.

  “You can’t be seriously considering of it, Mr. Peale?” said the younger constable. “This man here’s a laughingstock at HQ!”

  “You’ll go far, lad, I can see that,” said Field. “What’s your name?”

  “Quinn.”

  “Look here, Constable Quinn, we’ll clear it with your precious HQ first, right? Who’s in charge of the detectives now?”

  “Abercrombie, sir,” said Peale.

  “God help us. Well, we’ll pay him a visit, lay it all out for him.”

  “He’ll be happy to see you, Llewellyn,” said Quinn. “He’s just sacked you, you know, when you weren’t to be found yet again. You’re out of the Met.”

  “Shite!”

  “Pity,” said Field, nodding. “Still, too late now, isn’t it, Sam. How about we call on this house in Half Moon Street and tell Detective Abercrombie later? Mr. Peale, are you with us? Constable Quinn? You can come along, or you can run along, it’s up to you. I’ll be back directly.”

  Field went to the staircase behind the bar and disappeared up the steps to his little room on the first floor. When he returned a couple of minutes later, he had the pistol, which few knew about, secreted within his coat. Quinn was gone; Peale and Llewellyn remained. Field nodded. “Let’s go.”

  After a long wait, the door at No. 4 Half Moon Street was opened by a hunched old man. He looked the policemen up and down in silence.

  “We’re from the Metropolitan Police,” said Field, looking over the man’s stooped shoulders to the dim recesses of the ground floor.

  “What d’ you want?”

  “Is your master in? Mr. Cobb?”

  “Which one?”

  “You tell me, ducks,” said Field.

  The ancient servant’s mouth grew wide, revealing a few black stumps. Field realized with an unpleasant shock that this, for the old geezer, was a smile.

  “Mr. Cobb the First, weren’t he a pretty one,” said the relic.

  “I’m sure he was, Mr . . . ?” said Field impatiently.

  “Hamlet.”

  “Hamlet?”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Right, I’ve heard of you. Kindly let Mr. Cobb know the police would like a word.”

  “He’s dead.”

  Field restrained himself. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so bleeding obtuse. The current Mr. Cobb, if you’d be so good.”

  Old Hamlet sighed.

  Constable Llewellyn was shouting. “Where’s Mrs. Andrews? Where’s the old woman with the warts? Where are the children I saw here just hours ago?”

  Instead of answering, Hamlet groped for the chair that stood against the wall and sank down onto it, his grizzled head flopping back, looking to the heavens presumably. Field followed the old man’s gaze.

  “Oh, dear God.”

  John Getalong might have been a pockmarked angel looking down on them, suspended in the dim air above their heads. The rope he was hanging from was tied to a railing on the landing. Field took the stairs two at a time, although he knew there was no need for haste. Without touching anything, he made a cursory examination. “The lad did this to himself, I’m afraid,” he said.

  As the only currently legitimate member of the Metropolitan present, Constable Peale was quietly dispatched to fetch in a coroner. Field drew the pistol from his insid
e pocket and motioned Llewellyn to one side of the door closest to them. At a nod from his chief, Llewellyn turned the knob, flung the door open, and Field plunged before him into the room. A dull glow from the streetlamp on the opposite side of the road touched bookshelves, small tables, a globe. A clock ticked.

  “He ain’t in there,” said the desiccated old man, still sitting just outside the room. “Cut you into little pieces if he was.” He started to laugh, choked noisily, and fell silent. Field lit the gas sconce on the wall. The books stacked on end tables were atlases. Most featured German duchies and principalities.

  “Royal family off traveling soon, you said, Sam?” said Field.

  “To Germany in little over a month, according to Peter Sims.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen they found an old crone who looked disturbingly like the ancient man who’d let them in. She was sitting on a stool against the wall, shaking her head.

  “It’s all broke up now,” she said without prompting. “Nothing’s the same since he took in the new boy.”

  “Is that the boy, hanging in the hall?”

  “No! That’s John Getalong, of course. Idiot boy devoted to Master, and Master broke his heart again and again.”

  “Where is Cobb?” said Field.

  “They’re off abroad, ain’t they.”

  “But we saw them just hours ago in the Smithfield Market.”

  The crone shrugged.

  “Why would your master be going abroad?”

  “Oh, yes,” cackled the old woman. “Master tells me everything.”

  “Where abroad?”

  “I dunno. Across the water. The witch is gone, too, God knows where.”

  “This witch, her name is Andrews?”

  “Scum. She’s the one who sold the choirboy to the first Mr. Cobb all those years ago.”

  “Sold?”

  “Always wondered what Mr. Artemus paid for him. He was no bargain, mind you, not at any price.”

  “Is there anyone else in the house?” asked Llewellyn.

  “Dunno. The little hussy may still be about. Master sent Mary Do-Not off as kitchen help to folks he wanted to punish.”

  “Mary what?”

  “‘Do-Not,’ Master called her. He gives us all names, you see. That one upstairs weren’t born a Hamlet, believe me, nor yet was I Mrs. Hamlet when he led me from the altar, curse the day.”