The Darwin Affair

by Tim Mason

  The great man turned out to be far less intimidating than either man might have feared. Darwin had been on the lookout for the policemen, evidently; as soon as they started up the drive, he emerged from the big white house, wearing a greatcoat. He greeted them warmly but steered them away from the front door to a side entrance off the garden and into his study. The day was bitterly cold; Darwin placed his visitors before the fire during the introductions and sent a servant off for a pot of tea. Finally he lowered his voice and said, “Would you like to see them, Mr. Field?”

  “I would indeed, sir.”

  Llewellyn looked at his superior, bewildered. Darwin took two small parcels from a desk drawer and offered one of them to Field.

  “The first, sent from Ostend,” said Darwin.

  Field unfolded the brown paper and opened the little box.

  “Damn me!” shouted Llewellyn.

  “Hush, Sam.” A dog somewhere in the house began to bark.

  “You said he was dead, Mr. Field!”

  “Did I?”

  “‘Crushed by a train,’ you said.” Llewellyn ran his fingers through his hair. “You saw the body, sir!”

  “Others were convinced that the body by the train tracks belonged to our man, and I thought it possible, but with Decimus there was always a niggling doubt.”

  “Am I to infer,” said Darwin, “that you know who this correspondent might be?”

  “I believe we may, sir. Might I see the other, please?”

  The naturalist put the second parcel in Field’s hand. “Again, with an Ostend postmark. This one belonged to a much younger person. Also female, most likely.”

  “It’s got to be him,” muttered Llewellyn. “He’s on a bloody tear.”

  “They both feature this little bump here,” said Darwin, pointing, “which I call the Woolnerian tip. Others call it a tubercle. You can see from the note that the correspondent seems to think it proves a point, but I’m afraid it does rather the opposite. Who is he, Mr. Field?”

  “Man named Cobb.”

  “Do you think he murdered these women?”

  “I am afraid I do, sir.”

  “Good God. Why?”

  Field sighed and shook his head. “To look into another man’s heart is difficult enough. To read the heart of a monster—if he has one—may not be possible.”

  Darwin was silent for some moments, staring into the fire. “The heart is a pump,” he said finally. “That is all I am qualified to tell you about the heart. And yet I know, in some way not demonstrable, it is something other than, more than, that.” He rose and moved to look out the glass panes of the garden door. “I disbelieve in monsters. But I have found ordinary nature to be insupportably cruel, often enough. I left the Church because of it, causing my dear wife great distress. Other men have lost a child and not lost God. I envy them.”

  The inspector turned to Llewellyn. “Why has he come to life again, Sam? Why does he seem to be aiming at Mr. Darwin now and not Prince Albert?”

  “Prince Albert?” said Darwin.

  The sound of children’s voices rose just outside the study door.

  “Perhaps, sir, we might continue this outside?” said the inspector.

  London

  Jane Field was waiting patiently as Belinda’s quill scratched over her lesson. Ink blots appeared here and there on the page like raindrops; Jane winced but said nothing. Downstairs the bell rang. Jane heard Bessie opening the door and some minutes later heard her huffing up the stairs.

  “Missus! Someone is askin’ after Miss Coffin!”

  Jane looked up sharply. “Who is?”

  “A boy, but it was the lady in the carriage wot give ’im a sixpence, she was the one askin’.” I said there ain’t no Miss Coffin ’ere, nor was there ever, and when the boy told ’er that, ’e come trottin’ back sayin’ the lady knows I’m lyin’ and has a mind to alert the police!”

  “What did you say then?”

  “Nothin’, I slammed shut the door!”

  Belinda ran to the window. “Get away from there, Belinda!” said Jane. “Go and wash yourself, you’ve put more ink on yourself than on the page, haven’t you.” The girl turned and clattered down the stairs. Jane went to the window and cautiously looked down into the street.

  “The carriage is moving off. What did the lady look like, Bessie?”

  “All in gray, with a veil, starin’ out the carriage window like she would eat me alive!”

  “Did you ever see her before?”

  “No, Missus.”

  “Well, you’ll tell Mr. Field all about it when he returns.”

  “But Mr. Field don’t know about Miss Coffin and all wot ’appened!”

  Jane hesitated. “I’ll think of something.”

  “Yes, Missus. I don’t like to think about ’er—Miss Coffin, I mean.”

  “Nor do I, Bessie.” Jane turned from the window and touched Bessie’s cheek sympathetically. Thus, neither woman saw Belinda cautiously opening the front door below for a peek or the carriage circling back and drawing up to the front of the house.

  Down House

  The naturalist and the policemen paced round the Sandwalk as they talked, their hands thrust deep into coat pockets. “What’s all this about the Prince, Inspector?”

  “Did you know, sir, that you were to have been knighted last year, but your name was struck from the list?”

  “I had heard a rumor to that effect.”

  “The Prince is a great admirer of your work. There are those who believe if Albert were out of the picture, so to speak, it might help ensure your name will not appear on this year’s Honors List, nor ever again.”

  “Ah.”

  “Is it possible, sir,” said the inspector as they crunched on over the gravel, “that a man could have a tail?”

  Both Darwin and Llewellyn looked at Field in surprise.

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Yes, it’s possible. You had a tail once, and so did I. Every human embryo displays a vestigial tail for a few weeks, but it disappears before birth. We don’t have the need for a tail as we used to do. Mr. Field, I don’t believe you ask this out of idle curiosity.”

  “It always disappears?”

  “Almost always. There are extremely rare instances of humans born full term with a tail-like appendage, as much as five or six inches long. Of course, many vestigial organs are not rare at all but quite common, even universal. Your appendix is one. Wisdom teeth. Gooseflesh. Male nipples. We seem to be made of bits and pieces of who we used to be.”

  “Is that so? Mr. Charles Dickens once said much the same to me.”

  “Indeed?”

  “But I believe he was talking about the state we’re pleased to call childhood.” The inspector’s brow furrowed and he stopped in his tracks. “Very well, let’s say it’s me, then,” he said softly.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Darwin, but Llewellyn put a finger to his lips.

  “One moment, sir,” whispered the constable. “Sorry, sir.”

  “It’s me born with a tail,” continued Field as he started to walk again. “Different from all others, right from the start. Different in a nasty sort of way. Does anyone not wrinkle their nose at me, growing up? Draw back, gasp in horror or mere distaste? My siblings, my mates, if I have any? My own mother? And then, as I grow older, well, I don’t like the ladies seeing what I got down there, do I? Not much. But I want the ladies, nevertheless, I got the urge, like anyone else.”

  Darwin watched, fascinated, as the color rose to Field’s face and his breathing changed.

  “Makes me angry to feel it, the urge. Just to think of it makes me angry, come to that. Enraged actually. Bloody murderous. And then out comes this blighter’s damned book and it’s saying because of that thing at the bottom of my spine, I’m not even a man!” He was shouting now. “That’s insult to injury, that is!”

  Field stopped again. He clutched his knees and took several deep breaths. “Right,” he said with a skewed smile,
standing upright again. “That’s all well and good, Mr. Bucket, but it don’t help us know the man’s next move, does it.”

  “Charles!”

  The men turned to see Emma Darwin hurrying toward them, coatless, along the Sandwalk.

  “Oh, dear,” said Darwin. “I forgot all about our tea. We’re just on our way, darling!”

  She was half-running now, one hand over her mouth.

  “Emma, what’s wrong?”

  She thrust out a small package as she reached them. “What is this? The postman just brought it. It’s vile. It’s someone’s ear!”

  Field quickly took the parcel and Darwin embraced his wife as she began to sob.

  “Sam,” said the inspector quietly, “the postmark is Dover. He’s on his way.”

  London

  Field gave Llewellyn his newly purchased pistol and left him to protect the Darwins, ordering him to join him in London as soon as replacements could take his place. The inspector himself made it to town as a cold, slanting rain began to fall. He went directly to headquarters and briefed Commissioner Mayne, offering him three severed ears as evidence. Descriptions of Decimus Cobb were sent by telegraph to the police in Dover and to the coaching inns from there to London. Plainclothes police were dispatched to Orpington via train and coach, each instructed to look for a tall blond man with striking deep-set eyes. The royal family was at Windsor; Field sent a vaguely worded telegram alerting Colonel Ponsonby, who responded confidentially that the Prince was on the road after paying a visit to his eldest son at Cambridge to chide him for certain unspecified indiscretions.

  Just as Field was leaving Mayne’s office, a message was put in his hands. A moment later he was running down the stairs and out onto the street. A hackney coach carried him in a freezing drizzle to Bow Street where he found his wife in an agitated state and Bessie chewing her apron.

  “I’ve searched the house from top to bottom,” said Jane. “Belinda is gone.”

  “What? Is that all? Your note said it was urgent!”

  “She’s been taken, Mr. Field!”

  “No, she hasn’t, she’s run off! Belinda is a street girl, you can’t change her ways in a day!”

  “Listen to me, Charles. A woman called, asking after Mrs. Andrews—you know, that called herself Coffin?”

  “Yes?”

  “When the woman went away, Belinda was missing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “This was on the hall table,” said Jane, giving him a note.

  What have you done with Mother?

  The handwriting was unmistakable: the inspector had just seen three samples of it at Darwin’s home.

  “It was a woman, you say?”

  Jane nodded. Field thought for a moment, then looked keenly into his wife’s eyes.

  “Mrs. Field, did something happen with Mrs. Andrews that I don’t know about?”

  “She died.”

  “Ah. How?”

  “Bled.”

  “How?”

  “Throat cut.”

  “I see.” He nodded and took a deep breath. “By whom?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “My dear . . .”

  “Mrs. Ginty did it.” Tears coursed down her face. “With my help.”

  “What did you do with Mrs. Andrews?”

  “Mr. Llewellyn gave her to the doctors at St. Bart’s.”

  “Did he now. He neglected to mention it. It was a woman who was inquiring, not a man? You’re certain of that?”

  “A woman with a veil!” said Bessie.

  Field stared at the note. It was an angry scrawl.

  “Right. I must go. Bolt the door behind me.”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Jane said, weeping. “We killed a woman, I did, nothing can ever change that, I knew it would be the end of everything for us, everything . . .”

  “Mrs. Field.” He took her in his arms. “Jane. I begin to feel that whatever happened here in this house may have diverted our man from his intended purposes. Which, in a way, helps me. It does.”

  Jane clung to him. He gently but firmly disengaged her. “Throw the bolt, Mrs. Field. Admit no one.”

  The wheels of the coach rattled over the slick paving stones. Field sat up beside the coachman despite the sleet, straining forward as if willing the carriage to go faster. He leapt down when they reached the market, ordering the driver to wait for him. The inspector ran along the rows of flower stalls, shouting as he ran.

  “Where’s Tom Ginty? I want Tom Ginty!”

  Mr. Bowers appeared in Field’s path. “That’s just it, Mr. Field—Tom’s gone off!”

  “Off where, off how?”

  “A young girl came and fetched him away.”

  “Was there a lady?”

  “No lady, just the little girl. She was that scared, Mr. Field. She said our Tom had to come, or a bad man was goin’ to do for you and Mrs. Field. Tom dropped his apron and went, just like that!”

  Field turned and ran back to his waiting cab.

  “No. 4 Half Moon Street, driver,” he said, climbing up to the perch. “Fly!”

  The damp cloth had come down over Tom’s mouth as soon as he climbed up into the lady’s carriage. He had struggled against the hand that held it there, staring into the eyes behind the veil, eyes he realized he knew all too well. Belinda, somewhere very close, erupted into screams.

  Tom swam down to a great depth.

  He came to the surface, coughing. All was dark. When he tried to sit he hit his head. He fell back and struggled to squeeze shut his sphincters. He knew this darkness. He had been here once before.

  It was near dark. The sleet had turned to snow. A lamplighter was moving his ladder up the quiet street, pole by pole. To Inspector Field, sitting in the coach outside, the house looked abandoned. The police had sealed the door with wooden boards that already were weathered. No ray of light penetrated the shuttered windows. The steps were thick with sodden leaves covered by a layer of snow; no one had put a foot there. He recalled Belinda saying there was another entrance at the back. Or was Field all wrong? Had Decimus not brought the children here?

  Then he’s on his way to Mr. Darwin with the children, and with God knows what horror in mind.

  The inspector put himself in Cobb’s place. Decimus, having survived his train wreck, likely would be severely injured, even disfigured. Ladies’ apparel and a veil could suit Cobb’s purposes when traveling. Decimus had placed his mother in the policeman’s own household as a spy. After months of silence he had to know that something was seriously wrong there. But then to discover a former member of his own menagerie living at Bow Street must have come as an unexpected blow to him. So, thought Field, the madman would gather up the remnants of his flock and seek revenge.

  Field turned to the coachman. “Can you let me have a jimmy and a light?”

  The nails on the boards covering the door came up with raw shrieks, one by one. On his third kick the door shattered messily. He was in.

  Peter Sims had accompanied the Prince on his journey to Cambridge and back. Now he helped Albert climb the stairs. The two men were wet to the skin, but Albert was feverish and trembling. Peter called for the Prince’s valet, who took in the situation at once and began shouting orders to the other servants. A roaring fire was built in His Highness’s bedroom. He was given brandy and put to bed. Minutes later the Queen hurried to his side, only to find him sitting at his desk in his robe, writing furiously.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Palmerston’s people will have us at war with the United States of America,” said the Prince, still writing. His voice was raspy and tense.

  “Stop. Immediately. You were ill even before you went on this misbegotten journey. Dr. Clark says you are to rest.”

  “My dear, did you hear me? The Americans—the legitimate ones—have taken one of our ships from the open sea and brought her into Boston Harbor in order to seize two of these rebels from the South.” He paused to catch his breath. His f
ace glistened. “The action was imprudent, certainly, but our response must not be. This communiqué I wish to amend, if only you will let me, is positively incendiary!”

  “Sir James says you must sleep. He says you were responding well to the regimen he had you on, the gruel and so forth, but not if you keep working at this pace. He’s assigned a nice young woman from the kitchens to be in charge of you. You will enjoy talking with her, she is quite imaginative.”

  “This message, Victoria, dispatched as written, with its brash condemnation of the United States government, will draw us into someone else’s civil war! Now, please, leave me in peace!”

  The Queen took a moment to maintain her composure. She went to Albert and put a hand to his forehead. He brushed it away and continued to write.

  “I shall never forgive Bertie for this,” she said. “It is he who has made you ill, all along of his degrading vices.”

  “There,” said Albert, putting down the quill. “Finished.” He started to rise, faltered, and sank down onto the chair again. “Cramps.”

  Victoria went to the door and told a servant to summon Dr. Clark.

  There was an odor of gas. Field set down the coachman’s lantern, unlit, beside the splintered door, but hung on to the crowbar. He peered into the gloom and listened. Was there a drumming sound? A pounding? Someone somewhere was singing in a high voice. As dim as it was, he could see splashes of wet on the staircase before him. He approached the steps cautiously and crouched to examine them. People had come from the kitchen below and climbed to the upper floors. Looking closely, he saw here and there a scuff of boot blacking on the front edges of the risers. A boot-wearing male had been dragged up the stairs, his heels hitting each step. Field sensed movement directly above him and saw the flash of a large kitchen knife coming down to his neck; his right hand shot up and caught the wrist that held it, all bone, the skin brittle and papery.

  “Don’t hurt!” squeaked the old woman.

  He stood and made out the emaciated features of Mrs. Hamlet. “I thought you was him come back!” she whispered. “He has come, you know!”