It might have been a time for celebration, but the evening mood at the Anchor Inn was far from boisterous. Milly Meredith and her guests, at Darwin’s request, had been permitted the use of a private room at the rear of the building. The loud, cheerful voices from the front parlor and the clatter of dishes in the kitchen only added to the feeling of restraint at the long table.
Richard Dunwell sat by the wall across from Kathleen. He had thoroughly bathed, so that no trace of graveyard stench clung to him, and he had scrubbed his blackened teeth to their usual white. Borrowed trousers and jacket from Jacob Pole were a little too long, covering his hands beyond the wrist. He seemed in no mood for food or speech, but sat with the basset hound Harvey at his feet, following Kathleen’s every move.
Darwin was next to him, facing Milly, with Jacob Pole beside Darwin at the end of the table and providing the principal interface with the kitchen. A steady supply of food and drink appeared according to Pole’s command, the bulk of it despatched by Darwin alone, who had recovered his spirits and seemed exempt from the subdued, uneasy air that possessed the others.
“I saw, but did not understand,” he said. “When ‘Jack Trelawney’ appeared on the scene I noticed at once his yellow fingertips and nails. I assumed they were stained from habitual use of tobacco. But there was never a sign of a pipe, and he neither smoked nor chewed.” He turned to Dunwell. “According to the servants at Dunwell Hall, you spent many hours alone engaged in strange pastimes. You had eccentric friends and visitors from the Continent, and dabbled in ‘black arts.’ Now what, to a servant, is blacker art than alchemy? Those are acid stains on your fingers, are they not?—the result of alchemic experiments.”
Richard Dunwell nodded. “Performed also during my time in France, and again here. Contact with muriatic acid, and slow to fade.”
“I have seen them a dozen times on the fingers of our friend, Mr. Priestley.” Darwin shook his head in self-criticism. “They should have told me everything. But instead of using my brain to explain the phantom, I went off along a false scent of drugged food and drink.”
Millicent Meredith had been gazing at Darwin admiringly, but now she caught Jacob Pole’s eye. He grinned at her in an irritating way. “I know, Milly. I’ve been through it myself with Erasmus a hundred times.” He turned to Darwin. “I’m sure that you and Richard think you are being as clear as day, but I have to tell you that for people like Milly and me, it’s all a darkness. Short words and simple, ’Rasmus, and quick. I did exactly what I was told to do when I was driving the coach, so I know who was the phantom—it was Richard—but for the life of me I still don’t know how was the phantom.”
Milly nodded vigorously. “That’s my question. How could he walk through the walls of a coach, and never once be seen?”
Darwin raised an eyebrow at Richard Dunwell, who nodded. “Not walk, but float. For the phantom was no more than thin air. In Paris, the celebrated Monsieur Lavoisier showed it to me: a gas, simply prepared, with a faint, sweet smell, which at first renders a person cheerful, and then quickly insensible. That is what you released into the cabriolet, Colonel Pole, when Brandon and Kathleen were within it. I had experimented—on myself—and learned that it is safe to use for short periods. Once the occupants of the coach were asleep, anyone had a good five minutes after opening the door before the fresh air awakened the passengers.”
“And again, I had evidence placed before my face—and ignored it.” Darwin scowled, placed a whole brandied plum in his mouth, and struggled to speak around it. “Second robbery—downpour of rain. Passengers wet. But coach not leaky—saw that for myself. So someone been inside. If passengers don’t see, they must be asleep.”
“But why robberies?” Milly seemed as confused as ever. “Surely, Richard, you didn’t come all the way from France to rob your own relatives? Suppose you had been caught?”
“Caught, stealing that which was in justice already his?” Kathleen spoke for the first time, color touching her high cheekbones. “He had every right to take—”
“No, Katie.” Richard Dunwell squeezed her hand, and at the pressure and his look she fell silent. “I did in truth steal, simply because I needed money to stay. When I came here I had intended a brief visit, only to look at you once again and confirm that all was well. Your face told me that it was not. And when I saw Brandon, and watched his walk, I knew at that point I could not leave.”
“Brandon’s walk?” Milly Meredith gave Darwin one startled look of comprehension. “Happiness and health—”
He nodded his head gravely. “Kathleen is doubly lucky—triply lucky. She has avoided a disastrous union, and will marry a healthy and an honest man.”
“Honest enough.” Pole snapped his fingers and turned to Richard Dunwell. “But not totally honest. Come on, Richard, admit it. You persuaded young Georgie at the coach house to lie for you. He said that you had been driving the coach from St. Austell to Dunwell Cove for a long time, which convinced me that you at least could not be the phantom.”
Dunwell frowned back at him. “Georgie said that? I cannot explain his statement. I told you, I came to England little more than two months ago, when I heard word of a possible wedding. And I said nothing to Georgie.”
“You mean that he was lying?”
“Not so, Jacob.” Darwin had eaten everything in sight. Now he was sitting back contentedly and ogling Milly Meredith, not at all to her displeasure. “For a while I was as puzzled as you by Georgie’s duplicity. Then I realized that he was not lying. He was telling the exact truth—as he perceived it.”
Darwin pointed down below the table, to where the basset hound was blissfully licking Richard Dunwell’s hand. “For to a ten-year-old boy, or to a dog—are not two months an eternity?”
THE LAMBETH IMMORTAL
The morning had threatened rain and it was finally arriving. At the first warm drops the old horse whinnied protestingly and distended her nostrils. She lowered her head and walked on steadily through the darkened summer morning, pulling the sulky easily behind her.
“I told you, Erasmus.” Jacob Pole turned and looked at his companion triumphantly. “I knew in my guts we’d have rain after that east wind last night.”
Darwin, squeezed in beside him, pulled a brass-bound instrument from the side box of the coach and looked at it gloomily. “This still shows a setting for fair.”
“Aye, and it will, while we get soaked. I’ll back my old bones over that fancy new contrivance of yours every day of the week.”
“I begin to think you may be right.” Darwin looked up at the clouds, pouted his full lips, and shook his head. “Yet my barometer is based on sound scientific principles, whereas the behavior of your joints remains one of life’s mysteries. I am wondering now if the lessons I learned at Lichfield must be studied anew in East Anglia. Perhaps this must be somehow reset to local values.”
He poked at the barometer thoughtfully with a stubby finger, ignoring the rivulet of water that was beginning to stream from his broad-brimmed felt hat. Jacob Pole looked at it skeptically.
“I wish you could reset me along with it. Rain brings me the same aches and pains whether I am in Lichfield or Calcutta. If we had waited at the inn for an hour or two, as I suggested, we’d be snug and dry now and tapping a bottle of good port wine.”