Charles Sheffield - The Amazing Dr. Darwin

Darwin comforted himself with the thought that a fortnight was not much time for Jacob to hold the fort, no matter how long it might seem to him.

On the other hand, if Helen Solborne were to die…

Darwin longed for a report from a man with his own keen diagnostic eye for medical matters. Jacob had not been pressed into service, he had gone willingly enough, but he could no more read the facies of impending death or disease than he could swim unaided from Dorset to the coast of France. How sick was Helen Solborne? She’s an attractive little woman, and she said hello to me polite enough. But Solborne is right, a lot of the time she doesn’t seem to be all there. And Lord knows what she’s talking about the rest of the time. Two days ago she asked me if I knew of some Italian type called Fibonacci, and his successions. I asked her if he was that Italian general who’d fought against Austria in the War of the Polish Succession, and she laughed like I’d made the biggest joke in the world and said that Fibonacci had been a good deal earlier and a much greater man, and when she said successions she meant sequences. That was one of our better conversations. Afterwards, Tom said she’d been talking about her mathematics. God help the man who marries her…

Helen Solborne did not sound like an easy dupe—or an easy subject for her brother’s control. Darwin glanced down to the letter sitting on his knee. He had read it often enough to be sure that the information he sought would not be found there. Jacob was too full of his own opinions and interests to serve as impartial observer.

… looks of a starved Spaniard, or maybe a Portugee, though his accent says Hungary or even farther south and east. Either way, I’d bet money that his original name isn’t Riker. I followed him into Dorchester and watched him wander until he found a shop that suited him. He ordered a ton of food and spices delivered to that house he rents, most of it foreign muck as bad as any I’ve seen in Egypt or the Indies. No wonder he’s thin as a rail. He probably eats like a cormorant, but I’ll wager the stuff goes right through him. And the amount of it! You’d be hard pressed to put away all he ordered, ’Rasmus, and you’d make two of him in size.

Two of him in size . Darwin leaned his head back on the stuffed leather of the coach seat, eyes closed but deep in thought. They were skirting the chalky slopes of the Western Downs, rumbling down to Dorchester and Weymouth. Portland was a couple of hours away. The tempering effect of the English Channel could already be felt in the milder air.

Darwin turned to another page of Pole’s letter.

Jacob might not be the best judge of exotic foreigners or of talented young women, but he had other strengths. He evaluated terrain and landscape with the practical eye of a soldier and the methodical approach of a first-rate artillery engineer.

The west side of the Portland peninsula, where Newlands stands, is actually a continuation of a curious feature of the mainland known as Chesil Bank . The bank is a shingle beach that runs offshore of the mainland all its length, eight miles and more. A body of water called ‘The Fleet’ runs between bank and mainland. On the peninsula, however, the bank comes ashore, rises higher, and is more than thirty feet above the sea by the time it reaches Newlands. And Newlands is built on top of that bank. Tom Solborne said that the high window of the south tower was forty feet up. But that’s from ground level. Add in the height of the bank, and the window is more like seventy feet above the water. I checked the wall beneath. It has smooth facings of white freestone. The only way to get in that window would be to fly in, unless a man could run up the sheer wall like a human spider. You can also dismiss the idea of Helen Solborne, like Rapunzel, lowering a rope down to a waiting lover. He would have to be sitting in a boat and he’d get only one grab—the tide runs fast along this part of the shore. Next I examined the door locks. They are padlocks, simple enough for someone with experience. I, for my sins, had them open in a half a minute, without a key. However, the locks cannot be reached from inside the tower. The only other possibility would seem to be an accomplice, opening the lock from outside. In the next day or two I therefore propose an all-night vigil outside the south tower. It’s not as cold here as in Birmingham or Derby, but there’s a dampness that blows in from the sea. Bring plenty of your pills and nostrums with you—I’ll likely need them for my creaking bones.

From habit, Darwin patted the medical chest at his side. He might indeed need the contents for Jacob Pole, using them to treat the colonel’s agues from tropical service; he was more and more convinced that any standard pharmacopeia would be useless in dealing with Helen Solborne.

Thomas Solborne was waiting as the coach rattled up the Newlands gravel drive.

“Quickly now,” he said, helping Darwin down the double step. “There will never be a better time. What delayed you?”

The sun was setting, and a thick fog was creeping in from the sea.

“Broken traces, just beyond Wyke Regis.” Darwin was already surveying the house and shoreline. “Where is Colonel Pole?”

Solborne pointed to a narrow road leading to the left. “Helen went for her afternoon walk and rendezvous. Jacob again agreed to follow her—discreetly—while I waited for you.”

“What is her condition?”

“Deteriorating, at least to my eye. But Helen is of indomitable will. She admits only to a slight fatigue. Let us hurry. We have perhaps twenty minutes.”

He led the way through the double doors at the front of the house. The entrance hall was long and wide, furnished with massive oriental standing vases and gloomy suits of old armor.

Darwin peered down at the polished floor. “Purbeck marble? I have never seen it before except in churches.”

“It is mined locally. It is beautiful, wears forever—and is diabolically cold in winter. Were it not for Helen’s strong views and preferences, I would cover everything with carpets.”

Solborne was walking to the left, where a long curved staircase led upward to the next level. Darwin, still motionless in the entrance, saw an identical stair at the other end. He was forming in his mind a picture of the house layout and dimensions. Beyond the stairs must lie another room, and then the towers.

“Newlands was built with a high degree of symmetry.” Solborne had turned, aware that Darwin was not following. “The north and south ends of the main building form a matched pair. But it is better if you see the tower containing Helen’s suite of rooms.”

“It is best if I see everything .” Darwin, moving after the other man, ran his hand along the smooth curve of the banister. It was polished and free of dust.

The staircase brought them to an antechamber with two doors. One, open, led to a dining room, thirty-five feet long and with a log fire blazing on the seaward side. A huge table of gleaming mahogany and eighteen chairs dominated the middle of the room. The other door of the antechamber was closed. Solborne opened it without knocking and went through.

“Joan Rowland’s bedroom.” He pointed to the left, where still another door stood ajar. “Joan spends every night here.”

“What is her relationship to Helen?”

“I thought of that also. It is respectful, but not close. There is no way that Joan would jeopardize her future at Newlands by serving as Helen’s accomplice.” Solborne was at a door in a blank wall of white stone, no more than five feet away from Joan Rowland’s room. “And this provides the only inside entrance to the south tower.”