Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 1, January 2003

The Demon of E Staircase by Charles Sheffield

After the thunderstorm of the previous evening the skies had cleared. The passengers on the coach were riding aloft until the interior, which despite all efforts had admitted rivulets during last night’s torrent, dried out.

The two men provided an odd contrast. The thin one huddled inside a greatcoat and shivered slightly in spite of the warm June morning. The fat man by his side, also in his middle forties, bounced in his seat like a child and leaned forward as the coach approached the crest of each hill, seeking spires amid the gentle rise and fall of the East Anglian landscape.

“Close to twenty-five years since I first came here, Jacob,” he said. “A man changes a great deal in a quarter of a century. Yet would you believe it, I still feel the nervousness of a young lad within my belly? Though the feeling is, to be sure, a good deal less.”

“While the belly, Erasmus, is to be sure a good deal more.” Jacob Pole leaned forward a little, caught by his companion’s eagerness to see the town ahead. “Is it Cambridge that excites you, or is it the prospect of the exhibition and lecture?”

Erasmus Darwin smiled, revealing the absence of front teeth. “No doubt it is b-both.” As often when he was at ease, his voice had a slight stammer. “If rumors are correct, our good captain has returned a host of novel plant and animal forms from his voyage to the Pacific, and greater marvels yet from the vast terra incognita in the far south. Who would not be excited?”

“I perhaps less than you.” Pole, satisfied that their destination still lay some distance ahead, leaned back in his seat and nestled down again inside his thick coat. “I sailed the South Seas more than once, seeking my own variety of novelties, but what I brought back was less than marvelous.”

Darwin had at breakfast caught the slight tremor in the other man’s hands and read its meaning. He patted the wooden chest sitting at his side. “I have Jesuits’ bark here, should you feel the need for it.”

Jacob Pole shook his head. “This is no more than a minor fit, brought on by the cold and damp of last night’s storm. Give me time and warmth and I will be good as new. But what of your friend who waits for us? The storm delayed us, and we are already late. Are you not uneasy, imposing so on his time and hospitality?”

Darwin was pleased at the change of subject. There was no point in voicing his own fears, that his companion’s worldwide quest for treasure had permanently damaged his health and would doom him to an untimely death. “Be we late or be we early, you need have no worries about our reception by Collie Wentworth. Twenty-three years ago, when we were both undergraduates, he became convinced that I had saved his life.”

“And had you?”

“I doubt it. He had been drinking when I pulled him from the river, but others were about. Had it not been me, it would have been someone else.”

“And his gratitude continues yet?”

“It is more than that. Collie is the kindliest and best-natured of mortals. Permit him his pipe and his glass, and he will wait if we are late a full day, and never say a word against any man.”

Jacob Pole nodded, and the two lapsed into the silence of comfortable familiarity, the only sound the steady clip-clop of the horses’ hooves and the tuneless whistling of the coach driver on his seat a few feet below. They came to and breasted a final long hill, descended until they crossed the old stone bridge over the River Cam, and turned right into St. John’s Street. The great gates of the college were closed. Darwin, nimble for a man of his bulk, swung down from the coach’s upper level and gave Pole a helping hand.

He stared up at the carved decorations above the double doors. “Ah, they carry me back. But it is odd to find the main gates closed at this time of day. Come on.”

Leaving the coachman to transport their bags to the courtyard, he led Jacob Pole through the narrow inset door and into the stone forecourt beside the Porter’s Lodge. There Darwin again stood frowning about him in perplexity.

“Wentworth’s message said that he would be waiting here to meet us at noon, which is already passed. I see no sign of him, which is not perhaps surprising if he is eating lunch. But, much stranger, there is no one in the Porter’s Lodge.” He walked forward and stared around the open rectangle of First Court, with its precise squares of close-clipped green lawn. “Or, for that matter, anywhere else. At this time of year one expects few students — but not a college deserted. In my years of study here, I never saw this court so empty of people.”

An archway at the end of First Court led to Second Court, with Third Court beyond it and then the river. Darwin again moved forward, into a passageway with the dining hall on the right and the kitchen and buttery on the left. As though confident of what he would find, he turned into the buttery. Sure enough, four men were seated at one of the rough wooden tables, full glasses in front of them and a round covered dish on the table end. They sat close, heads together and talking earnestly.

“No need to stand up.” Darwin waved a fleshy hand. “We are seeking Mr. Wentworth, a Senior Fellow of this college. He was to meet us by the front gate, but he was not there and the court seemed... unusually empty.”

Despite the invitation to remain seated, the four men shot to their feet.

“Excuse me, sirs.” The only one of the four not wearing a striped apron took a step forward. “You came to see Mr. Wentworth, you say. May I tell him your name?”

“I am Erasmus Darwin. My companion is Colonel Jacob Pole. As I said, he is expecting us.”

“Very good, sir. I will inform him.” The man headed for the door, but hesitated there. “Things at the college today are, as you might say, not usual. Begging your pardon, sirs, but would you be good enough to remain here in the buttery until I return with Mr. Wentworth? I’ll be quick as I can.” He turned as he went out. “George, hospitality for these gentlemen.”

“Yes, yes.” A man with a girth to rival Darwin’s stepped forward. “Beer, sirs, or cider?”

“Apple juice, unfermented, for me. Jacob?”

“The same will do.” Pole watched as all three men hurried away into the room beyond the buttery. “Erasmus, what the blazes is this? We come for a talk about empty places on the map and instead we find an empty college.”

“I do not know. But whatever is going on, we won’t hear it from these men.”

“How do you know?”

“For one thing, they are not students, but college servants. They should not be drinking in the college buttery. For another, look at their faces — but say nothing.”

The three men were returning. One carried a metal jug and two pewter tankards, the others each bore a covered dish. They laid them down, gave nods that were almost bows, and hurried out without a word.

“Fear?” asked Pole.

“To the point of terror.” Darwin removed the lids from the dishes and grunted approval at what he saw. “Veal pie and game pie. We will not starve, even though it take a while to locate Wentworth. But fear it was, mortal fear. Did you not see them start when we entered and I spoke? It was as though you had put a sword through each of them.”

Pole poured apple juice, cool from cellar storage, and drank deep. He sighed in satisfaction, laid down the tankard, and said, “I’ve had many remarks about my appearance, but never that it would frighten grown men. What’s your explanation?”

“I have none.” Darwin removed a knife from his coat, cut a substantial wedge of game pie, and sniffed it. “Excellent.” He took a bite and said in muffled tones, “Explanations without facts are like fears in the nighttime. They seldom withstand the first rays of light.”

He was still chewing that first mouthful when the half-door to the buttery swung open. The man who hurried in was about Darwin’s age, a one-time redhead whose faded fringe was covered with a powdered wig. His face was pale, the eyes reddened by fatigue.

“Collie Wentworth.” Darwin swallowed, stood up, and clapped the newcomer on the shoulder. “And what a reception to give me after all these years — gates closed, Porter’s Lodge empty, quadrangles deserted.”

His tone was cheerful, but his eyes were evaluating the other man. His next words held a different tone. “Bad news, Collie? If we were better at an inn in the hours before the Cook Expedition lecture and exhibit, you have but to say the word.”

Wentworth glanced at Pole, who had so far not spoken.

“An official introduction,” Darwin said at once. “Driscoll Wentworth, Colonel Jacob Pole.”

Pole bowed. “At your service.”

“And what you say before him, Collie,” Darwin went on, “will never go farther. My word on it.”

Wentworth nodded. “That is appreciated. However, your word on something else is what I need. First, I have unwelcome news for you. The Cook Expedition lecture is postponed, delayed by the same storm that slowed your coming. I will confess to you, today I have given little thought to that or to your own impending arrival, much as it was earlier anticipated. However, your presence may be most opportune. Your reputation as the first physician in Europe is well deserved, and you are the most rational man that I know. Would you offer an opinion on an event within this college?”

“You have sickness here?” Darwin’s pudgy face came alight with interest.

Wentworth shook his head. “Worse than that. We have death. Early this morning, of Dr. Elias Barton.”

“Elias Charles Barton?”

“The same.”

“I am sorry to hear of it. I knew him, Collie. Not well, for he arrived in ’55, the year that I took the M.B. He already had a reputation for brilliance and erudition.”

“Brilliance and erudition, those I will admit.” Wentworth’s face took on a curious expression of distaste. “Though the ends to which they are put is perhaps more important than their degree.”

Pole’s raised eyebrow at Darwin spoke paragraphs. The kindliest and best-intentioned of men, who thinks well of everybody? Not when it comes to Elias Barton.

Darwin said only, “And now it is former brilliance. Collie, medical knowledge can do nothing for a dead man.”

“It can perhaps do one thing, which is to confirm the cause of his death. There is dispute in this college concerning the nature and manner of that event. The circumstances are as follows. Late last night—”

“With your indulgence.” Darwin held up his hand. “Are the mortal remains of Dr. Elias Barton here in the college?”

“They are. For want of a better temporary resting place, we placed his body in his rooms, at E Staircase in Third Court.”

“Then I would rather examine the body before hearing the circumstances of his death. An opinion without bias is more easily arrived at when the mind is unclouded by collateral information.”

Wentworth frowned. “As you wish.”

He led the way through the grandeur of Second Court. His face held its frown and he did not speak again. The silence allowed the walkers to note the faint sound of wind and to speculate on another change in the weather. Clouds were returning overhead, while a heaviness in the air suggested a respite from, rather than an end to, the violence of last night’s storm.

Third Court was less imposing than Second and backed onto the Cam River. Wentworth took his guests to the far left-hand corner, where a narrow passage gave access to Kitchen Lane and the Wren Bridge. Here, however, he turned into a stairway just before the opening to Kitchen Lane. He unlocked the heavy oak door on the left that led to a ground floor set of rooms, motioning Darwin to enter but saying to Jacob Pole, “It is not a pleasant sight. If you would prefer to remain outside...”

Pole grunted. “Appreciated. But to find worse than I have seen in battle, we would have to be wading in blood before we came to the doorstep.”

He followed Darwin into an elaborately furnished room about fourteen feet square. The left-hand wall held three narrow windows, with a large oak desk set by the middle one. Although it was clearly designed as a study, the far wall being all bookcases, columns had been added to the other walls in the form of caryatids, carved and painted women whose eyes seemed to follow anyone about the room.

Wentworth shrugged as he saw what the others were looking at. “A distasteful preference, but done all at Barton’s own expense. He kept this set of rooms throughout his whole time in college, declining larger sets, and employed skilled artisans from several different parts of the country to perform his work. Since he was certainly not detracting from the value of the rooms, he was permitted his whim.”

Darwin nodded absently. He had paused on the threshold and was sniffing the air. He did not long pause there but continued into the bedroom, where a still form covered with a sheet lay on a wide bed adorned with a carved wooden head and foot. No one, seeing his earlier bantering with Jacob Pole on the coach, would have recognized the man, coldly serious and absorbed, who removed the sheet and bent over the body.

“His clothes are wet.” He spoke as though to himself. “But we lack the facies of drowning. This body was broken — at feet and ankles, and much above. Tibia and fibula, femur and pelvis, all smashed. Spine and ribs shattered. Elias Barton suffered a long fall onto rock or stone.”

Wentworth started to say, “That is exactly what—” but Darwin held up his hand.

“Not yet, Collie. Detail is the heart of diagnosis, and I am not yet finished.”

He bent again over the body, now baring the torso and examining the chest, shoulders, and upper and lower arms, especially the hands. He turned these over to inspect the palms and the fingers and moved at last to the head. He rolled back an eyelid with his thumb and peered hard at the sightless orb behind it. He grunted, then pried open the mouth to examine the lips, teeth, and tongue.

“Erasmus, is this necessary? Surely you have already—”

“Now I have.” Darwin replaced the sheet over the body, returned to the study, and plumped down hard on the only comfortable chair. There he sat motionless, a vacant expression on his fat face, until at last Wentworth glanced across at Jacob Pole, who nodded and said, “Well, ’Rasmus? Are you going to offer an opinion, or do you propose to take a nap there?”

“Eh?” Darwin looked up.

“The death of Dr. Elias Barton.”

“Oh, it is as I said. He slipped from some high place, and the impact with the ground killed him. That is clear enough. That his clothes are damp is no mystery, if he fell last night before or during that torrential rain. It all fits. Yet there is... something...” He again stared vacantly across the room, to the open windows at the far side.

“You say he fell.” Wentworth spoke the last word with unusual emphasis. “He was not, you think, picked up and thrown?”

If Darwin was surprised by the question, he chose not to show it. He shook his head. “Strictly speaking, one cannot rule out the possibility. However, I judge it unlikely. From the nature of the injuries the body landed erect, as though during the fall he had struggled to land feet first. The lower body is horribly injured, so if someone held him by the legs and threw him down, any evidence there would of course be undetectable. On the other hand, there are no bruises on arms or shoulders consistent with violent gripping, which would surely have been necessary, if one were to overpower and hurl to his death a struggling victim. Finally, I find no head wounds to suggest that Elias Barton was knocked unconscious prior to his fall. He fell, he was not thrown. And he was alive — also, I surmise, awake and aware — until the moment of impact.”

Darwin stared at Wentworth. “I suspect that my comments in no way surprise you.”

“In truth, they do not, although in thoroughness of detail they go beyond the information offered by Dr. Arbuthnot, the physician who first examined the body. However, his conclusion, although more summary, was in essence no different from yours.”

“On the other hand, from your expression neither of our efforts is satisfying to you.”

“I cannot deny that your conclusion disturbs me, although the Master of St. John’s has already made his official announcement, that Elias Barton was unfortunate enough to fall from a high window and kill himself. An accidental death, with no room for doubt. However, will you permit one more call upon your time and attention?”

“The Cook Expedition lecture is, you said, postponed. My time today is yours.”

“Then pray follow me.”

Wentworth led them out of the rooms, but not, as Darwin and Pole had perhaps expected, taking the right turn back into Third Court. Instead he went left and up, ascending a dark, steep stairway with deep treads and tight right-hand turns. They went up and up, until by the fortieth step Pole was cursing and only lack of wind prevented Darwin from joining in.

“Where the devil are you taking us?” Pole halted, his hand on his side. “Up to heaven?”

“Or perhaps to hell.” Wentworth had reached his destination, a narrow door of dark oak, and was waiting for them there. “We are at the top floor, almost at the roof. This room is not occupied during the summer, so the door is never locked. It was not locked yesterday.”

He led them through a doorway small enough that Jacob Pole banged his head on the way in. The single room beyond, substantial in size but far less grand than Elias Barton’s quarters, had windows on three sides. Wentworth urged his companions across to the left, to a single oval window with a chest-high sill.

“Look over, if you can.”

Pole was the only one tall enough. He craned forward. “The river. A sheer drop. But a hard climb to get up to that sill.”

“Elias Barton could have done it. He did not.” Wentworth moved left, to a wall with two narrow windows. “Here, as you see, it is much easier to climb out of the window onto the gutter, and only a foot-high parapet stands between a man and a sheer drop to the cobblestones of Third Court. In the dark, in last night’s bad weather, anyone might slip and fall. But Elias Barton did not take that option, either. He fell from here, down to his death in Kitchen Lane.”

The third window was open. Darwin and Pole approached it cautiously until they could actually see what lay beyond. Then Pole snorted in disbelief. “From here? Why, man, your friend Barton would have to be twelve feet tall to slip over that — the protecting wall would come up to my waist.”

“Which is exactly what I said to John Chevallier, the Master of the College. Regardless of what Elias Barton was doing last night, by no stretch of the imagination could he have ‘slipped’ to his death from here. It would be necessary for him to climb deliberately out of the window, ascend to the top of the wall, and step out into space.”

“Which would make it suicide,” Darwin said quietly. “A prospect that I assume our good Master prefers not to face.”

“A prospect which he refuses absolutely to entertain. That conclusion would lead to other issues. At the very least there would be a question of burial in consecrated ground, and the investigation might not stop there. But the Master asserts — believe it if you will and if you can, although I certainly cannot — that a terrific gust of wind — and last night’s storm had many of those, no one can deny — lifted Elias Barton bodily over the parapet and dropped him to his death. For John Chevallier, any other explanation is anathema.”

Darwin was leaning out of the window, as far as his great belly would permit. He nodded. “Accidental death, even if it is the result of folly, leads to closure without recriminations. Whereas the alternatives...” He pulled back from the window. “Is the Master religious?”

“Almost unnaturally so.”

“So John Chevallier will do anything to save Barton from what he sees as the road to eternal damnation. Tell me, is this the only window from which Barton could have climbed, to land where he did?”

“All other high windows on this side of E Staircase were closed, because those rooms are not occupied. But this one was open then as it is open now, as the still-wet patch beneath it suggests. Any other window would imply at best an accomplice, at worst a murderer.”

“No other rooms at all were occupied, then, in this entire staircase? Isn’t that a rare situation?”

“Not in high summer. Also, not quite all rooms are unoccupied. I said, all high windows looking out over Kitchen Lane were closed, because those rooms are unoccupied. In fact, there is someone in the rooms on the next bend of the staircase above Elias Barton’s study.”

“But no one spoke to him?”

Wentworth’s face again took on a tight look of disapproval. “Indeed we did. His name is Thomas Selfridge. He is a young sizar, a second-year student of no great attainment. Barton was his tutor. His biggest fear seems to be that we will somehow conclude that he was involved in the death.”

“Are you sure that he was not?”

“I was suspicious, though for no sound reason. Talk to him yourself, should you wish — but do not ask permission from the Master. He would like the whole matter closed and forgotten.”

“I will speak to Selfridge. But there are others with whom I would like to talk first.”

“Erasmus, I never dreamed of putting you to such trouble. You came all the way from Lichfield; and you are in need of rest—”

Pole interrupted gruffly. “Don’t waste your breath on sympathy, Mr. Wentworth. Look at that face. Can’t you see that Erasmus eats mystery with the same gusto as he eats his dinner?”

He turned to Darwin. “Where now, ’Rasmus? Whose life do we make a misery now?”

“It has happened to me, too many times to count.” Darwin was following Wentworth to one corner of First Court. “I stop my sulky outside a house where there has been a report of infectious disease. I go to the front door and I knock. A servant answers and says — apologetically, in most cases, and with all honesty — ‘I am sorry, Dr. Darwin, but no one is home.’ Yet I observe, with my own eyes, half a dozen maids and footmen scuttling about at the far end of the hall! I say to him, ‘What then are those? The household sprites?’ and he gapes at me. It is one of the mysteries of our society. Servants go everywhere, and they see everything, but we often behave as though they do not exist.”

They were approaching the staircase. Wentworth stepped ahead. “Let me go first. I will emphasize to the College Butler the importance of full and complete cooperation.”

“Hold.” Darwin paused in mid-stride. “I must be getting old, Collie, or my brains are addled by a poor night’s sleep. This approach will not work. It cannot work. When the Master of St. John’s has himself defined the official position, no college servant will dare suggest anything else.”

“But it was you who suggested that the assistance of the college servants—”

“—is most desirable. It is. But this must be played differently. We must work outside the walls of the college, or we will learn nothing. Collie, do you know of an inn frequented by the college servants?”

“The Baron of Beef close by the Round Church and not fifty steps from the college front gate. The servants drink there, since they are forbidden to drink in college.”

“They drink, and then they talk, or they are like no serving folk I ever met. And I ask you, what will they be talking about today? Jacob, let’s be off. Not you, Collie. You are familiar to them and you will inhibit their gossip. Stay here, and when we return we will inform you of the outcome.”

“You are going to drink?”

“No.” Jacob Pole pulled a dark-brown briar pipe from his jacket. “Erasmus doesn’t drink. He claims that alcohol is an evil influence. So guess who has to do the drinking, while he sits and pretends to?”

“And the smoking. And guess who enjoys that, Collie, so long as he’s not paying? Come on, Jacob. This is going to take at least an hour or two. Get ready to open up that hollow leg.”

It required two rounds of drinks for everyone, and almost exactly one hour of time. In that period Darwin and Pole changed status from strangers to silent but interested and hospitable fellow drinkers.

The curiosity of the others helped. A third of the inn’s clientele were servants from next door Trinity College. They had heard rumors of something terrible that had happened at St. John’s the previous night, and they were all eager for details.

“Atop the college roof, he were.” The speaker was a lanky, dark-haired man with a flair for the dramatic. He stood up and raised his arms above his head. “With the wind ’owling ’round ’im, an’ the thunder crashin’ an’ the lightnin’ flashin’. An’ ’im calling down the Devil ’imself, to do ’is bidding.”

“Now where’d you get all that from, Joe Walker?” The speaker was not so much questioning as eager for lurid details. “We all ’eard ’e was out on the roof, but who gave you that Devil-worship stuff? Did yer just make it up?”

“I did not.” Walker was indignant. “I could ’ave told you that Dr. Barton was conjurin’ demons weeks ago, if you’d bothered to ask me. An’ that word didn’t come from me, neither.” He called on a short, bald-headed man for support. “Did it, ’Enry?”

“Joe’s quite right.” Henry swept the audience with a sinister squint. “Near a week back — six days, I know it were that because I recall it ’appened right at teatime on Wednesday. Simon Thorpe, ’e were bedmaker for E Staircase on Third Court and did Dr. Barton’s rooms, ’e come in the kitchen where me an’ Joe was cutting watercress, an’ ’e were white like a ghost. He swallowed a quart of beer down like it were nowt, an’ said that Dr. Barton were conjuring up demons in his room.”

“He saw it happen?” said a man sitting next to Jacob Pole.

“No, an’ lucky ’e didn’t, or that would have been the last of ’im. But ’e saw the smoke in the air, and ’e smelled fire and brimstone. Said it were like a whiff from the gates of ’ell.”

“An’ it ’appened again, two days ago.” Joe Walker felt that Henry had enjoyed long enough in the limelight. “That’s when Simon Thorpe told me, personal, that ’e were done. If the job meant workin’ Elias Barton’s rooms, with the chance of being dragged off to ’ell, ’e wasn’t ’aving no part of it. An’ ’e meant what he was saying because come yesterday morning Simon ran off. He never showed up for work, an’ I reckon as by now ’e’s t’other side of Huntingdon, an’ still goin’. An’ I say, good for ’im, otherwise ’e might have been up there on that roof when the Devil come down ’owlin’, an’ grabbed up Elias Barton, an’ dashed his brains out in Kitchen Lane.”

“I ’eard that t’Master of St. John’s says Barton slipped an’ fell. He weren’t thrown.” This was from one of the Trinity servants.

“Aye, you’ll ’ear that, an’ say it the Master did.” Joe Walker nodded. “But some time when you ’ave ten minutes to spare, Jack Piper, I’ll take you up on to that bit o’ roof of Third Court, and you can tell me if it’s a place a man could ever fall off.”

“Not take me up there you won’t. I’ll stay on ground.”

“Then you ’ave to trust my word on it, Elias Barton didn’t slip an’ fall, ’e thought ’e could call up the Devil, an’ win. But the spells ’e ’ad weren’t strong enough, and the Devil picked ’im up like ’e were a feather, right in the middle of the lightnin’ storm, an’ smashed ’im down to ’is doom.”

Walker spoke with huge relish, and there was a general mutter of agreement and awe. Jacob Pole nudged Erasmus Darwin and said softly, “There you have it. The word according to Joe Walker. Seems that everyone here buys it, too. But I’ll be damned if one way or another it does us a bit of good.”

Darwin had been sitting with his head tucked down on his chest. He roused himself and said, “Then damned you must be, Jacob. Because what we heard here is of the utmost importance and relevance. In fact, it is sufficient. We can depart. However, first let us buy another round for all present, so that we are perceived to leave in a state of grace.”

“I feel, Collie, like Buridan’s ass, drawn equally strongly toward two desires.” Darwin was sitting in Wentworth’s rooms on M Staircase in Second Court. The window was open, and gusty winds blew papers across the desk in front of it. Another storm was on the way.

“Except,” went on Darwin, “I am in rather worse plight than Buridan’s donkey. I am drawn not in two directions, but in three. First, I need to speak with Thomas Selfridge, the young student who has rooms above Elias Barton.”

“That should be simple enough. He is from the West Country, with no friends or relatives in Cambridge, and his reputation is of shyness and absorption in his studies. He seldom leaves his rooms, and today of all days I would expect to find him reclusive.”

“Then for the moment let us leave him there, preserved for our later attention. What of Dr. Arbuthnot? Will it be possible to converse with him?”

“Not for another hour. He keeps his practice in Sidney Street, a short walk from here. He was called in by the Master to examine Elias Barton because he is a graduate of the college, a frequent guest at High Table, and a man who can be relied on for discretion. However, he mentioned that should we need his services later, he would be taking lunch with a colleague at Corpus Christi.”

“Then our immediate options are reduced.” Darwin, reminded by Wentworth’s words that he and Jacob Pole had missed their own lunch, reached out to the tray on the table in front of them and picked up a slice of cold roast swan. His lack of front teeth made a challenge of biting into it, and he took the easier alternative of cramming the whole into his mouth. “Elias Barton and I knew each other,” he said indistinctly, “but only, as one might say, as ships in passing, and that more than twenty years ago. What manner of man was he, in intellect, in interests, and in spirit?”

Wentworth took his time before he answered. “He possessed an acute intelligence, that I will not deny. I never spent an evening next to him in Hall without feeling at the end that his was a mind more acute, more rapid, and more clear than my own. And I am not one to undervalue my own brains.”

“And his interests?”

“Diverse. His training was in history and the classical period, but he knew this university, and its leading minds, as well as anyone knows them.”

“In science, as much as in his own field?”

“Not to my knowledge. I would describe him as an interested observer of science and natural philosophy, rather than as a specialist. You seem surprised by that.”

Darwin had stopped chewing.

“I am. It is not the answer that I had expected, though I must wait until we meet with Dr. Arbuthnot before I can draw a conclusion. And Barton’s character? I notice that you have not spoken of that.”

Again Wentworth paused. “For good reason,” he said at last. “It is not my habit to speak ill of the dead, or to call into question a long-held good reputation. But what you heard in the tavern an hour ago did not arise full blown from the heads of college servants. For all his long tenure here, Elias Barton had certain eccentricities and... tendencies. As, for example, his refusal to change his rooms for larger ones when they were offered. But that is nothing. We all have our minor oddities. However, about a year ago Elias Barton changed his patterns of behavior.”

“How so?”

“He no longer took his meals in Hall, but always in his own rooms. He withdrew from social contact with other College Fellows. He ceased to give his usual course of lectures on significant intellectual trends of the past hundred years.”

“Did he not, as a lifetime College Fellow, have that option?”

“Of course. Yet it marked his increasing oddity. It would be easy to say that he became a recluse, but that would not suffice as a description. Since the beginning of this year I have seen him often, late at night, rambling alone around the quadrangles. Once I saw him pirouetting like a dervish on the Third Court lawn. As a graduate of this college he had, of course, a right to walk or dance on the grass if he so chose. Nonetheless, it is this kind of behavior that makes me — and not only me — suspect that Elias Barton’s death was in no way accidental. I believe, despite anything that the Master might desire and proclaim to the contrary, that a man whose reason was unhinged by overwork or unnatural practices deliberately took his own life. A brilliant mind can become deranged more easily than a simple one, without recourse to the Devil.”

“And the smell of smoke and brimstone, which so alarmed the bedmaker?”

“That I credit to imagination. The servants are a superstitious lot. In fact, there is more to the story than Joe Walker gave you. The bedmaker, Simon Thorpe, indeed complained of the aftertaste of deviltry in Barton’s rooms, and he left the college the night before last. Except that a gardener, Lambert Gray, who was working on the Third Court lawns, swore that he saw Simon Thorpe yesterday morning. Gray avers that Thorpe went into the doorway to E Staircase — and never came out.”

“That was not investigated?”

“Investigate what? Every room on the E Staircase of Third Court was thoroughly looked into this morning, even though most are unoccupied. As for Lambert Gray’s own reputation, he is an inveterate gossip and an idler, who sneaks off into Kitchen Lane to smoke a quiet pipe whenever he can. If he did not see Thorpe leave, it is because he was not in Third Court to see him leave. In any case, he came up with his story only this morning, after Elias Barton’s body had been discovered. I assign no significance to it, except to confirm the overheated imagination of college servants.”

“True. As Shakespeare says, at night most imagined bears are no more than bushes. However, occasionally one of them will prove to be a real bear.”

The clock on the mantelpiece sounded the hour, and Darwin glanced across at it. “Still too early, I judge, for Dr. Arbuthnot. May I then pay a visit to your sizar, Thomas Selfridge?”

“Certainly.”

“Alone, if you have no objection. If he is as shy as you say, numbers will work adversely on his willingness to talk.”

“My own feeling is that regardless of shyness he will offer you minimal cooperation. You should not be surprised if he is less than fully honest with you. However, you should do as you wish. Colonel Pole and I are situated comfortably.” Wentworth already held a bottle in his hand. “Tucked away in my little corner of England, I am always happy to hear of travels around the world. For treasure, Colonel, was it not? And you are hoping that James Cook’s discoveries in the southern continent will offer you scope for more success.”

“Better to say, scope for more failure. For I am forced to admit that all my travels, from Patagonia to Samarkand, have brought me five cases of fever and a thousand bug bites for every grain of gold.” Pole pulled his chair closer to Wentworth. “You have perhaps heard talk of Trapalanda, the lost city of the Caesars, in the High Andes of South America. Once I was given — no, let me be honest — sold, a map bearing on it the city’s supposed location. I set out with eight mules, and a year’s supply of provisions...”

Darwin left the room, light-footed and silent for such a big man. He knew how the story ended. Yet Jacob’s lust for treasure remained unquenched. As it should. An eager traveler derived more from life than one whose every goal had already been attained.

In twenty years of general medical practice around Lichfield, Darwin had been forced to deal with every type of patient. No fears could exceed those of a first-time mother, suffering the delivery of a breech baby in a farmer’s cottage in the dead of a Derbyshire winter, without adequate warmth or hot water.

Kindness, confidence, competence, and Darwin’s natural benevolence usually won the day. Yet even he had to admit that he was making little headway with Thomas Selfridge.

Darwin had read one major reason for Selfridge’s nervousness within the first thirty seconds of meeting, but he was convinced that there was more. The youth was pale and slim, with an uncombed shock of raven hair. He avoided Darwin’s eye, even when Darwin first introduced himself. He stood no more than five feet four inches — and he stood all the time, in spite of attempts to persuade him to sit down. Darwin himself perforce remained on his feet, asking about the logic and rhetoric courses that Selfridge had to take, and in which he was showing remarkably little interest. Finally, Darwin’s wandering brought him close enough to the desk under the window to examine the pages strewn across it.

He looked, and looked again. “I thought to see essays concerning the traditional studies. But here you appear to be working with the new fluxions.”

“Yes!” The dead voice suddenly came to life and gray eyes, clear and sparkling, met Darwin’s for the first time. “You know those methods?”

“I will claim familiarity, but not mastery. In my day here, a knowledge of the calculus was considered to be at the outer limit of human understanding. Yet I assume that it is the same as every area of human effort; there must have been progress in the past twenty years.”

“Enormous progress.” Thomas Selfridge so far forgot his nervousness as to come over to stand at Darwin’s side. “There is the Swiss genius, Monsieur Euler. I have written to him, and he to me. His new symbols, notation, and inspired analyses clarify the previously obscure and make possible vast new advances.”

“Beyond those of the immortal Isaac?”

“Beyond even Newton.” Selfridge went to the desk and picked up four sheets of paper. “Pray do not misunderstand me, Dr. Darwin. Sir Isaac remains the supreme scientific genius of this or any other era, and it is a mark of his unparalleled abilities that he was able to accomplish his feats without either the science of infinitesimals, or an easy or flexible notation. He made use of geometric tools so unwieldy that no other man could lift them, and still he accomplished miracles. But see here. This is Newton’s analysis of cometary motion, just as he developed it by geometric methods. And here — less than one-third the length — is my own proof of the same results, carried out with the aid of the calculus.”

“Impressive indeed.” Darwin examined both sets of pages carefully. “This first sheet appears to be very old. May I ask where you obtained what appear to be Sir Isaac Newton’s own notes?”

It was as though he had struck Selfridge in the face. The other flinched, turned pale, and took a step backward. He said nothing, until Darwin was at last forced to repeat, “Come, now, where? I have no thought to trick or trap you. You are a student, and clearly a most talented and dedicated one. But it is unusual for an undergraduate to be able to acquire such a page, even if it is only a fair copy, written in Sir Isaac’s own hand.”

Selfridge walked to the chair in front of his desk and sank down onto it as though his legs refused to support him. “I obtained it, and many others, from Dr. Barton,” he said in a weak, husky voice.

“I believe you. He was your tutor; it is entirely reasonable that he should assist you in your studies.”

“But I swear that I know nothing about his death.”

“It is about his life that I would like to ask you.”

“I know little.”

“More, perhaps, than you realize. For instance, you tell me that you obtained the Newton papers from Dr. Barton. Did he tell you how he came by them?”

“It was in a sense at my request. When first I came to St. John’s, close to two years ago, I knew no one. However, Dr. Barton was named as my tutor. I was assigned this room, just above his, and we spoke every week or two of the usual assignments of the undergraduate curriculum. In truth, those studies interested me little, and I performed indifferently well. But one day as I was leaving his tutorial he asked me what, given complete freedom, I would choose to study. I told him of my ambition, which I had formed when I was just sixteen years old; I wished to learn the most modern mathematical methods of analysis, now under development on the Continent, and make them a standard part of the English arsenal of analytical weapons. I am afraid that I was so presumptuous as to suggest that Cambridge, which I perceived as locked into the notation and notions of Newton, was in danger of becoming a backwater of mathematics.”

“Presumptuous indeed, to criticize Newton here, of all places, where he developed his great System of the World and wrote the Principia. But all advances begin life as some form of heresy. How did Elias Barton respond to you?”

“He laughed. He asked me if I had studied Newton’s works as Newton himself wrote them, and not in the contaminations and abridgements of lesser minds. And I was forced to concede that I had not. Such source materials were unavailable to me back home in Devon. I thought that was the end of the matter. But some months later, perhaps a year ago, Dr. Barton stopped me as I ascended to my room and said that he had something to show me. What you are holding formed a small part of it. It was works of Newton, written in the master’s own hand. Great as Newton was, Dr. Barton informed me, he was in the habit of making fair copies of his own and other people’s works.”

“Do you know how they were obtained?”

“Dr. Barton did not tell me. However, all agree that he was an outstanding archivist, with a knowledge of sources unmatched in this or any other college. He required that I first make a fair copy of every page that he gave me, and return the originals to him before I was permitted to study them. I did return them, in all cases but for a few sheets which happened already to be twice-copied by Newton himself. Dr. Barton assured me that some of the writings here are not to be found anywhere else.”

Darwin reared back, staring again at the sheet he was holding. “Then what Elias Barton had were new works by Isaac Newton?”

“So I was assured, at least for some of the pages.”

“They must be enormously valuable. Did it not seem implausible that Elias Barton would permit you to study them, month after month, and never seek to announce the discovery that he had made?”

“To be honest, I thought little of that. To have these, in my own hands, to study, to transform the results to modern guise, and to marvel at them — not much else entered my head. And Dr. Barton did say that all would be made known at the right time.”

“What time?”

“I cannot be certain. When, I think, certain activities of his own were completed.”

In his excitement, Selfridge’s tone had been rising higher and higher. Now, as though again suddenly self-conscious, he laid the papers back on his desk and said in a trembling voice, “I have committed no crime, have I? I surely intended none.”

“No crime known to me. Even if these papers were obtained by some irregular route — which I very much suspect — the offense was not with you but with Elias Barton. I wonder, though, why you were not more honest this morning, when you heard the news of his death and were asked if you had any connection with him.”

Suddenly the old Selfridge was back, a youth who would no longer look Darwin in the eye. “I had some connection with Dr. Barton in life, but I played no part in his death. Yet I felt sure that if ever I mentioned the papers that he had given to me, that would be the end.”

“Of your own studies and access to them? Perhaps you are right. For the moment, hold what you have. Study the work, and cherish it.”

“I will. I know of nothing more precious. I would protect these things with my life.”

“That will not, I trust, be necessary. Even if you were forced to give up the originals, you have the fair copy?”

“Of every line and every symbol.”

“Then I think you have nothing to fear.” Darwin started to leave, but turned back. “One more question. You have indicated that you owe much to Elias Barton, and I can appreciate that you may be reluctant to say anything against your tutor. But your rooms are just above his. Did you observe any change in his behavior, or in aspects of his life, in recent months?”

Selfridge hesitated. “If he were alive, I would not say this. But since he is dead, I do not see how it can be held against him. In the past six months, he changed. Rather than greeting me when we passed each other, he was as likely to scowl and mutter. We held no more tutorials. He also became more slovenly and careless in his dress. When I first met him his clothes were always clean and carefully matched as to color and style. He had a special fondness for cinnamon velvet and for green brocade, and the cut and balance had to be perfect. However, in recent months it seemed he put on the first garment that came to hand, wearing it regardless of color, match, cleanliness, or anything else. Also, there was the smell.”

“He stank?”

Again, Selfridge looked away from Darwin. “Of his person, I cannot tell, since we were never in close proximity. But my room, as you see, lies directly above his. The dreadful odors and noxious fumes that rose through the boards of my floor, especially at night, sometimes made it impossible for me to sleep, even with every window open to its widest.”

“Can you describe the smells to me?”

“They were various. One night it would be sulfurous, the next an acrid, acid vapor that left me coughing. This is poor description, I know, but I lack the words to be more precise.”

“That is in no sense your fault. I would do no better. We lack a taxonomy of smells, and all our descriptions will remain inadequate until the arrival of some new Linnaeus able to name and catalog odors. But in your case, with smells so foul, did you not think to complain to the College Steward?”

“I did not want to... cause trouble. I owed Dr. Barton for his former kindness to me.”

“Do you know what he was doing to make those stinks?”

“I heard rumors.”

“Did you believe them?”

“Not for a moment. Excuse me if my next words offend, but I do not believe in any forms of the supernatural. Neither gods nor demons form any part of a rational world view.”

Darwin nodded his approval. “Which makes you — and me with you — an exception in a superstitious world. I too find no need to hypothesize deity or devil. You will meet criticism, but hold steadfast to your opinions. Today we are in the minority, yet our day will come though it may take a thousand years. As for the foul fumes created by Elias Barton, they will trouble you no longer. And if it eases your mind, let me say that I have a good idea as to their true nature, although I am not yet prepared to declare finality on the subject.”

Darwin left the room and began his descent of the wooden stairs. As he went he heard Selfridge’s door slam shut and the lock go into place. It troubled his mind — he sensed unfinished business there — but it must wait until more urgent matters were settled.

“Selfridge is, as you said, shy and reclusive. He was also not fully honest with me. On the other hand, Collie, neither were you.”

Darwin was once again in Wentworth’s comfortable rooms in Second Court, and from the look of the other two men they had been in no hurry for his return. A bottle of white wine sat on the table; another, empty, was on the floor, and within easy reach stood a plate of ripe strawberries and raspberries. Pole had taken up residence by the window, basking in full sun, and for the first time since the previous night’s storm he was not shivering.

“I, not honest with you?” Wentworth, in the act of again filling his glass, paused. “Why do you say that?”

“You tell me. On the way here this morning, I told Jacob that you were full-hearted and generous, and would never say a word against any man. Yet that does not seem to apply to Elias Barton. Where the Master would give the man an honorable quietus, you seem implacably opposed to it. Why?”

Wentworth’s lips tightened. “Very well. These words for this room alone, Erasmus. Elias Barton was, as all agreed, a man of great talents. He was also a man of flaws.”

“As we all are.”

“Not these flaws. No member of the college will admit it — the Master, recently appointed, may not even be aware of it. But Elias Barton, who as a Senior Fellow was called upon to respect chastity and celibacy, did not. That failing is not uncommon, but Barton lapsed in a peculiarly unfortunate way. There is no way to put this, except directly: Barton had a taste for young men. The ones most readily available were his own students, and he seduced several of them. I suspect that Thomas Selfridge was his catamite. That is the reason why, despite a lack of evidence, I remain suspicious of Selfridge’s complicity in Barton’s death.”

Darwin shook his head. “I do not believe it. Barton contrived his own demise.”

“I am most glad to hear that. You are an acute observer, Erasmus, more than I. But that is not all. Tolerant as I like to think myself, I cannot condone sodomy within this college.”

“If there is sodomy within St. John’s, be assured that Selfridge is not involved. I saw complete absorption in abstract studies, far beyond the normal — not an indifferent student, as you had suggested, but an exceptional one. However, after speaking with Selfridge I also feel an increased concern about other events relating to the death of Elias Barton. Collie, I would appreciate it greatly if you would take me at once to Dr. Arbuthnot.”

“We are ahead of you there, Erasmus.” Wentworth waved for Darwin to sit down. “At Colonel Pole’s suggestion I sent a man over to Arbuthnot’s office, bearing my request that Rufus Arbuthnot come here as soon as he returned from his lunch appointment. I said he was needed for a meeting of the highest importance and urgency. Rufus knows me well enough not to disdain such a message, and he is a good friend of this college. So sit down, relax for a moment, and give me your opinion of ripe berries augmented by a truly fine Sauternes.”

“The wine, with your permission, I will forgo. Let me tell you what I heard in Selfridge’s room.”

Darwin sat down at Wentworth’s side, picked absently at the plate of fruit in front of him, and summarized his conversation with the young sizar. He omitted nothing relevant to the death of Elias Barton, while seeing no reason to mention another curious fact derived from his own observations.

He ended with a digression on the difficulty of classifying odors, elaborating his earlier remarks to Selfridge to the point where Jacob Pole was nodding off and Driscoll Wentworth poised to interrupt. Darwin’s impromptu lecture was ended by the precipitous arrival of Rufus Arbuthnot.

The doctor was short, round, and energetic. He breezed in, calling before he was through the door, “What’s this now, Collie? Cryptic messages — highest importance — urgent — must meet, must meet now. Tosh, man, you’ve had me over here once already today — with a coat over a nightshirt, and where’s my dignity?”

He spoke in bursts in a lilting Welsh accent, nodded to Pole and Darwin, helped himself without asking to a glass of wine, and went to stand by the window, where he bobbed up and down like a round windup toy.

Wentworth waved his hand. “Colonel Jacob Pole, Erasmus Darwin.”

“Good afternoon — Colonel, Doctor. Now then! Would that be Dr. Darwin of Lichfield?” Arbuthnot stooped and peered at Darwin as at a biological specimen. “Your fame precedes you, sir. Did you not affect that amazing cure of the Vicar of Northesk? And one yet more remarkable of Lady Buxton?”

Darwin smiled his ruined smile. “Remarkable, Dr. Arbuthnot, only that in the latter case there was nothing at all wrong with the lady. She merely needed to be told that, and firmly.”

“Like a fifth of my wealthy patients, while genuine sickness in the poor goes untreated.” Arbuthnot leaned forward and helped himself to one of the few remaining raspberries. “So what is it, Collie? Military matters — medical matters — or more of this morning’s claptrap?”

“Dr. Darwin would value your opinion regarding the last mentioned.”

“John Chevallier still sitting with his head in the sand, eh? Barton blown off the roof — stuff and nonsense. I hope, Dr. Darwin, that the Master has not been troubling you.”

“No. I have yet to meet the gentleman.”

“Keep it that way.”

“But I would like to ask your opinion regarding the death of Elias Barton. You saw his corpse long before I did.”

“Early this morning. Already dead. Condition of the body, hmm, dead, say, six hours.”

“And in your examination, did you inspect his hands?”

“Of course. Ah, see where you’re going. ’Course I did, hands often revealing. Fingers and thumbs, you mean? Blackened and stained. But old marks, those. Played no part in his death. He jumped from the roof of Third Court, simple as that. No one on Earth — including the Master, stupid man — ever persuades me Barton slipped. Blown over, even more stupid. Landed feet-first, he did. Like he decided — bit too late — he didn’t wish to die.”

“I concur completely. And the blackened and stained fingers. Might you suggest a cause?”

“No more than speculation. But — hmm. Discoloration and burning — definite burning, no whorls on some of the fingertips — accidental minor injuries. Careless use of acids and bleaches, maybe? For weeks or months.”

“And not, conceivably, burns caused by a lightning strike?”

“Poppycock!” Arbuthnot, aware of a possible breach of etiquette, rushed on, “Of course, if you know facts of which I’m ignorant—”

“Not at all. Again, we concur completely. Suppose, however, we add to the list of substances that Elias Barton may have handled. What if, in addition to the corrosives that burned and discolored his fingers, he had worked with other materials? Heated mercury, say, or elements of the medical pharmacopoeia, such as digitalis, foxglove, and aconite?”

“Then he was playing with fire. Might not notice at once, but over time—” Arbuthnot stopped his energetic bobbing and stood totally still. “My God. Mercury vapor poisoning?”

“The evidence was there. Go to the body, and you will see a blue line on the gums. And his teeth were loose.”

“Long-term use, then. So — effects on brain. Fits of madness — mistrust of others — outbursts of violence — excessive gaiety — apparent drunkenness. Any and all have been recorded.”

“All those, plus hallucinations and a conviction of invincibility. A man whose brain is affected by mercuric vapor poisoning might well feel that he could tame a lightning storm — or fly, if he chose, safely down from the highest of places.”

“Ye gods.” Arbuthnot slapped himself hard on the forehead. “John Chevallier — a pox on the man — was right after all. No deliberate suicide for Elias Barton. Death by misfortune and ignorance. But Barton — he was an archivist. Right, Collie? Not skilled in science. Dabbling in subjects far from his competence?”

“His great learning led to his downfall. As a charitable act to a young scholar for whom he served as tutor, he managed to locate a set of papers written by Isaac Newton. I assume he discovered them in neighboring Trinity College. He had been seeking Newton’s mathematical writing, but he found much more. As Newton himself has said, he minded mathematics and science more as a young man than an older one. After forty, his interests turned to other pursuits. To the interpretation of scripture, and to—”

“Alchemy!” The word exploded from Arbuthnot. “He left a mass of alchemic writing.”

“Some of which many of us have seen. A huge collection of papers exists. But what Barton realized — as young Selfridge would not, even if he was exposed to them — was that the alchemic pages he had discovered formed no part of any known body of work. They were new sheets, never before circulated, never before perused by anyone in the near fifty years since Newton’s death in 1727. Barton surely intended to publish them eventually — but would he not be as surely tempted to seek even greater glory? Those pages, remember, came direct from the hand of Newton, the largest-minded genius of this or any age. Barton permitted Selfridge access to the mathematical papers, which apparently duplicated known work. But the alchemy, which was new—”

“He kept for himself!” Arbuthnot’s face was fiery red with excitement. “He would, man, sure he would. Keep it to himself — confirm — duplicate. And if there was anything sensational in Newton — lead into gold—”

“But Barton would have realized the dangers,” Wentworth protested. “Whatever his faults, he was a man of unequalled knowledge of the past century. The mental breakdown of Newton himself in 1693 was well-known and widely reported, and many attributed that to dangerous chemical experiments.”

“Barton probably believed that he was observing full caution.” Darwin addressed himself to Rufus Arbuthnot. “Would you agree, Doctor, that a man is usually quite aware of physical problems? A sprained back, or in my own case, a gouty big toe, which cannot easily be ignored. But mental conditions, in which the observing organ of the brain is also the organ affected, present far more subtle problems.”

“Aha! No doubt of it. Mental patients don’t seek medical assistance — don’t know they’re sick, half the time, have to lock ’em up willy-nilly. Think Barton noticed changes? Seclusion couldn’t have helped.”

Wentworth said in amazed tones, “So when all is done, the Master was right. We are in a very real sense dealing with accidental death, even though the act itself spoke of suicide. It is not at all what I expected, but I’ll drink to a swift closure.” Wentworth reached for the bottle.

“Not quite over.” Darwin reached across and arrested Wentworth’s hand in the act of pouring. “There may not be, I fear, as comforting an outcome as you envisage. Something else must be examined: Barton’s rooms.”

“That has been done, Erasmus, once and then twice.”

“Perhaps. But it must be repeated with a more directed focus. The experiments of alchemy are not conducted within the confines of an egg-cup. There must somewhere be an alchemic laboratory. With your permission, Collie, we must search for it.”

“I suppose we must. But Rufus, we have taken a great deal of your time. If you would like to return to your practice in Sidney Street—”

“In a pig’s eye, Collie. I smell mischief. Am I correct, Dr. Darwin?”

“My own nose says the same, though I greatly wish that we are both wrong. Collie, can we take with us a couple of strong college servants, also a few iron tools?”

“What do you want with them?”

“I am not sure.”

Wentworth laid down with resignation the glass that he had all the time been holding. “All right. You go to the E Staircase of Third Court. I will meet you there with people and tools.”

The path across the quadrangles from M Staircase of Second Court to E Staircase of Third was no more than a hundred yards, but in the hour since Darwin had returned from his meeting with Selfridge the weather had changed again. The three men hurried along under darkening skies from which the first heavy drops were already spattering.

E Staircase was dark and silent. Darwin advanced to the oak door of Elias Barton’s rooms, banged on it with his fist, and cursed. “Locked, as of course I should have known. I didn’t think to ask Collie for the key. We’ll have to wait for him, unless some of these rooms share a common lock. Jacob, you carry a deal less weight than I. Nip up one flight, would you, and see if Selfridge has a key that might also fit here.”

Pole’s boots clattered loud on the stairs, turning one short flight and up again. A silence followed, after which the sound of boots repeated, slower now. Pole reappeared shaking his head.

“Sorry, ’Rasmus, but Selfridge isn’t there. No one is. The door stands open, but the room is empty. And the desk is cleared.”

“Damnation. I take blame for this. Dr. Arbuthnot, if a person were to leave here bound for the West Country, what would be the most logical avenue of departure?”

“Leave here westward? Coach to London, I’d say. Path via Oxford’s shorter — but transport less frequent and convenient.”

“And a coach to London leaves?”

“Far side of the marketplace. On the hour.”

“Which approaches fast. Jacob, I need your help.”

“Damn it, Erasmus, I can’t run all the way to the marketplace, any more than you could. And look at it out there, it’s pissing down.”

The rain was sheeting into Kitchen Lane, beyond the sheltered passageway.

“Jacob, I would not ask you to. You and I would be blown and foundering in the first fifty yards. Go to the buttery and dining hall and find a healthy-looking young man. Offer him a shilling to run to the market place and seek out any coach bound for London. Regardless of who he finds on the coach or waiting for it, he is to proclaim aloud and to all a simple message, ‘If you leave, Dr. Darwin will be forced to reveal your secret. If you return to the college, you can be protected.’ Do you have it?”

“Down pat. Should he wait for some answer?”

“No. There may be no answer. But go now, with your best foot forward and my profound thanks.”

Pole headed off into the driving rain without another word. Half a minute later Driscoll Wentworth appeared, his hat streaming water. He was alone and carrying a crowbar, a big hammer, and an axe.

“Not a servant to be found, Erasmus, when you need one. I’ll have Trelawney’s guts for this. What now? Do you want this door broken down?”

“Not unless you enjoy destroying college property. You have a key. Use it, Collie, and stand back while I take a look inside.”

Darwin waited as the door swung wide, then pushed his way through. The sky outside the narrow windows had become so dark that the interior was all gloom. Darwin paced around, examining each wall and stooping low to peer at the floor. The others had followed him in. All were very conscious of Barton’s body in the bedroom just a few feet away.

“What, Erasmus?” said Wentworth. “Tell us what you are seeking, or we cannot help.”

Darwin banged with an open hand on the wall beside a storage cupboard, and grunted at the feel of solid stone. “The obvious. The alchemic laboratory must be here. Look for evidence of oddities of wall or floor. With lack of forethought, I failed to realize the need for more light.” He moved to the table lamp. “Plenty of oil in this. Unless I am all thumbs it should take no more than a few seconds to ignite the wick.”

“What kind of oddity? In this room or the bedroom?” Arbuthnot was over by a massive bookcase set along the wall. “Behind this, maybe. Take two men to move.”

“Then it is not a candidate.” Darwin was working the flint obsessively. “Barton must be able to have acted alone.”

“Something like this, perhaps?” Driscoll Wentworth had been exploring beneath a wooden table. He had removed his wig, and emerged with his bald head veiled in cobwebs. Now he was rolling back a faded Persian rug and rubbing his hand along the wooden planks beneath. “I feel a seam or crack here, running crosswise to the grain of the boards. Erasmus, where is that lamp? And, Rufus, if you will give me a hand this can proceed more quickly.”

He and Arbuthnot rolled the rug back all the way. Darwin, the oil lamp lit at last and producing a guttering yellow flame, held it low.

“A little farther,” Wentworth said. “There! See the metal ring set in flat to the floor? This whole section should move.” He reached down, raised the iron loop, and lifted. The square trapdoor rose on brass hinges to reveal a square opening two feet on a side.

The three men craned forward.

“A room below!” Arbuthnot exclaimed. “Thought we were on the ground floor.”

“We are. And now we know why Elias Barton showed no inclination to move to other quarters.” Darwin was leaning over, precariously far. “You said that he employed out-of-town workers on the modification of his rooms. And he paid them well, I will warrant, for their future silence. Move aside, Collie. It will be a close fit, but I see a ladder there. I propose to go down.”

“Better if I do it, Erasmus. I’m a good deal more limber.”

“So is almost everyone. But it is better if I descend. And, if I am correct in my conjectures, Dr. Arbuthnot should accompany me. You should remain here.”

Darwin had already set the lamp down on the floor. He did not wait for Wentworth’s approval, but sat on his ample rear and gingerly lowered his feet to meet the top rung of the ladder. He turned, took four cautious steps down, and reached up for the oil lamp. Arbuthnot, unsure of the ladder’s strength, waited until Darwin had reached bottom. Then he came scuttling down and was talking before his foot hit the dirt floor.

“It is indeed a regular alchemic workshop!” He was breathless. “Just as you said: retorts, furnace, crucibles, alembics, and against that wall bottles, jars, and vials.”

“Completely equipped.” Darwin held the lamp close to the array of bottles. “Here is yellow sulfur, red lead oxide, red and black iron ores. There are the acids, acetic and citric, and perhaps nitric and sulfuric. And here is quicksilver, whose heated vapors contributed to Barton’s downfall.”

“Some animal essence here.” Arbuthnot had the stopper out of one of the bottles. “What a mix of stinks, when all was going!”

“Duplicating and confirming, as near as Barton could, Newton’s own alchemic work.” Wentworth was lying flat on the floor, his head poking over the trapdoor edge so that he could see what was going on. “And the source of the smells that frightened away Barton’s bedmaker. Erasmus, I’m coming down. I’m as interested in this as anyone.”

“A few moments more — I thought, but perhaps I was wrong.” Darwin had scanned the rough-walled chamber, and now he was peering under tables and workbenches. “No. It is, alas, just as I feared. Dr. Arbuthnot, would you?”

He was down on hands and knees by a long, low table in the corner. Together, he and Arbuthnot dragged out an object wrapped in coarse sacking. Darwin peeled back a part of it.

“Dead.” Arbuthnot had automatically reached forward to touch the cheek and feel the neck. “And for some time — rigor mortis been and gone. But who is he?”

“I could speculate. But others know beyond all doubt.” Darwin held the lamp so that it shone on the face of the corpse. “Collie?”

“That’s Simon Thorpe, Barton’s bedmaker.”

“Who did not run off to Huntingdon and beyond, as Joe Walker asserted. Sometimes even an unreliable witness may be right. Lambert Gray, the gardener whose testimony you were inclined to reject, did not err. Simon Thorpe indeed went into E Staircase yesterday morning — and never again emerged from it.”

“But why did Barton kill him?” Wentworth was at last descending the ladder, slowly and uneasily. “And when and how did he kill him?”

“How is easy.” Rufus Arbuthnot turned the head to reveal that the back of the skull was smashed in. “As for why and when...”

“We are obliged to conjecture.” Darwin squatted back on his heels. “Young Selfridge and you yourself, Collie, remarked that in recent months Elias Barton seemed to lose all sense of time, even seeming unaware of day or night. At first he would have been careful to safeguard his secret, working his experiments late and with his oak securely sported. But as his mania grew, so did his carelessness. No one is alive to confirm it, but suppose that Simon Thorpe entered these rooms during the daytime and found the trapdoor open. Would not any man have advanced to the edge, curious to see what lay below in a room previously unknown to him?”

“While Barton was working down there?” Wentworth had reached the foot of the ladder.

“No.” Arbuthnot had stripped back the sacking and was further examining the corpse. “See here? Smashed skull. Barton above, likely in his bedroom. Thorpe enters, finds trapdoor open. Then — bang, hard blow on the head from behind, forward he goes. Fall might have killed if head wound didn’t.”

“We have to lift Thorpe’s body aloft and prepare him for decent burial.” Wentworth had taken only one quick glance at the body on reaching the floor of the hidden laboratory. “What on earth could Barton have hoped to do, had he not himself died? Thorpe has relatives; his absence would have been remarked on within a few days. Might this murder have urged Barton toward suicide?”

“Never.” Darwin was assisting Arbuthnot, winding sacking tight about the body. “Elias Barton suffered the common delusion of all who believe they have infinite power. What would the death of a mere servant matter in his universal view of things? I doubt he thought of or cared about secular consequences. He had already passed well beyond the bounds of sanity.”

The melancholy business of hoisting the bedmaker aloft called for the combined effort of all three men. It seemed wrong to leave Simon Thorpe in the bedroom next to the body of his murderer, and Wentworth headed for the office of the College Steward to arrange for a more suitable resting place. Arbuthnot, after a look at his watch, went with him.

“Two hours late! Hell to pay in my office. But wouldn’t have missed a minute of this — corpse and all!”

Darwin was left alone to his vigil, pondering how a day begun with prospects of antipodean discovery could have turned to a puzzle of multiple deaths. He performed a systematic search of Barton’s rooms, including the alchemical laboratory, but did not find what he sought. His efforts were interrupted by a hollow clomp-clomp-clomp of approaching footsteps. He did not think of ghosts or the restless spirits of the dead, but he did grip one of the fire irons until Jacob Pole’s face appeared at the doorway. The colonel was soaking wet. Raindrops glistened in his eyebrows and thinning hair, and he was shivering.

“When the man I found in the dining hall didn’t come back, ’Rasmus, I went to look for him on the way. He swears he gave the message exactly as you told me and I told him. Doesn’t sound promising, though. He saw half a dozen passengers waiting for the London coach, but no one showed any reaction to the message.”

“I did not expect an immediate result. But many thanks for running my errand. Go to Collie now and demand food and a hot drink — another malarial bout is the last thing you need.”

“Won’t you come with me? Aren’t you all done?”

“Not quite. A possible item of unfinished business still lies here.”

Pole stared at the pair of shrouded corpses, then at the open trapdoor. “More bodies? I passed Wentworth in Second Court. He told me what happened to Simon Thorpe.”

“No more bodies. I hope that we are done with deaths. But there remains another matter here, and it is one better handled solo than duo — a matter this time of life.”

“About time. I began to wonder if you had brought me to a college or a charnel house.”

Pole squelched away, leaving Darwin alone again in near-darkness. Night was far away, but rain fell heavily and the sky was black from horizon to horizon.

The sound, when it came, was scarcely audible above the hiss of rain along gutters. Light footsteps entered E Staircase, paused for a moment outside Elias Barton’s chambers, then continued slowly and hesitantly up the stairs.

Darwin allowed half a minute before he followed. Very little light bled into the staircase from above, and he almost had to feel his way. He tapped on the open door, two flights up. “It is Erasmus Darwin. I am alone.”

He entered without waiting for a reply. A figure in a rain-soaked overcoat sat huddled on the chair by the desk.

“You returned.” Darwin sat down on the only other chair. “You were wise to do so. The death of Elias Barton is resolved, and you are under no suspicion. I know your secret, but it is safe with me.”

Selfridge looked up. “I felt that I had to leave. Dr. Wentworth was not satisfied with the Master’s explanation, I knew that from his questions of me. There would have been more probing, perhaps a search of my room, and who knew what digging into my private affairs. There are already those in the college who believe that I was Elias Barton’s catamite, and might therefore have been involved in his death.”

“Did Barton in fact seek your affections?”

“Not at first. Initially I believed that his assistance to me in my studies was no more than natural kindness on his part, and the duties of a tutor toward his student. But I was wrong. His true motives were revealed when he at last made open advances toward me.”

“Which you, of course, were obliged to rebuff — or provide to Elias Barton the surprise of his life.”

That produced from Selfridge a hint of smile. “A surprise indeed. Also an inevitable discovery.”

“It is amazing that has not happened already. You have led a charmed life at St. John’s. If Dr. Arbuthnot, after examining Elias Barton’s body, had chanced to see you, that would have been sufficient.”

“Why so? My voice, my movements, my behavior—”

“—are not sufficient. You possess undisguisable features, such that to the eye of a trained physician you would not for one minute pass muster as a man. What is your name — the name with which you were christened?”

“You know! How could you possibly know?”

“More from an accumulation of detail than a single instance. One who lacks the laryngeal prominence of the human male should be careful always to wear high-neck collars, and never a loose shirt. Your voice, which most of the time you held deliberately to its lower register, rose sharply in excitement when you discussed Newton and your own work. Finally, your close and accurate observation of Barton’s dress style and color preference seemed more like a woman than a man, unless you were indeed of Elias Barton’s own amatory persuasion. Again, I ask your name — your real name.”

“I am Athene Selfridge. My late father valued knowledge above all things, and told me I was named to achieve it. The pity is that he did not also inform me of the obstacles that would be set in my path.”

“It is likely that he did not comprehend them, any more than I do, or any man. We can only surmise the frustration of a woman of talent, seeking success in what has so far been regarded exclusively as a male domain.”

“It is worse than that. Consider this college — your own college, from which you are doubtless proud to have graduated. It is an institution which claims to cultivate the highest forms of knowledge — yet it is an institution which denies to half of humanity a presence within its walls.”

Darwin nodded. “What you say is sad but true. And I see no change in sight, although I would like to think that time will prove me wrong.”

“Time?” Athene Selfridge’s voice rose, shedding the low tone she had adopted as a man. “You speak of time, but how much time? How long am I supposed to wait, Dr. Darwin? One century will it be, or perhaps two?”

“I would hope not. But because I can in all honesty discern no signs of prompt change, may I offer advice? Why not return to your home in the West Country, and work via correspondence with the leaders of mathematics. You already mentioned an exchange of letters with Monsieur Euler. An assumed name for you, or simply the use of A. Selfridge, would—”

“No!” Athene Selfridge glared at Darwin. “Never! You ask me to accept the status quo, rather than fight it? I will not. Without defiance there will be no progress. Better to stay here, with all its risks. Better to be exposed, than to retreat like a tame rabbit to some safe haven in the West Country. Expelled, I will at least make my point — that a woman can work at mathematics as well as any man. If I am wrong in this, Erasmus Darwin, then tell me the nature of my error.”

Darwin’s eyebrows rose and his jaw dropped. “Wh-why, my dear.” The hint of a stammer came into his voice. “Thank goodness that Jacob Pole is not here. Were he present he would gloat to see my shame. You are not wrong at all. I am. I have long preached that principles should never be subservient to acts, yet here I am playing false to my own precepts.”

He glanced around the ill-furnished room. “It is no life of luxury that you seek. You are happy with your eremitic isolation?”

“I thrive on it. The ideas of mathematics are best conceived in solitude.”

“Yet if you remain here at St. John’s, you run continued risks of exposure and expulsion. You are a young lady whose actions already prove her not averse to risk. Will you consider taking one more?”

“I am a mathematician, Dr. Darwin. I must compare risk with possible benefit.”

“The risk, immediate expulsion. The benefit, an ally here in this college — and one very different from Elias Barton, who expected a certain quid pro quo.”

“Dr. Darwin, before your intervention I was already frightened and running. I can be in no worse situation than I was an hour ago.”

“Then come with me.”

The fickle weather scattered huge and random droplets on them as Darwin led the way to Second Court. He walked straight into Wentworth’s rooms, where the Senior Fellow stood at the window and Jacob Pole sat again at the low table with a steaming jug in front of him.

Wentworth swung around, and his smile at Darwin changed when he saw the latter’s companion.

“Now then, Collie.” Darwin paused in the doorway. “Abandon any thoughts of sodomy, pour yourself a glass of wine, take a deep breath, and sit down. And permit me to introduce to you Miss Athene Selfridge — who is not, nor has she ever been, nor could she ever be, the catamite of Elias Barton or any other man.”

The explanation took five minutes. Wentworth’s questions, exclamations, and muttered protests continued into the second bottle.

“Erasmus, how can I, a Senior Fellow of this college, condone and even assist in such deception?”

“Who was it mocked the policies and judgment of a certain university not sixty miles from here, when Miss Parker’s daughter composed English verse that you judged far superior to that of Sir Roger Newdigate’s contest winner?”

“No folly is too extreme for Oxford.”

“Right. But cast out the beam in your own eye. Who at St. John’s comprehends and champions the mathematical work of Monsieur Euler, or Monsieur D’Alembert, or young Monsieur Lagrange? I will answer my own question: no one other than Athene Selfridge. Do you wish to see this college fall behind the French?”

Wentworth rolled his eyes. “God preserve us from such a thought.”

“Then your duty is clear.”

“Damn you, Erasmus. You should have let me drown twenty years ago.” Wentworth turned to Athene Selfridge. “You know, do you not, that no one of a right mind disputes with Dr. Darwin?”

“I am beginning to learn it.” Athene moved to Wentworth’s side and took his hand in hers. “I will practice the utmost discretion. I will seek to bring nothing but honor to this college. If at any time you ask me to leave, I will do so without question.”

Wentworth slowly nodded. “I can in fairness ask no more than that. Let us drink to it. Erasmus, you have no glass.”

“You know that I have for many years foresworn alcohol.”

“Erasmus.”

“Collie, must you insist on your pound of flesh? Oh, very well.” Darwin accepted the glass that Wentworth pressed into his hand. “I have no need of a clear mind tonight. The Cook exhibit is washed out, the lecture postponed. But if there is to be a toast, Miss Selfridge must propose it.”

“That will be my honor.” With all the glasses raised, Athene Selfridge paused for thought. “If it were I alone, I would drink to you fine gentlemen. But since all are included in the toast, let it be to the wondrous Isaac Newton, before whom the greatest minds alive all bend the knee.”

“To the wondrous Isaac.” All drank, but Jacob Pole continued, “And damn the man, too. To hold in his head such secrets — perhaps of the elixir of life, perhaps even of the philosopher’s stone that turns lead to gold — and then to permit such work to be lost.”

Once over the first hurdle, Darwin was drinking as happily as anyone. “We should not blame Isaac Newton,” he said. “It is Elias Barton who should be double damned. I searched thoroughly, and the papers describing Newton’s alchemic work were nowhere in his rooms or laboratory. They are lost forever. And it is a great loss. Newton, with his great powers, may have advanced far along the road of chemical discovery that Mr. Priestley and Monsieur Lavoisier, close to a century later, are beginning to mark out.”

“A loss forever,” Wentworth said. “But just possibly not.” He stood up suddenly, knocking wine glasses over on the table. “When I was called to Elias Barton’s body this morning, I noticed at the far end of Kitchen Lane a mess of blown papers. Suspecting undergraduate foolery, I ordered them collected up. But if Elias Barton had been holding the alchemic papers in his hand when he stepped off the roof—”

“Their subsequent fate?” Darwin spoke, but all came to their feet.

“God help us, old papers are treated as waste and used to light fires.” Wentworth frowned. “But they would have been wet from the storm, and not burned until thoroughly dried. There is a chance.”

He was gone. The others sat frozen, with even Darwin reduced to silence until Wentworth returned. He was holding in his arms a bulging brown sack.

“Thank the storm for its favors. Trelawney said that every foolscap sheet found this morning in Kitchen Lane was collected and placed in this bag. But all were wet. Drying had not yet begun. We have everything!”

He placed the sack on the table, opened its neck, and reached within with both hands. Slowly and carefully, he pulled forth a great mass of paper. The sheets were wet, set at all angles, and stuck together. Carefully, one by one, Wentworth peeled loose pages and handed them to the eager onlookers.

“Well?” He was still at work separating sheets, while the others observed a total silence.

“Written in ink,” said Darwin, “but of a type soluble in water. The words of genius, perhaps immortal words, washed away drop by drop — to the cobblestones, to the gutters, to the River Cam, to the North Sea.”

“All?” Wentworth ceased separating the pages and looked up.

Three heads nodded. “Nothing here,” Jacob Pole said sadly. “Maybe the odd word or handful of letters, half distinguishable. But no philosopher’s stone.”

“And no leap forward of centuries in chemical knowledge,” said Darwin. “Nothing to foreshadow or even surpass the discoveries made in our own time.”

“And no new mathematics.” Athene Selfridge alone appeared undismayed. “These pages might as well be blank. But is that not as it should be? This generation, and those that come after us, should not be content to trace the words of former genius. The future should be as a tabula rasa, on which new words and thoughts may be inscribed.” She put down the page that she was holding. “You asked me to propose a toast, and I did so. With your permission I will now offer another. Let us drink not only to the great Isaac, but to those minds of the near or far future, who will carry our ideas as far beyond today as Newton carried us beyond the notions of Aristotle.”

Every glass was raised, and every man drank. But on Darwin’s face alone sat the expression of one who comprehended the toast in full, and was overwhelmed by it.

He regarded with approval the bright gray eyes and young intensity of Athene Selfridge. But for the first time in his life, he felt old.

Author’s note: This story takes place in 1776. In 1981, St. John’s College, Cambridge, opened its doors to women students for the first time.