The Coroner's Daughter

by Andrew Hughes

  Reeves reached down to turn a handle, setting all in motion: the moons about their planets, and the planets about the sun, all with varying speeds of orbit, so that bodies would catch up with each other, or drift apart, or briefly align. After a few more cranks of the wheel, he let go, and it continued on its own. ‘This was also here before I was born, but exactly how old it is I do not know.’

  ‘It was built before 1781, anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because that is when Herschel discovered the Georgian planet. And it is not represented here.’

  ‘Most perceptive, Miss Lawless. Yes indeed, Uranus. It is what I am observing at the moment.’

  Clarissa said, ‘I had no idea that the planets were so close to each other.’

  I felt a tinge of embarrassment at her misconception, but Reeves was kind when correcting her.

  ‘Your intuition was correct, Miss Egan,’ he said. ‘If it were truly to scale, then the earth would be at the front of the house, and Jupiter somewhere near the front gate.’

  ‘Which would make for an unwieldy mechanism,’ I said, and he smiled.

  He pointed to one of the planets. ‘Something is not quite right, though. See how Mercury lags halfway through its orbit. One of the gears must have gone awry.’

  I watched the machine turn slowly and allowed another year to elapse. ‘There is a clockmaker on Abbey Street who perhaps could fix it.’

  ‘Mr Elyan,’ Reeves said. ‘Yes, I know of his work. But I have grown used to its eccentric orbit. Besides, I have no real use for the device, when I am lucky enough to observe the planets in reality.’

  ‘Abigail was hoping we could see the telescope,’ Clarissa said.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Well, perhaps. I mean I realize that it’s not a plaything. Only if you thought it was appropriate.’

  Reeves said, ‘But of course. Why else would I have dragged you all the way here?’ He checked his watch. ‘We shall have supper, allow night to fall, and then we shall see what there is to see.’

  I saw Clarissa stand a little straighter, and tilt her chin upwards. James Caulfeild approached. He greeted us with a brief bow, but immediately turned to Reeves.

  ‘Professor, unfortunately I must depart, for I am expected in Dublin.’

  Reeves frowned and said, ‘I was expecting you to remain here, Mr Caulfeild. There are men from universities and academies that you should be conversing with, explaining yourself and the research that we are carrying out. This is not just a social gathering.’

  ‘I believe I have already spoken with everyone of note.’

  ‘All I saw you do was study the rain falling in the garden.’

  As I said, I have an appointment in the city.’

  ‘With the card tables or the tavern?’

  James took a breath through his nose. The planets in the orrery began to slow with a faint clacking, and then became still.

  ‘You can do as you wish,’ Reeves said. ‘Though if you leave the gathering now, I shall be disappointed.’

  ‘Mr Caulfeild,’ I said. ‘Clarissa and I would be pleased if you can remain. We have only just arrived, and were looking forward to your company.’

  ‘Yes,’ Clarissa said. ‘I was hoping someone could explain to me the workings of this infernal machine.’

  James held the professor’s eye for a moment. He turned to Clarissa and said, ‘Of course, Miss Egan. I would be delighted.’

  The guests in the corner began to laugh together, and one called for Professor Reeves to join them. A group had gathered around a gentleman seated at a table. He wore a fur stole about his neck, which must have felt stifling, but he spoke with a Spanish accent and was no doubt used to warmer climes. The table was littered with scraps of paper bearing people’s names, and an opened inkpot.

  Reeves said to me, ‘Dr Inez claims that he can discern any man or woman’s character simply by the form of their signature.’

  The doctor took a swig of Malaga wine. ‘Would you like to

  see, miss?’

  I was sceptical, but with smiles of encouragement from those around me, I took up the quill and dipped it in ink.

  After a few letters, Inez gripped my hand quite firmly and turned the paper over. ‘No, no, miss. Do not try to impress me. Write it quickly, without thinking, as you would if no one was watching.’

  I did as he suggested, and placed the quill down. Inez picked up the sheet and held it close to his face. He spoke in that position, without looking up. ‘There is grace and cultivation in the harmonious flow; self-assertion in the disproportionate loop of the g.’ He tilted the sheet slightly. ‘The sloping lines announce tenderness. The firm yet delicate cross of the A shows a sufficiently strong but not obstinate will. The dots of the i float far above and not in line with their letters, indicating the ardour and impatience of your Irish character.’

  Reeves said, ‘That sounds quite accurate.’

  ‘I think the doctor is being generous.’

  Someone said that the only person yet to submit to a reading was Professor Reeves himself. He held up his hands as if ready to yield, but then said, ‘There is little about me that Inez doesn’t know, so I fear it would be cheating.’

  Supper in the observatory was an informal affair, with people sitting down at different times and in no particular arrangement. The rain eased and the skies cleared as darkness fell, and I found myself in stilted conversation with a mathematician’s wife who seemed used to passing her meals in silence. Afterwards, in the drawing room, I could not find Clarissa, so I stepped into the hall. There was a glow of light beyond a corner. Professor Reeves stood next to some opened shutters. An oil-lamp cast his shadow on a grandfather clock, and little could be seen in the window except the professor’s own reflection.

  He turned at the sound of my footstep, and I apologized for disturbing him. ‘I was just looking for Clarissa.’

  He smiled at me. ‘You have caught me taking a quiet interlude.’

  ‘Every host deserves that from time to time.’

  ‘The last I saw, Miss Egan was talking to Mr Caulfeild in the conservatory. I am pleased that he found at least one reason to stay.’

  ‘I might look for them there.’

  ‘Actually, I was just about to seek you out. Would you like to see the equatorial room, Miss Lawless?’

  ‘Very much so. What about your other guests?’

  He picked up the oil-lamp, causing his shadow to shift along the wall. ‘Most of those present have seen it before, or will be too comfortable by the fire if I’m any judge. Though perhaps you would like to ask Miss Egan?’

  I thought of her speaking with James in the conservatory, and decided to leave her be.

  ‘Very well,’ the professor said, turning around. ‘It is this way.’

  He led me through another corridor to a spiral staircase that wound itself around a single column of stone. At the top he entered a circular chamber, the interior of the turret, with four tall windows looking out in each direction. A heavy oak desk sat beside cabinets and bookcases and a black fireplace with glowing embers. The ceiling was low and wooden, and a staircase led to an opening like a trapdoor. Reeves continued upwards.

  We now stood beneath the dome, in a simple room with varnished floorboards and whitewashed walls. In the centre, the telescope was set upon a granite plinth. It was about the length of a man, made from polished brass which tapered in segments to a narrow eyepiece. The vaulted roof overhead had a long aperture, which could be opened to reveal a section of the night sky. Reeves began to turn a handle attached to the wall, and the roof slid up like the shutter in a bureau. A chill breeze entered the room. The stars above seemed rather dim, and I asked the professor if the recent haze had affected his work.

  ‘It hasn’t helped, of course,’ he said, placing his eye to the bottom of the telescope, which was set at a height so he could stand beside it comfortably. ‘But the effects are mostly visible close to the horizon.’ He made feather-light
touches to the dials on the frame. ‘We were observing the planet at this time last night, so it can’t have gone far.’

  ‘We?’

  He moved back from the eyepiece to look at me. ‘Mr Caulfeild and I.’

  Reeves returned his attention to the telescope, and with one more adjustment to the focus, he said, ‘Ah,’ and invited me to look.

  The professor was an inch or two taller than me, and I had to stand on my tiptoes. Loath to brush against the telescope in case I knocked it out of focus, I got as close as possible and closed one eye.

  A pale-blue drop hung suspended in a dark circle. It seemed motionless and silent, indistinct at its edges, though I fancied I saw enough light and shadow to make out its spherical form. It was perfect, like a pearl on a black cushion, and I couldn’t believe that I looked upon an object some two thousand million miles away. It felt as if I could reach out and roll it between my thumb and forefinger.

  Reeves’s voice came over my shoulder. ‘You are seeing what Herschel looked upon thirty-five years ago, the first planet discovered since antiquity.’

  I pulled back from the eyepiece and regarded him. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  His mouth straightened a little. ‘Yes, though our primary concern is not aesthetic.’

  ‘No, of course—’

  ‘There is something of a mystery, you see, one that I had intended to describe in the Academy some weeks ago. We thought that we had calculated the planet’s trajectory perfectly, that we would know precisely the path it should take. But it turns out we have been wrong.’

  I looked through the eyepiece again.

  ‘The orbit has been perturbed,’ he said. ‘There is a body at work that we cannot perceive, yet we know it is there because of its influence on others.’ He gazed at the portion of sky visible through the aperture. ‘If we just keep looking, Miss Lawless. It cannot remain hidden for ever.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Another planet,’ he said. ‘As yet undiscovered. In a way, I am just like your father. Looking for evidence, and seeking out the truth.’

  I smiled at him, followed his gaze, and said that it must be a thrill to forever peer into the unknown.

  ‘Oh, there are many evenings of stiff joints and fruitless labours as well. It gets cold up here in the dead of night. But it is worth it, to work towards a greater purpose.’

  ‘Which is what?’

  ‘To understand everything,’ Reeves said. ‘To discover and know each of the threads that Nature uses to weave her patterns.’

  A breeze began to whistle through the roof, and I gripped my elbows in the cold air. Reeves noticed and said that I should warm myself by the fire in his workroom while he closed the roof.

  I went down the wooden stairs, and coaxed some flames from the embers, while the sounds of ratchets and gears echoed in the dome overhead. The fireplace was made from slabs of polished black limestone, dotted with white spirals and swirls, the relics of ancient sea-creatures and molluscs. Reeves came to stand beside me.

  ‘It’s a beautiful piece,’ I said, tracing a finger over one of the fossil shells, tightly coiled like a ram’s horn. ‘I wonder if it could convince those who shouted you down in the Academy. That the world is older than they think.’

  ‘They would only say it was evidence of the Flood. Or that God created the world with an appearance of great age to provide variety for the senses, or some such nonsense. It is a shame, when the truth may be far more fascinating. To think that these creatures lived in so remote a time, and toiled under the same sun as our own.’

  I smiled at his choice of word. ‘Toiled?’

  He glanced at me. ‘Perhaps that was a bit pessimistic.’ He placed the guard before the fire. ‘You know, Miss Lawless, at times I get discouraged when I see religious fervour hold sway in the city, but meeting people like you, and like your father, gives me some hope at least.’

  I was about to thank him, but there were footsteps on the spiral staircase, and the faint approach of a candle-flame. An elderly servant entered and told the professor that Mr Caulfeild was returning to the city.

  Reeves frowned and looked at a clock on the mantel. ‘I must have a word with him before he leaves. Please excuse me, Miss Lawless.’ He hurried from the room and down the stairs, and the servant followed after.

  I warmed myself by the fire for another moment or two, took the oil-lamp and went to find my way back to the drawing room. In the dark passages, nothing could be seen beyond the glow of the lamp, and I soon found myself in a corridor that we had not come down before. There was no wallpaper, just exposed stonework, and I thought perhaps it would lead to the kitchen or servants’ quarters. An arched doorway stood at the end, with an opened callipers engraved in the keystone above. I knocked and, when there was no answer, I pushed the door open.

  The room was narrow but long, with a workbench of wooden slats and cast-iron legs. Further on, there was an armchair beside a fireplace, and a small bed in the corner, its blankets neat and folded. The fireplace was clean, but there was less chill here than in the corridor, so perhaps it had been lit earlier.

  I brought the lamp to the table. There was some order to the clutter of glass beakers and jugs, weighing scales and candlesticks, each in their own place. A polished rosewood box with a hinged lid contained rows of stoppered bottles sitting snugly. Each was labelled with creased yellow paper and spidery handwriting. I picked up three at random: iodine, laudanum and potassium.

  I heard a rustling in the corner and turned about. A tall bird-stand stood beside the shuttered window, its coop covered in a cloth so thin that the outline of the frame was visible like a ribcage. I raised a corner of the fabric to look inside. There was a canary, but instead of sitting on its perch, the bird clung to the side of the cage with its claws and beak, and remained motionless in the lamplight. Its bedraggled yellow feathers were tipped with white as if they’d begun to drain of colour. The bird twitched its head and I let the cloth drop.

  This was clearly a workroom, but not for Reeves – he would have no need for a bed in his own house. Perhaps it was a space for James Caulfeild, a place to rest in the small hours, or to work if the weather turned against them.

  A sheaf of papers lay on the workbench, the topmost page covered in mathematical equations and geometrical diagrams, all neat and precise. Beside that, a letter was indeed signed off by James. It was two months old, an inconsequential note to Professor Reeves describing correspondence with the observatory in Armagh. There was another sheet next to it, not a missive or thesis, but rather a single line repeated again and again: In this Year of Our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death. I could see slight variations in the handwriting. Some of the lines were slanted, some of the letters looped or exaggerated, others angular and unjoined. But each time, the style grew closer to James’s, until the final line was undoubtedly his handwriting. Perhaps it had been another of Dr Inez’s games.

  I left the room as I found it, and retraced my steps, locating the correct passage that led back to the drawing room. Clarissa was sitting by the Spanish doctor, and I went to join them. When she looked at me I said, ‘Mr Caulfeild had to leave?’

  She nodded. ‘He had business in the city.’

  ‘At this hour?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, but Dr Inez has been excellent company.’

  The doctor nodded his head solemnly, as if he couldn’t deny the truth of her statement. He topped up his glass with some Malaga wine. ‘You ladies don’t appear to have glasses.’

  Clarissa said, ‘Oh, that wine is far too sweet. I don’t know how Professor Reeves could have developed a taste for it.’

  Inez put his hand to his chest in mock indignation. ‘It was I who gave him his first bottle some twenty years ago, when we were both undergraduates.’

  ‘You studied together?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, we trained in different disciplines, but we shared dingy room
s overlooking Front Square – dark even in the middle of summer, cramped and draughty. You could not move without knocking over a pile of books or an empty bottle. I don’t know how we managed,’ he said, though I could tell from the warmth in his voice that he remembered it fondly. He held up his glass. ‘My uncle sent us a case each term, and Reeves and I would have a glass or two in the evening to keep the cold at bay.’

  I pictured myself and Clarissa in such a setting, and felt a brief pang that it would never be allowed.

  ‘We were always there,’ Inez said, ‘even on feast days, or when term had finished. I was far from my family of course, but Reeves preferred to remain in the college. He considered it his true home.’

  ‘He told me before that he was estranged from his family.’

  ‘From his father most certainly. But he always had great affection for his mother. It was rather sad. I would see him write to her each week without fail, hunched over his small desk at the bottom of the bed. She never replied, but he was unconcerned. She had never been one for correspondence, he said. One morning he did receive a letter from home, from his father, attached to a bundle. In one brief message he told Reeves that his mother had taken ill several months before, and had finally succumbed, and he returned every letter that Reeves had sent her unopened. The old man had kept them from her. As far as she was aware, her son had left for an academic life and had forgotten her altogether.’

  The professor had returned to the drawing room, and I watched him bid good night to some guests who were leaving, shaking hands and gripping shoulders. ‘Such a cruel thing for his father to do, and so petty.’

  ‘That was the measure of the man.’ Inez reached for the bottle and topped up his glass. ‘After that, Reeves had little inclination to leave the college walls. He also became conscious of young men like himself, those without family or means. He has shown kindness to many throughout his career, students in hardship, those who have fallen foul of the college authorities, often giving them positions right here at the observatory.’