“You, children, what are you about?”
Men had appeared on the beach without Dick noticing. If they had come from either direction along the shore, he should have seen them.
“You shouldn’t be here. Come away from that evil thing, at once, now.”
The speaker was an old man with white hair, pince-nez on a black ribbon, an expression like someone who’s just bit into a cooking apple by mistake, and a white collar like a clergyman’s. He wore an old-fashioned coat with a thick, raised collar, cut away from tight britches and heavy boots.
Dick recognized the Reverend Mr. Sellwood, of Orris Priory.
With him were two bare-armed fellows in leather jerkins and corduroy trousers. Whereas Sellwood carried a stick, they toted sledge-hammers, like the ones convicts use on Dartmoor.
“Foul excrescence of the Devil,” said Sellwood, pointing his stick at Violet’s ammonite. “Brother Fose, Brother Fessel, do the Lord’s work.”
Fose and Fessel raised their hammers.
Violet leaned over, as if protecting a pet lamb from slaughter-men.
“Out of the way, foolish girl.”
“It’s mine,” she said.
“It’s nobody’s, and no good to anybody. It must be smashed. God would wish it…”
“But this find is important. To science.”
Sellwood looked as if that bite of cooker was in his throat, making his eyes water.
“Science! Bah, stuff and nonsense! Devil’s charm, my girl, that’s what this is!”
“It was alive, millions of millions of years ago.”
“The Earth is less than six thousand years old, child, as you would know if you read your scriptures.”
Violet, angry, stood up to argue. “But that’s not true. There’s proof. This is…”
Fose and Fessel took their opportunity, and brought the hammers down. The fossil split. Sharp chips flew. Violet—appalled, hands in tiny fists, mouth open—didn’t notice her shin bleeding.
“You can’t…”
“These so-called proofs, stone bones and long-dead dragons,” said Sellwood, “are the Devil’s trickeries.”
The Brethren smashed the ammonite to shards and powder.
“This was put here to fool weak minds,” lectured the Reverend. “It is the Church Militant’s sacred work to destroy such obscenities, lest more be tempted to blasphemy. This is not science, this is sacrilege.”
“It was mine,” Violet said quietly.
“I have saved you from error. You should thank me.”
Ernest came over to see what the noise was about. Sellwood bestowed a smile on the lad that afforded a glimpse of terrifying teeth.
Teeth on monsters were fine with Ernest; teeth like Sellwood’s would give him nightmares.
“A job well done,” said the Reverend. “Let us look further. More infernal things may have sprung up.”
Brother Fose leered at Violet and patted her on the head, which made her flinch. Brother Fessel looked stern disapproval at this familiarity. They followed Sellwood, swinging hammers, scouting for something to break to bits. Dick had an idea they’d rather be pounding on something that squealed and bled than something so long dead it had turned to stone.
Violet wasn’t crying. But she was hating.
More than before, Dick was convinced Sellwood was behind some vile endeavor. He had the look of a smuggler, or a spy.
Richard Riddle, Boy Detective, would bring the villain to book.
II
QRS NDPS JA QRS DGGJHBQS DHHBRBFDQJM
Uncle Davey had let Dick set up the office of the Richard Riddle Detective Agency in a small room under the eaves. A gable window led to a small balcony that looked like a ship’s crow’s-nest. Seaview Chase was a large, complicated house on Black Ven, a jagged rise above Lyme Bay, an ideal vantage point for surveying the town and the sea.
Dick had installed his equipment—a microscope, boxes and folders, reference books, his collection of clues and trophies. Violet had donated some small fossils and her hammers and trowels. Ernest wanted space on the wall for the head of their first murderer: he had an idea that when a murderer was hanged, the police gave the head as a souvenir to the detective who caught him.
The evening after the fossil-smashing incident, Dick sat in the office and opened a new file and wrote Qrs Ndps ja qrs Dggjhbqs Dhhbrbfdqjm on a fresh sheet of paper. It was the RRDA. Special Cipher for The Case of the Ammonite Annihilator.
After breakfast the next day, the follow-up investigation began. Dick went into the airy studio on the first floor and asked Uncle Davey what he knew about Sellwood.
“Grim-visage?” said Uncle Davey, pulling a face. “Dresses as if it were fifty years ago? Of him, I know, to be frank, not much. He once called with a presentation copy of some verminous volume, printed at his own expense. I think he wanted me to find a proper publisher. Put on a scary smile to ingratiate. Maeve didn’t like him. He hasn’t been back. Book’s around somewhere, probably. Must chuck it one day. It’ll be in one of those piles.”
He stabbed a paintbrush towards the stacks which grew against one wall and went back to painting—a ship at sea, only there were eyes in the sea if you looked close enough, and faces in the clouds and the folds of sail-cloth. Uncle Davey liked hiding things.
When Violet and Ernest arrived, they set to searching book-piles.
It took a long time. Violet kept getting interested in irrelevant findings. Mostly titles about pixies and fairies and curses.
Sellwood’s book had migrated to near the bottom of an especially towering pile. Extracting it brought about a bad tumble that alerted Aunt Maeve, who rushed in assuming the whole of Black Ven was giving way and the house would soon be crashing into Lyme Bay. Uncle Davey cheerfully kicked the spill of volumes into a corner and said he’d sort them out one day, then noticed a wave suitable for hiding an eye in and forgot about the children. Aunt Maeve went off to get warm milk with drops of something from Cook.
In the office, the detectives pored over their find for clues.
“Omphalos Diabolicus, or: The Hoax of ‘Pre-History’,” intoned Dick, “by the Reverend Daniel Sturdevant Sellwood, published 1897, Orris Press, Dorset.” Uncle Davey said he paid for the printing, so I deduce that he is the sole proprietor of this phantom publisher. Ah-hah, the pages have not been cut after the first chapter, so I further deduce that it must be deadly dull stuff.”
He tossed the book to Violet, who got to work with a long knife, slitting the leaves as if they were the author’s throat. Then she flicked through pages, pausing only to report relevant facts. One of her talents was gutting books, discovering the few useful pages like a prospector panning gold dust out of river-dirt.
Daniel Sellwood wasn’t a proper clergyman any more. He had been booted out of the Church of England after shouting that the Bishop should burn Mr. Darwin along with his published works. Now, Sellwood had his own sect, the Church Militant—but most of his congregation were paid servants. Sellwood came from a wealthy Dorset family, rich from trade and shipping, and had been packed off to parson school because an older brother, George, was supposed to inherit the fortune—only the brother was lost at sea, along with his wife Rebecca and little daughter Ruth, and Daniel’s expectations increased. The sinking of the Sophy Briggs was a famous maritime mystery like the Mary Celeste and Captain Nemo: thirty years ago, the pride of the Orris-Sellwood Line went down in calm seas, with all hands lost. Sellwood skipped over the loss in a sentence, then spent pages talking up the “divine revelation” which convinced him to found a church rather than keep up the business.
According to Violet, a lot of folk around Lyme resented being thrown out of work when Sellwood dismantled his shipping concern and dedicated the family fortune to preaching anti-Darwinism.