Darwinia Read Online Free PDF

adjust. It was a hazard to navigation, but atmosphere was paramount: he dealt, after all, in the commerce of the invisible.
    And the atmosphere was working its effect on Mrs. Sanders-Moss. Vale tried to imagine the scene from her perspective, the faded splendor of this rented town house on the wrong side of the Potomac. Side-boards furnished with Victorian bronzes. Greek wrestlers, Romulus and Remus suckling at the teats of a wolf. Japanese prints obscured by shadows. And Vale himself, prematurely white-haired (an asset, really), stout, his coat trimmed in velvet, homely face redeemed by fierce and focused eyes. Green eyes. He had been born lucky: the hair and eyes made him plausible, he often thought.
    He spun out silence into the room. Mrs. Sanders-Moss fidgeted and said at last, “We have an appointment… ?”
    “Of course.”
    “Mrs. Fowler recommended—”
    “I know. Please come into my study.”
    He smiled again. What they wanted, these women, was someone outré , unworldly… a monster, but their monster, a monster domesticated but not quite tame. He took Mrs. Sanders-Moss past velvet curtains into a smaller room lined with books. The books were old, ponderous, impressive unless you troubled to decipher the faded gilt on their threadbare spines: collections of nineteenth-century sermons, which Vale had bought for pennies at a farm auction. The arcanum , people assumed.
    He steered Mrs. Sanders-Moss into a chair, then sat opposite her across a burnished tabletop. She mustn’t know that he was nervous, too. Mrs. Sanders-Moss was no ordinary client. She was the prey he had been stalking for more than a year now. She was well-connected. She hosted a monthly salon at her Virginia estate which was attended by many of the city’s intellectual lights — and their wives.
    He wanted very much to impress Mrs. Sanders-Moss.
    She folded her hands in her lap and fixed him with an earnest gaze. “Mrs. Fowler recommended you quite highly, Mr. Vale.”
    “Doctor,” he corrected.
    “Dr. Vale.” She was still wary. “I’m not a gullible woman. I don’t consult spiritualists, as a rule. But Mrs. Fowler was very impressed by your readings.”
    “I don’t read, Mrs. Sanders-Moss. There are no tea leaves here. I won’t look at your palm. No crystal ball. No tarot cards.”
    “I didn’t mean—”
    “I’m not offended.”
    “Well, she spoke very highly of you. Mrs. Fowler, I mean.”
    “I recall the lady.”
    “What you told her about her husband—”
    “I’m happy she was pleased. Now. Why are you here?”
    She put her hands in her lap. Restraining, perhaps, the urge to run.
    “I’ve lost something,” she whispered.
    He waited.
    “A lock of hair…”
    “Whose hair?”
    Dignity fled. Now the confession. “My daughter’s. My first daughter. Emily. She died at two years. Diphtheria, you see. She was a perfect little girl. When she was ill I took a lock of her hair and kept it with a few of her things. A rattle, a christening dress…”
    “All missing?”
    “Yes! But it’s the hair that seems… the most terrible loss. It’s all I have of her, really.”
    “And you want my help finding these items?”
    “If it’s not too trivial.”
    He softened his voice. “It’s not trivial at all.”
    She looked at him with a gush of relief: she had made herself vulnerable and he had done nothing to hurt her; he had understood. That was what it was all about, Vale thought, this roundelay of shame and redemption. He wondered if doctors who treated venereal diseases felt the same way.
    “ Can you help me?”
    “In all honesty, I don’t know. I can try. But you have to help me . Will you take my hand?”
    Mrs. Sanders-Moss reached tentatively across the table. Her hand was small and cool and he folded it into his own larger, firmer grip.
    Their eyes met.
    “Try not to be startled by anything you might see or hear.”
    “Speaking trumpets? That sort of thing?”
    “Nothing as vulgar. This isn’t a tent