“Specimens, exhibits,” the stationmaster said. “I don’t care what you call them. They’re dead bodies, and I don’t want them in my station.”

“Well,” the guard said, “they can’t stay on my train.”

They looked to Sebastian for some kind of adjudication. He realized that what they’d been seeking was neither a doctor nor a policeman, but a Solomon.

Meanwhile, his train stood waiting. And there was an urgency to his mission that, though he could not advertise it, argued against delay.

The fact of it was that he had no answer. Freak or not, these were human remains and there was probably some law to govern their storage and use. His employer might know. But Sir James was up in Dundee for the week, giving an address to the British Association.

He gave the bottled specimen a more intense inspection. Here, only inches from the glass, the smell of formaldehyde was almost overpowering.

He had an idea.

He said, “Have you opened any of the other boxes?”

“No,” the stationmaster said.

“Have you taken a close look at this?”

“As close as any man would care to.”

“Look,” he said, and beckoned the man in. “Get close enough and you can see a faint crazing pattern in the surface of the skin. What does that tell you?”

The stationmaster opened and closed his mouth and then was about to shrug, so Sebastian told him.

“I think you’ll find that what you’re looking at may not be flesh, but …”

“Wax!” the guard said suddenly.

The stationmaster seemed doubtful. He regarded the freak through its glass and said, “They’re waxworks?”

“Have you never heard of such a thing? Anatomical models. Bottled up in spirits of alcohol for a showman’s trick. Of course,” he added for safety, “that’s only my guess.”

Then he looked into the milky eyes of the three-eyed freak, and the dead freak stared ahead and through him as if refusing to meet his gaze.

He felt a touch of guilt.

But hadn’t he witnessed worse things in this world? And the freak was long dead.

And as for the guard, he had all the answer that he needed.

He clapped his hands together. “Right,” he said. “I’ll have the rest of your goods off my train and we’ll be on our way.”

As the lad went to unload the other crates, the stationmaster crouched down and peered more closely into the jar. All of his reticence was forgotten now.

“A waxwork,” the stationmaster said, and he looked up at Sebastian with a face of wonder where, before, there had been only disgust.

“Indeed,” said Sebastian.

“Who’d have imagined that?” the stationmaster said. “You don’t see it till you really look.”

THE UNLOADING of the boxes took another fifteen minutes. Once the train was moving again, Sebastian opened his book and tried to read.

The reading was not for pleasure; behind the content of the book lay one of the reasons for his journey. If he arrived too late to seek out the author this afternoon, he could finish it in his hotel.

He was keeping alive a glimmer of hope for a decent supper. His warrant might give him first class travel out of London, but the restaurant car was beyond his means.

To those hopes of a quiet evening and a decent supper he added another, which was not to dream of carnival freaks in a strange bed.

In the event, he did not. But only because worse was to come, before the day was out.

AFTER THE GOODS DISPUTE AND AN UNSCHEDULED CROSSROADS stop to pick up some soldiers, Sebastian reached his destination almost an hour late. There was an address on the slip of paper that he’d been using as a bookmark. He took it out to check it now. He had a room reserved by telegram at the Sun Inn, Arnmouth.

Arnmouth was a resort that had been established close to an estuary, where the lack of a suitable bridging point had sent the railway line inland. Which meant that the station was more than a mile from the town, with a horse wagon service to carry passengers and their luggage over the final leg of the journey.

Sebastian had no luggage to speak of, just his usual leather Gladstone. While the other passengers were seeing their bags onto the station wagon, he watched the soldiers climbing into the back of a waiting motor truck. They were a squad of teenaged boys and a gray-headed sergeant. All had ridden the last few miles together in the baggage car. Their transport now was a petrol-driven three-tonner with cart wheels and a canvas cover, and an engine noise like spanners tumbling in a drum.

A young railwayman closed up the tailgate after the soldiers. He’d been blasted with soot at some point in his working day, so that when he turned around to the horse wagon his eyes were a startling blue in contrast to his blackened skin and shirt collar.

“Sorry for any delay, ladies and gentlemen,” he called up to the passengers as their horse shied and stamped.

“No apology required,” one of Sebastian’s fellow passengers called back. “We don’t argue with the King’s Own. Is it for the maneuvers?”

“A little local emergency they’re helping us out with,” the railwayman said. Sebastian felt his senses sharpen. But the young man was already walking away.

The final leg of Sebastian’s journey took about twenty minutes through country lanes. Arnmouth was a onetime fishing village that had grown for the summer crowds as far as its situation would allow. His first sight was of a clock tower and municipal welcome garden at the top of the main street. A dense bed of roadside flowers spelled out the town’s name on a sloping bank.

Their wagon made its way down the street, which wasn’t long. An observer could feasibly stand at one end of it and hail to a friend at the other. The street was lined with fancy shops, fine hotels, and tall houses made of the local stone.

Something was definitely amiss. Shopkeepers were outside their doors, exchanging words while their shops stood empty. A group of women had gathered on a corner. None of them paid the station wagon any attention as it went by.

The Sun Inn was at the end of the main street, where the street made a sharp turn down to the harbor. It was an old coaching inn, with an archway to its stables and a view out over dunes and the estuary strand.

Sebastian tipped the driver sixpence and climbed down with his bag. Then he glanced back up the street. The local women were too far off for him to do more than read their attitudes. Some stood with their arms folded. They glanced around as they talked.

The driver inspected the sixpence, sniffed wetly, and then pocketed the coin as he flicked the reins to move on.

THE TWO STEPS up from the pavement into the inn were edged with heavy iron. Once off the street, Sebastian found himself in a low-ceilinged and gloomy interior. Except for a few stuffed sea birds on a shelf above the mantel, he was alone. There was a mahogany bar counter with a backdrop of bottles, mirrors, and crystal. On one paneled wall was an engraved print of the barquentine Waterwitch, and on another a picture frame with samples of sailors’ knots behind glass.

He’d found solitude, but not silence. At the far end of the saloon bar was a partition. Beyond the partition was the snug, where the floor would be bare wood and the beer a halfpenny cheaper, and from which came the noise of a crowd of men. Sebastian paused for a moment to listen in case he could make out what was being discussed with so much enthusiasm, but he could not.

He reached over the bar to where a brass ship’s bell hung, and tweaked the clapper so it rang once.

All went quiet. Then a head popped around the bar side of the partition. It belonged to a large, unshaven man wearing—from what Sebastian could see—a parish constable’s uniform with a touch of the rummage-box in its fit and condition.