Free The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darnton

woman in tweeds.
    “Hello,” she said brightly.
    “Hello, I’m glad you . . .” He broke off—his words were being splintered, odd echoes bounced around the room. Above him was a hanging disk that refracted his voice. She smiled.
    “That’s our little surprise,” she said.
    She apologized, said the house was in the throes of moving, and as she led him up a winding staircase, they stepped around stacks of card-board boxes. They passed a bust of Byron, under an array of portraits in heavy dark colors with thick gold frames. Hugh read the names: Osbert Lancaster, Kenneth Clark, John Betjeman. There were half a dozen John Murrays.
    “That was Darwin’s,” she said, casting her eyes at a portrait of John Murray III looking out from behind a writing desk with a confident gaze.
    “He took over in 1843 and prodded the firm towards science, which was his prime interest. He published Darwin, Lyell, David Livingstone, and of course the famous travel handbooks. They were the first of their kind and very popular. They kept the wolf from the door.”
    They passed through a rear drawing room decorated in thick gold wallpaper—from Japan, 1870, she said—and entered an office that was cluttered with boxes and files. She explained that the publishing house had been purchased by a larger company and was moving to a corporate headquarters.
    “I see the wolf was patient,” said Hugh.
    She didn’t smile. Hugh produced the letter from Simons, which she read twice.
    “Well,” she pronounced finally. “All of our important Darwin papers are locked away in a secret archive, which will remain with us. We have a few boxes of unimportant material in a storeroom here, which you are welcome to peruse, but I doubt you will find anything of interest. It is commercial in nature, bills and accounts and such.”
    Hugh recalled Darwin’s obsessive bookkeeping. One year when he was too ill to jot down the precious sums of money coming in and  money spent he permitted his wife, Emma, to take over the ledgers; a  £7 discrepancy cured him of that forever.
    The archivist informed him that he was not allowed to search directly through the cartons of material. Instead, she led him to the main drawing room where, she explained, he would be observed as he pursued his research. The ornate chamber was lined with glass-encased books and on the higher reaches portraits covered every bit of wall space. He recognized the French windows he had seen from below.
    She offered him a seat at a round felt-covered table set upon a Persian carpet. A box was brought to him and placed beside his chair. She cautioned him to use pencil only in taking notes and said an observer would soon be there to sit at the desk near the window. She lingered for a moment and seemed to have something on her mind. Perhaps, he thought, he was not grateful enough.
    “I appreciate that you’ve allowed me to do this.”
    “Oh, don’t mention it. That’s what we do. We take care of our authors even after death.” She paused a beat, then added: “You realize this room has remained unchanged for nearly two hundred years. And you are in good company. Southey, Crabbe, Moore, Washington Irving, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Madame de Staël. Over there”—she gestured to the center window—“Sir Walter Scott was introduced to Lord Byron in 1815. And over here”—she nodded toward a fireplace with a marble mantelpiece—“Lord Byron’s memoirs were burned after his death. It was thought best for all concerned. Especially Lady Byron.”
    That was it: he had not been sufficiently impressed with the surroundings.
    She left Hugh alone. He looked around the room, taking it all in, and then another woman entered and sat primly at a desk near the window, glancing over from time to time as he opened the box and went through the material.
    The archivist was right: there seemed to be nothing much of interest.
    There were business files and account books—bills of sale, royalty statements,