Weirder Shadows Over Innsmouth

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.

“What’s an omphalo-thing?” asked Ernest.

“The title means ‘the Devil’s Belly-Button’,” said Violet, which made Ernest giggle. “He’s put Greek and Latin words together, which is poor Classics. Apart from his stupid ideas, he’s a terrible writer. Listen… ‘all the multitudinarious flora and fauna of divine creation constitute veritable evidence of the proof of the pellucid and undiluted accuracy of the Word of God Almighty Unchallenged as set down in the shining, burning, shimmering sentences, chapters and, indeed, books of the Old and New Testaments, hereinafter known to all righteous and right-thinking men as the Holy Bible of Glorious God.’ It’s as if he’s saying ‘this is the true truthiest truest truth of truthdom ever told truly by truth-trusters’.”

“How do the belly-buttons come into it?” asked Dick.

“Adam and Eve were supposed to have been created with navels, though—since they weren’t born like other people—they oughtn’t to have them.”

This was over Ernest’s head, but Dick knew how babies came and that his navel was a knot, where a cord had been cut and tied.

“To Sellwood’s way of thinking, just as Adam and Eve were created to seem as if they had normal parents, the Earth was created as if it had a pre-history, with geological and fossil evidence in place to make the planet appear much older than it says in the Bible.”

“That’s silly,” said Ernest.

“Don’t tell me, tell Sellwood,” said Violet. “He’s a silly, stupid man.

He doesn’t want to know the truth, or anyone else to either, so he breaks fossils and shouts down lecturers. His theory isn’t even original. A man named Gosse wrote a book with the same idea, though Gosse claimed God buried fossils to fool people while Sellwood says it was the Devil.”

Violet was quite annoyed.

“I think it’s an excuse to go round bullying people,” said Dick. “A cover for his real, sinister purpose.”

“If you ask me, what he does is sinister enough by itself.”

“Nobody did ask you,” said Ernest, which he always said when someone was unwise enough to preface a statement with “if you ask me”. Violet stuck her tongue out at him.

Dick was thinking.

“It’s likely that the Sellwood family were smugglers,” he said.

Violet agreed. “Smugglers had to have ships, and pretend to be respectable merchants. In the old days, they were all at it. You know the poem…”

Violet stood up, put a hand on her chest, and recited, dramatically.

“If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,

Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street.

Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie,

Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.

Five and twenty ponies, trotting through the dark,

Brandy for the parson, ’baccy for the clerk;

Laces for a lady, letters for a spy,

And watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by.”

She waited for applause, which didn’t come. But her recitation was useful. Dick had been thinking in terms of spies or smugglers, but the poem reminded him that the breeds were interdependent. It struck him that Sellwood might be a smuggler of spies, or a spy for smugglers.

“I’ll wager ‘Tiger’ Bristow is in this, too,” he said, snapping his fingers.

Ernest shivered, audibly.

“Is it spying or smuggling?” he asked.

“It’s both,” Dick replied.

Violet sat down again, and chewed on a long, stray strand of her hair.

“Tell Dick about the French Spy,” suggested Ernest.

Dick was intrigued.

“That was a long time ago, a hundred years,” she said. “It’s a local legend, not evidence.”

“You yourself say legends always shroud some truth,” declared Dick. “We must consider all the facts, even rumors of facts, before forming a conclusion.”

Violet shrugged. “It is about Sellwood’s house, I suppose…”

Dick was astonished. “And you didn’t think it was relevant! Sometimes, I’m astonished by your lack of perspicacity!”