The Darkwood Mysteries (14): The Ghosts of the Black Museum

By Steve Merrifield

Emily Darkwood is already resisting Victorian society's expectations of her as a woman of the upper classes, when she receives a strange and life-changing inheritance in the wake of her missing parents. A stone of amber that draws her into mysteries, supernatural, cosmic, and criminal. Armed with this guide stone, her wits, revolver, sword-stick umbrella, and faithful servant-companion, the streetwise, scrappy, and young Jack Hobbs, she determines to challenge the mysteries and threats she encounters in her search to understand the power of the stone, its connection to her parents, and their fates. Yet dark forces conspire against her, and her drive for answers and her fight against the darkness of the world risks her friends, family, her fought for studies in medicine and surgery, and herself.

In The Ghosts of the Black Museum (novella), Irene Reuben, friend of Darkwood and spiritualist medium, encounters spiritual tormentors at a museum of crime. Are they unknown victims of the Creeping Ghost Killer? Is the murder case not closed after all? Their demands and the truth put her at risk from a murderer among the living...

The Darkwood Mysteries is a non-linear episodic series of short-stories, novellas, and novels which can be enjoyed as standalone tales of horror and adventure, or together as part of a deeper mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Merrifield
• Release date: Dec 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005038151

Steve Merrifield

Steve Merrifield is a writer of mystery and horror fiction. He takes his inspiration for writing from the work of James Herbert, Shaun Hutson and Clive Barker, and credits Gothic horror episodes of 70s ‘Doctor Who’ and cult TV such as ‘Kolchak: The Night Stalker’, ‘Sherlock Holmes’, and ‘Twin Peaks’; and classic horror movies as feed for his imagination.While most of his novels have been dark contemporary stories, his interest in Victorian history led to his historical crime and horror series ‘The Darkwood Mysteries’.Steve isn’t limited to dark fiction, and his work in social care, his training and experience in counselling, and his love for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has seen him write his self-help title, ‘Get Over It’. Steve plans to broaden his writing genres further through other genres.He lives in the UK with his husband and their two cats. Being a self-confessed geek, he regularly indulges his inner child through modern board games, miniature painting, revisiting shows from his childhood, and enjoys modern anime, sci-fi, life’s mysteries, fantasy and supernatural horror.Steve regularly shares updates on his projects and posts on his personal interests here on his blog, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.

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The Darkwood Mysteries: The Ghosts of the Black Museum

by Steve Merrifield

copyright 2022 Steve Merrifield

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The Darkwood Mysteries

These are the chronicles of the pursuits of Emily Darkwood—my employer, teacher, and friend; a young woman who refused to allow Victorian society to dictate her life, determined to become a physician and surgeon, and live a life of her own making. Inheritance gave her means and opportunity, and with it came her most cherished possession: an amber stone that once belonged to her mother. A gem with the curious power to draw its owner and dark happenings together. Through the stone, Darkwood courageously shone her light upon the mysteries gathered to her—both criminal and supernatural—in her search for answers to the fates of her missing parents. With resolve, wits, and revolver, she became a fighter of the wicked and the monstrous lurking within the shadows.

Jack Hobbs, her ever faithful servant-companion and your narrator, humbly presents…

The Ghosts of the Black Museum

I start the tale I relate to you this day, in Scotland Yard. Not as an unwelcome intruder upon the work of the detectives through Miss Darkwood's investigations, but as a guest exploring the exhibits of Inspector Neame's criminal museum—more widely known as the 'Black Museum'.

The museum consisted of a series of interconnected rooms at the heart of the constabulary's headquarters. Windows were narrow, and set high in the walls, and led only to the surrounding corridors and adjoining offices to leech a share of their natural light. The darkness shivered around the displays and examples of criminality, held back by the constant hiss and flare of gaslight.

Intended as an education on crime and investigation for new detectives, it had become a morbid curiosity which many of the public sought an invitation to visit. While Miss Darkwood's persistent pursuit of a criminal had not brought us to this place, her persistent badgering of the long suffering Inspector Duggan for an invitation had. He relented and made the arrangements. Being on duty that day, he planned to meet us at the end of our tour for a pint of dark ale in return.

Miss Darkwood was in the company of her senior cousin, Robert Darkwood, whose fresh face expressed a grim distaste at everything his dark eyes encountered. Written reports of detectives and statements of witnesses, victims, and suspects; the weapons used to maim, disfigure and kill; the bloodied clothes of victims and photographs of their brutalised bodies; and the noose of ropes that dispatched murderers on the gallows; the faces of the executed criminal preserved in death as plaster death masks as faces for an onlooker to search for clues as to the natures of deviancy.

It is fair to say that a grim distaste in response to these reminders of the dark side of life was wholly appropriate, but there was an air of Mr Darkwood overplaying this reaction to distance himself as a man of the 'holy cloth' from the gloomy fascination in this exploration of the tangible evidence of murder. I suspect that is also the reason for his conspicuously absent white collar—not wanting a Catholic priest to be seen as a common gawper at the evidence of human suffering and cruelty.

"Why do we need to see that?" Mr Darkwood sneered before a cosh studded with nails.

It conjured unwelcome images of the nightmarish wounds it could deliver.

I think this is all a healthy reminder of one's mortality, Miss Irene Reuben, our friend and ally, defended.

Her words were no longer buoyed by the thick molasses of a Russian accent. It had diminished after recent events that saw her character dismantled within her social circle—and whoever read the newspaper articles about her past without considering the person between the lines and behind the salacious stories. Miss Reuben had been torn down. Her Russian accent a casualty as she shed the remains of who she had been to become something else. Anything else to escape the scandal.

It's certainly a reminder to keep one's wits sharp, Miss Darkwood offered to her cousin from his arm, squeezing it and pulling him to her affectionately.

Miss Reuben walked with her hand hooked into the crook of Mr John Acre's elbow. It was a tentative hold, for they were relatively new in one another's lives, and I expect such demonstrations of intimacy were unfamiliar between them. I felt conspicuous and set apart from them, in that Miss Darkwood walked with her cousin, and Miss Reuben with her gentleman while I, there as servant companion to Miss Darkwood, walked alone. I was also the youngest, at seventeen, with my company ranging from the early twenties of the Darkwoods to the thirties of Miss Reuben and Mr Acre.

In the orange glow of the gaslight in the dusty rooms, I was at least not the only visitor to be on their own. I contented myself in Darkwood wanting me there and inviting me, and that Inspector Duggan would soon join us, and he and I could be absent of partners together.

It seems distasteful for these examples of man at its lowest being memorialised.

"Oh, come Robert, this is from a man married to an institution founded and maintained on the guilt of those who cling to it. Why, you have your own little private box where distasteful confessions of shame are presented to you and you alone." Darkwood smiled wickedly at him, her dark eyes afire in the golden gaslight. The easy affection between them only highlighted how Miss Reuben and Mr Acre had some way to go before they reached the natural familiarity between the Darkwoods.

Mr Darkwood made a murmur of consideration before responding. Perhaps you are right, dear cousin. I wonder if this fine institution would loan me some death masks. Coming across a couple of these—like this brute—in the dark confines of the confessional might dissuade some of my repeat offenders of sin from falling by the wayside. They laughed together.

Mr Acre suddenly directed Miss Reuben away from us, as he had done several times at that point. I couldn't decide whether he wanted to show Miss Reuben a display, or whether he simply went where his interest led him and he expected Miss Reuben to follow. It was a marked difference from the way the two Darkwood's strode together in a union of shared interest, or at least courtesy to the other's interests.

I noticed a brief slip in Miss Reuben's smile, and I remember wondering at the fragility of it upon her round face in the company of Mr Acre. He was a nice enough man, I suppose, but he had a bold waistcoat of many-coloured stripes, and made a show of his pocket watch, polished within an inch of its life, even though it was a common enough model. Not detractions in themselves, but on him they were boasts that emphasised his brashness. He seemed full of himself and teetered on the boundary between respectable confidence and arrogant poseur—straying into the latter regularly.

I sensed Miss Darkwood tolerated Mr Acre for the sake of her friendship with Miss Reuben and her friend's need for someone at a difficult time. Miss Reuben had left a life on the streets and within houses of the night for the dark of the séance rooms and started a new life for herself in Southend-on-Sea. She used the proceeds from her work to support women like her who had done what they could to survive in the world, but this venture resulted in tragedy and horror—as relayed within The Hound at the Door.

That was fifteen months prior, and Miss Reuben had since moved back to London. She continued her work in social reformation by supporting fallen women to stand up for themselves in new lives separate from their old. Through a network of sympathetic and charitable employers, she had provided opportunities for women to earn their keep through respectable and safer means. One of the many fringe churches which offered a path towards salvation supported her in this. On the verge of becoming raised to a councillor in an East End borough, Miss Reuben would find to her cost that her church operated through the flawed ideology that those who offered salvation to the fallen should be beyond such fallibilities themselves.

When the church leaders and philanthropic donors realised Miss Reuben's passionate rallies on the lives of fallen women were born from first-hand experience, they were quick to close ranks against her to ensure she was on the appropriate side of the pulpit. Her political rivals and their supportive periodicals ensured her fall was swift, public, and resolute. Many of the friendships she garnered dissolved, and her network of supporters fell apart. Most of Miss Reuben's saved women left their employment for fear of association with her. All Miss Reuben worked for had come undone. Mr Acre was one of the few from her church who still associated with her, largely because his attraction to her was greater than his faith.

Mr Darkwood tutted. I wonder at these poor victims—perhaps only forever known through a morbid fascination with crime. Will these unfortunate women be known only by their grisly fates as victims that make the villain?

Darkwood answered her cousin. "I don't overlook them as being whole, multi-faceted people with lives before their deaths. It is that which makes it all so tragic. This is more a memorial than most might have. I see them as a sobering reminder of the dangers in life. Why, I see this photograph of this young woman here, and the sample of her blood-stained clothes there, and the very weapon that cruelly ended her life, and that sad photograph of her final undignified repose, and it's more real and involving than some passing news story at breakfast which I will dismiss as something that happens to others so I can enjoy my kedgeree. I stand here and think what if I had taken a wrong-turn and found myself at the mercy of some criminal?"

You? At the mercy of anyone? Mr Darkwood scoffed. Unthinkable. With your sword-stick umbrella and concealed revolver. Which you no doubt have on you at this very moment…

I never leave home without them. And perhaps surrounded by all these victims, it will comfort you in knowing your dear cousin can defend herself—and you. And, she whispered. If you could moderate your volume, Robert, I might leave Scotland Yard similarly armed.

Oh, yes. Of course. Don't want to make you an exhibit of criminality.

A section of wall with black cloth pinned across it distracted me from their interplay. A simple sign hung over it stating, 'Display Temporarily Withdrawn'. From the drape of the material over protrusions, it was clear items were there but hidden from view. I remember frowning at this; my curiosity teased to a pique—an exhibit had been covered up. Is there anything more enticing that something censored or forbidden?

When I thought no one was looking, I lifted one corner from the wall. Seeing beneath, I knew exactly why the display had been 'withdrawn'. The title stated: 'Dr Josiah Berkley—the Thief of Faces'.

The sergeant in attendance rushed to stop my further inspections, but I had already dropped the cloth back in place. I knew why the exhibit was hidden before I saw the flushed, scowling, and apologetic face of the sergeant.