Chapter 17: The Collector from York

On the second Thursday of November, a private carriage arrived in Whitby, stopping outside the harbor office on Customs House Quay.

From the carriage stepped a man wrapped in a heavy, fur-lined cloak, carrying a brass-bound walking stick. He introduced himself as Mr. Edward Sterling, a representative of a private antiquarian society based in York. By afternoon, he had tracked Arthur to his small workshop near Grape Lane.

Arthur opened the door to find the man standing in the rain, his grey eyes fixed on the mahogany camera case sitting on the shelf behind Arthur’s worktable.

"Mr. Arthur Wright?" Sterling asked, his voice smooth, cultured, and entirely devoid of the local coast accent. "The assistant to the late Mr. Finch’s correspondents?"

"I don't sell my prints," Arthur said, holding the door halfway shut. "The workshop is closed for the winter."

Sterling did not move away from the threshold. Instead, he reached into his breast pocket and produced a small, velvet-lined mahogany box, opening the brass clasp with a soft snap.

Inside the box lay a three-inch square piece of glass.

Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. He recognized the distinct, bluish-gray sheen of wet-collodion immediately. But the image rendered on the small plate was not a portrait or a landscape.

It was an exposure of an open moorland road, taken at twilight. In the middle of the road, rendered in sharp, dark silver lines, was a tall, four-wheeled carriage. Surrounding the carriage were six shadowed, waterlogged figures, their arms raised, their faces featureless smudges of gray.

"Where did you get this?" Arthur demanded, stepping out onto the wet cobbles.

"My society acquired three such plates in York last week," Sterling said, closing the box. "Purchased from the estate of an itinerant dealer named Silas Thorne, who was found dead in his rooms near the cathedral. The cause of death was recorded as drowning, though his rooms were entirely dry and situated on the third floor."

Sterling stepped closer, his voice dropping to an urgent whisper.

"Mr. Thorne was not a chemist, Mr. Wright. He was a thief. He stole a crate of unrefined silver-coated glass plates from an excavation beneath the old alum works in Robin Hood's Bay three months ago. He prepared twelve dozen of them before he realized what he was selling."

Arthur felt the cold rain soaking through his coat, but he could not move. "Twelve dozen?"

"He sold them across the North Riding," Sterling said grimly. "To portrait studios in Scarborough, to landscape artists in Leeds, to amateur photographers in Durham. We have recovered eleven plates, Mr. Wright. But ninety-six of them are still unaccounted for."

Sterling looked past Arthur into the dark workshop, his eyes settling on the empty chemical shelves.

"When a glass negative is exposed to light," Sterling continued, "it captures what is before the lens. But when these specific plates are exposed, they do not record light—they attract what has been buried in the shale. You destroyed the anchor off Ravenscar, Mr. Wright. But the chain had more than one link."