Mary felt mortified—had they really left Mrs. Poole with so little? But she had not expected Catherine and Beatrice to join her and Justine on the continent—she had assumed they would be here, looking after the household. Instead, they had left Mrs. Poole and Alice alone—and look what had come of that! “I’m glad you did,” she said. “And it’s not a bother, of course. In my waist bag you’ll find—goodness, I don’t even know how much it is without doing conversions in my head. A bunch of francs and krone—I spent the last of our pounds and shillings getting us home. Also my pistol and some bullets. Could you take the foreign currency to Threadneedle Street tomorrow and have it exchanged? And could you please telegraph Mina and tell her we’re arrived safely? I’m so sorry, Mrs. Poole. I should have made better arrangements.” That money would carry them through—well, Mary did not know how long. They would each need to start working again, soon. But they would have to solve this mystery first. She thought, with a pang, about the fact that she would not be returning to work for Mr. Holmes tomorrow morning, but trying to locate him in the labyrinth of London. Was she more worried about the job, or the man? This was no time to make such distinctions. The man was the job—to get back one, she would have to find the other.
“That’s quite all right, miss. You can’t think of everything, now can you? After all, you rescued Miss Van Helsing, and that’s the important thing. Although Miss Murray’s telegram didn’t provide many details?”
And Mrs. Poole, epitome of a housekeeper that she was, would never ask for them! Still, it was clear to Mary that she would like to know what all of them had been doing since they left Park Terrace. After all, Mrs. Poole was human—she would never admit to curiosity, but she would certainly feel it! “I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. It was Diana’s doing, really, but don’t tell her I said that. Oh, and she almost burned down a mental hospital in the process!”
DIANA: But I didn’t, did I? And you said it yourself—I rescued Lucinda. If it weren’t for me—
LUCINDA: For which I am most grateful, I assure you.
DIANA: Oh. Well, it was nothing. I mean, it was something, all right—especially when we set all those sheets on fire and everyone began running out of the building, and they called the fire brigade! That was prime.
The next morning, Justine walked across the courtyard to the building that had once been Hyde’s laboratory and was now converted into Beatrice’s greenhouse of poisonous plants. Before she had left Budapest, Beatrice had said to her, “When you are once again in London, please look in on my plants. I do not know if Dr. Watson’s ingenious arrangement of rubber tubes actually worked. I hope they are still alive—but I am anxious about them. Sometimes I think of them as my children, the only ones I shall ever have.”
As she crossed the courtyard, Omega followed her, meowing at her heels. She picked up the kitten. “You can’t come with me,” she said to him sternly. “It’s poisonous in there. Un petit chatton like you would not last a minute.” She kissed him on the head, then put him down again and said, “Shoo! As Mrs. Poole always says, although I do not understand the reference to footwear. Go back and bother her, mon petit. I have no time for you this morning.” He walked off disdainfully, tail in the air, as though having been rejected in that fashion, he could not be bothered with her either.
The door of the greenhouse, once an operating theater with a high glass dome to let in light, opened with a creak. The moisture inside had rusted the hinges.
Inside, it was warm, humid—and green. Justine breathed a sigh of relief. Here and there she could see patches of brown—the Digitalis purpurea had not survived as well as some of the hardier specimens, and the henbane was drooping. But most of the plants arranged on the semicircular wooden ledges where students had once taken notes were lush and thriving.
Justine checked all the tubes, made any necessary adjustments, and moved the Digitalis to a shadier location, although she was not certain if that would help. Beatrice knew more about such plants than she did, although she had done well enough raising vegetables for her own consumption during the hundred years she had spent in Cornwall.
Were they indeed the only children Beatrice would ever have? She herself was not capable of having children. When he had re-created her, Victor Frankenstein had made sure of that. When Adam had held her captive in the small cottage in the Orkneys, when he had insisted that she behave as his wife, she had been glad that she could not conceive a child. But now? She would never have the life Justine Moritz might have had, the life of an ordinary woman. There was a man who might love her—at least, she had seen marks of attention from him. The small courtesies, the poetry… Atlas, the Strongman of Lorenzo’s Circus of Marvels and Delights, who was as tall as she was, although not as strong. How did she feel about him? She did not know. Adam’s death had changed something, she was not sure what—but now she felt as though, for the first time since Victor Frankenstein’s death, she could think about the future. What did the future hold for her? She had no idea.
Well, it was no use standing here in a state of uncertainty and indecision. She must go join the others—there was a great deal to do today!
While Justine was crossing the courtyard from Beatrice’s greenhouse to the tradesmen’s entrance, Mary was waiting in the parlor for her and Diana. She paced back and forth, then paused and looked up at the portrait of her mother over the fireplace. She had not come into this room last night—the fire had not been lit, and it had been a cold, dark cave. But now, morning light streamed in through the windows, illuminating the sofa and armchairs Beatrice had re-covered in a floral pattern, the Turkish rug she had bought at a church sale. Mary looked up at the painting of her mother over the mantel, between two Chinese jars that, yes, Beatrice had chosen. The Poisonous Girl was, after all, their resident aesthete and decorator. There was Mrs. Jekyll, with her golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes, dressed in the romantic and slightly ridiculous fashion of a previous generation. Mary walked to the fireplace and stood beneath the painting.
Mother, if you could have been there, she thought. In that castle in Styria where her father—well, Edward Hyde—had told her the terrible story of his experiments: how he had tried to become his better self, how he had fallen to his lower impulses. And while he was still trying to become the higher man, a more rational, evolved human being through chemical experimentation, he had given his wife something, some drug created through his experiments, that allowed her to have the child she had so long desired. He experimented on you too. And I was the result of that experiment. If her mother were here now, what would Mary tell her? She did not know. Perhaps it was better, after all, that Ernestine Jekyll was lying in the graveyard of Marylebone Church. What characteristics had Mary inherited from that version of her father? No wonder she and Diana, who was born of her father’s lower, more bestial self, were so different. But the higher man—could he not be as inhuman as the lower? She was, perhaps, as much of a monster as her sister.
DIANA: Oy! Anyway, you’re worse than me any day. At least I’m never a sanctimonious prig.
“Mary, are you ready?” asked Justine. There were Justine and Diana in the doorway, both dressed in men’s clothes—well, boys’ clothes, in Diana’s case.
“Is it absolutely necessary for you to dress like that?” said Mary. “Where in the world did you get that suit anyway, from Charlie? You look like one of the Baker Street Irregulars. Indeed, there’s no need for you to come at all. Why can’t you just stay here and do something or other with Archibald?”
“You never want to include me!” said Diana, putting her hands in her pockets and planting her feet wide, like Charlie Sutton or another of the Baker Street boys. “Well, I’m coming—nohow.”
“I am not certain that word means what you intended,” said Justine.
“Words can mean whatever you want them to,” said Diana. “You just have to pay them enough. Anyway, what do you know about English? You’re Swiss.”
Mary had no time to waste on such non
sensical chatter. “Come on, then. Honestly, half the reason we bring you anywhere is that it’s usually more trouble to leave you behind!”
She walked at a brisk pace out the front door of 11 Park Terrace, then across Regent’s Park, annoyed at Diana and anxious about what she would find at Baker Street. In the park, the trees and shrubs, which had still been green before they left for Vienna, were draped in their autumn finery. A few leaves, yellow and orange, already littered the ground. The roses of summer had turned into red hips, and the ducks and geese on the river looked ready to depart for warmer climes.
BEATRICE: That’s lovely writing, Catherine.
CATHERINE: Thank you. I must have rewritten that description three times. I wasn’t sure about “climes”—it may be too Wordsworthian? But “climate” sounded so ordinary. I wanted it to sound, you know, poetic.
At 221 Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson greeted Mary with voluble joy. “Oh, Miss Jekyll, I’m so glad to see you safely back!” she said. “No, I’m afraid I don’t have anything more to report. Nor hide nor hair I’ve seen of either Mr. Holmes or Dr. Watson since I spoke with Mrs. Poole. Sometimes the gentlemen are away for long periods of time, but they generally let me know where they’re going, although Mr. Holmes can be secretive, to be sure. Yes, of course you may search their rooms—I know they wouldn’t mind you doing so. And this is Miss Frankenstein! I wouldn’t have thought you were a lady, in that getup—look quite gentlemanly, you do. But Mrs. Poole told me all about you, miss. Such a nice time we have on her days off—we go to the Aerated Bread Company for tea, and then on to Harrods or a walk down Piccadilly to look at the shops. And Miss Hyde, too, of course. She’s told me all about you!” Mrs. Hudson looked at Diana disapprovingly. “Mind you behave yourself upstairs! No monkey business.” She took a large set of keys from her apron pocket. “I’ll just unlock the flat for you, shall I? How were your travels on the continent?”
“Very well, thank you,” said Mary. So Mrs. Hudson and Mrs. Poole went out for tea and shopping! Mary would have liked to be a fly on that wall so she could overhear their conversations. She wondered what they said to each other about the Baker Street and Park Terrace households. “We went to Vienna and Budapest. It was—well, it was an adventure.”
“I’ve never been to Europe myself,” said Mrs. Hudson, “although I traveled with my husband when he was in Her Majesty’s army. We were in Lahore for a while, and then he was posted to Goa. Ah, we were so young! It’s easier to travel when you’re young, I think. You don’t mind the inconveniences so much.”
Mr. Holmes’s residence at 221B looked exactly the way it had the last time Mary had seen it. Books lay scattered over every surface. There was the long table with its scientific instruments, the camera on its tripod sporting a top hat, the shelves of glass jars containing—she scanned them quickly—yes, mostly ears, and she thought back to the monograph Mr. Holmes had been dictating the last time she had seen him. It had focused on the distinctive characteristics of ears and their use in criminal investigation.
“What are we looking for?” asked Diana.
“I’m not sure. Any indication of where Mr. Holmes might be. If he’s on a case, he may have left notes of some sort. He usually makes notes to himself. I’ll start with the desk. Justine, could you start—well, honestly, any place is as good as another. And Diana, could you stay out of the way for a while? Maybe you can sit on the sofa—oh, it’s covered with books. Well, find a place anyway.”
Mary sat down at the rolltop desk, which was spilling over with papers. That was where she usually worked as Mr. Holmes’s assistant, although she had kept it so much neater! However, the papers she could find were simply notes for his monograph and some of her typescripts. At one point she called Diana over to unlock the hidden drawer.
“Easy peasy,” said Diana, putting a thin metal tool of some sort back into a compact leather case filled with similar tools. “See? You want me out of the way until you don’t. What would you do without me?”
“Where did you get that case?” asked Mary, sliding open the drawer.
“It’s the one Irene gave me. Why?”
“I’ve just never seen it before, that’s all. I mean, I’ve seen you pick locks, but I’ve never seen the instruments all together like that. Like some sort of nefarious manicure set!”
“You only see what I want you to see. Anyway, I usually only carry around what I need, but I didn’t know what would be needed this time, did I? Also, what does ‘nefarious’ mean?”
Mary sighed. If only Diana were less annoying! She could be so useful sometimes—and she never failed to point that out or let you forget it!
The hidden drawer held only the photograph of Irene Norton—Irene Adler, as she had been then—that Mr. Holmes had shown her before their European trip, and a stack of letters postmarked from Vienna with the Baker Street address written in violet ink. Those must be from Irene. Mary remembered what Dr. Watson had told her the day they had received Mina’s telegram, as they were hurrying back through Regent’s Park to the Jekyll residence: I believe she was the love of his life. And yet Irene herself had said that she and Sherlock were fundamentally incompatible. Would Mr. Holmes agree with her assessment? And did it even matter? Mary still did not know him as well as she would have liked, but she suspected that he would be perfectly capable of feeling an unrequited passion for many years, like one of those rivers that run deep underground, giving no evidence of its presence—but there nonetheless.
“Don’t misjudge Holmes,” Dr. Watson had once told her when she remarked on the imperturbable way he had approached a brutal murder. “He may seem like a thinking machine, but he is capable of great depth of feeling. When he learned that my wife was dead—that day he appeared again, like a magician’s trick, after his supposed death at Reichenbach Falls—you cannot imagine his kindness and compassion, Miss Jekyll. I assure you, there is more to him than what you see on the surface.” But would she ever see below that surface?
“I have found something.” Mary turned around to see Justine standing at the door to Dr. Watson’s room. “Come look.”
Unlike the parlor, Watson’s bedroom was as neat as a pin, with a narrow cot in one corner, a wardrobe and chest of drawers, and a desk under the window. Everything was folded and tucked away. A wool blanket at the foot of the bed and a pair of boots by the door waited for when their master might need them. Of course, he had once been a soldier. It made sense that he would keep his personal space tidy.
“Here, on the desk,” said Justine. She pointed to the leather blotter—one of the flat kind that covered the desk, rather than a handheld device. The sheet of blotting paper on top was relatively new—there were few marks. But close to one corner was what looked like a list of addresses. Watson’s handwriting was neat, and even backward, Mary could make them out.
“There’s a date on top,” she said. “September 21, a little more than a week ago. Thank goodness Dr. Watson is used to recording Mr. Holmes’s cases so meticulously. He must have written this just before he disappeared. Justine, would you mind copying these down? I’d like to look in Mr. Holmes’s room as well.”
Mr. Holmes’s room! It was so easy to say, but she put her hand on his door with some trepidation. She had never, of course, been in either of the bedrooms before. Dr. Watson’s was impersonal enough that she had felt no compunction in entering. But Sherlock’s room…
She was right to have worried. Everything in that room—the violin in the armchair by the window, the pipe on the bedside table, the slippers under the bed, their heels worn down, spoke of him. The room was a mess. An infernal mess, Mrs. Hudson would probably have called it.
It felt so strange searching through his personal possessions! Looking through the bedside table drawer and in the pockets of his waistcoats and suit jackets in the wardrobe, which was identical to the one in Dr. Watson’s room. She felt as though she were invading his privacy. Would he be angry with her when they met again? But first she had to make sure they would
meet again, and that meant finding him. Which meant looking everywhere she could think of for clues as to where he might be.
Here, too, there was a desk, but it contained nothing enlightening. The blotting paper was crisscrossed with fragments of sentences, but none of them seemed to have any bearing on this case. On one corner of the desk was a sheaf of papers entitled Notes for Mary, but they had to do exclusively with ears. Was that, after all, what she meant to him? Was her value simply as a transcribing machine? Mary felt tired and despondent. Pull yourself together, my girl, she thought. It’s almost lunchtime, and you’re getting hungry, that’s all. There’s no time for thinking like that, not right now. Would they find anything at all useful in this mess?
At last, she found something that might be of use—a card in the pocket of his greatcoat, which had been tossed onto a chair. On it was engraved: MR. MYCROFT HOLMES, THE DIOGENES CLUB, and on the back in Mr. Holmes’s handwriting—she had seen it so often that she could pick it out from a hundred others, as she could pick his face out of a crowd—was written: 10 a.m. urgent. Dr. Watson had mentioned that just before Mr. Holmes’s disappearance, he had gone to meet his brother Mycroft. Urgent—that sounded as though he had been summoned for some reason.
“Have you found anything?” asked Justine, standing in the doorway.
“Just this.” Mary held the card out to her. “I think we’ll need to visit the Diogenes Club, as well as those addresses you wrote down. Do you have the list?”
Justine patted her jacket pocket.
“All right then, I think we’ve probably done all we can here. What worries me is that Mr. Holmes doesn’t seem to have taken his clothes. I mean, as far as I can tell.” She had examined his clothes thoroughly—she had opened a drawer full of socks and felt her cheeks grow red from embarrassment. And the drawer of underclothing… well.
The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl Page 5
