The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl

by Theodora Goss

Catherine walked quietly back to the doorway into the drawing room and stood listening. Mary waited for a moment, but the only sound was of footsteps. If Queen Tera was in there, she wanted to act, and quickly. She stepped past Catherine and stood in the doorway with her pistol in front of her, finger on the trigger.

  There, in the middle of the blue drawing room, stood Mrs. Russell, supervising two parlor maids. They must have entered while Mary and the others were in the storage room. One of the parlor maids was dusting the ornaments on the mantel in a way that no competent parlor maid had ever dusted, without picking them up, simply moving the feather duster over them. In a moment, Mary was sure, one of the marble busts would crash to the floor. The other was plumping a pillow on the blue sofa, although it was not the sort of pillow that needed plumping, being filled, most likely, with horsehair. They looked like actresses playing at being parlor maids in a theatrical performance. But of course it was not Mrs. Russell, because she was lying unconscious in the hall, and they were not parlor maids. Which of them was Queen Tera? Which were Mrs. Raymond and Margaret Trelawny? And who was producing this illusion? Mary had no idea. Which of them should she shoot? She had to choose one, but she hesitated. At that moment, Mrs. Russell noticed her standing in the doorway. She snarled and raised her left hand. It had seven fingers. Mary pulled the trigger and shot the housekeeper in the shoulder.

  In the quiet drawing room, the sound of the shot was almost deafening. Mrs. Russell screamed and collapsed. But what hit the floor was not Mrs. Russell—it was the small figure of Queen Tera, dressed not in the housekeeper’s black dress but in a white linen gown, on which a red stain was rapidly spreading. It matched the ruby scarab at her throat. And the two parlor maids were no longer maids, but Mrs. Raymond and Margaret Trelawny. Mrs. Raymond looked at Mary with astonishment and dismay. Miss Trelawny cried out and knelt beside the fallen figure of Tera, putting her hands on the Egyptian queen’s shoulder to staunch the blood.

  “Good shot,” said Catherine. She and Justine had come through the doorway and were standing just behind Mary, to either side. “Now let’s get those two.”

  From where she was kneeling on the floor, Miss Trelawny raised one hand, pointed at Mary, and said to Mrs. Raymond, “Kill her.”

  CATHERINE: That was an excellent shot, Mary.

  MARY: It was a lucky shot. If I had shot Margaret Trelawny instead, Queen Tera would quickly have electrocuted us, and that would have been the end of the Athena Club. Or at least three of its members!

  Beatrice checked her lapel watch. It was time. “Come,” she said to Diana. “We must light the beacon fire.”

  “Were you thinking of Big Ben?” asked Diana.

  “Yes,” said Beatrice. It had in fact been Mary’s wristwatch, but there was no more time to play Diana’s game.

  “Then why did you say it was smaller than an elephant?” asked Diana.

  “Is Big Ben larger than an elephant? I meant only the clock face. You can carry the rags, and I shall carry the container. Vieni, cara mia.” Beatrice opened the trapdoor. The wind had picked up, and rain was coming down in a steady drizzle. Would they be able to light the fire? From the top of the tower, she was able to see the horizon on three sides. On the other, she could see the coast, with the houses of Marazion white against the gray hills. The ocean was gray, with white foam on the tops of the waves where they rushed in and crashed against the shore. And there—she could see the Queen’s yacht, white against the gray water, getting closer to St. Michael’s Mount. But it was still farther out than she had expected. The weather must have put it behind schedule. She should wait a little longer to light the beacon fire. Ten minutes should do it. She took off the silly waterproof coat that Mary had insisted she wear and laid it over the rucksacks filled with rags. They must be kept dry, at least. Then she pulled off her gloves and put them into her trouser pockets. She would need bare hands for what was to come.

  “Are we just going to stand out here in the rain?” asked Diana.

  “Yes,” she replied, checking to make sure the matchbox was still in the pocket of her coat—what the English called a mackintosh, which she found difficult to pronounce.

  “Oh. All right. Look, there’s the keep. I can see it all the way from here. And there’s the inn. I wonder what Mrs. Davies will make for dinner tonight? I told her Beef Wellington was my favorite, and she said she would try to make it just for me.”

  The yacht sailed closer, closer.…

  Beatrice checked her watch again. It had a few water drops on it. Now was the time.

  “Or sausages. She said she had some sausages from a pig that was killed in August, from a farm near Perranuthnoe.”

  Beatrice was about to tell Diana to be quiet and pull out the rags when she noticed that Diana was pulling out the rags, even as she was describing some sort of special Cornish sausage called, improbably, Hog’s Pudding. Apparently, her obsession with their dinner menu did not preclude her from getting things done.

  And then she heard, above the wind and rain and Diana’s chatter, a grating noise. It was the trapdoor opening. She watched it rise an inch, two inches.

  Someone had followed them—presumably, someone who was going to try and stop them from signaling the Queen. Unlike Mary and Catherine, she had no pistol, only her poison. Quickly, she moved to the trapdoor and stood with her hands outstretched, her fingers curved, ready to burn the face of whomever came through it.

  “I’ll slit his throat with my knife.” Diana was standing next to her, knife out, also ready. Annoying as she could be, you could always count on her in a pinch.

  The trapdoor continued to rise, revealing a man’s head with dark eyes, two days’ worth of beard, and dark, tousled hair under a checked cap.

  “Oh, it’s you,” said Diana, lowering her knife. “It’s only Isaac Mandelbaum,” she said to Beatrice, apparently disgusted at not being able to stick her knife into anyone. “He was pretending to work for Moriarty, but really he’s on our side.”

  Beatrice stepped back and lowered her hands. “Mary said you work for Mycroft Holmes.”

  Cautiously, as though afraid they might still attack him, Isaac climbed up the remaining steps and closed the trapdoor behind him. He had a leather satchel slung over one shoulder. When he saw the rags in the metal basin, he grinned. “I see that we had the same idea, more or less. I’m here to warn the Queen as well. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss—”

  “Rappaccini,” she said. “We’re going to light a beacon fire. What is your plan?”

  “Signal flags,” he said, pulling two sticks with pieces of cloth wrapped around their ends out of his satchel. “But I’m afraid the captain won’t see them in this rain. I have two compatriots down by the dock who will attempt to warn the Queen if she comes ashore. We tried to warn her through more direct channels, but Moriarty’s co-conspirators are still in positions of power around her. They do not yet know he is dead, and are continuing to implement his plans. We need to stop them as well, but the first step is making sure the Queen does not set foot on St. Michael’s Mount. Perhaps we could work together? It would be a pleasure to work with such a charming collaborator.”

  “Are you going to flirt with Beatrice or light the fire?” asked Diana. She crossed her arms and glared at them.

  “Hello, Miss Hyde,” he said, grinning. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, although we keep meeting under such inauspicious circumstances.”

  “I’ll inauspicious you!” said Diana. “Who sent you? Was it that that big slug who stays in his fancy club instead of actually helping anybody? At least his brother gets out and does things!”

  “All right, Mr. Mandelbaum,” said Beatrice. Per carità! Could they not concentrate on the task at hand? “Take that container and douse the rags with the liquid inside. Be careful—it’s camphine, and highly flammable. Don’t get any on yourself. You would not want to go up in flames.”

  Isaac nodded, picked up the container, and unscrewed the cap. He poured the contents carefully
but thoroughly over the rags. Beatrice put her hands up to her nose—the camphine smelled foul. The rags were wet—not soaked, but certainly not dry. Would they catch fire? She worried that she had waited too long.

  Isaac stepped back and put the container down on the stones.

  “You, too, Diana,” said Beatrice. “Step back, and give me my mack—” The word stuck in her mouth. “My coat. You should have folded it neatly instead of tossing it down in that untidy fashion.”

  Diana made a rude gesture, but handed her the mackintosh. Beatrice took her matchbox out of the pocket, struck a match, and tossed it on the camphine-soaked rags. She need not have worried after all. The rags blazed up—the fire rose higher and higher, white and hot. Hastily, she stepped back, all the way to the battlements.

  On the other side of the tower, Isaac had unfurled his flags. She was startled to see him step closer to the fire and wave his flags through the flames. In a moment, the ends of both flags were on fire! Then he turned and walked to a corner of the tower facing the shore—and the Queen’s yacht. He raised both flags and began moving them from one position to another, sending a message: Danger? Retreat? She had no idea what he was signaling.

  What would it look like, from the yacht below? The sky had grown darker. Against it, the beacon would flame brightly, and beside it, the fiery flags would dance the message that there was danger here: retreat, retreat, retreat they seemed to say.

  After repeating the same motions several times, Isaac turned and threw the flags into the fire—they were almost completely burned to the sticks. In another moment, the sticks themselves would have been consumed.

  He looked at her, firelight dancing over his face, which was covered with sweat from the heat of the flags, despite the drizzling rain. “We’ve done what we can do.” He was not grinning now. His dark eyes were serious, and the set of his jaws was grim. Beatrice joined him at the battlements that faced the shore. She could feel the heat of the fire on her back.

  Had they done enough? They stood together at the top of the tower, looking down at the yacht, which continued its steady movement toward the harbor. In one corner of the tower, Diana paced back and forth. “It didn’t work,” she said.

  For an agonizing minute, and then another, nothing happened. Then, the yacht began to turn. Slowly, it turned away from the entrance to the harbor, away from St. Michael’s Mount, away from danger—toward the safety of the great gray sea.

  “Grazie a Dio,” said Beatrice.

  “I’ll go tell them,” said Diana. “At least they won’t have to fight Queen Tera in the chapel!” She opened the trapdoor and disappeared down it. Beatrice could hear her clattering down the stairs.

  “We did it, Mr. Mandelbaum,” she said.

  “We did indeed, Miss Rappaccini,” he replied, grinning and wiping sweat from his forehead with a damp handkerchief. “I understand Miss Jekyll is down below. Shall we go help her?”

  Beatrice nodded. This day was not over yet, but at least they had done one thing right—they had saved the Queen.

  CATHERINE: You were heroic in the tower, Diana. It was you and Beatrice who saved Queen Victoria. Oh, come on, I said I was sorry.…

  Mrs. Raymond pointed one finger at Mary. Lightning crackled from it, but reached only halfway across the distance between them before it sputtered and went out. She pointed her finger again, but with the speed of a puma, Catherine pulled the silver mirror out of Mary’s left pocket, leaped forward, and held it in front of her. This time the lightning bolt was stronger. It hit the mirror squarely in the center. The mirror shattered, but the bolt ricocheted off and struck an elaborately gilded eighteenth-century clock on a marble side table. Mary cried out. There was blood on her hands—some pieces of the mirror had hit her.

  “Use your gun, Helen!” shouted Margaret Trelawny. “I can’t reach mine.” She was still kneeling by Tera, who appeared to be unconscious, with both hands on the wounded shoulder of the Egyptian queen.

  Justine pulled the bottles of pepper spray out of her pockets. She held them in front of her and advanced toward Mrs. Raymond.Catherine pulled out her pistol. If she could shoot Mrs. Raymond, this fight would be over, more easily than they had anticipated. Unlike Mary, she would not bother trying for the shoulder. If she killed Mrs. Raymond, so be it.

  For a moment, Mrs. Raymond simply looked at them—Catherine advancing with the mirror in one hand and a pistol in the other, Justine with the bottles of pepper spray. Then she raised both her arms. Suddenly, a gray fog rose from the floor. It roiled around their legs, then waist high, then at the height of Catherine’s chest. In a moment, she could not see anything.

  “Justine!” she called. “Where are you?”

  “I am here.” That was Justine’s voice. And Catherine could smell her—she smelled like lavender, probably from Mrs. Russell’s dress. She reached out—her hands found long, slender ones. Yes, this was Justine, although Catherine could barely see her face in the fog.

  “Where is Mary?” she asked.

  “I do not know.” Justine looked frantically around, but there was no around to look at—only fog.

  Gray fog everywhere. Catherine took an experimental step to see if she could feel anything in her immediate vicinity and stumbled over a Chippendale side chair with blue upholstery. So at least they were still in the blue drawing room!

  “What now?” she asked Justine.

  “I think it’s starting to dissipate,” said the Giantess from her vantage point. Yes, the fog around Catherine’s head looked lighter, although her body was still lost in it. But in a few moments, that too started to blow off, until the room was at it had been. The fog was gone. So were Queen Tera, Margaret Trelawny, Mrs. Raymond, and Mary Jekyll.

  DIANA: I can’t believe you let them take my sister.

  CATHERINE: Well, we certainly didn’t mean to! It just happened.

  DIANA: I was talking to Justine, not you. I’m never talking to you again.

  Alice put her finger up to the keyhole. She concentrated as hard as she could. A small bolt of lightning leaped out of her finger and into the lock. She pulled at the door. It did not open.

  “I’m not strong enough,” she said.

  “But you’re getting stronger,” said Sherlock Holmes, who was sitting on the steps just below her. “Look at how far you’ve come since last night. Apparently, those electrical impulses are a physical phenomenon controlled by your brain. The more you practice creating them, the easier it will become. There’s no reason you cannot do what Tera can, with enough time and practice.

  “But there isn’t enough time.” Discouraged, she sat down on the step beside him. “They’re kidnapping the Queen today, and we’re stuck in here. We’re never going to get out of here or see our friends again.”

  “We most certainly will,” he said. “Don’t you trust me, Alice?”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “Well, you are Sherlock Holmes.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. He must be feeling better—this was the strongest she had seen him since she had found him drugged at the house in Soho. “Yes, you’re right. I am, aren’t I? Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the great detective, immortalized by Dr. Watson in The Strand, a shilling an issue, promises you that we will get out of here. And I promise as well. Come, let’s have something to eat, and then get some rest. You need to build up your strength. I believe in you, and I know that you or I, or the both of us, will find a way out of this dungeon.”

  Alice nodded and squeezed his hand. Ever since she had first met him, she had been afraid of Mr. Holmes. Now, she wondered why. Once you got to know him, he was not so very fearsome after all.

  ALICE: Well, he is still a little fearsome.

  DIANA: Bollocks.

  It was almost dark by the time Catherine, Beatrice, Justine, and Diana stepped off the small fishing boat piloted by Isaac Mandelbaum and his two compatriots, who had not given their names. They were both ordinary-looking young men who could have passed for bank clerks, but Catherine suspec
ted that they belonged to an organization more secretive than even the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, as the Bank of England was called by those who worked in her mysterious halls.

  “We shouldn’t have left the island without Mary,” said Diana. She punched Catherine on the arm, but in such a dejected way that it barely hurt.

  “Diana, Mary is not on the island,” said Justine. “We searched everywhere.”

  Once they realized that Mary was gone, Catherine and Justine had made their way as quickly as possible out of the blue drawing room, hoping not to be noticed. Luckily, the terrace had been filled with scurrying maids and footmen, while the butler shouted orders. Everyone had been staring up at the tower and the flames that danced at its top. So Beatrice had lit the beacon! Had it worked? Had it driven the royal yacht safely away from St. Michael’s Mount?

  As soon as they entered the chapel again, Diana had greeted them with “Where have you been? We saved the Queen. What in the world have you been doing, and where is Mary?” Beatrice and Isaac Mandelbaum had appeared a moment later to explain the situation. Catherine had breathed a sigh of relief. They were still in trouble, a great deal of trouble, but at least they had done one thing right—they had indeed saved the Queen.

  In the hallway behind the wooden wall that held the organ, Catherine and Justine had changed once again into their ostler’s clothes, leaving Mrs. Russell’s dress and the maid’s uniform Catherine had been wearing folded neatly on the floor beside the sleeping servants. Even then, the parlor maids were starting to stir. They would awaken soon, and hopefully they would wake up Mrs. Russell. She was snoring slightly—Catherine thought that was a good sign.

  Then, they had searched every inch of the island. Mary was not on it. Neither were Miss Trelawny, Mrs. Raymond, and Queen Tera.

  “How do you know Mary’s not on the island?” Diana asked now. Isaac Mandelbaum’s boat was carrying them closer and closer to shore. “Maybe they made her invisible. Maybe they’re all invisible and hiding out for a while.”

  “I think it is unlikely,” said Beatrice. “From what Catherine told us, it sounds as though Queen Tera is seriously wounded. They will want to take her somewhere she can rest and heal. That is probably where they have taken Mary as well.”