Spectris

by Quinn Coleridge

  She laughs again and pats my hand. I freeze at the touch of her skin, knowing the familiar tightness in my skull. My bones grow hot and a vision forms in my mind. I see the prostitute as she presently looks and the way she was before she became a dove—a split picture of now and then. Hair dyed a cool blonde, she calls herself Pearl because Jimmy likes the name. And she always dresses in white, only white, and keeps herself exclusively for my brother’s use.

  Odd that an oyster’s pearl is the allegorical color of purity, while scarlet is a shade often associated with sin. Shakespeare’s Juliet might have had it wrong when she asked, “What’s in a name?”

  Nevertheless, this Pearl isn’t up for sale tonight; she’s merely keeping an eye on the other girls for their madam. The one who owns the best bordello in Stonehenge. Pearl only smokes because Jimmy isn’t around. He thinks it’s a filthy habit in women—despite the fact he takes a cigar every evening—but who is the poor dove to question her owner’s hypocrisy?

  The original incarnation of Pearl had light brown hair. Her name was Edna Mae, and the drawling accent is an affectation, because men enjoy Southern belles. Born in Wyoming, she was the only daughter of a poor farmer who had too many sons. More beasts than men, they ran wild and lawless as a pack of wolves. Edna Mae didn’t seek male attention, but it surely found her—destroying whatever innocence she once possessed. At fifteen, she escaped the farm, only to land in a Denver cathouse six months later. The new arrival gave away her name that first night, the only thing to ever truly belong to her, and cultivated persona after persona, matching her identity to the whims of her male protectors.

  As tears stream from my eyes for this girl, she pats my arm, trying to comfort me. I know everything about her life with one touch, and it breaks my heart. Far worse than her past or present, Pearl’s future reveals itself. She stands with Sir Death, drenched in blood. In contrast to the gore upon her body, her lips are colorless, and her angel face is washed out and grey.

  Who did this to you? I ask the future Pearl telepathically, but the image grows dark, until I can see it no more. I am thrust away from the psychic realm and return to myself, back in Griffin House. My chest hurts as I stand in the hallway with the living Pearl, knowing she will die in a painful, horrible way.

  “Don’t cry, honey,” she says. “Fannie isn’t worth your tears.”

  I push against my throat and say the first thing that comes to mind. “This life will kill you. Get out of Stonehenge.”

  After the words hit the air, I want to slap myself. If only I could go back and think of a less bizarre and more diplomatic warning. The rasping of my voice can’t have helped matters. It is also technically against the rules of magic to interfere with time or to alter human choice. Visionary law expressly says that I’m to witness visions without changing them, but how can I not try to help this poor soul? She’s been given no advantages, no people to care for her. The damn Furies may condemn me for this if they wish.

  I touch Pearl’s shoulder and abandon diplomacy. “You’ll die before the year is out if you remain.”

  She tries to lighten the mood by asking if I brought my crystal ball with me. “Every good fortune teller needs one. Jimmy would like it, too. Has to know everything about everybody. Me? I don’t care much about the future.”

  “Please listen, Edna Mae.”

  I don’t know why I used her former name—it slipped out—and now her emotions smell of fear and revulsion. I must remember to call her Pearl from now on—as awful as her current career choice is, she prefers it to the life she knew on the farm in Wyoming.

  Her pretend accent falters. “How did you . . . Don’t call me that! You’re going to spoil everything!”

  Back in the kitchen, I hear Fannie and Fred return from drinking tea outside. Hell’s bells. I don’t want the English terror to catch me without exploring more of the club, and I need to speak further with Pearl about her fate. Make her see that she must leave town.

  “Where’s the new girl, the beggar?” Fannie asks the kitchen help.

  “Can’t say,” one of them replies. “Her work’s finished, so maybe she left.”

  Fannie grumbles and walks toward the door leading into the hall. Toward the soiled dove and me.

  “You don’t want her to find you?” Pearl asks. “Well, hide then. I won’t tell tales.”

  Conflicted, I push against the door at my back and enter the room. It’s hot and stuffy inside and smells of moth balls and dust. Pearl closes the door behind me. Will she give me away? The girl owes me nothing.

  But Pearl stays mum. Instead, she asks Fannie for a match, speaking like a true Southern belle. “Bless your soul, Fan. You look like a thundercloud. If you don’t want to give me a light, just say so.”

  Fannie sucks in her breath. “Mr. Scarlett doesn’t want the club smelling like an ashtray. The gentlemen have access to the smoking rooms, but your kind isn’t allowed beyond the parlor.”

  Listening at the door, I rub my eyelid. Being even this close to Fannie brings out the twitch again. Yet Pearl’s sugar-sweet reply puts the dragon in her place.

  “Better the parlor than the kitchen, I always say, and don’t put on airs. While we may both work for Jimmy, I’m paid a whole lot more.”

  This response, followed by Lupo’s sudden barking, nearly causes the Englishwoman to have a fit. She makes a choking sound and returns to the kitchen. After congratulating her dog and promising him a soup bone, Pearl walks back toward the party, no longer ambling but with purpose. I must talk to her again, but I sense she’s had enough of me for one day.

  About to leave my hiding place, I hear Fannie exit the kitchen and return to the hall, followed by Fred. Botheration to end all botherations! It doesn’t sound as if their exchange will be ending soon. They discuss Pearl’s insolence for a while, with Fred pausing every so often to assure Fannie that he much prefers decent women to soiled doves. This happens a number of times, until I begin to think the man doth protest too much.

  As they prattle on, anxiety begins to develop in a corner of my mind, and the panic I usually keep tightly bound begins to unravel. I dislike being confined to this room. It reminds me of the asylum—as if I needed to be reminded! The things that happened within those walls haunt me worse than my ghosts. The panic begins to spread, and I rub my arms and try to think of something pleasant and peaceful. I once thought of butterflies when I needed courage, when my first love Tom Craddock and I sleuthed out criminals together. He had sent me the telepathic pictures when we were young, telling me he loved me for the first time. I saved those butterflies in my mental tall boy for years, and they always brought me strength. I thought of them all throughout the scourging that gave me the scars on my back, and never summoned the picture again afterwards.

  These days, I usually concentrate on a lovely alpine meadow, flower strewn and surrounded by trees. I think now of how fresh the air would smell, so different from the stale room in which I stand.

  You’re going to be fine, Hester. You’ll get out of here soon, don’t worry.

  Calmness returns, and I begin to think constructively. What shall I do now? I decide to eavesdrop on the club members again. I gathered some good information earlier, when I overheard Lennox threatening the men from York and Birmingham, telling them to pay the extra money to Scarlett or die. Benedict and Morris were not happy with Charcoal Suit at all, especially because of the way he dealt with Shaw and Abernathy.

  I could track down Benedict and Morris first thing tomorrow, ask them questions for a bit, and be home before tea. After all, how many British chaps with those names are living in Stonehenge? Exhaling in disappointment, I count the ones I know personally on most of the fingers of one hand. The butcher, postman, candle maker, and tailor . . . All right, so there are quite a few, but none of their voices match the men at the meeting with Charcoal Suit.

  Lifting my chin, I check on Fannie and Fred. They haven’t moved an inch, blast them. Fred is now insisting that he has never even consider
ed calling upon a soiled dove, not in all his forty-seven years as a bachelor. Pro di immortales! They deserve each other.

  Their chit-chat fades into the background as I extend my hearing out into the club, but I find nothing unusual among the patrons. Nothing incriminating to Charcoal Suit Lennox, or James Scarlett, for that matter. Isn’t this just like life? Magic ears and all the time in the world, but I get naught.

  What can I do while I’m trapped here? It’s doubtful this room will yield much in my investigation of the factory bombing. To occupy time, I decide to stretch my stiff back. Move a little to keep the muscles warm.

  After taking one step forward, I feel something poke my arm, something shaped like a large, male hand. My breath catches, and I make a rasping wheeze.

  No, I scream inside my head. Leave me alone! Get away!

  When I shove the man, his head falls from his body and lands on my shoe. I do not scramble toward the door or make a scene. Fannie and Fred are just outside, and I don’t want them to find me. Besides, I have come to the conclusion that the head on my foot actually belongs to a mannequin and not a human. As I tilt my boot to the side, the head rolls onto the floor, and I cringe at the noise, hoping the two F’s in the hall didn’t hear it.

  A few seconds pass, without anyone coming to investigate the noise, and I begin to relax. I touch the features of the head. Lifelike, and boasting a swath of human hair, but it is indeed a mannequin. I move on and run my fingers over the rest of his body. The arms are made of wood, jointed at the elbow and wrist. Chest and midriff feel like hard wax.

  For a moment, I imagine being discovered, clutching the figure. How shameful I would look! I snort in derision and give a raspy laugh. Calm down, Hester. No one need ever know what transpired here this day. It will remain a secret between you and the dummy forever.

  I grin and turn my thoughts back to my new wax and wood friend. He’s the kind tailors display in their shops. My mother had several female versions of this type in the rooms where she kept her vast assortment of clothing. The mannequins were always covered in some frilly, incredibly soft fabric as Mama’s seamstress labored over her newest design. As a child, I stayed far away from the figures, afraid they would come alive. The wax ones were always the most disconcerting.

  Stepping carefully around the room, I count at least a dozen mannequins. Most are not wax but molded wire frames, covered with padded wool. Those are easier for me to touch. They don’t have hair or sculpted facial features like their wax cousins.

  My half-brother would have a mannequin room—he’s eccentric and loves clothes almost more than life. The club must maintain a tailor shop on the premises to serve the patrons and his flair for fashion at the same time. They have every other convenience available for the pampered rich, why not an in-house tailor?

  I venture into the space behind the wire and wool figures and stumble across a pile of rubbish. Sweet blazes! Not so loud! Why would housekeeping leave this trash here? The heap contains wooden limbs, wool scraps, and metal bits from the mannequins. Unsettled by the fake body parts that press upon my leg, I move back and walk quickly toward the front of the room. I am about half-way there when I step on an object of some kind.

  It’s a wool-covered hand, connected to an arm and a male body. Not just one mannequin, but a group of three, laid out on the floor: man, woman, and child. They are not the wax, wooden-limbed mannequins that I dislike, but the metal framed, wool covered variety.

  Strange, the three being grouped together like this, separated from the rest.

  The first mannequin feels unusually big, tall as well as broad, and he’s wearing clothes. A cravat winds around his neck and an old-fashioned coat with wide lapels covers the rest of his upper body. Wool trousers encase his long legs. One of the man’s pockets has something in it. I reach inside and grasp a strip of leather with a cold metal buckle attached to the top. As I draw out the belt, it reminds me of a leather snake. Or a whip. The thought makes me wince, and I toss the belt to the floor.

  Kicking it aside, I examine the childlike figure next. I turn him with ease—his frame is thin but recognizably male. He wears a cotton shirt with short trousers and a trim wool jacket. When I worked at the Stonehenge orphanage last year, the six-year-olds were about this size. Why would they have a mannequin for a little boy in this place? No male under eighteen is allowed at Griffin House.

  It seems intentional that the boy and the man are lying together while the woman is a few feet away. I briefly run my hands over her body. Turned on her side, one arm sticking out, she’s wearing exceptionally fine clothes, though at least twenty years past the current fashion. A triple strand of pearls is fastened tightly at her throat. So tight, the necklace would choke a real woman. I picture how she must look, leaning toward the big man, arm extended like she’s pleading for him to stop.

  Stop what, I wonder?

  A chill runs up my spine—these three figures are somehow different than the others, and it isn’t by chance. They’re fully dressed like real people. And staged together, almost like a family.

  My bones grow hot. There’s some truth here I must learn. What have I missed?

  Kneeling close to the woman, I put my hand on her arm and imagine the mannequin transformed into a flesh and blood female. Her bonnet has grosgrain ribbon under the chin, and the feathers on top smell musty with age or from being stored in a poorly-ventilated chest. My fingers brush against her throat where the pearls choke her. Beautiful luxury killing as it dazzles. At her waist, I detect something rough and knotted. It is a rope, frayed at the ends.

  An image appears in my mind, one I thought of a short while ago as I approached Griffin House. I see the face of Marie-Louise Lennox when she told me that I could not stop her from dying. I was only to witness her fate. In that vision, her waist was encircled with a rope and the other end was knotted about a large stone. I hear again the soft, compelling voice of my brother urging her to jump into the water. They found her floating in the pond near her home the next day.

  The picture fades to nothing, and my psyche grows dark. I sit in the menacing room and analyze what I’ve found here, but my headache makes it difficult to think . . .

  I must try anyway. How old was James Scarlett twenty-odd years ago? In his early thirties now, he would have been about the age of the mannequin child on the floor. I turn my head toward the woman’s figure with the rope around her waist. Does she represent Marie-Louise?

  If so, then the man with the belt would be Scarlett’s stepfather.

  Is my half-brother so twisted that he relives the abuse through these figures? Or are they trophies of some kind, allowing his younger self a victory over his tormentors?

  He is the victor, after all. Lennox and Marie-Louise are dead.

  Only my father and I are left alive, and while Scarlett has admitted to toying with us for his amusement, we could be his next targets. A flare of heat penetrates my insides, and I know that I must take greater care. I may have bested him last spring, but the truth is, had a Roman goddess not stepped in and saved my hide, I would most likely be dead.

  My aunt Mary Arden agreed to train me in order to develop my magic. She also promised to demonstrate how to shield my loved ones from Scarlett’s wrath. No matter how often I send messages with Willard to her cabin, she does not respond or show up.

  I must find her soon. My half-brother is more dangerous than I supposed. From his hospital bed, he threatens me, and with the Furies, no less. It may be these wax figures have shown me his biggest weakness. His childhood. Is there something amid that pain which I can use against him?

  Above my pondering, I hear Fannie and Fred return to the kitchen. Thank the heavens. At last, an empty hall! She bids a deliveryman farewell and tells the scullery maids and busboys to clear the tables and remove the food trolleys from the tea room. I step out of the mannequin storage space as she and Fred go down to the cellar. The cooks remain in the kitchen, but they are slamming pots and pans around, hurrying to get supper fin
ished. I close the door on the mannequins and hope never to return to the disturbing place.

  Some kind of fish sizzles on the stove as I pass through the kitchen, and one of the cooks calls to me. “Beggar,” she says. “Don’t leave! We’ll have more dishes to scrape in a minute.”

  I act as though I didn’t hear her and continue walking toward the door. Hopefully, she won’t complain to Fannie about my departure. I’ll return again tomorrow to play the part of the dish scraper, but I can’t now. James Scarlett’s presence is ingrained within the walls of his club. The stench of madness and cruelty makes me feel dead inside.

  Out in the fresh air, I turn East. A hot breeze blows over my face as I walk across the grass toward the front of the club. Keep walking, Hester. That’s it. Breathe and walk.

  The summer heat bakes into my skin, slowly burning away the shadows of Griffin House.

  8

  Amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.

  Even a god finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time.

  My possessions are right where I left them behind the fence. I slip the spectacles over my eyes, tie the sash about my waist, and brush at the dried mud on my bodice. I give up after a few minutes. It feels like a permanent part of the cotton weave. Shoving the hat on my head, I set out for Black Swan Lane. If I miss Kelly and find that he has left his office for the day, it won’t be a total loss. I stand a better chance of hailing a hansom cab on his street, and I’ll pay the driver with the coins I’ve earned begging outside Griffin House. Though I have a hunch Kelly will be there, he carries an especially heavy work load now as coroner.

  It should be cooler than this by early evening, but I feel desiccated from my exposure to the sun, crisp as a month-old rosebud, forgotten in the parlor and left to wither. As heat rises from the sidewalk, the desiccated feeling evolves into a moist film of sweat. I wipe my forehead with my sleeve, hoping that I haven’t left a streak of dirt behind.