Beatrice took the letter from Mary. For a long moment, she could only look at it, her hand trembling and her eyes filling with tears. Clearly, she was thinking about her father. At last, she looked up. “I do, alas,” she said, wiping her eyes with one hand. “You know, of course, of the medieval alchemists?”
“No,” said Diana.
“Yes, of course,” said Mary. “They tried to turn lead into gold.”
“That was the medieval idea of transmutation,” said Beatrice. “One form of matter turned into another. In the Middle Ages, alchemists were considered magicians and burned at the stake. But truly, they were scientists. What occupied them more than anything else was the search for eternal life—the transmutation of the dead into the living. And so they began to experiment on biological matter. A century ago, a university student named Victor Frankenstein proved that it could be done, that dead matter could once again be brought to life. He paid a terrible price for the success of his experiments. But my father believed his aims could be achieved by other means. Frankenstein was his inspiration, and the inspiration for those who, like him, wished to transmute not base metals, but human beings.
“My father sent papers about me to the Société. He often complained about what he called the traditionalists, the anti-evolutionists who believed that man was divinely created, that transmutation of the human was against God’s plan. ‘Evolution is the greatest discovery of our age,’ he would tell me. ‘We evolved from the apes. What may we yet evolve into? The forces of natural selection are no longer acting on man. So it has become our duty to direct evolution, to create the higher forms that man will become. But do they see that? No, they do not, the grandi idioti!’ He would wave his hands, shouting, ‘idioti, idioti!’ Thus would he speak of the traditionalists in the Société. But he and his colleagues were working on advancing evolution through transmutation. They believed they were assisting the species, unasked and unappreciated, to rise higher. . . .”
“And so they were trying to transform girls into—what?” asked Mary. “What were they doing, and why would it require murder? These girls who’ve been killed in Whitechapel. They had limbs missing. Why would transmutation require that?”
Beatrice looked at her with astonishment. “Missing limbs? From girls murdered in Whitechapel? But that does not make sense. There is only one reason to take limbs—but the experiment is ancient, a hundred years old! It is Frankenstein’s original experiment. Why would anyone want to re-create his experiment in this day and age? The experiments of my father and his colleagues were subtle and theoretically sophisticated. They sought to advance humanity in particular directions. My father wished to strengthen humanity through the incorporation of plant essences. Dr. Moreau and your father were exploring what separates the human and animal, in an attempt to raise the human even higher, above our animal natures. They were attempting to refine and purify humanity. Their goals were noble, and when I was young, I thought they were the wisest men in the world, that they would lead us to a new golden age. Since then, I have come to question their methods. But this matter of the missing limbs—I cannot understand it.”
She drank the rest of her noxious tea and put the empty mug on the windowsill. Diana shoved the last of her toast and poached egg into her mouth and chewed loudly.
“Well, the girls are dead,” said Mary. “And their limbs are missing: legs, arms, head. And two sets of brains. That’s the mystery we’ve been trying to solve. You said there’s only one reason to take limbs from these girls, but you didn’t say what it is. What was Frankenstein’s original experiment?”
“To take parts of the dead and create a living being,” said Beatrice. “To sew those limbs together into a woman and bring her to life. That is what Frankenstein did—not with a woman, but with a man, a living corpse who became a monster.”
“Awesome!” said Diana, her mouth open, with half-chewed food in it.
“But that’s horrible!” said Mary. “I can’t imagine what would prompt someone to do such a thing.”
“The love of science for its own sake,” said Beatrice. “But also for the promise it holds of raising us above our limited human selves. Surely you see the beauty of such an ambition, even if you cannot approve of how it has been pursued. And of course the murder of five women is inexcusable, however noble the aim. But Frankenstein’s experiment was crude, inelegant. My father’s methods—”
“Left you poisonous,” said Mary.
Beatrice simply looked down at her hands, clasped on her lap.
Mary did not know what to do. Had she insulted Beatrice? She had not meant to, but the experiments—they were wrong. Surely they must all agree that the experiments were wrong? Molly Keane, lying on the pavement in her own blood . . .
Diana belched and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
Mary did not reprimand her. She did not know what to say.
“What are those other letters?” asked Beatrice. “Are they also from my father?”
“Oh, those,” said Mary. “No, and they’re in Latin, so I have no idea what they’re about. But they have red seals on them, with S.A.”
“Bet Poison Breath knows Latin,” said Diana.
“Of course,” said Beatrice. “It is the language of science. And the seals were used by members of the Société, including my father, when transacting official business. They signaled that the letters were to be opened at once, and in secret. All members of the society had such seals, often on pendants or rings. I will approach and examine those letters, if you will allow.”
“Of course,” said Mary. She made a point of not moving back as Beatrice walked to the table, although Diana retreated to the other side of the room.
Beatrice drew the letters toward her across the table. “Ex societate expelleris. . . . These are from the president of the society to your father, warning him that if he continues his experiments, he will be expelled. This letter is the first warning. The second one—you see it is dated six months later—tells him that the warning is final. It is, as you say, an ultimatum. My father had spoken of Dr. Jekyll’s experiments as dangerous. . . .”
“What were they, do you know?” asked Mary. “I have a hypothesis . . .”
“That I do not know, not specifically,” said Beatrice. “My father did not speak of it with me, only to say that Dr. Jekyll was trying to defeat our animal nature, raise man to new spiritual heights—and that no scientist should experiment on himself.”
Mary was disappointed. She had hoped Beatrice would know . . . something. Her father had attempted to defeat his animal nature and had instead become Hyde, the animal. How? Why? She sighed, ate the remainder of her toast, and wiped her mouth with a napkin. Perhaps she would never know. Her father had taken his secrets with him to the grave—all but these fragments.
“Are we done?” said Diana. “Because I’m bored.”
They heard the front doorbell ring, and a moment later, Mrs. Poole came in. “It’s Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson,” she said. “They would like a moment of your time. They say—let me see if I’ve got this right—Renfield has escaped?”
CATHERINE: You haven’t said anything about Giovanni.
BEATRICE: I don’t want to talk about it.
MARY: But Beatrice, you’ve left out an important part. I know you don’t want to remember what happened, but it’s not as though you killed him. You can’t take responsibility for what’s not your fault.
BEATRICE: But it is my fault. When I let him into my father’s garden, when I walked with him among the poisonous flowers, I was infusing him with the poison—my poison. I did not mean to harm him. I thought if he could become like me, we could be together, and I would not be so alone. And then, he died. . . .
CATHERINE: But not just like that. Here, let me tell the story.
One day, as I was walking through the garden, I looked up, and there, looking down from Signora Lisabetta’s window, was the handsomest man I had ever seen. He was a cousin of hers, who had come to Padua to s
tudy medicine. Of course, the only other man I had seen was my father, but I have seen men since, and Giovanni was indeed handsome, with crisp, curling brown hair, brown eyes that seemed to contain his soul, and cheeks tanned by the sun of southern Italy.
BEATRICE: Oh, Catherine, please stop! It’s enough to say that he was handsome, and I loved him. All right, I shall tell the story, if only to keep you from making it sound like one of those romantic serials sold in train stations.
CATHERINE: There’s nothing wrong with train stations. If it weren’t for train stations, The Mysteries of Astarte wouldn’t have sold nearly as well.
BEATRICE: That is not at all the point.
Day after day, he would come to visit me in my father’s garden. Day after day, he walked in a poisonous miasma, not knowing. I knew—each day I kept him longer, talking to him, never touching him, waiting for him to become poisonous, as I was. My father knew of his visits—how could he not? And yet, he said nothing. Perhaps he thought Giovanni would form a useful addition to our family. After all, he was a medical student at the University of Padua. He could become another apprentice to the great Dr. Rappaccini.
One day, Giovanni noticed that a spider had woven a web in his window—he leaned closer to look, and the spider died from his breath. He realized, then, what had happened—he was becoming poisonous! He went to see my father’s rival in Padua, the physician Pietro Baglioni, who was a professor at the medical school. My father and Baglioni had been medical students together, and he had once been a member of the Société des Alchimistes himself. But he had quarreled with my father and left the society. He knew about me, about my poisonous nature. He concocted what he believed to be an antidote and gave it to Giovanni, telling him that if we drank it, we would be cured.
Giovanni brought me the antidote and told me that it would cure us both. We stood in the garden together, not touching. Even then, he did not know I had intended to make him poisonous—he thought it was an accident, that I had not been aware of my own nature. How trusting he was! He loved me, and wanted us both to be normal. He did not want to be a monster—that was the word he used. He did not want to be separated from humanity. That day, I realized what I was—a monster among men.
MARY: You’re not a monster, Beatrice. I wish you would stop using that word.
JUSTINE: Why, if it’s technically accurate? We are all monsters in our own way. Even you, Mary.
I told him that I did not trust Baglioni, as a man or a scientist. I told him we should not drink. But he pleaded with me. I took the glass vial containing the antidote. It was green, the color of emeralds. And then I heard, “No! No, my daughter! Do you not know that Baglioni is my enemy, that he would do anything to destroy my experiments?”
“Father, can’t you see what you’ve done to me?” I said. “I don’t want to be deadly to my kind.”
“Here, let me show you that it’s perfectly safe,” said Giovanni. “I will drink first.”
He took the vial from my hand and drank the emerald liquid. He smiled down at me reassuringly, but then his face contorted with pain and he fell to the ground, writhing, clutching his abdomen. I fell to my knees beside him. I, who had made my father’s medicines, did not know what to do, what to give him. I took him in my arms and pleaded with him not to die. But in a moment it was over. Giovanni lay in my arms, dead.
I took up the vial he had let fall and drank the remaining antidote, intending to die myself. But nothing happened. The poison in my system was so strong that it had no effect. That night I thought about killing myself, with a knife perhaps. Did I not deserve death? I had killed the man I loved, as surely as though I had driven a knife through his heart.
But I lacked the courage. Instead, the next day I told my father that he must reverse the process. I did not wish to be poisonous any longer, not after killing the man I loved. I wished to be an ordinary woman. That was when he told me the process was irreversible. So I left my father’s house and went to the university. I found Professor Baglioni and told him that if he did not find a cure for my condition, I would tell all Padua he had murdered Giovanni. He tried, again and again, to find an antidote. Not for my benefit, or out of a sense of responsibility for Giovanni’s death. No, I believe he was motivated by malice toward my father. Nevertheless, I stayed, living in his house, although he kept well away from me—hoping for a cure, or death. There was no one else who knew of my condition, and my father had made it clear that he could not help me, that he wished me to remain as I was—his greatest creation. So I became Baglioni’s collaborator, working with my enemy, the man who had caused my lover’s death, creating potion after potion in his laboratory. But none of them made me less poisonous.
One day, Baglioni came into the laboratory, where I was brewing the latest potion. “Your father is dead,” he told me. He had been found in his garden, among the poisonous plants. Signora Lisabetta had seen him and alerted the authorities. I had left him without a word, and in the weeks I had been staying with Professor Baglioni, he had never come to see me. Always, I had been the one to tend his garden. The plants could not harm me, but he was too frail and had succumbed to their poison. Because of his reputation, none dared enter the garden. I was the one who entered it once again and buried him there. As I left my father’s house for the last time, Signora Lisabetta leaned out of her window and cursed me. It was only what I deserved.
JUSTINE: Beatrice, that is certainly not true.
DIANA: Why did you even bother going back? I would have left him to rot.
So you see, I killed my mother and Giovanni. Perhaps I killed my father as well, who knows. Giovanni was right to use the word monster.
MARY: That’s ridiculous. It’s not your fault that your mother or Giovanni died, and your father is certainly responsible for his own death. I agree with Justine. Honestly, even Diana has a point, for once.
CATHERINE: Has everyone forgotten that I’m trying to tell a story? We’ve left Holmes and Watson on the threshold.
MARY: Cat, you’re the one who insisted we tell our own parts of it. And now you’re upset that we’re interrupting the plot. This isn’t one of your thrillers. We’re trying to recount how we all came together, describe who we are. That’s not just the story of how we solved the Whitechapel Murders. It’s the story of us.
DIANA: I don’t think you’re supposed to say that we solved the murders.
MARY: Well, of course we solved them, eventually. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t be writing about them, would we? But how did we solve them and what happened to us along the way? That’s the real story.
“Renfield escaped!” said Mary. “Show them in at once, Mrs. Poole.”
Both of the men bowed upon entering, and Holmes cast his keen, hawk-like glance at Beatrice.
“I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Rappaccini,” he said. “I often feel like a biological curiosity myself, so you and I have something in common.” Mary felt a pang of jealousy. Did Beatrice have to be quite so beautiful? For a moment, she was glad Beatrice was incapable of touching anyone, that she burned on contact.
MARY: Is it necessary to include every detail of what we were thinking? And keen, hawk-like glance! Seriously, Cat.
CATHERINE: It’s the story of us, remember?
“I think it’s time for a confabulation,” said Holmes. “We have information you don’t, and I suspect Miss Rappaccini has given you information we are lacking. Shall we all consult together?”
“Yes, of course,” said Mary. “We were just finishing breakfast. Let’s go into the parlor. Mrs. Poole, could you bring us another pot of tea?”
She put the documents back in the portfolio and carried it with her. It was time to show Mr. Holmes what she had found. Once they were sitting in the larger room, with Holmes and Watson in the two armchairs, and Beatrice on one of the deep window seats, Holmes said, “Our news, in brief, is as follows. We are now up to five bodies: Sally Hayward, Anna Pettingill, Pauline Delacroix, Molly Keane, and a Susanna Moore, who was in th
e same line of business as the others. The last two bodies both had their brains removed, we don’t know why. Although curiously, like Molly Keane, Susanna Moore had also been a governess. All the victims were murdered in Whitechapel. We know that despite his confession, Renfield could not have committed the last murder. The body of Susanna Moore was found just after we left for Purfleet with Lestrade. She had been killed the night before, while Renfield was in his room at Purfleet Asylum, watched by an attendant. So who killed her? The next day, we saw Lestrade lock Renfield into the police wagon. He was in handcuffs and guarded by Sergeant Evans. By the time the wagon arrived at Newgate, the door was unlocked, Evans was unconscious, and Renfield was nowhere to be found. Did he kill the other women, but not this one? Is that why the brain was taken again? Or were all the murders committed by someone, or some persons, else? As you know, I’ve always inclined to the latter theory. And who helped Renfield escape? He could not have done it himself—he did not have the means, or even the courage.”
“By someone else,” said Beatrice. “There is a method behind this seeming madness, Mr. Holmes. The murderer is not a madman. What I do not understand, however, is why these murders are being committed now. It does not make sense.”
“Beatrice has been telling us about the Société des Alchimistes,” said Mary. “Its members were interested in the evolutionary theories of Mr. Darwin, although they seem to have gone considerably beyond him. They wanted to advance evolution, to create more-perfect men—well, women, really. But she said this putting limbs together was an old experiment, a crude one. . . .”
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