“Yes,” said Catherine in response to Beatrice. “It was the difference between man and animal that vexed him.” As she talked, she started to pace back and forth before the dead man, stopping and turning to them when she wished to emphasize a point. “What separated the two? If he could turn animals into men, could he not create men who were even higher, in whom the animal nature was entirely absent? Men who would have no base desires, no primitive instincts? After he was driven out of England for the cruelty of his experiments, he took the fortune he had inherited and bought a ship. He stocked it with everything he would need for an extended stay on a South Sea island, and set sail. He took with him a disgraced medical student named James Montgomery, who was willing to become his assistant under such inauspicious circumstances. Once he had found a suitable island, uninhabited and with no important animal species, he began his experiments: transforming animals into human beings. At this, he was successful—or successful enough to fool an average observer, although he was never satisfied with the result.”
“I find it difficult to believe,” said Watson. “How could an animal be imbued with human reason?”
“The proof stands before you,” said Catherine. She unbuttoned the collar of her dress—one of Mary’s day dresses that she had not worn for years because it was too tight, but Catherine was smaller than she was. She pulled the fabric back to expose her neck, then turned her head from side to side. Her face and neck were covered with a pattern of faint scars. “Am I human?” she said. “I don’t know. I have a name, Catherine, given to me by Montgomery. As a joke: Catherine, Cat in here. There is a cat in here.” She pulled up the sleeves of her dress: on her arms, too, they could see a regular pattern of scars, faint but visible in the lamplight, like a network of roads over her body.
“After Moreau had been on the island for several years, a boat carrying specimens for him, under the care of Montgomery, picked up a man who had been shipwrecked and was floating in a dinghy with two dead sailors. His name was Edward Prendick, and by one of those strange coincidences that sometimes occur in the world, he was a man of science, a biologist who had studied under Professor Huxley. Montgomery befriended him, and when the boat arrived at my father’s island, Prendick disembarked as well. One of the animals on that ship was a puma.”
Here Catherine paused, poured herself a cup of tea, and added a great deal of milk.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” said Diana. “You’re the Cat Woman.”
Catherine took a sip of her tea. “I was the puma, yes. After we disembarked, Moreau began the process that would turn me into a woman. Surgery, but also after a certain point, after my mind was receptive to it, hypnosis and education. Indoctrination. In the same room, for I was in a cage during most of the process, he sat with Prendick, drinking tea, discussing his aims and procedures.”
“That’s incredible,” said Watson. “I don’t know whether to loathe the man or admire his artistry.”
“They talked science, history, politics. Moreau had been alone with Montgomery for a long time. I think it was a relief for him to talk to someone who was not yet infected with the melancholy of living among the Beast Men. So I listened, as my ability to comprehend their speech grew, and learned more from their conversations than what Moreau was trying to teach me. The history of the Alchemical Society, for example. Moreau invited Prendick to join and explained the aims of the society, the work it had done over the centuries.
“Prendick was horrified, but fascinated. Day after day, he heard my screams of agony, for in that first stage, Moreau would not use anesthetic. He said it complicated the procedure, that pain was a necessary part of the process. Prendick would come and look at me in the cage, watch me being transformed into a woman. He saw the first light of recognition, of reason, in my eyes. And he was there the day I escaped.”
“How did you manage it?” asked Mary. What a strange story this was. Several days ago, she would not have believed it. But was it any more incredible than her father turning into Hyde?
“I was almost healed by then. Moreau himself, who was rarely satisfied with his creations, said I was his masterpiece. His previous attempts at creating Beast Women had been failures. He had never before been able to get the delicate formation of the fingers, or the contours of the face. The few Beast Women on the island were poor, malformed creatures. But the ship that brought me had also brought a new set of German surgical instruments. With those, and with patience and the most precise technique, he created me. It took months.”
“His technique is remarkable,” said Holmes. “I would not have distinguished you from a human woman.”
Catherine opened her mouth in a snarl. Moreau had reduced their length and sharpness, but she still had fangs. They would not be visible unless her lips were drawn back, as they were now. But they would nevertheless be deadly.
Holmes smiled. “I meant that as a compliment.”
“Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” said Catherine. “But you see that I am not entirely human. I could, in a moment, bite through your throat.”
Holmes bowed in acknowledgment.
MARY: Did you really say that, or are you showing off?
CATHERINE: If I didn’t say it, I should have, don’t you think?
“Moreau looked forward to teaching me, to turning me into the perfect Englishwoman. Since I had listened to their conversations, I knew about the island, about the other Beast Men. I knew that he and Montgomery kept a tenuous grip on power by use of the guns, or thunder sticks as the Beast Men called them. At that point, I was no longer caged. Because I was more human than animal, they chained me instead. One afternoon, during the hour when Moreau and Montgomery both slept, I pulled the iron staples out of the walls. And when Moreau came after me, calling to me as though I were a lost cat—‘Here, Catherine, where are you, Catherine’—I strangled him with my chains, which still hung from the manacles on my wrists. Montgomery found me standing over him as he lay on the ground, staring up at the sky with empty eyes. There was blood on my mouth. Perhaps I was still more animal than they had realized.
“I was in pain, not yet entirely healed. Montgomery took me back to the compound. He should have killed me, but he could not bring himself to do it. He had always been sympathetic to the Beast Men. After all, they had been his only company on the island other than Moreau. So instead, he removed the manacles and tended to my wounds. And Prendick—it was he who continued my education. I knew enough English to understand their speech, but he taught me how to sound like an Englishman, how to read and understand what I was reading. There were few books in the enclosure—Darwin was there, and Huxley’s essays. Textbooks on surgical technique that I found tedious. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, some books of poetry—and a book of your cases, Mr. Holmes. So you see, I know who you are, although I am behind in my reading. I thought you had perished at Reichenbach Falls. And he taught me the rudiments of Latin, what he could remember from his own public school education.
“When the Beast Men discovered that Moreau was dead, they were inclined to rebel. They had never been afraid of Montgomery, and had always hated their masters. Prendick tried to convince them that Moreau was still alive, although incorporeal—watching them from the sky. The Pig Men, who had developed a sort of religion, believed him. The others were still wary of the thunder sticks. Montgomery was less cautious. He traded with them for the fruit and vegetables some of them grew on rudimentary farms, even allowed them into the compound for a sort of ‘market day.’ In return, he would give them biscuits and tinned meat.
“He and Prendick talked about getting off the island. Moreau had a boat, docked in a natural harbor near the compound. But it needed a crew, and without Moreau to strike fear into the hearts of the Beast Men, none of them would agree to sail it. They had been made of land animals, and feared the ocean. The only other option was to wait for the arrival of the supply ship, which was supposed to come every six months. But the date came and went. The supply ship did not arrive. I think tha
t was what finally broke Montgomery.
“There we all were, in an uneasy truce, with no hope of leaving the island. One day, that truce was broken. It was one of the market days. Montgomery had been drinking. Prendick and I did not know—we were once again discussing how we could sail the boat with only the three of us, for Prendick intended to take me with him to England. He did not think of me as a Beast Woman any longer, and he said that my killing of Moreau had been justified. He called it self-defense.
“Outside, in the courtyard of the compound, Montgomery began gambling with the Beast Men. They had simple games of chance that involved casting marked bones onto the ground and gambling on the results. Montgomery joined in, lost, and kept losing. He gambled away a barrel of whiskey.
“That night, Prendick and I woke to the sound of gunfire. It was outside the compound, which meant that Montgomery was out there—and in danger. We ran out of the compound, carrying our guns. Down on the beach we saw a fire, with Beast Men dancing around it—Ape Men and Bull Men and Wolf Men, like figures out of a nightmare.
“Montgomery was dancing among them, shooting up into the air, drunk, and as beastly as any of them.
“ ‘What are they burning?’ I asked, for there was no vegetation on the beach.
“ ‘The boat!’ said Prendick, pointing toward the harbor. What floated there was no longer a boat. It looked more like a skeleton that had been picked clean by birds.
“We rushed down to stop them, but it was too late. Most of the planks were already char and ash.
“Montgomery laughed when he saw us, the laughter of a madman. ‘Now we’ll never get away! We’ll all die together on this godforsaken island!’
“What could we do? We turned to walk back to the compound, only to see that it, too, was in flames. One of the Beast Men had snuck up while we were running toward Montgomery and set fire to the thatched roofs of the buildings. I started to run back, but Prendick stopped me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘The ammunition.’ In a moment, I understood what he meant. We were knocked to the ground by the explosion.
“Morning found us with no home, no supplies, and no means of escape. On the beach were the charred remains of the boat and Montgomery’s body. He had been strangled by one of the Beast Men.
“After that day, we lived like savages. Prendick and I brought whatever we could salvage from the compound into a cave above the beach. Once our bullets ran out, we hunted—I did most of the hunting, since Prendick had no weapon. But I was a weapon. Slowly, the Beast Men killed each other off. Or,” Catherine added calmly, “I killed them. By the end of the year we spent on the island, there were none left. We ate them, of course. What else was there to eat on that island but coconuts and crabs?”
“You—ate them?” said Mary. “How could you . . .” She had been fascinated by the story—as they all had been, judging by their faces in the lamplight. Holmes was leaning forward, his fingers tented in a way she was coming to recognize. It meant he was turning something around and around in his mind, considering every angle. Even Diana had stayed quiet for all this time. But it was a gruesome story as well. Mary did not know whether to feel greater pity for Catherine’s suffering or horror at the cruelty of Moreau. Those Beast Men, doomed to die on their remote island . . .
MARY: Well, to be honest, I was mostly curious about how he had done it. Created you, I mean, as well as the other Beast Men. It was a quite a scientific accomplishment, although of course horrible from an ethical standpoint.
CATHERINE: It would be much easier writing from your perspective if you admitted to feeling normal human emotions!
MARY: I did! I felt horror and pity, really I did. At least, some. But I was curious too. Wouldn’t you be?
DIANA: I didn’t feel horror or pity.
CATHERINE: That doesn’t surprise me in the least.
“Why should I not eat them?” said Catherine. “Because they were men? To me, they were apes and bulls and wolves. If I had still been a puma, they would have been my natural enemies or prey. But Prendick—I think it made him sick, not in the stomach but in the head. One day, he gathered together the remaining planks of the boat and made a sort of raft. On it, using the rags of his shirt as a sail, he set out to sea. I saw him from the hill above our cave, already too far away for me to swim out to him, floating away on the tide. That was the last I saw of him. I believe he perished on the open ocean.”
“No, he couldn’t have perished,” said Mary. “Wasn’t that the name in Dr. Seward’s letter? It was Prendick, I’m sure of it. Let me go check. . . . I’ll be back in a moment.”
In the morning room, she opened the drawer of her mother’s desk and pulled out the portfolio. Yes, there it was. She took out the letter and brought it back with her into the parlor. Justine was talking to Catherine in low tones, and Beatrice was answering a question about transmutation posed by Dr. Watson. When Mary entered, they all fell silent and turned to look at her. Catherine had an expression on her face that Mary did not understand.
“Yes, there, I was sure. Listen: ‘I assume you will be traveling with Mr. Prendick? Poor man, I hope he may someday be ready to participate fully in our community again. I cannot tell you how I mourn the loss of Moreau. You and Prendick belong to a younger generation. You do not know what it was like for us old fogeys, as you may call us, resurrecting the Société from the decrepitude into which it had fallen and redirecting its energies to biology, to the material of life itself!’ That has to be the same Prendick, doesn’t it?”
Catherine opened her mouth, then closed it again, as though she could not continue.
MARY: I didn’t understand your reaction that night. It was only later, when you told us about your . . . relations with him, that it made sense.
CATHERINE: My relations . . . how delicately you put it! I didn’t want to say anything in front of Holmes and Watson. And why should I have? It was my story to tell—or not.
MARY: No reason, I’m not questioning your judgment, Cat. But I’m glad you told us later.
CATHERINE: He was there when I tore the manacles out of the walls. He didn’t stop me—just stood there as I ran out of the room and through the compound. I think he felt guilty for having done nothing all those months, while I screamed in pain. It was easy to open the gate with my human fingers and disappear into the forest like the puma I had been. He didn’t anticipate that I would kill Moreau, of course. Once Moreau was dead, Edward and James fought over me. I was the only woman on the island, the only one who didn’t look like a beast, and James thought I should be his as Moreau’s successor. But I rejected him. That may be why he became drunk that night. . . . When you told me that Edward was still alive, I didn’t know what to think or say. Justine was the only one who knew, the only one I’d spoken to about it. I still don’t know . . . whether he ever loved me. Or whether I was simply convenient.
BEATRICE: I’m sure it wasn’t that. There must have been more to it than that.
CATHERINE: Must there? I don’t know. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for certain.
“It’s all right,” said Justine. “She’s startled, that’s all.”
“Yes, startled,” said Catherine, finally. “I wonder how he survived. . . .” She remembered looking down from the hilltop, watching Prendick’s raft float away into the distance, until it was lost against the immensity of the sea. Finding herself completely alone on an island where her only companions were beasts. Feeling as though she should lie down and die, and then deciding that she was going to survive. She did not know how, but somehow.
“A week later, the supply ship came. The captain had been sacked for brutality to his men, and another captain hired. In the transition, the supply ship had missed a scheduled delivery. When I saw the ship, I made a signal fire from whatever wood I could find, including planks left after Prendick had built his raft. It was the last of the wood from Moreau’s boat. When the sailors picked me up and took me aboard, I told the captain that I was an Englishwoman shipwrecked on that shore. I said
I had no knowledge of Moreau or his compound, that the island had been deserted as long as I had been there. I told him I had lost my memory, and remembered only having come from the city of London. Because I spoke with the accent of an educated man, the accent Prendick had taught me, I was believed. They assumed my clothes must have come from a drowned sailor, my complexion from living in the sun unprotected for so long. My scars from my misadventures.
“The captain took me back with him to the port of Callao, and then to the capital city of Peru, where he needed to deposit his cargo. In Lima, I became a sort of cause célèbre among the English population—the Englishwoman who had survived on a deserted island! I was offered a room in the house of an English industrialist who had come to Peru to reestablish trade after the late war, and invited to dinners and balls. You can imagine my confusion on first encountering women’s clothes! On the island, and even on shipboard, I had always worn the clothes that were available, which were men’s. In Peru, for the first time, I was given a chemise and corset and petticoat. I had no idea what to do with them. Luckily, the maids helped me dress, or I assure you, I would not have figured out all those buttons and laces!
“A subscription was taken up for me, enough to pay for my passage to London. The industrialist, Sir Geoffrey Tibbett, was returning to England, and he offered me his protection on the voyage. He told me that I could stay with his family while being treated by a mesmerist, who would help me recover my memories and find my own family, my own home. I wonder what a mesmerist would have made of the incidents I recalled! After the long sea voyage, during which Sir Geoffrey and I played endless games of cribbage and backgammon, I stayed at the Tibbett household in Mayfair for several months, recovering—or so it was thought. I was learning as much about England as I could, going to lectures, reading novels and poems and collections of essays.
“Sir Geoffrey was fond of me. He said if I could not find my family, he wished to adopt me as his daughter. But his wife did not like me. She was a woman with a pinched nose and a back as straight as a poker, whose primary interest was climbing into the right social circles. A strange girl from a South Sea island did not fit into her plans.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Page 20
