The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

by Theodora Goss

  “Her small dog did not like me either. He was a Pekingese, horribly overfed, and although he was the approximate shape and size of a bolster, he was still a dog. He knew I was a cat. One day, I was reading in the parlor and he would not leave me alone. He kept yapping at me and nipping at my toes. Finally, I could take it no longer. Lady Tibbett heard his squeals and came into the room, only to see his body dangling from my jaws. That was my last day with the Tibbetts!

  “For a while, I lived on the streets, scavenging what I could. There is reasonably good hunting in London, for a cat. But one day, I saw an advertisement for Lorenzo’s Circus of Marvels and Delights, which was appearing in Battersea Park. I went to Lorenzo and offered myself as a performer. ‘Why do I need you?’ he asked me. ‘I have Sasha the Dog Boy.’ ‘But you don’t have a Cat Woman,’ I said. I growled and purred for him, and he hired me on the spot. During most of the year, we toured the countryside, but each summer we spent a month in London, on the South Bank. And that was where you found me. . . .”

  “And Justine,” said Mary. “Was she already at the circus when you joined?”

  “No, I was the one who brought her to the circus.” Catherine looked over at Justine. “She can tell you herself . . .”

  But Justine was leaning back on the sofa, looking even paler than usual. She reminded Mary of the Madonna lily, just after Beatrice had breathed on it.

  “Have you forgotten?” said Justine. “There is a dead man lying on the floor.”

  “Dead pig,” said Catherine. “I can’t imagine who would create Beast Men here, in London. Why would anyone want to replicate Moreau’s techniques? Unless . . .” She paused for a moment, but did not continue her train of thought. Mary wondered what she had meant to say. Instead, Catherine looked down at the Pig Man. “We’ll have to get rid of him.”

  “Can’t we report him to the police?” asked Mary. “After all, it was self-defense.”

  “Not without explaining how Justine was able to strangle him. Which means explaining about Justine—and about us.”

  “I agree with Miss Moreau,” said Holmes. “This is not a matter for the police. I suggest taking him to the park, dirtying his clothes, and putting his hat beside him. When the police find him, as they assuredly will, they’ll assume he is a beggar. They will not pay much attention to the death of one more beggar in London.”

  “Phew!” said Diana. “You would make a good criminal.”

  “Yes, I worry about that sometimes,” said Watson. “Holmes, can you and I lift the body between us?”

  “I shall carry the body,” said Justine. “It will be my penance.”

  “Penance!” said Catherine. “What a ridiculous idea.”

  But Justine would not be dissuaded, and although Holmes and Watson went with her, she was the one who carried the Pig Man’s body into Regent’s Park.

  Mary follow them, partly from a sense of obligation—the Pig Man had after all been killed in her parlor—and partly to make certain they placed him well away from 11 Park Terrace, so no one could connect him to the Jekyll residence.

  Am I developing a criminal mentality, like Hyde? she asked herself. Or like Mr. Holmes? That thought, at least, was more reassuring.

  When they had carried the Pig Man as far as the rose beds, Watson and Holmes rolled him in the moist, prepared earth. Then they placed him under a tree near the Inner Circle, close to the pond, where a beggar might be expected to lie down on a chilly, but not cold, spring night. As they were walking back in the darkness, Holmes beside Mary, Justine and Watson ahead of them, he said, “Your mystery is unfolding even faster than I expected, Miss Jekyll. In addition to the pleasure of investigating such a case, there is the pleasure . . . that is to say . . . the contact of another keen, logical mind is always a pleasure.” He was silent a moment. Was he going to say anything more?

  But they had arrived once again at Park Terrace.

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes?” she said.

  “What I was going to say . . . Well. Miss Jekyll, Watson and I would have come this evening in any case, to tell you about a curious fact we discovered during our investigation. Four of the murdered women were at one time inmates of the Magdalen Society.” Surely that was not what he had been thinking about, as they walked in the park?

  “Justine! Are you all right? You don’t look well.” It was Catherine, standing in the front hall, waiting for them to come in. Just beyond her stood Diana and Beatrice. Justine staggered, clutched at the doorframe, and then crumpled in a heap on the threshold.

  “Oh goodness,” said Mary, darting forward and kneeling beside Justine. “I think she’s fainted. Diana, get Mrs. Poole to bring the sal volatile. We have to bring her to, because I don’t think we’re going to be able to carry her upstairs.”

  “Why me?” said Diana.

  “Because you’re closest to the back stairs, and anyway, I may need Catherine to help me lift her,” said Mary. “Now go!”

  “Straighten her head,” said Beatrice. “Make sure the passage of air is not obstructed. Can you do it, Catherine? Alas that I cannot touch her!”

  “Allow me,” said Watson. He knelt by Justine, checked that she was breathing, and felt her pulse. “Your friend is unconscious, but in no immediate danger. All this has simply been too much for her. I prescribe a good night’s sleep.” When Diana returned with a frantic Mrs. Poole, who was carrying a bottle of smelling salts, he waved it under Justine’s nose and waited until she moaned and opened her eyes.

  “She never should have come downstairs,” said Mrs. Poole. “Come on, deary. Let’s get you back into bed again.”

  “Mr. Holmes, what were you saying before Justine fainted?” asked Mary. In a moment, she would have to help Justine back upstairs, but he’d been saying something about the murdered girls. . . .

  “Never mind for now,” said Holmes, smiling. “Take care of your friend. We’ll return tomorrow morning and talk then.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Mary, distracted. Catherine was already supporting Justine on one side, and she would need to support Justine on the other, since Diana was too short and Mrs. Poole wasn’t strong enough to help the Giantess upstairs. And Beatrice, of course, was poisonous. No, Mary’s life was definitely no longer ordinary. . . .

  CHAPTER XIII

  Return to the Asylum

  MARY: Imagine, for a moment, the logistical difficulties of having four girls—or women, for only Diana was truly a girl—suddenly move into your household. On Monday morning, I had twelve pounds, five shillings, three pence in my bank account, and only myself and Mrs. Poole to clothe and feed. After I had transferred the money from Diana’s account, we had thirty-five pounds, five shilling, three pence. That amount could feed and clothe three people comfortably for a year! On Friday morning, we had forty-two pounds, twelve shillings exactly. Beatrice had come with nothing but the clothes on her back, but Catherine and Justine had brought their savings, which they kept in the toe of an old stocking. Shockingly irresponsible of them it was, too. Seven pounds, six shillings, nine pence is a great deal of money and should have been deposited in a bank.

  CATHERINE: How were we supposed to keep money in a bank? We were constantly moving around the countryside. It was a traveling circus, remember?

  MARY: They were still owed for the last fortnight, but we didn’t know if they would be able to collect that money from Lorenzo, since they hadn’t given proper notice. And now we had six mouths to feed! Or five, as Beatrice did not count—what she did could scarcely be called eating. She seemed to live off sunlight, weeds, and the occasional insect. But Catherine ate only meat, Justine ate no meat at all, and Diana ate everything and a great deal of it. I needed to find beds for Catherine and Justine in addition to the one I had already found for Diana, and the bed for Justine had to be seven feet long, or she would inevitably bump her head. Diana was already in the old nursery. I put Catherine in my mother’s room, and Justine slept in what had once been my father’s bedroom. If we built up the bed with enough p
illows so she could lie at an angle, it was long enough for her—just. The governess’s room, where Nurse Adams had been sleeping, was still empty. But that was all the bedrooms I had. If creations of the Société des Alchimistes kept showing up, I would have to start putting them on the third floor, in the servants’ rooms. Mrs. Poole occupied what had once been the butler’s apartment, in the basement next to the kitchen, which Poole and his wife had inhabited while they were alive. Beatrice, of course, slept in the office next to my father’s laboratory. The day before, I had lost three dresses and a pair of boots. That morning, I once again had to find enough dresses for all of us to wear. I wondered how we were all to be fed and clothed and housed.

  Catherine wishes to write about our adventures, to leave out the domestic details. “This is not a manual of household management,” she says. That would be something: a manual of household management for monsters!

  MRS. POOLE: And very useful it would have been in those early days, I can tell you! How was I to make a broth with no meat in it for Justine? I’d never heard of such a thing!

  The next morning, Justine was ill and feverish. “She’ll have to stay in bed,” said Mrs. Poole. “The rest of you can go gallivanting around the city all you like, but Miss Justine needs rest, and if she doesn’t get it, she’ll become sicker yet.”

  “I would scarcely call escaping from Wolf Men gallivanting, Mrs. Poole,” said Catherine. “We were running for our lives, you know.”

  “Are there any more eggs?” asked Diana.

  “No, not cooked, so you’ll have to fill up on toast and marmalade. That stomach of yours is like a bottomless pit! You don’t see Miss Beatrice asking for seconds, do you?”

  “She barely asks for firsts,” Diana muttered.

  “And as for gallivanting, I’m sure you’ll be doing it again today, instead of staying at home as you ought to. There’s more than enough to do here. You’ll need dresses, so there’s plenty of sewing to be done.”

  “Sewing!” said Catherine, with an expression of disgust.

  “But we have a mystery to solve,” said Mary. They had already discussed the details of that mystery over breakfast, from Mary’s meeting with Mr. Guest to the murder of Molly Keane, the rescue of Beatrice and their slow piecing together of information about the Alchemical Society. . . . Catherine had listened with keen interest.

  “Which you could leave to Mr. Holmes and the police, who are after all paid to solve such things.” Mrs. Poole said “such things” in the tone she might have used to describe a dead rat.

  “I’m going to check on Justine,” said Beatrice. “Before Mrs. Poole called me down for breakfast, she was running a fever, and she didn’t seem to know where she was. She kept turning her head on the pillow, calling for her father. I think all this has been too much for her.”

  “Should I come with you?” asked Catherine.

  “No, eat,” Beatrice replied. “You were sitting up with her most of the night. You should rest too, you know.”

  Beatrice had flitted out of the room like a beautiful ghost, and Diana had crammed the rest of the toast into her mouth, when the front doorbell rang. A minute later, Mrs. Poole showed Holmes and Watson into the morning room.

  “So sorry to interrupt your breakfast, Miss Jekyll, ladies,” said Watson with a bow.

  “Yes, yes,” said Holmes, who was obviously not sorry at all. “Shall we begin? There are lines of investigation I would like to pursue today, but I wanted to consult with you ladies first. We were with Lestrade earlier this morning.”

  “Would you like some tea, Dr. Watson?” asked Mary. “Mrs. Poole just brought up a fresh pot.”

  “Thank you,” said Watson. “And I should go check on my patient.”

  “Beatrice just went up,” said Mary, pouring tea into the cup that Beatrice had not used and handing it to him. “Do drink this first. I know what it’s like when you’re investigating. If you were with Inspector Lestrade earlier, you probably haven’t even breakfasted yet. Mr. Holmes? Tea? Or would you prefer coffee? I’m sure Mrs. Poole could make some.” But Holmes was obviously not interested in tea or coffee. He sat down impatiently and said, “Miss Frankenstein’s collapse last night prevented us from telling you about our interviews with the families and friends of the murdered women—or four of them, since Pauline Delacroix had only recently arrived in London. She was a French lady’s maid who had been serving in St. James’s Place. Her mistress dismissed her without a reference, so she was forced to make her way on the streets. She had no family in this country, and had not been in London long enough to make friends. The woman who ran the boardinghouse where she lived could tell us almost nothing about her. But the four others, including the most recent victim, Susanna Moore, had all been recent inmates of the Magdalen Society. Some only for a few days, one—Sally Hayward, the first victim—for several months.”

  “All four of them? That’s too many to be a coincidence,” said Mary. “Diana, do you remember hearing any of those names while you were at the Magdalen Society? Anna Pettingill was the other one, I believe, and of course poor Molly Keane.”

  “I never paid attention to their names,” said Diana, putting more sugar into her tea before slurping it down. “They all looked and sounded alike. But I always knew there was something rotten about that place! Well, I’m ready to go back and search for clues.”

  “You can’t,” said Mary. “They already know you there. What we need is someone who can get in without arousing suspicion, who can search around. Someone in disguise.”

  “I’ll go,” said Catherine. “They don’t know me, and I met enough prostitutes when I lived on the streets that I can convince them I’m one. But I’ll need Diana—not to go in!” Diana, who had sat up at the possibility of going as well, hunched down in her chair again and frowned. “I’ll need her to be my contact outside. You know all the hallways, right? And how to get in and out, over the wall? I assume there’s a wall—there always is. And where the director’s office is located? I’ll need to know where to look. . . .”

  “Just a moment,” said Watson. He leaned against the wall rather than taking the only remaining chair, at Mrs. Jekyll’s desk. “We weren’t implying that you ladies should participate in this investigation. I know you’re brave, but this is getting far too dangerous. Yesterday, you were attacked. Let the police handle it, or at least leave it to me and Holmes!”

  “But you can’t get in,” said Mary in her most reasonable voice. “Men aren’t allowed into the Magdalen Society, and by the time the police force their way into the building, the director could destroy any evidence she might have, anything that might connect her to these poor women, if indeed she is guilty of wrongdoing. I think we proved yesterday that we can take care of ourselves.” She remembered Mrs. Raymond’s grim face. Could she be connected to these murders, or to the Société des Alchimistes?

  “She has a point, Watson,” said Holmes, smiling. “And I must admit, I was hoping Miss Jekyll would suggest some useful way of investigating from the inside, where you and I can’t go. However, I understand your concern. Therefore, I suggest you accompany Miss Moreau and Miss Hyde as their protector. You can assure yourself in person as to their safety, although I’m afraid you’ll have to stay outside the gates.”

  “That’s scarcely reassuring,” said Watson. He gulped the rest of his tea. “All right, I’m going up to check on Miss Frankenstein. You mentioned that Miss Rappaccini is up there?”

  “Yes,” said Mary, amused. Were men always so obvious in their attentions? No, not all men. Mr. Holmes would certainly not be obvious—if, indeed, he paid attention to women at all, as women that is! He seemed to treat women as though they were men in skirts, either useful in his investigations or not.

  Watson nodded and put his teacup on the table, then left the morning room, almost too eagerly to be strictly polite.

  “And what about me, Mr. Holmes?” said Mary, turning to the detective. “There is another line of inquiry I’d like to pursue.” If
it was going to be all about investigations, well, let them investigate!

  “What is that, Miss Jekyll?”

  “I’d like to return to Purfleet. As we left after Renfield’s arrest, he recognized Diana. I don’t know if you remember, but he told her to tell her father that he had done . . . whatever he was supposed to. Is it possible that he might once have seen Hyde? Or had some dealings with him? And Dr. Balfour said something that didn’t strike me until later—he said it was a pity that a respectable man of science should fall into madness. I would like to know what sort of scientist Renfield was, and what drove him mad.”

  “I can see what you’re implying, Miss Jekyll,” said Holmes. “Was Renfield in some way involved with the Société des Alchimistes? I don’t know if Dr. Balfour can throw light on these matters, but he seems to know something about Renfield’s past. I was considering another visit to Purfleet myself. This would be a good day for a trip to the country, I think.”

  “And I’ll come with you,” said Mrs. Poole, who had brought in a tray with more buttered toast. “Miss Jekyll of Park Terrace can’t go wandering off to Purfleet with a single gentleman, Mr. Holmes. Not even one as celebrated as yourself.”

  “Mrs. Poole, that’s ridiculous,” said Mary. “This is the 1890s. Men and women can sit in a railway carriage together, I should think, without accusations of impropriety.”

  “Not ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Poole.

  Holmes laughed. “I shall be delighted to have your company, Mrs. Poole,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll make a charming chaperone.”

  A chaperone! How absolutely mortifying. For a moment, Mary was almost angry with Mrs. Poole. Then she reminded herself that she was eating the breakfast Mrs. Poole had cooked, in the house Mrs. Poole had cleaned. She owed so much to the housekeeper. Still, a chaperone . . . It did not help that Mr. Holmes was still smiling at the idea.