Spotting her in the yard, he called out, “Guess where I was?”
“La Raza.”
“And guess who else was there?”
That wasn’t hard, either. “Seth and Alfie.”
He clambered to his feet, brushing the gravel off his jeans. He still had that long, rangy body that had first driven her crazy, but these days it wasn’t as hard as it used to be. He was even starting to develop a potbelly.
“Is that the stuff?” he said, gesturing at the clothesline. “Looks like a lot of crap to me.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe,” he said, “it’s just what the doctor ordered.” He started toward the clothesline, ready to remove the top hat, but she wanted none of it. Nor did she want to have Rafe hear, or worse yet witness, some scene between the two of them. Taking him by the arm—he reeked of beer and dope—she steered him back toward the house, with Trip bringing up the rear.
“And didn’t I hear something about a box of gold and jewels?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“I think I did.”
“You’re so stoned you don’t know what you heard.”
“I’m not that stoned,” he said, letting one hand slink over her shoulder, still swaddled in the sheet, and onto her breast. She let it stay, figuring it would help get him up the back stairs and into the house.
Which was about as far as it worked. As soon as they got inside, he swerved toward the fridge, took out a Corona, and slumped into a chair, his hands cradling the cold bottle, his chin nearly resting on his chest.
“Sit down,” he said, his words starting to slur. “Have a drink with me.”
Fat chance, she thought, though with any luck, he’d fall asleep at the table. With even better luck, he’d stay right there all night.
In the bedroom, she turned up the window air conditioner—its roar might just cancel out the snoring she was sure to hear soon from the kitchen—and put the fresh sheet on the bed. In the shower stall, she positioned the tin bucket to catch some of the runoff, and when she was done, ruffled her hair dry while standing at the window onto the yard. The gent was still doing his creepy jig on the clothesline, and she yanked the blind down.
Falling into bed in nothing but a long T-shirt, she felt the last ounce of energy drain from her limbs. She’d had too much wine with dinner. And it had been a tiring day—running a store was a lot harder than it looked—capped by that bizarre visit. Before long, her mind had drifted, too. She hadn’t moved a muscle on the bed, even to untangle the loose wet ends of her hair from the pillow, before sleep overtook her. But it wasn’t a deep or relaxing sleep; her dreams were strange and discomfiting—she was late for some event, but couldn’t leave until she’d found a pair of white gloves, and everywhere she looked for them she turned up other odd things from her past, like stuffed animals, field hockey sticks, and the wilted corsage from her prom. She was vaguely aware that this wasn’t real, that it was all just a dream, and that if she could only wake up, she wouldn’t have to worry about the white gloves at all.
The room was cool from the old air conditioner, but the racket was getting intolerable. And so was Laszlo’s snoring. She really should force herself to wake up and get out of bed and fix the situation. Her wet hair would be a hopeless tangle the next day. The light coverlet that she had drawn up over her body was being drawn down again, and her fingers tried to catch it and keep it where it was, at least until she’d located those missing gloves.
Besides, it was too cold in the room to sleep in just the T-shirt.
There was a bad smell in the air, too. Foreign, but familiar. Could it be the rotting corsage? Her eyes opened, blearily, and made out something just above her, weaving back and forth in the moonlight cutting through the slats of the Venetian blind. But what was it? It was squarish at the top and black all over, and when it moved, there was a rustling sound, and another wave of the foul odor washed over her.
Wake up, she told herself, while something else, in the back of her head, said, But you are awake, Miranda.
She felt the coverlet descending again, and the thing looming above her bent down, and now she thought she could see that the squarish shape was a top hat, and the blackness was a cape with a wide collar, and the terrible smell was from those old clothes in the trunk. But the blanket was down at her ankles now, and the bottom of her T-shirt was coming up, and the fingers lifting it were hard and cold, and with a jolt like electricity her mind snapped into consciousness—you are awake, Miranda. Her hands flew up to push back at the body trying to clamber on top of her, its fetid breath on her face, its crumpled hat tumbling onto the pillow.
She opened her mouth to scream, but she had no breath in her, and what she heard instead was a low chortle. She kicked the blanket off her feet and struggled to turn on her side, but a voice said “Don’t fight” and she was pushed onto her back again. “Don’t fight,” the voice repeated, though she squirmed in the other direction. Cold hands groped at her waist, and she managed to kick out, feeling the soles of her feet connect with a hard thud and send the intruder reeling back against the window. Something clattered to the floorboards. The blind rattled and crashed from its rod, and when she’d landed upright on the other side of the bed, she snapped on the lamp and saw the Victorian gent slumping down, one hand to his chest, the other planted on the windowsill.
“Shit, Miranda,” Laszlo gasped. He looked stunned, as if the kick had shaken him out of some trance. “It was only a joke.”
A joke?
“You could have killed me,” he complained, massaging his sternum.
She could hardly believe what had just happened. “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking,” he said, “that it might turn you on.”
“Turn me on?”
“You used to be kinky. Remember?”
Her mind was still reeling, blood pounding in her temples.
“I think you might have broken one of my ribs.”
“I hope I did,” she said, storming into the bathroom and locking the door behind her. Putting her hands on either side of the sink, she stared at herself in the mirror, taking slow, deep breaths. She ran cold water over her wrists, then soaked a washcloth and held it to her face. She heard Laszlo, bitterly complaining, tromping out of the bedroom. In the kitchen, a chair got kicked, and the refrigerator door slammed shut. Thank God it was well stocked with Coronas. A few more and he’d be unconscious till dawn. If she slept at all that night, she was going to do it in the tub.
3 January, 1882
There was no funeral for Yannick, no formal obsequies of any kind to mark the passing of the man. It was clear to me that Dr Rüedi preferred it that way. He wanted nothing to put the guests of the Belvédère any more in mind of mortality than they already were. As it was, death was always just around the corner, or even in the next room of the hotel. In this Alpine castle, the music of the danse macabre played on forever.
But I had resolved to quit the masque, just as Desmond and his Miss Wooldridge had done, and had booked three seats on the next Sunday coach to the train station in town. When I shared the news with Symonds, as we lay wrapped in our blankets on the outside verandah, he looked positively stricken.
‘But whom shall I talk to?’
‘Surely there is no shortage of other convalescents,’ I replied, though flattered at his consternation.
‘None whose mind provides quite such fertile ground.’
‘You make me feel like a fallow field.’
‘And that you are!’ he said, turning his long face and doleful eyes my way. ‘I have been tilling this soil, cultivating this crop, ever since you arrived.’
‘Time, then, that you brought in the harvest.’
‘I’m not yet done,’ he declared. Looking off towards the valley, so filled with fresh snow it looked like a bowl of milk, he said with great resolve, ‘I shall simply have to return with you.’
‘Are you well enough?’
‘No, but I never shall be. And making the arduous journey back into the world will be much easier if I have travelling companions who may, should disaster strike, be able to offer aid.’
How Fanny would react to having been turned into an ambulance service was not something I looked forward to with any relish, but I could hardly refuse. Already, I had aroused the ire of Dr Rüedi, who had vehemently opposed my departure and nearly refused to undo the effects of the plombage.
‘It is too soon to reinflate the lung,’ he had insisted in his office.
‘But you yourself have said, and seen, that I am much better.’ The results of my blood tests had been improving, and even more to the point, the bout with the now-departed Yannick had confirmed a newly restored constitution. Indeed, it felt as if the fight had miraculously invigourated it.
‘But there are better results yet to come. If you leave prematurely, you will undo everything we have accomplished.’ By ‘we’, I thought for one moment that he was referring not to me, but to the grinning skeleton hanging behind him on the wall.
‘I will have to hazard that.’
‘It will be on your own head, not mine.’
‘I accept that charge.’
Reluctantly, he agreed to perform the necessary surgery that same afternoon, removing the paraffin through a small but painful incision between my shoulder blades, and then using a rubber nozzle to guide fresh air, blown down my throat through a device that resembled a miniature accordion, into the collapsed lung. Feeling it expand again in my chest was among the strangest sensations I have ever known, like having a bird awaken in its nest and spread its wings beneath your skin. I coughed several times, Dr Rüedi watching intently, before I could regain my equilibrium and give him a reassuring smile. I did not let on that each cough had been accompanied by an exquisite jab of pain.
The news that we were leaving brought nothing but joy to Fanny, who had long ago exhausted the stores and diversions of tiny Davos, and Lloyd, who missed everything from the streets of London to the lovely Constance Wooldridge. Her charms had never worn off; indeed, at one point, Fanny had caught Lloyd stealing a bit of her monogrammed lacery from a laundry basket left out for the maid.
Even Woggin seemed to have intuited the news somehow, and though he had come to enjoy the treats from the hotel chef, he followed us from room to room as the packing was done, tail wagging, making quite sure that no one went anywhere without him. In my attic study, he stood by his pillow on the floor, head up and barking, until I had proved to him that it, too, would be brought along. I took one last look from the window onto the rear of the hotel, thinking I might catch some glimpse of Lord Grey lurking at the fringe of the forest, but saw nothing. The salt lick was unvisited. The smokehouse was as dark and silent as a tomb . . . which, I reflected, it might well have become. Could I really have died in such a remote place, a hut for curing dead game, and in such an ignominious fashion? Hacked to pieces by a murderous Swiss peasant?
Symonds was already ensconced in the coach under two blankets by the time the rest of us climbed in. It was another cold and overcast day, and I saw him glance fretfully at his pocket watch.
‘The train leaves at three o’clock.’
‘It will wait if it has to,’ Fanny said, already exasperated and settling several boxes around her feet. She left so little room that I had to stretch my legs above the boxes and across to the opposite seat, between Lloyd and Symonds.
There was no send-off committee to wish us well. The porter, having secured the bags atop the carriage, tipped his cap, stepped back, and the coachman cracked his whip. With a jolt, the carriage left the shelter of the porte cochère, and as it came around the curve of the hotel drive, the bell tower tolled. Symonds checked his watch again, and from the corner of my eye I saw the odd tableau of a stout woman with a striped kerchief tied under her chin, sitting on a plough horse, the reins held by a sturdy blond lad in lederhosen and a crumpled hat with one red feather.
And then the Belvédère, and all of those whom it housed, disappeared.
The coach grew quiet as each of its occupants descended into separate reveries. So much had transpired in this place, it was no wonder. For myself, I could not view the narrow pathways cut through the snow without thinking of the doomed souls who took their lonely exercise there, or the toboggan run without recalling the cargo I had seen dispatched on it by moonlight. I was fortunate indeed to be leaving under my own steam, of my own volition, and in more robust health than I had arrived. For all his eccentricities, Dr Rüedi had proved himself to be my saviour, and I looked forward now to resuming my work and retaking my place among the literary mob of London. W. E. Henley’s was, of course, to be my first stop; no one would be better able to bring me up to date on the latest news.
As if by some tacit agreement, the doctor and I had never discussed Yannick’s death—it was put down to a wolf attack—nor did we address the missing occupant of the subterranean cell. I suspect he knew I had had a hand in Lord Grey’s escape, but what was done was done. All the doctor asked of me was that I keep him informed of my progress, and, if I remained well, make some mention of the magical Belvédère (and its resident Prospero!) to anyone who might ask—particularly if the interlocutor was of a prominent station in life. In return, he gave me a supply of the elixir to which he attributed much of my improvement.
‘But as this remedy still carries no patent, and is in the experimental stage, I have taken the precaution of disguising it,’ he said, handing me two bottles of what appeared to be the local Valtellina wine. ‘Be sure you do not lose it among the other vintages in your cellar.’
‘No fear of that,’ I replied. ‘I have no cellar. But if I am to inject it as you have done, do I not need a lesson or two in that procedure?’
‘I have diluted it for just this reason. Direct intravenous injection is a delicate operation and carries with it too great a risk of misapplication. A small dose of the liquid will offer the benefits of the drug without the inherent dangers.’
The bottles were now thickly swaddled in the bottom of the handbag I had tucked beside me in the coach. With only one brief detour, to skirt the corpse of a frozen cow, we made steady progress towards the town, arriving at Davos with plenty of time to spare. Fanny employed the coach to make one last round of the stores—the shopkeepers were sure to weep at her departure—while Lloyd took Woggin for a quick romp in the snow. And then we were off again, rumbling the rest of the way to the valley floor and the train station, where Symonds promptly took a seat on the bench closest to the fire, while I made mental notes for a travel essay I was contemplating. If one were to keep up one’s name among the public, it was necessary to contribute pieces on a variety of subjects to as many different periodicals as possible.
It was after an hour or so, and while making these observations, that I noticed, through the window of the station, the stout woman in the kerchief again, now waddling along the platform and turning her head this way and that. She had watery eyes and fat cheeks red as apples. Under one arm, she carried a bundle the size of a baby. Thinking no more of it, I made some jottings in my notebook, and when the train blew its whistle and the conductors called for the passengers to board, I gathered up my tribe and we made our way to the first-class cars.
Our compartment was soon filled with luggage, and as the air inside was stifling from whoever had last travelled in it—one could only imagine that they had been devouring onions—Lloyd took it upon himself to lower the window all the way to the sash and hang his head and shoulders outside.
‘Make sure you come back in before the train starts up,’ Fanny said. ‘I came here with a full boy—I don’t want to leave with just a half.’
On Symonds’s face, chin huddled down into the upturned collar of his coat, I detected no great unwillingness to leave with half.
The conductor called again for those holding tickets to board the train, and loud jets of steam plumed from the undercarriage and into the air.
It was from that swirling fog that the woman with the bundle emerged again, scanning the train frantically. At first, it appeared that she was trying to enter the first-class car, but when she was barred from doing so, she went back to marching up and down the platform, as if searching for someone. The blond boy appeared at her side, said something with a hand cupped to her ear—even idle, the noise of the engine was quite deafening—and, to my surprise, pointed up at Lloyd.
She looked uncertain; then, when he had assured her, she ran to the train, which was just beginning to roll, shouting something in German. Lloyd shrank back just as her hand reached out to snag his sleeve, and Symonds said, ‘For God’s sake, close that window!’
But it was already too late. As the stationmaster struggled to hold her back, she threw the bundle as hard as she could and with unerring aim. It came straight through the window, rebounded off the luggage rack, and banged me on the knee. She was still shrieking something as the train picked up speed and left the platform behind.
‘Good God, what is that?’ Symonds said.
Woggin’s ears pricked up.
It was round and wrapped in rags, old pillowcases that carried the monogram of the Hotel Belvédère, and as I unwound them, I felt my heart sinking in my chest. This would be no gift, I knew. But the full measure of horror had not yet dawned. As my fingers peeled the last rag away, I saw staring up at me a pair of yellow eyes, dull as copper coins, and a muzzle of broken teeth, twisted to one side. The crown of his head, where the grey fur had sustained a deep gash, was matted with blood.
‘How ghastly,’ Symonds said.
‘What’s it mean?’ Lloyd said, as if this gory prize were some clue in a game.
But Fanny, whose German was even worse than mine, asked the question I was wondering myself. ‘What was the old woman shouting?’
‘She was calling you a murderer,’ Symonds said.
The Jekyll Revelation Page 12
