The Jekyll Revelation

by Robert Masello

  Turning, I looked at the cheval glass across the room. A misshapen thing, with drooping arms and jutting jaw, sat in my chair, in soaked trousers and a bloodstained shirt. It was at once the most appalling sight I had ever seen, and the most entrancing. If I chose to raise my arm, this creature’s arm went up. If I yawned, it yawned. If I stretched my back, it stretched its own. I was reminded once more of those poor caged apes aboard ship, and the one whose fingers—remarkably like my own—had been extended in mournful friendship through the bars. What separated our natures now?

  A church bell tolled an early hour, and before it had stopped, my chin had fallen to my chest in slumber. I dreamt I was a wolf, hunted by men in deerstalker hats, calling me by name. What was it the villainous Jack had said in his letter to the news agency? ‘I shan’t stop ripping till I do get buckled.’ Something like that.

  Well, buckled he had not been, and it appeared that he was the hunter now. And I his quarry.

  TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

  Present Day

  “You don’t think it’s too yellow, do you?” Miranda asked, and Rafe, standing on the ladder with the paintbrush in hand, debated how to answer that.

  “I mean, when I wake up on a sunny morning, it isn’t going to blind me, is it?”

  “There’s always that possibility,” he replied.

  She puckered her lips, reassessing the section of wall he had already painted, while Rafe held his fire. He did think the yellow was awfully bright, but he also understood exactly why she’d chosen it in the first place. She was determined to exorcize all trace and memory of Laszlo from the place, to make it seem new and fresh, and so she’d decided to change everything from the drapes to the paint. He had accompanied her to the Topanga Hardware and Locks shop, and from the limited selection of paint colors they offered, she had chosen the brightest one. Sunshine Gold.

  And then, with some more of the small bequest she had just inherited from her great-aunt Gladys—“Now I feel bad that I only visited her once in that nursing home in Pasadena,” she confessed—she had stopped in at the Canyon Quilt Shoppe and bought an equally colorful bedspread—big squares of yellow and red and orange—with pillow cases and curtains to match. Personally, Rafe thought it would all be enough to give him a headache.

  “Should I keep going?” he asked.

  “Yes, go on. I like it.”

  He dipped the brush in the bucket again, and started making long, even strokes on the wall, while Miranda fussed with a box of clothes she had decided to donate to Goodwill. It had only been a week since she broke it off with Laszlo, but already Rafe could see a change in her. On the whole, she seemed lighter, and more buoyant, though he could also see that there were times when, all of a sudden, she went into a tailspin, everything about her—from her eyes to her shoulders—falling. “What is it?” he’d asked the last time it had happened. “Please don’t tell me you’re missing him.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she said. “I just feel like . . . I failed somehow.”

  “Laszlo was not some kind of school project. You didn’t fail at anything.”

  “I wonder where he went.”

  “He’s fine, trust me.”

  “You know that?”

  Rafe was reluctant to get into it, but hoping to put her mind at ease, he said, “He’s living at the Compound now.”

  “No,” she said, incredulously. “He’s joined the Spiritz?”

  “Not until he gets a decent motorcycle. But I saw him arriving at La Raza with a bunch of them, and leave with them later.” He didn’t tell her that on the way out, Laszlo had passed Rafe at the bar and whispered, “You getting any yet?”

  Downstairs, he could hear his sister calling for Miranda. “There’s a customer,” she called out, and Miranda dropped a scarf into the box and said, “I’m coming!”

  Lucy wasn’t getting along with her new roommate any better than she had the previous one, and Evangelina was getting increasingly frustrated. It was clear that Lucy just didn’t want to live there anymore; she wanted to live with her older brother, and even though that was not going to work, Rafe had volunteered to keep her at his place for the weekend, and as often as he could otherwise. Miranda was fine with it, and she was the one who suggested that Lucy could mind the store while she and Rafe painted the apartment. “I think she’ll like being in charge of something for a change.”

  “Just don’t let her make change,” Rafe said. “Her math is as bad as mine.”

  Rafe stepped down from the ladder and moved it to the other side of the window. From here, he commanded an unimpeded view of the scruffy backyard and his even scruffier trailer. Some of Laszlo’s old clothes, also on their way to Goodwill, hung on the clothesline, the same one under which he had found the Asprey gold watch. The initials in it weren’t Stevenson’s, nor did it work anymore, but it was the only thing, besides the journal, that remained from the trunk he’d recovered from the lake.

  When he’d gone to retrieve the trunk from the dump, it was already gone. Nothing in Topanga ever went to waste, and he wouldn’t be surprised to see someone come into the Cornucopia one day wearing the top hat or the opera cape.

  Scraping away at a stubborn spot of the old paint still showing through the primer, he thought about how it wasn’t only Miranda who’d changed since Laszlo’s sudden exit. He’d changed, too. He hadn’t realized how deeply he’d disliked seeing Laszlo’s Vespa parked outside the house, or watching the lights go on—and more important, off—in their bedroom at night. He also hadn’t realized how often it had kept him from stopping inside the store to see Miranda: there was always the chance that a snarky Laszlo would be lurking there. Now, he looked forward to returning from his solitary work in the canyon and popping into the shop.

  Miranda came back into the room, laughing and fanning herself with a bunch of bills. “Check it out!” she said. “I just sold three paintings to a couple of German tourists.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Don’t act so surprised,” she said with mock indignation.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Lucy’s a good-luck charm.”

  “I hope you told her that.”

  “As a matter of fact, smarty-pants, I did.”

  A lot was going right in his world just now. Miranda was happy, Lucy was happy, and he figured he’d even reached a kind of détente with the troublemakers in the canyon. He’d paid a visit to the scene of the former meth lab, and apart from some dusty beakers and supplies, it looked pretty much abandoned now. The Potheads said they’d seen nobody coming or going. All Rafe wanted was to be able to go about his own business and complete his coyote studies, without any interference from the locals, or, ideally, the Land Management office downtown.

  “Miranda!” he heard Lucy calling again. “There’s another customer!”

  “You see what I’m saying?” Miranda said, heading back downstairs. “By the way, I’m buying dinner tonight, anywhere except La Raza.”

  Rafe went back to painting. In the yard, he heard Tripod barking, no doubt in futile pursuit of a squirrel or a lizard; you had to give him points for trying. The ladder rocked on its base, and he had to step down for a second to reposition it. The floors in this old building were as uneven and bumpy as the walls. Trip was still at it, and he glanced out the window to see what was up.

  That was when he saw Alfie, in his backward baseball cap, snooping around the trailer. He stuck the paintbrush in the can, wiped his hands on a rag, and hurried down the stairs. But before he could even go outside, he heard Miranda in the store, saying, “That is not what he told Rafe. He told him that anything he left here, I could toss.”

  “Well, what we must have here is a failure to communicate.” Seth was standing on one side of the counter, with Miranda on the other, shielding Lucy.

  “What do you want?” Rafe said.

  “Laszlo’s shit.”

  “He took it with him.”

  “That’s not what he said.
He said he left some stuff behind.”

  Rafe knew what Seth was doing—he was creating a distraction, hoping no one would notice Alfie was out back. “Fine,” Rafe said. “What’s left is hanging on the clothesline. Let’s go get it.”

  He banged out the screen door to the yard so loudly Alfie spun around.

  “You want Laszlo’s shit?” Rafe said, striding to the clothesline and ripping down the clothes that Miranda had put out to air before donating them. “That’s why you’re here, right?” He wadded them up into a big ball and shoved them into Alfie’s arms.

  Seth had come out behind him, and Miranda and Lucy had followed, too. He wished they hadn’t.

  “Anything else,” Rafe said, “or are you done here?”

  Alfie looked at Seth for further instruction.

  “We want our own stuff, too,” Seth said.

  “What stuff is that?”

  “The stuff from the trunk.”

  “Not that again. It wasn’t yours, and there was nothing else in it, anyway. You already got the knife,” Rafe said, noticing that it was prominently displayed through the belt loop of Seth’s baggy jeans.

  “No, we mean the stuff from the littler box,” Alfie said.

  “There was nothing it but some old useless papers.”

  “Then give us those,” Alfie insisted, dumping the clothes on the ground.

  “They’re gone. Thrown out.”

  Seth and Alfie exchanged a mutinous look.

  “That’s not what Laszlo says,” Seth said.

  Ah, now it all made sense. The bitter and evicted Laszlo was trying to stir up some trouble by planting these ideas in their heads.

  “Maybe we should look around in that shitty little trailer you live in just to make sure,” Alfie said.

  “Maybe you should pick up those clothes and get out of here instead.”

  It was starting to feel more and more like some schoolyard dispute, charges flying back and forth, only this one, Rafe knew, could turn ugly any time. He thought of the Smith & Wesson locked in the safe inside the trailer and wondered if he would need to get at it.

  “Who’s the girl?” Alfie said, out of the blue.

  “Nobody you need to know.”

  “I’m his sister,” she said proudly. “Lucy.”

  Alfie smiled, revealing a big gap in his front teeth. “Nice to meet you, Lucy.” Alfie looked at Rafe. “She living in the canyon, too, now?”

  “No.” He had to put a stop to this. “Miranda, why don’t you two go back inside?”

  Looping an arm around Lucy’s shoulders, she shepherded her back toward the house. Glancing back, Miranda said, “You coming, Rafe?”

  “In a minute.”

  The three men stood in a circle no more than ten feet apart until Seth said, “Pick up the damn clothes.” Alfie said, “I’m not carrying his fuckin’ pants around.” And to make the point, he kicked the heap, scattering them around the ground.

  “Come on, then,” Seth said, one hand resting obtrusively on the handle of the knife.

  “We ain’t done with you, Salazar,” Alfie said, as he sauntered off behind Seth. “We know when we been screwed.”

  Rafe felt his hand clench, and it was all he could do not to slug him. But he waited and watched as they got into their old truck, revved the engine defiantly, and backed up onto the main road. He knew things had been going too well. Now, unfortunately, they were right back to normal.

  1 October, 1888

  ‘Louis!’

  There was a knock on the door. It felt as if someone were banging on my very skull.

  ‘Louis! Are you in there?’ It was Lloyd.

  The door handle jiggled. The knocking got louder.

  ‘Are you asleep? Wake up.’

  My chin rose from my chest, my shoulders aching—everything aching.

  ‘There’s a detective here, from Scotland Yard. He says he needs to speak with you.’

  The room was flooded with light. Woggin was standing by the door, whining to go out.

  In the cheval glass, I saw myself again, a haunted, haggard creature, but mine own.

  ‘What should I tell him?’

  ‘Tell him’, I croaked, ‘to go away.’

  ‘I don’t think I can tell him that. Shall I tell him you’ll be down in a few minutes?’

  I didn’t reply. I was testing my legs to see if I could stand.

  ‘I’ll tell him that,’ Lloyd decided.

  Yes, I thought, tell him anything. All I wanted right now was a hot bath and a deep sleep in a long bed. I settled, however, for a good, hard scrub with a basin of fresh cold water, a hasty shave, and a new suit of clothes. I was hardly the picture of health, but presentable enough to go downstairs. As I passed the grandfather clock on the landing, I saw that it was already half past four. I had had a long, if uncomfortable, sleep. In the parlour, I heard Fanny’s voice.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, Inspector. He keeps his own hours. Great artists are like that.’

  ‘But you don’t know what time he came to bed?’

  ‘Our sleeping arrangements are our own affair.’

  ‘Pardon me,’ Abberline apologised. ‘Let me rephrase the question—do you know what time your husband retired that night, wherever in the house he might have been?’

  ‘He often falls asleep at his desk.’

  ‘And wakes there, too,’ I said, entering the room, ‘with a stiff back.’

  Abberline, in his usual brown suit, was standing between the front windows, holding a note pad and pencil. Lloyd lounged beside his mother on the sofa.

  ‘Mr Stevenson,’ the detective said, nodding his head.

  ‘To what do we owe the honour of this visit?’

  ‘There was a double murder last night,’ Fanny interjected. ‘You have not yet seen the papers.’

  Several of them, from the most staid to the most lurid, were fanned out on the sofa between herself and her son. They were late editions, the ink still wet, as it were.

  ‘Two more ladies of the evening’, Fanny said, ‘slaughtered even worse than the ones before.’

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if we spoke in private,’ the detective said, but I had already deposited myself in one of the wing chairs and had no desire to be interrogated privately, or otherwise. All things considered, it seemed wise to have Fanny there, acting as my advocate, if need be.

  ‘You can speak freely,’ I said. If I banished Lloyd, he would only linger at the keyhole, anyway.

  Clearing his throat, Abberline said, ‘What your wife has said is true. You know nothing of this?’

  ‘I was working late into the night. I saw the dawn from my study window.’

  ‘Surely you didn’t work all night,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you go anywhere earlier in the evening?’

  It was a leading question, if ever there was one, and my answer would establish, or destroy, my veracity in whatever else was to come.

  ‘I did go out earlier last night.’

  ‘Where?’

  I knew he had the answer already. If Mansfield was under surveillance, as even Stoker admitted, then the operative must have seen me enter and leave the theatre. ‘I went to the Lyceum.’

  ‘To what purpose?’

  ‘Can’t I go to see my own play without arousing suspicion?’

  ‘The play was over when you arrived.’

  At least he had shown that card.

  ‘I came at the request of the manager, Bram Stoker. You may corroborate that with him. He wanted to consult with me on some artistic questions.’

  ‘With him alone?’

  ‘And with the lead actor, Mr Mansfield.’

  Under questioning, it is always best to share as much of the truth as possible, not only to display cooperation, but to obfuscate whatever portion of the tale you are hoping to conceal. A simple lesson of the storyteller’s art.

  ‘What were Mr Mansfield’s artistic problems about, then?’

  ‘Nothing much. He wondered if he was remaining true to the or
iginal text, and I assured him he had the greatest latitude to bring to the role whatever he chose.’

  Abberline look unpersuaded. ‘And after your consultation?’ He said that last word with the utmost suspicion.

  ‘I left Mr Mansfield at the stage door, and tried to get a cab home. It was raining quite hard last night, as I hardly need to remind you.’

  The corollary is to offer up nothing you don’t absolutely have to.

  ‘Have any luck?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you walked all the way back? In the rain?’

  ‘Apparently so,’ I said. ‘I know I was thoroughly soaked when I got here.’

  ‘Did you, by any chance, take Wellington Street in the direction of the Strand?’

  The very route I had taken. ‘Yes, I believe I did.’ So that sense I had had of being followed was not altogether wrong. I had attributed it, in hindsight, to being stalked by the man with the knife. Jack. But could it have been a policeman? Could it have been the same one who intervened in the attack, though almost too late to have saved me?

  The detective waited, as if giving me time to sort through my own questions.

  ‘There was an altercation in a costermonger’s arcade,’ he finally said. ‘A man with a knife.’

  ‘Was it Jack?’

  ‘Unlikely, but possible. The other murders occurred close to the same time, but all the way over in Whitechapel again.’

  ‘Who was the victim of this incident in the arcade?’

  ‘None, fortunately. A woman escaped clean, but the men got into a bit of a brawl.’

  ‘Men?’ I asked innocently. ‘There were more than one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did the policeman get a good look at them?”

  ‘Good enough. The one with the knife was big and blond, the other was a queer-looking gent.’ He studied me oddly. ‘Shorter than you, and rather twisted in both his frame and features.’ It looked as if he were trying to puzzle something out.