by John Kessel
“It is too slender a reed,” he said, “and I am not some suitor. I am a murderer.” He turned from her toward the skiff.
Mary came to the gunwale. She seized his hand in both of hers, raised it to her lips, and kissed it. She looked up into his face.
It was dark, but she saw him tremble and close his eyes.
“Miss Bennet!” a voice shouted above the sound of the surf. “Victor!”
Adam’s head snapped up. Mary turned and saw a man striding across the beach toward them. Henry Clerval.
She still had hold of the Creature’s hand. “Henry, no—”
When Henry came within a few steps of them he stopped. He stared. In the starlight Adam’s livid face was that of a corpse.
“I am not Victor,” he said.
Henry rushed forward, pulling Mary away. “Run!” he said. He seized the oar that lay across the bow of the skiff and swung it toward Adam’s head.
“No!” Mary shouted.
Adam’s hand flashed out and caught the oar in mid-swing. He ripped it from Henry’s grasp.
Henry faltered, but then hurled himself at Adam.
Adam staggered at the force of Henry’s assault, but he did not fall. He seized Henry by the throat.
“Adam, no!”
Adam lifted Henry by his neck. Henry kicked and struggled. Adam’s face was set in a rictus of rage. He closed his hand on Henry’s throat. Henry, writhing, tried to pry Adam’s hand from his neck, to no avail. When he was still, Adam threw him down onto the beach.
Mary knelt over Henry. He was not breathing. Tears were in her eyes.
She looked up. Adam towered above her, looking down on them both, arms at his sides. His hands moved aimlessly, as if he had forgotten how to control them.
“Is he dead?” he said.
Mary nodded.
Adam poked at Henry with the toe of his boot. “It is my fate to kill them all.”
Mary tried to speak, blinking away tears. She rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes and caught her breath. She should call him away from such thoughts. You don’t have to do these things, she should tell him. God will forgive you if you repent.
She said nothing.
Adam pushed the skiff into the water, climbed aboard, and rowed away from the shore, leaving Mary standing with the body of Henry Clerval at her feet.
Numbly, Mary walked back from the beach into the town.
She needed to tell someone about Henry’s murder. As a stranger and a beggar, she knew she would be suspect. If anyone had seen her with Henry at the inn, she would surely be questioned.
She had not slept for two days. She was so weary and heartsick that when she came upon a horse stall along the way, she crawled into it, curled into a corner, and fell unconscious. Her dreams were full of black terror, and in those moments where she lay half-awake, images of Eve dropping the cup, Henry’s terrified and determined face as he assaulted Adam, and the warmth of Adam’s hand against her lips.
The next morning it seemed that these things could not have happened. When she made her way to Traill Street, she found a grim-faced knot of people standing outside the town hall. They spoke to one another in low voices. Mary eavesdropped. Henry’s body had been found by some fishermen coming ashore—it must have been not long after she had fled the beach—and failing to revive him, they had brought him to the gaol.
A stranger had sailed into the harbor with the dawn, in the kind of skiff that had been seen off the coast near where Henry’s body had been found. The man had been arrested and was at this moment being interrogated by Mr. Kirwin.
No one said there was anything unusual about the accused, so it could not have been Adam. Whoever they had arrested was innocent. When Mary tried to enter the hall, she was turned away by the same woman who had dismissed her the day before.
She returned to the churchyard and sat on a stone bench among the graves. Idly putting her hands in the pockets of the greatcoat she still wore, she found the hard bread that the turnkey had given her. She gnawed at one end and considered what she must do. Her mind was not clear. She was a fool. She might have guessed that as soon as Henry missed her, thinking she had gone off to meet Victor, he would try to follow. By luring him to the beach, she had caused his death.
Eventually she walked back to the town hall and stood uncertainly among the people gathered. She drew a number of curious glances, but no one tried to speak with her. Then someone among the gawkers mentioned that the murderer was a foreigner, and Mary realized, cursing her blindness, that it had to be Victor.
She went to the door again. The woman saw her coming. “Didn’t I tell ye yesterday to leave this town?”
Mary announced loudly, “I know who killed Henry Clerval.”
“Who the devil’s Henry Clerval?”
“The man they found on the beach.”
The woman let her in. Inside were the fishermen who had discovered Henry’s body and those who had apprehended Victor. “Where is Mr. Kirwin?” the woman asked.
“He’s in back,” one of the older men said. “He wants to see what this fella does when he sees the body.”
A commotion arose somewhere in the back of the building, and a benevolent-featured man hurried into the room. “The fellow swooned,” he told the woman. “Fetch the apothecary.”
“Sir,” Mary said, “if your suspect is Victor Frankenstein, I can tell you that he did not commit this crime.”
Harried as the man appeared, he stopped. “And how do you know this?”
“Mr. Frankenstein was on an island five or more miles from here. He could not have killed Mr. Clerval.”
“And who are you? How is it that you know these men?”
“My name is Mary Bennet. I came here yesterday but you were not in. The turnkey and his wife met me, and can vouch for this.”
“Come with me,” Mr. Kirwin said.
He led Mary back to the room where Henry’s body lay on a table. Henry’s face was placid, but ugly bruises marred his throat. Mary had little attention to spare for him, for lying on the floor, writhing and muttering sporadic exclamations, was Victor. The turnkey had hold of his shoulders and was trying to get him to lie still.
“Oh, Henri!” Victor said. “Henri, t’ai-je tué comme j’ai tué William?”
Although his eyes were open, he did not seem aware of his surroundings. Mary tried to call him out of his fit, but he was oblivious.
Mr. Kirwin observed her attempts to bring Victor to his senses. He had Victor carried off to a cell and laid on a cot. The apothecary arrived and forced Victor to quaff a strong sleeping draught that at last subdued his mutterings.
Kirwin brought Mary to his office. He sat her down opposite him and closed the door. From a drawer in his desk he took a pipe and tobacco, prepared and lit it, and leaned back.
“You are exhausted,” he said.
Mary rested her head in her hand. “This is undeniable.”
“You know both the victim and the murderer. How is that?”
“Victor is not a—he did not kill Henry.”
“So if this man did not commit the murder, who did?”
Mary hesitated. “I cannot say.”
Mr. Kirwin studied her for some time. His gaze was not unkind. “It is clear to me that you have not always been this destitute. Tell me how it is that you find yourself here, and explain your connection to both of these unfortunate men. Beware: though I compassionate you, I ask in my official capacity, and will hold you accountable for whatever you say.”
Mary rubbed her brow. She felt the hard chair she sat in, the weariness in her bones. What could she say to this good man that would not strike him as lunacy?
She took a deep breath and began: “I am a person who has always believed what people told me, and who could not see them well enough to know when they lied.”
She related the story of a well-bred, naive woman who developed an unwise affection for a handsome and troubled man; how, against all her history and principles, she followed hi
m to the remote north of Scotland. She told of Victor’s despondency at the death of his brother, and how he and Henry had come to Britain so that he might recover himself.
She said nothing of the Creature, but she assured Mr. Kirwin that Victor had been on the island at the time that Henry had been killed.
“You cannot know that unless you were there,” Kirwin said. “Mr. Frankenstein raves that he is responsible for his friend’s death.”
“You understood him,” Mary said.
“Even in remotest Scotland there exist men who know French, madam. I heard what he said. I cannot say that I understood him.”
“He is not in his right mind. The William he spoke of—that was his young brother, who was similarly strangled back in Switzerland. Mr. Frankenstein had isolated himself in the Orkneys so that he might drown his sorrows in scientific research. Your grocer will vouch for his presence on Emray Isle for many weeks. It was ill done. I arrived and, in the foolishness of my heart, thought I might draw him away from his obsession. I was wrong. Mr. Clerval came to meet Victor that they might return to Geneva. If you inquire at the inn, you will discover that he arrived only yesterday. Victor must blame himself for bringing Henry into a circumstance that has led to his death.”
Mr. Kirwin was not satisfied with her tale. “No one here knows Mr. Clerval. Yet less than twenty-four hours after his arrival he is found strangled on the seashore. Witnesses say that a beggar woman was with him at the inn the last time that anyone observed him alive. I assume that woman was you.”
“I knew that he was coming to meet Victor, and in my desperation I sought his help. The innkeeper will testify that Henry helped me to write to my family. When that help comes, if you will permit me to, I shall return to my home. Though I came all this way only to have Victor disappoint my hopes, I know that he cannot have killed Henry, his dearest friend. I would suggest that, before you settle on his fate, you write his father. He is a syndic in Geneva, Switzerland.”
“The court will decide his fate. But I will write his father, and see that he is cared for until he recovers himself sufficiently to be tried.”
“You are a generous man.”
“As for you,” he said gravely, “I believe that you are not telling me all that you know. You are a poor dissembler. It would be well for you to reveal everything. However, it is quite evident that you are not capable of strangling a man to death, and there is no indication that you have an accomplice. The person who was seen sailing away from the scene of the murder was a single man, in a skiff.”
“Victor warned me that he had an enemy who would seek to harm those whom he loves. The murderer of his young brother still roams free.”
“A convenient circumstance for Mr. Frankenstein. We shall discover whether he deceived you in that as he did in his regard for you. In the meanwhile, I will do my best to see that you are taken care of until your family is able to send you relief.”
In the days after his swoon, Victor did not recover from his brain fever. Mary visited him more than once in the gaol, trying to bring him back to the world, but he only stared at her with blind eyes and muttered self-accusations in French.
Two weeks later Darcy arrived once again to save Mary from herself. He had become accustomed to this role with regard to his wife’s sisters over the years, and though he was weary of it, he did not reprove Mary any more than she did herself. After meeting with Mr. Kirwin and offering to recompense him for his kindness to Mary—which Mr. Kirwin politely declined—Darcy and Mary left on the next coach back to Edinburgh.
Mary never saw Victor Frankenstein again.
TWENTY-ONE
When Mary entered the shop, Mary Anning’s black-and-white terrier, Tray, lifted his head. His eyes brightened and he trotted over to sniff Mary’s boots and push his head against her hand.
“Good dog,” Mary said, and he circled back to his place beside the counter. He was as loyal a creature as had ever inhabited the earth, Mary Anning’s constant companion when she went searching the Blue Lias cliffs for new fossils.
Despite the fact that the windows at the front were open, the air in the tiny shop lay heavy and motionless. The heat had been the beginning of every conversation for weeks. People fleeing London crowded the streets of Lyme Regis. The town bustled with visitors, the wealthy to country houses in the vicinity and the less wealthy filling the inns. A continual tide of curiosity seekers washed in and out of Anning’s Fossil Depot.
Mrs. Anning stepped out from behind the door at the back. “Good day, Miss Bennet,” she said. “Mary is in her workshop. Shall I call her?”
“Don’t bother. I’ll go down, if I may.”
“Certainly.”
Mary stepped down the narrow stairs to the cellar. Here it was cooler, and the window to the street was open to let in daylight. Still, a lighted lantern hung above the table where Mary Anning bent over a slab of limestone. She held a small rock hammer and an awl, chipping away bits of stone. When she heard Mary on the creaking stair treads, she looked up.
“We sold the ammonite slab,” she said in her blunt way.
“Wonderful,” Mary said. She stood beside the younger woman, examining her recent find. “I have not seen this one.”
“Center of a vertebra, I think, of a shark.” She ran a finger over the disk that protruded from the stone. “Few and far between, such shark fossils.”
Mary looked at the notebook lying nearby, where Mary Anning had made a drawing of the fossil. Mary loved to see the young woman so caught up in her work. She had the slightest education, and as Mr. Woodleigh had charged years before, could not pronounce ichthyosaurus to save her life, but she had laboriously copied word by word the scientific papers sent her by fossil-hunting correspondents. Her mind was keen and her ability to discern slight differences between even partial skeletons uncanny. From the shy girl she had been at sixteen, at twenty-two she demonstrated growing confidence in her abilities. She could be careless of social forms, and on occasion demonstrated a sharp tongue, but these things did not bother Mary as they once might have.
Mary said, “I came to ask whether you might wish to walk on the Undercliff this Sunday. We might take a lunch and hunt for specimens.”
The younger woman said, “I should be pleased—after church.”
Mary Anning attended the Dissenters’ church run by the Reverend Gleed, whereas Mary attended the Anglican service. “Will you come by the cottage, then? I’ll have Alice prepare something for us.”
“I shall be there at one.”
This had become their habit on fine summer days. They took their baskets and hammers and a picnic lunch and lost themselves in the woods above the cliffs. In truth they did not so much hunt fossils—the fossils to be found were down on the beach—as the opportunity to be together away from the eyes of townspeople. Mary was that fossil-collecting old maid who had moved here from Hertfordshire, and Mary Anning was the queer girl who corresponded with important men half-mad for the bones of monsters dead thousands of years. Whatever gossip the two women stirred protected Mary Anning from worse gossip about her association with these strange men.
“At one, then.” Mary kissed her on the cheek and climbed back up the stairs to the shop.
Anning’s Fossil Depot might be said to be a product of Mary’s intervention in the Annings’ lives. She had observed the desperate hand-to-mouth existence Mary and her mother lived, dependent on Mrs. Anning’s sewing and whether her daughter was able to find fossils to sell to tourists. Mary Anning’s brother Joseph had given up fossil hunting and apprenticed as an upholsterer.
Not having the resources herself to save them, Mary called upon a connection she had forged with one of the wealthy enthusiasts who came to Lyme Regis. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Birch had purchased many of the finer specimens that Joseph and Mary had found. Over the course of months Mary had gently drawn Colonel Birch to pay more than passing attention to the precarious living of the Annings. He recognized Mary Bennet’s breeding and was familiar wit
h her family connections. Mary put the notion into his head that perhaps something might be done to help the Annings, and from this came Birch’s idea to auction off his collection and give the proceeds to them. It was a generous impulse. Mary praised him for his charity, contributed her own meager collection to the cause, and did everything she could to see that Birch garnered all the credit that might be had from it.
The auction drew bids from fossil collectors across Britain and raised more than four hundred pounds for the Annings. With that money they started their shop. Mary Anning recognized Mary’s role in her good fortune, and though she was sixteen years her junior, over time the two women had become something more than close friends.
When Mary climbed to the front of the shop again, she found Mrs. Anning sitting on a stool behind the counter, stitching a piece on an embroidery frame. Tray rested with his head on his paws, eyes following a man who strolled around the tiny shop, examining the exhibits. He was finely dressed, perhaps thirty or thirty-five years old, and possessed an open and honest face.
Mary exchanged a few words with Mrs. Anning while idly watching the man. He leaned forward over the fossil of a fish cemented into a frame. As he did so, he clasped his hands behind his back, one of them holding his gloves, and Mary saw that he was missing the two smallest fingers of his right hand.
The door of the shop opened and a woman entered. It was Mrs. John Saville, a visitor to Lyme for the last weeks with her husband and two children. Mary had met her at the church and had enjoyed a pleasant conversation with her.
“Mrs. Saville,” Mary said. “How good to see you.”
“Miss Bennet. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you.”
The man looked up. Mrs. Saville said, “Miss Bennet, this is my brother, Captain Robert Walton.”
“Miss Bennet,” he said, with a slight bow.
“Miss Bennet is a collector, Robert.”
Walton raised an eyebrow. “Another lady fossil enthusiast? I shall have to snap up the bargains here, then, lest you anticipate me.”
“Robert has a scientific temperament,” Mrs. Saville said teasingly. She smiled at her brother, who smiled back.
