The Dastardly Miss Lizzie

by Viola Carr

Pah! I spit on the floor, my disgust rich and raw. Fun without responsibility, debauchery without guilt. To fuck exotic dollies and smoke Canton dope and drink yourself stupid, then front up next morning to your Harley Street surgery, fresh as spring dew with your conscience clear. S’what you birthed Eddie for, you snide-arse hypocrite, so don’t be gawping at me like I’ve turds all over my dress, thank you very much . . . oh, wait. I do! Har-de-har!

  Same thing Eliza wants. Life without risk. No such luck, you cowardly tart. Nice seeing you again. And thrrrp! Back in I go.

  Eliza staggered, ears ringing. Her vision shimmered, a twisting tumult. The stink of boiling aether drowned her, and she collapsed to the floor in a black faint.

  He pulls back, dark eyes afire, mingled shame and desire. “My God. Miss Jekyll, forgive me.”

  I laugh, the flavor of his eager kiss a glory in my mouth. Her mouth, that is. Her face he adores, her touch he craves . . . or so he thinks.

  “Not my forgiveness you want, is it?” I rub my thumb over his lips, and the catch in his breath is black temptation. His scent of jasmine a taunting challenge.

  I don’t know why I want this. I don’t know any damn thing. I just do.

  That’s who I am, by God. The doer. The devil on her shoulder, the canker in her heart. I’m Lizzie Hyde. And screw thinking before I act.

  He averts his face, still breathing hard. “It’s wrong. I can’t.”

  “Oh, I think you can.” I push him back onto the chaise, yanking her skirts to climb after, and giggle at his reaction. Sweet Byron. It’s too easy, this business of rot and regret. I wonder what he looks like, under his sober garb? An angel, I don’t doubt. A dark-eyed angel of ruin.

  His eyelids flutter closed, and he whispers the last-ditch protest of surrender. “He’ll find out.”

  I unfurl her long pale hair, let it tumble. Slip to the floor on my knees. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  “Miss Jekyll . . . Eliza . . . please . . .” But he can’t talk now. Not when I loosen his clothes with her hands, touch him with her fingers, linger over his secret skin with her hot breath, her lips, her tongue . . .

  Cold white air, the stink of piss and rats, the padded wall against our back. I crouch in the corner, laughing inside. This cell is cold, but we’re warm. Hands tucked beneath our thighs, hiding my stolen sweetheart. It’s our secret.

  Our eyes, wide with terror, setting the snare. Our voice, strained with heartache, baiting the trap. “Mr. Starling? I thought we were friends. Why are you keeping me here? I’m not insane! Please, you must release me!”

  The boy who loves her leans closer on his haunches. He smells of jasmine and guilt, sweet and bitter. “You’re not yourself. The doctors here will make you well. It’s for the best.” His long poet’s hair falls forwards as he strokes her cheek. His dark eyes shimmer. “I was a fool. I never meant this to happen. I’m so sorry.”

  We whip back our arm and strike.

  Sspllt! The rusted blade stabs deep. It’s easy. No resistance at all.

  He screams, clutching his blood-spurting eye. And I laugh fit to crack. “Not so pretty now! Never mind, Byron. It’s . . .”

  “. . . it’s for the best.”

  Startled, Eliza recoiled from her faint.

  Stiffly, she winced. Her knees and elbows ached where they’d hit the cold laboratory floor. How much time had passed? Minutes? An hour?

  That nightmare vision of Lizzie, that stabbing blade. She shuddered. It was real. She’d done those things. That illicit heat, the cruel and senseless deception, the burning splash of blood. Pure luck that Starling hadn’t died. Once a killer, always a killer. Her sanity stretching . . .

  She jerked upright, head whirling. Henry . . .

  But Henry was gone. She was alone. She, Eliza Jekyll. Daughter of a killer, with murder in her blood. A taint that couldn’t be erased or washed away.

  Eliza Hyde.

  Only the machine remained, still and silent now. A strange metal beast, its single blue eye glaring. What did you do? it seemed to growl. How did you awaken me?

  Her mind still boggled. Professor Crane was selling a time machine to the traitor Veronica Burton. To Liberté du Sang. And someone disliked the idea enough to commit murder.

  Ireton House, Red Lion Square. The lady there will help you. But Crane was dead. So what now?

  Bzzt!

  Eliza scrambled up. What on earth?

  Bzzt! An electric buzzer, loud enough to rattle the floorboards.

  The bell on the servants’ door. She faltered. Surely it was Burton, smug and steely-faced, her Enforcers brandishing electric weapons.

  “The lady of the house is not to be disturbed.” Brigham’s voice drifted down. “I assure you, sir, I’ll keep it quite safe. What do you mean, ‘her eyes only’?”

  Curious, Eliza climbed the stairs. At the door, Brigham was holding a stand-off with a wiry fellow in a dark suit who’d planted himself on the doorstep. “Don’t be a pest, man. The lady’s indisposed. Come back tomorrow.”

  “It’s all right, Charles.” She craned her neck. “Yes?”

  The fellow blinked through thick clerk’s spectacles. “Fogg, ma’am, of Utterson and Jaggers. Are you Miss Eliza Jekyll?”

  No, the name’s Hyde. Sorry to have wasted your time. But her heart skipped. Utterson. Henry’s lawyers. “Yes, I’m she.”

  Mr. Fogg proffered a paper-wrapped package.

  “What is it?”

  “Haven’t the foggiest, ma’am.” Fogg chuckled at his own well-worn joke. “It’s been lying around the office for years. Instructions to deliver to Eliza Jekyll, today’s date, half past seven in the evening.” Eagerly, he peered past her into the house. “We’ve taken bets, you know. All the new clerks have to make a guess. The smart money was on a long-lost orphan. Are you a long-lost orphan?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  He sighed. “That’s ten shillings I owe that blackguard Tulkinghorne. Anyway, here I am, right on time. And this is for you.”

  Gingerly, she accepted it. “But I’ve only just moved here. How did you know my address?”

  “It’s written right there. Just moved here, you say? Funny thing, that.” Fogg tipped his hat, and went on his way, whistling a cheerful tune. “In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty . . .”

  She examined the package thoughtfully as Brigham closed the door.

  MISS ELIZA JEKYLL

  HYDE HOUSE, CAVENDISH SQUARE

  (ENTRANCE OFF CHANDOS STREET)

  HER EYES ONLY!

  A funny thing, indeed.

  The paper unwrapped easily. Out fell a note, faded with age.

  My dear Eliza,

  As promised. You know what to do.

  Your loving father,

  Henry.

  The leather-bound book had a neatly printed title page.

  THE PHYSICS OF

  MULTI-DIMENSIONAL SPACE

  BY

  MICHAEL FARADAY

  WITH SPECIAL MATHEMATICAL NOTES

  BY MISS ADA BYRON

  Her skin tingled. Red Lion Square. Ephronia Crane’s secret workroom.

  Project Interlunium.

  But who would she find there?

  SPECULUM MUNDI

  FRIGID MIST HAD FALLEN OVER RED LION SQUARE, wreathing Ireton House in a ghostly shroud. No lights shone in the grim stone casements. The square was empty, just wind and freezing raindrops. In the darkness, a lost owl hooted, ooh-oooh! Ooh-oooh!

  Cheeks tingling, Eliza hopped up the front steps and tried the door. It didn’t budge.

  Hipp bounced at her feet. “Locked. Entry inadvisable. Home, three-quarter mile.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she scolded, tucking the calico-wrapped book more firmly under her arm. “We must find the hidden workroom. Time travel, Hipp! Aren’t you excited?”

  He just whirred gloomy cogs, rrk! rrk!, and flashed his red unhappy light.

  She trotted around to the back, sidestepping muddy puddles though her skirts alre
ady stank thanks to Lizzie’s games.

  Lizzie hadn’t emerged since Henry’s laboratory. Not a peep. But that prickly blue substance frothed yet in her stomach, undigested and unwanted.

  Thwart me, will you? she hissed at it. Jump out in front of my father? I’ll teach you.

  But Lizzie’s silence only made Eliza worry harder.

  The back door was locked. Dismayed, she cupped her hand to peer inside. For once, she could use Lizzie and her thieving friends. “No one’s here, Hipp. We’ll just have to break the window—”

  Electricity crackled in the tang of hot aether, and a warm pistol pressed the vein in her throat. “That won’t be necessary.”

  Oh, bother.

  “E-e-eh!” Hipp squawked, scuttling for cover. Stiffly, Eliza straightened, clutching the book tightly. In the glass door, the man’s reflection gleamed darkly. Glinting eyeglasses, mirroring the burning coil of his pistol. One lens white, one blue.

  She forced a shaky smile. “Byron. No need for that.” But in a flash, the way he’d behaved around her for the last few days glared, garish and threatening. His awkward advances, the letter, the flowers. She’d imagined it innocent.

  Now—with his pistol shoved under her chin, his body against her back, his feverish heat suffusing her—she wasn’t so sure. That nightmare of Lizzie in the asylum, her rusty blade scything down . . .

  “Shut up.” Starling’s hand trembled, and hot metal singed her neck. Half an inch of trigger from blowing her head off. “The day Antoinette died, I told him you’d be a problem, but would he listen? Does he ever?”

  “Who, Byron? Tell me what’s going on and we can talk about this.” Her face burned. By all means, let’s reminisce about old times, when Lizzie seduced you and stabbed your eye out. Fine weather we’re having.

  Starling pressed his nose into her hair, inhaling deeply. “Still so lovely, Eliza. I’d have married you, you know, this time around. Done the proper thing. Kept you out of sight and out of trouble. But you had to be already engaged. And to such a first-class arse, too. I’d credited you with better taste.”

  “Unhand me and we’ll hear no more of this.” But her courage rang false. Starling was shaking, burning up with unknowable urgency. She could smell his hair against her cheek, sweet jasmine mixed with oily desperation. Reason wasn’t paramount in his decision-making.

  Curse his god-rotted pistol. If only she had her stinger. Where was Hipp when she needed him? Shivering in the cesspit?

  Irony stung her mouth. She’d fought so hard to remember. Now, she only wished to forget what Lizzie had done. The taste of Byron’s skin, his sweat, his fingers clenching in her hair. The bitter ache of lies and dumb rebellion. Her knife slicing into flesh, that fountain of blood . . .

  “Such a waste,” murmured Starling, as if he’d somehow heard her. “Antoinette was a whore, Ephronia a thief, Ormonde a traitor. What will it say on your epitaph? I fancy it’ll say liar.”

  “You killed them.” Her swallow hurt. “Why? They did you no harm.”

  “Oh, that wasn’t me.” A dark chuckle. “You know what that’s like, don’t you? To watch on while someone else does the dirty work?”

  “What? Then who?”

  “Does it matter? I only want what’s mine. That book, for instance.”

  “So you burned my house down,” she snapped, feeling giddy. Relief or idiocy? Did she even believe him? “Thank you very much. I knew I should never have believed that little monster Wyverne.”

  “D’you think tutoring privileged little girls like you is the extent of my ambition? I gave my life to that infernal machine. I should have been famous. But that greedy bitch wanted to sell it to a bunch of maniacs and leave nothing for me!” His breath roughened on her neck. “I need you to imagine my frustration, Eliza. It’s important you understand how I feel.”

  “No, Byron, it isn’t.” Her feelings of guilt maddened her. No matter what had passed, he’d no right to act this way. “You men are all the same. Everything’s about how you feel and what you want—ow!”

  Hiss-zzap! “Think I enjoyed watching Antoinette flaunt her body to get ahead?” he hissed. “Think Ephronia didn’t bat her eyelashes for her privy council cronies when she wanted money? I have to work for what I’ve got.”

  “Poor you,” she retorted. “All that being listened to and taken seriously, and reaping proper rewards for your effort. It must be such a trial. If you’re planning to shoot me, sir, kindly stop whining and proceed.” But she shivered. Such destructive self-pity. It isn’t fair, you don’t understand, what about me? How many times had Lizzie said similar things? How many times had she?

  A melting smile. “Well, I could. I imagine it’d feel good. But then you’d never find out what’s in that secret laboratory, would you?” He jingled a key ring against her ear. “Curiosity was always your weakness, Miss Jekyll. Curiosity and recklessness—but that wasn’t all you, was it?” He watched her, fascination sparring with disgust across his expression. “Help me, or die ignorant. Your choice.”

  Glaring, she snatched the keys, and unlocked the door.

  Starling ushered her forwards, grim. Inside, a chill breeze whistled, and irritably she brushed aside floating cobwebs. “Where are we going?”

  “Quiet,” hissed Starling, jabbing the pistol into her back.

  In the front library, Ephronia’s corpse was gone, of course. Books replaced neatly on the shelves, the desk tidied by some helpful constable. But the armchair and carpet still showed bloodstains, and she fancied she could see remnants of those ugly smears on the spotted mirror. Thief, it sniggered at her. Whose letter did you steal today? Whose life?

  “Well?” She dropped the book on the desk, planting hands on hips. “If you’re so clever?”

  “The entrance must be in here somewhere.” Starling strode around, waving the pistol carelessly as if he’d forgotten it in his excitement. “The workroom itself must be underground. All space on the plans is accounted for.”

  Anticipation sparkled, and Eliza stifled a curse. Despite everything, she longed to see the time machine in action. She wanted to see it work. “Could it be a bookshelf, or the fireplace? Hidden hinges worked by a lever?”

  “You try that wall. Springs, switches, buttons. Anything.” Starling was already running his hands along the cases, feeling for irregularities. His eagerness reminded her of the Philosopher, when some curious point of science grabbed his attention. It made Starling look young again, unspoiled by cynicism or ambition, and that only stoked her anger higher. What had corrupted the keen student she’d admired?

  But she knew. A girl he’d tried to help—perhaps a girl he’d loved, however forbidden or shameful it had felt to him to want her—had stabbed him through the eye, for no better reason than to watch him scream.

  Hell of a way to break a man’s heart.

  Sympathy warmed her, and she doused it firmly. It didn’t give him the right to shove a pistol in her face.

  She joined him, and soon they’d searched all the shelving with no result. She tugged the sconces above the mantel. Nothing. She stood back, dusting her hands. “Well, unless it’s some mechanism we don’t understand . . .” Her gaze lit on the huge silver-backed mirror. “Wait. What about the glass?”

  “What about it?”

  She pressed her palms against it, testing. “Locke kept staring into it, the night Griffin and I examined Ephronia’s body.” Ha. To think she’d imagined him soul-searching. “He knew where the secret prototype was all along. He just didn’t know how to get in!”

  “Let me see.” Starling knocked on the mirror, testing different areas. Bmmf, bmmf, bmmf . . . bnngg! His final blow rang hollow.

  A secret door.

  “Help me find the mechanism.” His good eye glittered with excitement. He’d put his pistol aside, forgotten. She didn’t care. Together, they examined the mirror’s edges, put weight on different corners, pushed and tugged. Starling knelt to scrape back the rug in search of a floor lock, and Eliza reached for
the top, stretching on tiptoe.

  Above the silvered glass shone a tiny Latin epigram, painted in bronze.

  IPSE, it said. Myself.

  Surely it must be a clue.

  The exhortation above the entranceway to Ireton House rang dissonant chimes in her head. QUID ME RESPICIS, VIATOR?

  Why do you look back at me, traveler? She frowned. Well, why?

  “Aha!” crowed Starling, plucking at a thin metal strip jammed beneath the mirror’s bottom corner. “Stand back!”

  Strange foreboding chilled her bones. “Byron, don’t—”

  He’d already pulled the handle. Crr-ICK! The lever snapped back . . . and a cloud of white powder hit Starling in the face.

  He screamed, spectacles melting down his cheeks. Eliza recoiled, aghast, as the acid ate into his face, chewing away skin and muscle and bone with a hideous hissing noise. Blood bubbled, and he fell, clawing at his gelatinous eyes.

  In less than a minute, he lay still, smoke curling from burned flesh. Quite dead.

  What an excellent, abominable booby trap.

  Swiftly, she plucked up the pistol and tested it, hiss-flick! The charge was still good. Warily, she eyed the enemy mirror. Now what?

  The epigram sneered back, belittling her shabby reflection in the spotted glass. IPSE, the letters scoffed. Myself. Look at yourself, woman. You’re a disgrace. Mussed hair, filthy skirts, wide glossy eyes like a madwoman’s.

  Why do you look back at me, traveler? Go on your way.

  “Vade,” she mused. “Walk on. Leave ‘myself’ behind. Or . . .”

  Carefully, she swung on one heel, facing the opposite direction.

  The bookshelf stared back at her. That same oaken shelf, which the killer had cleared. Hunting for Crane’s book, she’d assumed.

  But what if he’d been hunting for something else?

  She crossed the upturned rug and swept the armful of books onto the floor. In the shelf’s corner, concealed in polished oak, was a tiny brass button.

  She pressed it. Pop! Silently, the right-hand edge of the mirrored wall swung inwards.

  Rusted iron steps beckoned into dark depths. Distantly, she heard clanging metal and the crackle of electricity, her nose tingling with stormy aether.