A Study in Silks tba-1

by Emma Jane Holloway

  His mother squeezed his hands and let them go. “Poor girl. That was very generous of you, but would never have worked out. We could never have recommended a servant who had obviously involved herself in something disreputable. But I see why you couldn’t tell any of that to Inspector Lestrade. It wouldn’t do to have it rumored that we had a criminal element in the house.”

  Uncertainty crept over Tobias. His mother was clearly missing the point. “Grace was afraid that if I said anything, she would be dead for certain. I think she was afraid of someone in this house.”

  He watched his mother’s face carefully. Bewilderment faded to consternation, and she shook her head. “Impossible.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “How can you say that?” she exclaimed.

  “Who are we, Mother?” he snapped, hating the sharpness of his voice. “Do you recall the housemaid being electrocuted at our garden party? How many steps is it from torture to murder?”

  “Tobias!” His mother’s eyes were wide and a little afraid. “Whatever put that thought in your mind?”

  He had felt the fissures in his world widening under his feet even then. Perhaps Grace had seen them even before he did. “Father is guilty of something.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “I don’t know,” Tobias said dryly, wondering how the conversation had turned to his father. Then again, everything in their lives revolved around the man.

  His mother’s face had gone white. He decided to let the subject of Grace drop and try a different tack. “What is the connection between father and Dr. Magnus and automatons? They both seem obsessed with them.”

  “Automatons? What do you mean?”

  “The ones we had in Vienna. The ones that were stolen.”

  She sat back slowly, every movement carefully controlled. “Oh. Those.”

  “What is so valuable about them?”

  “Dr. Magnus helped him build them, long ago,” his mother said dully, avoiding the question. “It’s a part of your father’s life that he will never willingly revisit.”

  “Why not?” Tobias have a harsh laugh. “Science is the one thing we have in common, and he won’t even talk about it.” Anger jammed in his throat, too thick to let out. He fell silent.

  His mother looked stricken. “Some things should never be disturbed,” she whispered. “Whatever it was that happened came at that terrible time when your sisters were so ill.”

  “A girl is dead. Two of our grooms are dead. A little discomfort is a small price to pay.”

  His mother blinked rapidly, refusing to meet his eyes. “Tobias, stop this. For my sake, if not for your own.”

  “Did he kill Grace Child?”

  His mother looked up, her lips parted in shock. Guilt seared through him. He hadn’t meant to go this far. His mother was the last person he wanted to hurt. She bore too much of his father’s burden already. And yet he held his breath, waiting for the answer.

  “I don’t know,” she said. The words held so little force, he could barely hear her.

  “I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure what for. Maybe everything, like the sacrificial scapegoat.

  She drew herself up, folding her hands in her lap. She refused to look at him, but sat with the light gilding her hair and casting her features into sharply limned shadows. “What are you going to do?”

  Tobias didn’t know. What would the future hold if Lord Bancroft were hauled off for murder? Or even if his career collapsed? Imogen would never make her brilliant match. His youngest sister—scholarly, awkward Poppy, happier in the country than enduring the London social whirl—would suffer, too.

  If his father fell from grace, so would his mother. How long would she last in genteel poverty, forced to manage her husband’s thwarted ambitions, before the shadows finally blotted her out altogether?

  How much depended on Tobias keeping his suspicions to himself? Bile burned in his gut. He didn’t want this much responsibility. “I have to find out what happened to Grace,” he said quietly. “Until I do, I can’t know where my duty lies.”

  “Duty?” his mother asked in a stiff voice, finally turning to look at him. “To whom? To what?”

  “Honor, then.”

  “There is no such thing,” she said hoarsely. “It’s time you grew up and learned at least that much.”

  “Mother?”

  Her face twisted. “Honor is what people use when they can’t bring themselves to face their own weakness. Then they grasp their honor like Michael picking up his holy sword and cut their loved ones off at the knees in the name of the greater good.”

  Tobias sat, numb and silent. His mother worked her tiny handkerchief, kneading it into a tight ball. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t bear this conversation a moment longer.”

  She stood up, waving him down when he scrambled to his feet. “Sit.”

  “Mother—”

  “Sit and think about the calamity you’re going to cause before you do a single thing.”

  “But what if he is guilty? What am I supposed to do then?”

  She turned to look down on him, her face taut with misery. “Guilty he may be, but am I? Are your sisters? If you punish him, you punish us. That’s the way of the world. Does his guilt matter that much?”

  The worst part was she thought her husband capable of murder. He could see it in her eyes. He could hold his tongue, but he couldn’t protect her from her own suspicions. “It matters to you,” he said.

  “Only so far.” She held up her finger and thumb, a scant inch apart. “I have children. That makes me blind to everything else.”

  Tobias could find no words to say. His mother left the room.

  He stared at his hands, lying idle in his lap. All he wanted in his life was to build interesting machines. Instead …

  Outrage crept over him. He wished he wasn’t part of his family anymore, but there was nothing he could do to change his blood.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  London, April 11, 1888

  SPIE HQ

  11 p.m. Wednesday

  The clubhouse was silent as the proverbial … well, Tobias was depressed enough without the comparison. The conversations with his mother and father had left him raw.

  The bottle of brandy he had taken from his father’s private reserve at first tasted like hot, smooth ambrosia. Then rank as poison, as he drank past the point of pleasure. Finally, he tasted nothing at all.

  The remains of the iron squid looked lonely in the yard. He and Edgerton had quietly retrieved them from the scrap heap behind the Royal Charlotte, where old sets went to die. The scavengers had been at it, picking the metal like a carrion bird cleaned a corpse. He had mourned the thing with all the intensity of a bereaved parent. It had been his one real triumph.

  Now it lay on its back, the remaining three legs stuck in the air, a fly carcass from a giant’s windowsill. Tobias sat on its steel belly, bottle in hand, and fondly patted one of its knees. “That was some night.”

  He had barely escaped. And then that wretched girl had died. Tobias raised the bottle to his lips again, accidentally banging it against his teeth.

  He squinted up at the sky. Coal smoke dimmed the stars, but he had the impression of a vast, awe-inspiring heaven. It seemed like a good moment to wax philosophical, but tilting his head back reminded him how much brandy he’d consumed.

  What options did he have now? He could fall into line with his parents. Take up a profession his father approved of. Abandon his talents. Protect his family. Use Evelina’s affection to trick her. Most important, bury any uncomfortable truths she and her uncle might uncover. As options went, they all sounded disgusting.

  In truth, he thought he might love Evelina. It wasn’t because she was pretty or clever, though that didn’t hurt, but because she actually cared who he was. That was worth fighting for, taking risks for. He hadn’t lied when he’d said she made him a better man. He needed her if he meant to keep his soul. No, there would be no betraying the woman
he loved.

  He could help Evelina find Grace Child’s murderer and whatever other horrors might be hiding in the Roth family closets. But that way led ruin for not only for his father, but also for the innocent women of the family.

  The first alternative—dishonor—was unthinkable and the second—utter ruin—unbearable.

  He rose, desperation giving him a second wind. The dark swirled around him, the shadows unpleasantly intimate. With a final affectionate caress to the squid, he walked with careful steps toward the clubhouse, where a gentle pool of light spilled through the door.

  He had left a candle burning in the lantern that hung from an overhead beam. Tobias half sat, half fell into the ragged chair. There was an inch of brandy left in the bottle, but he set it aside. He was at that state where the world tilted if he closed his eyes. Instead, he stared at the floor, focusing very hard on the cracks between the boards to keep the room from spinning.

  Tobias needed a mentor. Someone who knew who he was and could help him turn that to practical ends. To be perfectly honest, Magnus’s intensity was daunting. But, with knowledge, money, and ideas, he was a lifeline. Tobias’s best option was to surpass the foreigner’s expectations at every turn and hope somehow to make a name for himself with his talent. That might lead to an independent income, which meant the freedom to make his own choices.

  Feeling slightly steadier, he rose and crossed to the worktable. Serafina still lay there, naked. Edgerton must have come by, because her legs were properly attached, the issue with the hip joints solved in record time. Again, Tobias had the irrational urge to cover her. It’s cold in here. Magnus should have brought her some clothes. Surely she must have some?

  Tobias picked up the drawings, shuffling through them. There must have been more reasons why the doll had been disassembled. Oh, yes, something with the logic system. Magnus had said he’d fixed that, hadn’t he? She was ready for a new trial.

  If he had doubts about his inebriation, those moments quashed them. He could feel Serafina’s eyes watching his every move. It had to be his imagination, because in his own mind those eyes belonged to one of his many mistresses, and then another, and then Evelina.

  When he looked up, the doll’s eyes were peacefully closed. He made a disgusted noise, fed up with his own weakness. He needed to work. If he could turn his hands and mind to a practical problem, everything wrong with the world would fade away. It was the only time he was truly at peace.

  He peeled off his coat and settled to work on Magnus’s doll. At first his fingers were clumsy, drink-addled, but concentration pushed past the fog, sending him into a state that was almost hyperalert. The arms attached easily, only needing an hour’s effort. The head was another matter. It was missing a pin that slid from ear to ear, unlocking the spring-driven programming mechanism that served as Serafina’s brain. That had to be one of the bits and pieces at the bottom of the trunk.

  It was too dark to see inside the box, so he knelt and searched the bottom by touch. He didn’t find the pin right away, but instead found the trunk was lined with thick black card. Wedged halfway beneath the card were papers that looked like they’d escaped the portfolio of sketches.

  Tobias pulled them out, finding the pin stuck between sheets of paper. He carried the lot back to the lamplight and then began sorting the pages into order, looking for any further instructions on how to activate the automaton. He couldn’t see a proper power source, and that made him curious. In terms of appearance, she was a superior product, but the real test of manufacture came when the gears were in motion.

  Tobias leaned with his back to the worktable, his legs crossed at the ankles. The spidery writing on the pages was in Italian. Not his best language. Still, it didn’t take him long to realize it was the notebook of Serafina’s original maker.

  “I am dying,” he read. Lovely. He was distinctly not in the mood for someone else’s brooding. “I stole the pin and threw it in the holy well before the cathedral. God willing, this theft will save my life.”

  Holy well? What was he afraid of? Tobias flipped over the page, frowning. The man was a complete lunatic. Moreover, his plan had been a failure because the pin—or its replacement—had been in the trunk, along with the notebook pages.

  Tobias dropped the pages back into the trunk and picked up the brandy bottle, returning to the table to stand looking down at Serafina. Well, let’s see what this lady can do. Lifting the soft, waving locks of red hair, he slid the pin into place. Nothing happened. He was oddly relieved.

  It was hard not to be rattled by something that looked so alive, but wasn’t. In the flickering light of the candle lantern, the porcelain features seemed soft as flesh, the intersections of jaw and joint nearly invisible. Whoever had sculpted her had loved the female form, down to the details of her the perfect, pink-tipped breasts, and the swell and dip of belly and thigh. Shadows seemed to press in around them, the silence in the room profound. He could hear the pulse of his own blood.

  Tobias blinked, his fingers tightening on the bottle. He could swear the shadows were actually seeping into the doll, like a thick, dark smoke. Weird, roiling darkness was rising from the floor, creeping up the legs of the table and worming under the inanimate form like something insectile. The doll was absorbing it into her sawdust flesh.

  And Tobias felt himself growing weaker, as if he were losing blood. This can’t be happening. He set the bottle down, pushing it away. He was drunk. He was just feeling that sudden fatigue that comes a few hours after a hard drinking session. That point where a nap sounds like the best thing in the world.

  He unhooked the lamp from the hook on the ceiling, bringing it closer to the worktable. Details jumped into focus. The patch of Serafina’s hair that was uneven had not been cut, but burned away, as if she had leaned too close to a candle.

  He leaned close. The hair smelled of smoke, but there was a fresh scent, too, as if she had been out of doors not long ago. He would have expected staleness, but she could not have been locked in the trunk long. Magnus must have taken her apart for repairs very recently.

  And brought her to SPIE to be put back together. The task the doctor had set wasn’t to challenge their skill—that was certain. It had taken a delicacy of touch to hook the doll’s fine workings back together, but Tobias could have done the whole job himself in an afternoon. So what had the doctor said? Serafina represents a test. The questions she poses are not a matter of springs and gears. What did that mean?

  He didn’t have long to wait for an answer. The sawdust chest rose in a breath.

  Terror bolted up his spine. Tobias skittered back from the table, his disbelieving cry bouncing off the lowering shadows. Magic!

  The following silence was suffocating. Suddenly, there seemed to be no air in the place, despite the doorway open to the night. He rubbed his eyes, sure his imagination had run riot. But his mind raced anyway, trying to straighten out what he’d seen the way a maid tidied an unmade bed. No rumples. No wrinkles. Just rational, tidy corners.

  I’m not in a nursery tale. This was London, a real London full of real monsters like his father and Jasper Keating. With them around, dark magic was superfluous.

  No, but the last man who worked on Serafina took out the pin and sunk it in holy water. That can’t be good.

  Nausea robbed the strength from his legs. He sat down hard in the chair. If this was a nursery tale, the power source she doesn’t have would be magic and Dr. Magnus would be a sorcerer. After all, didn’t he say artists put a bit of their soul into their creations? Isn’t that theft of life how sorcery works?

  “Sorcerers don’t trick men into assembling evil dolls.” He said it out loud, trying to forget all Magnus’s prattle about bridegrooms and nourishment, and all Bucky’s talk about vampire brides.

  He needed to reject these thoughts out loud, because he was quite clearly drunk and nearly swallowing the nonsense whole. But he might have also said that strangers didn’t unexpectedly mentor talent that rested on the fame of a s
ingle prank at the opera. Good Samaritans didn’t lure talented young men by appealing to that hurt in their soul left by a bitter father.

  If Tobias wanted a fairy tale, he had to look no further than his own wishful thinking. Magnus had taken an interest because he wanted Tobias for his mysterious other project. And he only wants me if I pass the test that is Serafina.

  He put his hand on the doll’s chest, ready to convince himself that it wasn’t actually moving, but he felt it lift. Tobias started to tremble, tears filling his eyes. The breathing must be part of the mechanism. He hadn’t really had a good look inside the torso.

  “I am dying,” the Italian had written. Death magic worked by stealing life. Did Serafina survive by draining her makers? Don’t be ridiculous!

  So … what was he looking at? A mechanism? A miracle? The stirrings of a creature set to devour him? In the nursery tales, there was always a test of faith. Was he supposed to trust Dr. Magnus, no matter what? To keep courage and accept whatever dark, shadowy horror the doctor threw at him, because that was the only way to move onward to the bigger project, to the next level, and to get the support he needed to be his own man?

  Serafina’s eyes snapped open, the relentless china blue fixed on his face. Then one hand lifted, the delicate, porcelain fingers reaching out and grazing his cheek in a slick, chill caress. Then her jaw opened with a slight click, showing the white tips of tiny, perfect teeth in an eerily charming smile.

  Tobias made a sound between a groan and a cry of terror. Before he could stop to think, he pulled out the pin. He stood with it in his hand, tears hot on his cheeks. The questions she poses are not a matter of springs and gears.

  He’d wondered who he was. Now he knew.

  Tobias Roth was a desperate coward.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  London, April 12, 1888

  HILLIARD HOUSE