“What has he done to them?” I murmured, and picked up one of Alcinda’s hands. It was cool and remained as limp and unresponsive as a dead fish no matter how I chafed and squeezed it. I was unable to find her pulse; after a few seconds of trying, I let the hand flop back into her lap. “What sort of drug would induce a state like this?”
My partner shook his head. “I think it is more likely the result of hypnosis, possibly facilitated by some sedative draft.”
“A drug should wear off in time. How can we wake them from hypnosis?”
“I’m afraid we may need Smurl for that.”
As he pronounced the name, I was aware of a subterranean rustling, like a shiver running through the room. This gave me an idea, and I said, loudly, “Mrs. Smurl!”
Nothing happened right away. Later, it occurred to me that the pause between my speaking and their response was the sort of delay one might get if sound were to be slowed, forced to pass through some medium much denser than air, and then the listener must interpret the spoken syllables separately before putting them together and translating them from one language to another. After two or three seconds, when I had stopped expecting anything, five women turned their heads towards me, like pale, blind sunflowers—all responding to the call of their name, all of them “Mrs. Smurl”—all, save Alcinda.
It was an eerie moment. Under the force of that massed, unseeing gaze, I felt a quiver of fear, imagining this power yoked by one man.
“Mrs. Smurl, if you can hear me, please rise.”
Nothing happened, although we waited a whole minute.
I exchanged a look with my friend: perhaps a man’s voice would produce the desired result? “Mrs. Smurl,” he said, low and deliberate. “Mrs. Smurl, nod your head to show you hear me.”
None of them moved a muscle.
“There may be some key word to release them from trance; or perhaps he has trained them to respond only to his voice.”
That seemed horribly likely to me, as surely no man mad enough to establish such a household would risk relinquishing control of it to anyone else.
Yet Alcinda had not responded to the summons of “Mrs. Smurl.” So I tried again:
“Alcinda. Please stand up.”
I held my breath. She stood up.
Jesperson and I looked at each other, and I knew we were thinking the same thing, that there was nothing to stop us walking out with Alcinda. Once away from Smurl, no longer drugged, she might return to normal; if not, there must be doctors, or specialists in hypnosis …
But we could not make the others follow us, and, knowing that Smurl was likely to return very soon, how could we leave them? It was an impossible dilemma.
“Take her to Gower Street,” Jesperson said decisively.
“You’re not staying here alone.”
“Would that I could,” he said dryly, with a tilt of his head to our silent audience.
“I won’t let you.”
He stared at me, half-affronted, half-amused. “And how do you mean to stop me, Miss Lane? Would you drag me out by the ear?”
“Please.” I stared at him, wishing I could make him see it as I did. “It’s too dangerous—”
“You think I am no match for a middle-aged undertaker? Do me some credit. A danger to women he may be, but—”
Seeing that I had offended his pride, I tried to explain. “He’s nothing in himself, and of course you’re not afraid of a few weak women, but imagine if a word from him should transform them into Maenads. Someone without fear can do the most terrible things, and if he has made himself their god—!”
I knew, by the puzzled impatience of his expression, that he did not share my mental image of these silent, soberly dressed ladies turned to howling, blood-maddened creatures who would tear a man apart with their bare hands and feast on his bloody flesh.
“Dear Miss Lane,” he said gently. “Trust me. We cannot abandon—”
“If you mean to stay, I shall go from here straight to the police.”
The creaking of a chair, the silken rustle of a skirt, made me turn my head in time to see that one of the statues had come to life. It was a woman in a brown dress, bending over her neighbor in grey, speaking words too low for me to distinguish.
“Mrs. Smurl?” The woman straightened. No longer a colorless, lifeless statue, she had changed into an unfriendly-looking individual with snapping dark eyes, a strong jaw, and a belligerently thrust chin. Two brown corkscrew curls bobbed over her ears—a girlish touch that did nothing to make her look a day under eight-and-thirty.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What is the meaning of this intrusion? How dare you enter uninvited?” Despite a ring of righteous anger, she kept her voice low and well modulated as her eyes darted quickly between Mr. Jesperson and myself.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said insincerely. “However, after knocking for some time with no effect, I felt we had no choice—”
The ringlets quivered. “You broke in?”
“Not at all.” He flourished the key, and her eyes widened with shock.
“But—how—Where—”
“Where do you think? When Mr. Smurl heard we were concerned about Miss Travers, naturally—”
“Who is Miss Travers?”
Jesperson indicated the young lady in question. Alcinda gave no sign that she had heard, still staring blankly in my general direction.
Mrs. Smurl gave a small hiss of displeasure, and said coldly, “The young lady is no concern of yours.”
“But she is. Her family wish her home.”
“This is her home. We are her family.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I might be more inclined to believe that assertion if it came from the lady herself.”
“She cannot speak to you.”
“That I can see. But who is stopping her?”
“Mr. Smurl does not wish it.”
“Mr. Smurl, I feel certain, would not wish to be arrested and charged with false imprisonment and other crimes.”
“You dare to threaten … ?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. Her lips had thinned almost to invisibility.
“I do,” said Jesperson, sounding jolly. “Bigamy is another charge he may face although I suspect most of his marriages have been recognized nowhere beyond these four walls. Despite the saying that an Englishman’s home is his castle, there are still some things he may not do even there with impunity. Why should you try to defend him? You cannot be happy to share your husband with other women; women he has stolen from their families and forced into submission—”
Her pale face grew flushed. “How dare you! Mr. Smurl is a good man, a perfect gentleman. He would never use force against a woman—he has never made any of us do anything against our will.”
“You call this their will?” He gestured at the silent, motionless women.
“You know nothing of us. It’s for their own good. It makes the day go by more pleasantly.”
“Drugged and dreaming? Yes, I daresay the denizens of an opium den reason so. But why should life as the wife of your ‘perfect gentleman’ require such an escape?”
As he went on speaking, my nervousness increased. How long had we been here? What if Smurl was made suspicious when he heard someone had been asking about his wife and was even now on his way home?
Looking at the agitated little woman—I am small, but she was smaller still—I said, “You may justify that man and your life as you like, but we’ve come for Miss Travers and mean to take her home.”
“There is no Miss—”
“Alcinda,” I said sharply, and managed to draw her closer. Getting her to move on her own would be a slow business; I again addressed the angry woman:
“Can you wake her?”
“Why should I?”
“If she wants to stay, let her tell us so, and we will leave.”
She stared at me. “You would go away without her?”
“Of course. We would not take her against her will.” I wasn’t sure
if I was telling the truth.
Mr. Jesperson said, “I assure you, if the young lady says she prefers to stay, we will let her remain. Otherwise we shall escort her to wherever she wishes.”
“And let her spread her lies about our husband? No. She would make too much trouble for us.” Turning away, she began to mutter, rousing the mesmerized figures one by one. By the last, my ears sufficiently habituated to her voice, I managed to understand that she was repeating a simple Latin phrase attached to each woman’s Christian name, and heard her command, “Carpe diem, Violet.”
So that was Smurl’s “Open Sesame” that unlocked their imprisonment. Their slow responses, confused reactions and sleepy demeanor made me think we were in no immediate danger although I did not rule out the possibility that a few more words from the first woman might turn them into an army of Furies. As jailers may have a “trustee” amongst their prisoners, so it seemed that Smurl had given this first wife power over the others. It could be only with her collusion that he had managed to gather his collection of “dead” women; had she spoken out, he might now be in prison and most of these women still safely in the bosom of their real families. This was her fault as surely as his, I thought, a furious contempt against her growing in my breast. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to her, maybe he had spent years breaking down her spirit, forcing her to become his abject slave, but she did not look enslaved to me, standing there with a smug little smirk on her face, aware that she’d increased her odds of winning against us …
“Carpe Diem, Alcinda,” said Mr. Jesperson.
The girl’s eyes popped open. She looked like a startled doll, then confusion and resentment and fear battled for the upper hand in her expression.
“We’re here to help you,” I said quickly. “Tell me, would you like to come away from here?”
“Dear God,” she cried fervently. “Yes!”
“Alcinda!” barked the Mrs.-Smurl-in-charge. “Dormite!”
Although my sisters and I were not allowed to study Latin, because of some notion that dead languages might damage the weaker female brain, we heard odds and ends of it from my father while we were growing up, and that particular command was one he’d often directed at one or another of us at the end of a long and tiring day.
She froze, as in a game of statues, but the utter blankness of Alcinda’s expression had nothing playful about it.
“Violet,” I said sharply, and when I was rewarded by a look of a surprise from the pale, wan creature in beige, I said “Dormite.” It worked. Unfortunately, I knew no one else’s name.
“I suppose you think you’re very clever,” said Mrs. Smurl.
“Not really. You wake her, we wake Alcinda, and so on, and so forth. What a waste of time. I’m sure you wouldn’t like Mr. Smurl to find us here …”
“You would like it even less, I think,” she said with a malicious smile.
I felt a quiver of apprehension, wondering if she might actually want to keep us here until he returned.
Jesperson, meanwhile, had roused Alcinda, and, his manner cool, informed Mrs. Smurl that we were taking her away. “And if either of you ladies would care to join us?” With a charming smile, he looked at the two women flanking Mrs. Smurl. They responded as if to a lewd suggestion, shrinking back, shaking their heads; the slightly plumper one in grey even shut her eyes.
“We are happy as we are,” said Mrs. Smurl, putting an arm around the waist of the trembling lady in grey.
“Not all of you,” I said, offering my hand to Alcinda, who gripped it hard.
“Ungrateful minx!” Mrs. Smurl glared, and her anger gleamed a moment like a razor blade catching the light, then vanished into the darkness of her shrug, as she seemed to relax. “Very well. You may go, if you wish, Alcinda, but you can never return. There will be no forgiveness. And if you should even think of betraying us—”
Beside me, I felt her shudder as she shook her head.
The woman continued: “But if you should try, Mr. Smurl will have his revenge. There is no escaping him, you know, no matter how far you go, no matter what happens to him in this life, his power over you will not be diminished.”
“I won’t say anything, Martha. I promised him I would not, and I keep my promises, even though he did not keep his. I’ve told him so many times: I do not love him. I do not want to be married to him.”
“He has done nothing wrong. Albert is a good man. He has never forced you, has he? You admit it? Yes, I see you do; you must bow before the truth. I know, you know, you were a mistake, his little weakness, but it wasn’t the end of the world, was it? It was not. You would soon learn how to be happy. And it could still be all right, you know, if only …”
Although I did not realize, the dull repetition of her voice was having an effect. Fortunately, Jesperson was alert to the danger, and quick to pick up the key Alcinda had provided.
“Martha, dormite!” he cried, and his voice felt like a splash of water, shocking me awake.
Martha Smurl flinched; but after a brief flash of anger, her eyes were as guarded, and alert, as ever. The magic words did not work on her. “How dare you?” She drew herself up, looking daggers. “How dare you break into my home, intrude upon my peace and quiet, refuse to give your name, and then take liberties with mine? You presume to give orders that a woman should accept only from her husband.
“Get out of here,” she said, in a low and dangerous voice. “Go, now.”
I was halfway to the door with Alcinda before I realized that Jesperson had not budged.
“One more thing, before I go,” he said. “I want to make it clear, if anyone else wishes to leave, she has my promise of protection.”
“Our protection,” I put in, so no one would think she must trade one master for another.
“It is not wanted,” replied Mrs. Smurl.
“With respect, madam, I should prefer to hear from each individual lady, however well qualified you may feel to speak for her.”
There was a brief, silent struggle between them, but then she gave in and woke her sisters. It turned out to be as unnecessary as she had implied: except for the old woman, Mary, who was too bewildered to understand, each of the others proclaimed her love for Mr. Smurl and expressed her desire to stay there. However the wide world might judge them, they all felt themselves to be his loving wives. While Violet was still passionately declaring that she could never leave her beloved Albert, no matter what might happen, the old woman stood up and wandered away and out of the room.
Martha Smurl gave a hiss of annoyance. “She’ll never settle now, and I shall have to spend all my time chasing after her, and Mr. Smurl will be so cross if dinner is late—”
“Never mind, dear,” said Violet, sounding anxious. “I’ll go and tend to Mother Mary—you can get on with the cooking.”
So we left them. What else could we do? We would have to be content with the rescue of Alcinda for our happy ending. After all, we had not been asked to do more.
The house where Alcinda had grown up and her family still lived was scarcely two miles away, on the other side of the cemetery, but she would not go there. Pressing her about it only made her more anxious, so we suggested that she come back to Gower Street with us. At least for the time being, it seemed wise to remove her from the chance of another encounter with Mr. Smurl.
We made our way to the train station and were soon comfortably settled with the whole of a carriage to ourselves. With no need to worry about being overheard, I raised the subject of a visit to Scotland Yard.
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“As Mr. Smurl is so well regarded in his neighborhood, it might be better to avoid the local police. And considering the seriousness of his crimes—”
Tears filled her eyes, threatened to spill. “Crimes?” she whispered. “Oh, no, no, never!”
Although I thought she might be frightened of the revenge Mrs. Smurl had suggested, I had little patience. “He kidnapped you,” I pointed out. “That is a very serious crime.�
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“But I agreed to it!”
“You agreed to become his prisoner? I think not. If you were happy there, we can take you back.” I regretted my cruel words when I saw her shudder.
“No. Please. I don’t want that. And I am grateful—oh! How grateful you may never know! It’s true—he betrayed my trust. He had his own reason for wanting me dead to the world; I was so caught up in my own plans, I did not realize. I expected to go home again a day or two after I was buried, and—” She stopped, as I was unable to repress a cry of horror. “What?”
“Do you mean to say … you knew you would be buried alive? You agreed to it?”
“Of course. Mr. Smurl explained the operation of his safety coffins to me and—well—as I was so determined to have the experience of death, how could I be satisfied unless I was pronounced dead and buried? Anything less would be hardly more than sleep. I wanted to be dead to the world, to know the quiet of the grave—it was the only way.” She spoke with simple conviction, but it was like hearing a hymn of praise to some ancient and long-forgotten god. I had found the notes in her sketchbook peculiar enough, but I was struck now even more forcibly by the distance between her way of thinking and my own. We might have belonged to two different races, indoctrinated into different belief systems. It seemed to me there was something almost inhuman about her.
It left me speechless, but Jesperson’s face was alight with curiosity as he asked, “Weren’t you frightened?”
“Oh, yes! Certainly! Terrified!” She gave a nervous laugh and no longer looked like anything but a pretty, modern, ordinary girl. “Never so frightened in all my … But then that was part of it, don’t you see? Who would not be frightened to die?”
He nodded. “You wanted to meet Death, like the boy in the fairy tale—and for Mr. Smurl, I presume, it was to be an unrivaled opportunity to advertise the worth of his wares?”
She looked as if he had made the most astounding of deductions, like Sherlock Holmes laying out the entire course of a man’s career after a glance at his hat. “Yes! Exactly! How very clever of you! Of course, people would say it was terribly wrong of him if they knew, but it wasn’t like that, you see! Not a real crime—certainly not a crime against me. I begged him—I practically made him do it! And I was never in any danger, for he knew it would work—”
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