The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl

by Theodora Goss

  “ ‘The waves,’ she said, in a voice harsh with disuse. ‘I see the waves.’ She turned to look at me. ‘Daughter, you are drowning.’ And then she screamed. She wrapped her arms around herself and screamed, turning her head from one side to the other. In her agitation, she fell on the floor and had what I believe to be an epileptic fit—there was foam on her lips. My nursemaid hurried me out of there—as we left, the attendants were running to her room with a straitjacket. The next day, my nursemaid told me that she was dead. She had died in the night, alone. After she died, my father sent me to live with a family on a farm in Wales, under the name Helen Vaughan. That was my mother’s surname—he did not want me associated with him, in case there was a scandal of any sort. In those days, I could not yet control my powers. Two children died because of visions I had produced. One was my friend Rachel, the daughter of a prosperous farmer. At first she was entranced by what I could show her, and asked me daily to conjure scenes out of her book of fairy tales. But when the visions took a dark turn, she became convinced that my powers were of the Devil. She was a pious girl, and felt that by encouraging me, she had herself participated in witchcraft. She hanged herself in her father’s barn. The other was a young boy, who claimed to have seen a satyr—half man, half goat—walking in the forest with me. He went mad with fear, and one night he ran out on the bog, where he was sucked into the mud and drowned. After that, the villagers feared and avoided me, so my father sent me to school in London. There, the other girls would not speak to me—they insisted that I had the evil eye. I did not know what to do with my life, so I did what most young women do when they wish for freedom—I married. Charles Herbert was not a bad man, but he was not a good one either. And he was a gambler who slowly, and then quickly, lost the fortune he had inherited. He discovered my abilities and made me use them to frighten men into giving him money. However, as you will discover, we cannot control how others respond to the illusions we create. Some of those men died, and the police began to investigate what they called the Paul Street Murders. I told Herbert I would not extort money for him again, that I was leaving him. He hit me—for the first time in our marriage, he used physical force instead of persuasion and the threat of abandonment. That was a stupid thing to do. Using my powers so often, I had come to understand how they worked. I had learned to control the waves. Now, I was stronger than he was. He died attempting to escape spiders that crawled up his body, spiders that stared at him with their multiple eyes, spiders walking all over him with their furred limbs. He had been terrified of arachnids all his life.

  “Only after his death did I discover that I was with child—with you, Lydia. By that time, I was suspected of his murder. But the jury had no direct evidence on which to convict me: I had never touched him. After I was acquitted, I went to a charity hospital, for I had no money—Herbert had spent all I made for him. When you were born, I did not know what to do with you. I did not wish to be a mother, and had no means with which to care for an infant. They allowed me to stay in that hospital for three months, until you were weaned. Then I asked the sisters to take you to an orphanage that was associated with the hospital. I told them your name was Lydia Raymond—I did not wish to use Herbert’s name, for it was still notorious. After that—for a while, I lived as I could, making my way in the great, pitiless labyrinth that is London. Then, one night, Moriarty came to the small tenement room in which I was living. He had been looking for me ever since the trial. He was familiar with the work of the Alchemical Society, for both my father and Lord Godalming were members, although Moriarty never joined himself—he preferred organizations that he could lead. Despite his great learning, he was not a scientist. However, he had always been interested in my father’s experiments, and he said he could use my skills in his business. So I began to work for him. For a while, I posed as a Mrs. Beaumont, contacting wealthy gentlemen, making them tell me political secrets or influence pieces of legislation in ways that were advantageous to Moriarty. When I got in trouble with the police as Mrs. Beaumont, he arranged for me to become the director of the Society of St. Mary Magdalen. And there I stayed for many years, concealing my activities for Moriarty under a respectable exterior. Until one day Hyde showed up and asked me for suitable young women for a series of experiments! He knew who I was, of course, and whom I worked for. He and my father had been friends, colleagues, even collaborators. Years before, as Dr. Jekyll, he had directed his attorney, Mr. Utterson, to bring me his daughter Diana. Another child created by experimentation! Another daughter of a member of the Société des Alchimistes. She was a continual reminder of you—my own child, whom I had given up. But of course she was not you. How I loathed the little monster.”

  DIANA: I always suspected there was a reason she disliked me so much. She would order me to be whipped, but never whip me herself.

  ALICE: Do you forgive her for how she treated you all those years ago?

  DIANA: Of course not. I may understand her better, but she’s still a bloody bitch!

  ALICE: But in the end, as Lucinda said—

  CATHERINE: We haven’t gotten to the end yet.

  Helen was silent for a moment. Alice looked at her—this woman who was, but had chosen not to be, her mother. How did she feel about Helen Raymond, or Vaughan, or Herbert, or Beaumont—whoever she was? A woman who had assumed so many identities, and whose mesmerical abilities has resulted in so many deaths? She had no idea.

  “I look at you now, Lydia, and I wonder what it would have been like if I had kept you with me all those years. Would you have been different? Would I? We cannot know. When Margaret came to me with her plan to resurrect Tera and said we would need seven sacrifices, I thought of whom they should be—Moriarty, who had helped me but also used me for his own purposes, and my father, who had abandoned me. The rest I did not care about—I allowed Moriarty to gather the members of the Order of the Golden Dawn. I was glad, however, that they included Godalming and Seward among them. They had not been responsible for my mother’s death—they had become trustee and director of the Purfleet Asylum after her time. Nevertheless, it was satisfying to witness the destruction of two men associated with that place.”

  “So that was the plan all along?” said Alice. “But why?”

  “For revenge,” said Helen complacently. “The same reason Margaret gave her father an incomplete formula for the ritual, so that he and her fiancé both died. Did they not deserve it, these men who would not allow her to learn and study as she wished, who insisted that she be secondary to themselves? And for power, of course. Look.” She held up her hands, palms almost a foot apart. She stared at them for a moment, with a frown creasing her brows, as though concentrating on them. Suddenly, lightning crackled between her palms. “There, you see? Tera is teaching me how to do it properly. Before, all I could do was cause superficial burns, like those on your servant boy, the hairy one who tried to stop us from rescuing you in the Jekyll residence. You just have to—well, intensify and direct the waves. It’s a little like clenching your fist. Soon, I will be able to use the true energic powers of the Earth, just as she can. That is worth… everything. Lydia, I am truly sorry—I know you had nothing to do with that pendant. I promise this imprisonment will only be for one night. After that, we will be together, and I will teach you, just as Tera taught me. You will have that power as well. Now, gather up whatever food you want and bring it with you. I will try to make you as comfortable as possible. After all this is over, we will go somewhere—perhaps the Lake District?—and get to know each other properly. How does that sound?”

  Alice did not know what to say. Rescuing her? Did her mother truly think she had rescued Alice from the Athena Club? It had been a violent abduction—but apparently Helen had forgotten that, or had chosen to remember the circumstances differently. She put the rest of the brown bread, a hunk of hard cheese, and two apples into Mrs. Polgarth’s marketing bag, which the housekeeper had apparently forgotten after her unusual dismissal. In the pantry, she found another saffro
n bun and added that, as well as a pot of orange marmalade. At least she would be able to share all this food with Mr. Holmes! She would have liked the sweets as well, but Queen Tera had kept those. Apparently two-thousand-year-old Egyptian queens had a sweet tooth!

  Then she followed Helen back to the hallway and the secret panel in the wall she had not been able to find. About halfway down the hall, Helen slid part of the paneling to one side to reveal a keyhole, with an ancient-looking key hanging beside it on a nail. She put the key into the keyhole and turned it, then pushed on the panel. It swung open to reveal a dark, twisting staircase. “Go on down,” she said to Alice. “I’ll come back for you tomorrow afternoon, once we’ve abducted the Queen and Tera has taken her place.”

  Alice carried her bedclothes and the bag of food down, down, twisting around as the steps turned. At the bottom, the passage opened into the underground chamber she had seen from under the hawthorns, outside the barred window.

  And there was Sherlock Holmes, sitting on the stone ledge. “Well, Alice,” he said. “So they’ve put you in here as well, have they? Tell me all about it. What is happening up there, in the world outside these dungeon walls? I’m sorry to see you down here, although your company is most welcome of course. You and I have gone from the frying pan into the fire, that’s for certain. But at least we’re in it together.”

  Alice walked over to the stone ledge and set down the things she had been carrying. She sat down beside Mr. Holmes, and stared ahead of her for a moment without seeing anything in particular. Then, she put her head in her hands and began to sob, terrible, racking sobs that echoed around the dungeon.

  Sherlock Holmes put his arms around her. “There, there, my dear. I promise you that we’ll get out of this situation and see our friends again. I don’t know how, but somehow.”

  ALICE: I don’t know why I did that. Truly I don’t.

  JUSTINE: Because you had just gained and lost a mother. She was your mother, but not, perhaps, the mother you hoped she would be. I know how that is—my mother sent me away at a young age to be a servant in the Frankenstein household. When I saw her again on my days off, she was not the same—the younger children took all her attention and time. I missed her even while I was with her. And then of course I lost her permanently when I died and Frankenstein transformed me. It is always difficult to lose one’s mother. Lucinda knows that.

  LUCINDA: Yes—I cannot think of my mother’s death without tears. She, too, gave her life for mine.

  ALICE: I wish things had turned out differently for both of us.

  MRS. POOLE: We all do, my dear.

  “Kyllion Keep wasn’t there,” said Catherine. “All we could see was a boathouse by the water. We climbed down the cliff and looked through the window. There was nothing inside except what you’d expect to find in a boathouse. And there was no keep.”

  Mary looked at her skeptically. They were all sitting in the dining room of the inn, having an early dinner of fish stew. Catherine was only eating the fish, picking pieces out of the stew with her fork; Justine was eating everything but the fish; and Beatrice wasn’t having any stew at all. Instead, she was eating a cup of Mrs. Davies’ elderberry compote. It was the first time Mary had seen her eat anything with a spoon.

  “You went all the way to Perranuthnoe, and didn’t see the keep at all? How is that possible?” Mary turned and called to the proprietress, who was standing by the door, “Mrs. Davies, would you mind coming here a moment?”

  “Yes, miss?” said Mrs. Davies. “Shall I ask Wenna to bring you more stew? It’s real Cornish fish stew, my mother’s recipe. The fish were caught this morning by one of our fishermen here in Marazion.”

  “No, thank you. Diana’s already had two bowls. But we have a question about Kyllion Keep. Catherine says she and Diana walked all the way to Perranuthnoe, and all she saw was a boathouse.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Mrs. Davies. “I mean, begging your pardon, Miss Montgomery, but the keep’s right there, sticking up out of the ground, as large as life and twice as solid, at the top of the cliff above the boathouse. You see, the boathouse belongs to the keep—Miss Trelawny uses it for a little sailboat she has. A mighty fine little boat, and she’s a good sailor. When she was younger, she used to sail around the bay and pull it up on the sand below. Not that she had to do much pulling herself—there were always young men about, willing to help her. She was quite a favorite in the village, and at our dances. Any number of partners, she had! I was worried for a while that she might marry one of our fishing lads, which would have been below her station. Quite a wild young lady she was, but so lovely, with that long dark hair! I was glad when she got engaged to that solicitor from London. Such a handsome man, although handsome is as handsome does, my mother always says. But when they came here together, he was always genteel and wellspoken. So tragic, what happened—I don’t wonder that she left for London after the accident. I imagine this area held terrible sad memories for her. Now, if you’re not wanting any more stew, how about some pudding? I have a lovely quince fool to finish off your dinner.”

  “Yes, please,” said Diana. “And I’ll have Beatrice’s fool as well, since she only eats goop.”

  “All right, then.” Mrs. Davies nodded. “I’ll have them out in a moment.”

  When she had gone, Catherine said, “We know Alice can make herself invisible.” She put the remainder of her stew in front of Justine. “Look, I picked out all the fish. You can have the rest.” She took the small plate on which Justine had put all her fish and started eating them as well. “Mrs. Raymond is stronger than Alice, and Queen Tera is even stronger. Could one of them have made the entire keep invisible? I mean, make us not see it. You know, by manipulating our perceptions of it. I swear, Diana and I walked along that path twice. We didn’t see anything.”

  “That’s true,” said Diana. “I had to walk all the way to Perranwhatever and then all the way back. Does anyone else not want their fool? Because I’m hungry.”

  “I don’t think Mrs. Raymond could,” said Mary. “If she could make an entire house invisible herself, she wouldn’t have needed to summon Queen Tera. But Tera? Who knows what she can do. See, this was the problem with confronting them at the keep in the first place. They’re behind stone walls, so they have physical defenses. They can anticipate our moments and prepare for us. And they can see us coming—keeps have windows, remember? I told you it wouldn’t work. We need to surprise them in some way. I guess we’ll have to go with the plan Beatrice and I came up with on the island.”

  “All right then, since you’re such a genius planner,” said Catherine, “tell us your plan.”

  Mary put her soup plate in the middle of the table. “Imagine this is the island. And this spoon is the causeway. This butter knife—Justine, give me yours as well. These butter knives are the harbor. It’s shallow, so to get Her Majesty to the island, they will send a barge out to her yacht, to bring her in. Our first line of defense is the beacon—I don’t have anything to represent that, so you’ll just have to imagine it. Or wait, I’ll put this piece of bread on top of the fish bones. All right, that’s the tower, except it really should be taller—you all saw it across the water when we were coming up from the train depot. St. Michael’s Mount has a beacon at the top of the tower that was once used to warn the inhabitants of Marazion when there were pirates in the cove. We’re going to light the beacon and warn the Queen’s yacht away from the island.”

  “How are we going to get into the castle?” asked Catherine.

  “I’m going to pick the lock,” said Diana. “That should be obvious. Mary doesn’t even need to say it.”

  “Right,” said Mary, annoyed at Diana, although she was of course correct. “There are three doors: the castle, the chapel, and the tower. All the locks look as though they date from the medieval era.”

  “Easy peasy,” said Diana.

  “We will climb up the tower,” said Beatrice. “The housekeeper, Mrs. Russell, described a narrow stair
case leading to the top. There, we will light a fire with rags soaked in turpentine. Perhaps some of you can come with me to the general store? I will need help carrying all the things we must purchase. I estimate that we will need a gallon of turpentine—it will be difficult to keep a fire burning in the storm that is coming tonight.”

  “There is one additional complication,” said Mary. “No one will be allowed to cross the causeway tomorrow, so we have to cross at the next low tide, which is at eight o’clock tonight.”

  “Mary, I told you it is dangerous,” said Beatrice. “How can we cross the causeway in the dark? We could miss our footing and be swept out to sea!”

  “We’ll have to carry lanterns,” said Catherine.

  “No lanterns,” said Mary. “Someone might see us. But it’s a full moon tonight—we should be able to see our way. At least, I hope we’ll be able to. Anyway, we don’t have much of a choice. We don’t have a boat, do we? We could hire one, but none of us knows how to sail. And I don’t think any of the local fishermen would be willing to carry five women over to St. Michael’s Mount after dark! Anyway, we’ll need to be there before low tide tomorrow morning to implement the second part of our plan. Our second line of defense is the spoon—I mean the causeway. Queen Tera and whoever is with her—I assume Margaret Trelawny and Mrs. Raymond, although they may have Alice with them as well—will need to cross the causeway at low tide, which begins at eight thirty a.m. They will probably make themselves invisible so they won’t be seen crossing. On the island, there is a stone wall that separates the village from the castle grounds. Cat, give me your butter knife. That’s the stone wall although it’s more curved. In order to get to the castle, you have to pass through that wall. Just where the causeway touches the land, where the spoon touches the soup bowl, there is an arched gateway in the wall that leads to the path up the hillside. I’ll use more bread for that. They’ll have to pass under that arch unless they want to go to the other side of the village, where there is another opening—but that one leads up through forest. I think they’ll choose the easier route. Before they can cross to the island, we’ll put fishing line across the gateway, with a bell attached. When they walk into the fishing line, the bell will ring. We’ll be hiding behind the wall, and we’ll know they’re there, even if we can’t see them. Then, we can spring out and spray Beatrice’s pepper solution into the air above the fishing line. We don’t have paprika, but she says she can make it with ordinary pepper, although it won’t be as strong. Hopefully, it will disrupt their concentration long enough for the illusion to dissipate, and we’ll be able to see them. If we can see them, we can wound Tera in some way before she fires off any of her lightning bolts, which will at least give us a chance. I wish we knew of some way to disrupt the mesmerical waves, but we still have not heard from Ayesha. No telegram again today—I asked Mrs. Davies and she even checked at the telegraph office for me. Nothing.”