European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

by Theodora Goss

  “Or poisonous.” Diana was standing in the doorway, her arms crossed. “As usual, no one tells me anything.”

  At least she had gotten dressed! Although Mary noticed that her shirtwaist was untucked in the back and her tie was askew. And had she forgotten to brush her hair? With Diana, one could never tell.

  “All right, come in, we need to meet anyway,” said Mary. She took the telegram out of her purse. “We need to figure out what to do about this.” She put the purse on the mantle, then realized what she was doing—once again making more work for Mrs. Poole. Instead, she sat down in one of the armchairs and placed the purse on her lap. Suddenly, she felt very tired. Really, she had no idea what to do.

  Holmes sat down on the sofa across from her, where Alice had been lying. Watson was about to sit next to him when Diana insinuated her way around him and onto the sofa, rather like a cat. Before he could sit, she was already curled into the corner. With a look half of amusement and half of exasperation, he took the other armchair. While his back was turned, she stuck her tongue out at him. Mary shook her head vigorously as though to say Stop that, you brat!

  DIANA: You can’t say “brat” by shaking your head!

  MARY: Oh, can’t I?

  “Why don’t you tell me your original plan,” said Holmes. “How were you planning to rescue Lucinda Van Helsing?”

  “I’ll need my file,” said Mary. “Everything is in there. It’s on the table in the library.”

  “Here it is.” Justine came into the parlor, carrying a portfolio and a small red book. “Beatrice is making up some sort of medicine for the pain, and to help Alice sleep. I put our passports in here just before the telegram arrived. You will see, Mr. Holmes, how organized we have been! I also have the Baedeker.”

  She handed the portfolio to Mary, who gestured for her to draw the tea table in front of the sofa. When it was in place, Mary put the portfolio on it and pulled out the documents they had spent the past week assembling. Justine added the red book, which had Baedeker’s Austria written on the cover.

  Mary picked up the passports, which were on top of the pile, and handed them to the detective. “According to Baedeker, the passports aren’t strictly necessary for European travel, but we need them to establish identity. You see, we don’t intend to travel as ourselves.” Each passport was a single sheet of thick official-looking paper on which a clerk at the Passport Office had written, in clerical script, that the holder of the passport was a British citizen and should be allowed all the rights and privileges of free passage within the country where it was presented.

  “Justin, Mary, and Catherine Frank,” said Holmes, reading the passports. “And you, Miss Frankenstein, are to be Justin, I take it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Holmes. I would be immediately conspicuous as a woman, simply because of my height. I am less conspicuous—not much more than you would be—as a man. Oh!” As though suddenly remembering, she pulled the scarf off her head. “You see?”

  “Miss Frankenstein!” said Watson. Justine’s hair, which a week ago had fallen down her back in blonde ripples, the color of a wheat field with wind blowing across it, was as neatly cropped as any London clerk’s. As Justine Moritz, the Frankensteins’ maid, she had been a pretty, laughing, rather thoughtless girl with eyes as blue as the bellflowers growing on the slopes of the Swiss Alps. As Justine Frankenstein, brought back to life by her father and creator, Victor Frankenstein, she was tall and pale, with a habit of stooping in an effort to conceal her height. She was thoughtful, quiet—it would no longer have been quite right to call her pretty. But as a man, she had a sensitive handsomeness that would be attractive to intellectual women, such as writers for The Yellow Book, suffragettes, and dress reformers.

  BEATRICE: I suppose I would qualify as one of those intellectual women for whom you have such obvious scorn! Although I have not written for The Yellow Book—I leave that to you, Cat. And I thought Justine was quite handsome as a man.

  CATHERINE: I doubt The Yellow Book would be interested in the sort of thing I write!

  BEATRICE: Well, I won’t argue with you about politics or literature.

  CATHERINE: That would be a first.

  “We intend to go as a family group, a brother and two sisters,” said Mary. “It seemed best to choose a name that was fairly common. We thought any of ours—Jekyll, Moreau, Frankenstein—might attract attention. You see, we shall have to buy train tickets, pay for lodgings . . .”

  “And how are you proposing to get to Vienna?” asked Holmes, putting his elbows on his knees and tenting his fingers. It was his I am about to suggest something pose. This, thought Mary with trepidation, is where he disrupts all our plans.

  “London to Dover, then the ferry over the channel of course, then Dover to Ostend, and from there by a series of trains—”

  “Not an express?”

  “Mr. Holmes, we can’t possibly afford an express. From Ostend we shall take the train to Brussels, then to Frankfurt, then to Nuremberg, and finally to Vienna, traveling second-class when possible, staying at lodging houses along the way. Our route has been carefully planned.”

  “No doubt, Miss Jekyll. Any planning you do would be careful. But how long will it take you to reach Vienna, traveling in such a fashion?”

  “Two weeks,” said Justine. “Truly, Mr. Holmes, it is the most rapid means of transportation we can afford. I sold a painting to the Grosvenor. Catherine received an advance for The Mysteries of Astarte. Beatrice worked day and night to fulfill a large order from the Royal College of Surgeons. We have all contributed what we can, and Mary has worked out the cost very carefully.” Mary looked at Justine, impressed. It was not like her to challenge anyone, yet here she was, standing up to Mr. Holmes! Good for her. She had changed in the three months since they had formed the Athena Club. They all had.

  “Two weeks is too long,” said Holmes. “Remember that you are due in Budapest by September twentieth if possible for that meeting of the Société des Alchimistes. I do not understand what Miss Murray, your former governess, is planning—or why she wants you there with Lucinda Van Helsing. But you know and respect her, Miss Jekyll, so I assume she is a woman of sense, and there is a reason she has asked you to do the almost impossible. I have an interest in this case: I too am trying to unravel the mystery of the Alchemical Society. I too want to find out what Van Helsing and Seward are up to. If I could go myself, I would. Despite the danger, I am glad you are going, and I hope you will report to me as circumstances permit. But if you wish to be in Vienna as soon as possible, it must be by express. I shall wire for three tickets on the Orient Express to Vienna. As it is a sleeper, you will not need to pay for lodgings. And I shall telegraph Irene Norton your date and time of arrival.”

  There was silence. “You are all glaring at me,” he said. “Even Miss Frankenstein, who never glares. Pray tell me what I have done wrong.”

  “Ladies, you must forgive Mr. Holmes,” said Watson. “He is so often in command that he sometimes forgets it may be disagreeable to others, to have their affairs arranged according to his ideas.”

  “In other words, you’re the great Sherlock Holmes, so no one tells you when you’re being a pain in the arse,” said Diana. Mary looked down at her clasped hands and smiled to herself, both because it was true, and because Diana had managed to stay quiet for five whole minutes at a time. That was progress.

  “You’re right, Mr. Holmes,” said Mary. She tried to stop smiling—he was not used to being found amusing, much less being called a pain in the arse. “An express would no doubt get us there more quickly. As to whether we can accept your offer, I shall have to consult my fellow members of the Athena Club. We have no president here—decisions are made by agreement of the members.”

  He looked at her for a moment—he was about to say something. Yes, what was it? She prepared for an argument. But he visibly restrained himself. It would be cruel to laugh at him—he really was trying his best, and the offer he had made was most generous. Granted, its very
generosity had felt like an insult. Nevertheless, on the Orient Express, she calculated—if they could finish their preparations quickly and leave within the next few days—they could be in Vienna in less than a week. That would give them two more weeks to find Lucinda Van Helsing and get her to Budapest. It was still hopeless—but it was a week less hopeless.

  “Will you be wanting tea, Miss?” While Mary was making her mental calculations, Mrs. Poole had come in, her usual respectable self in a black dress and apron, no longer dressed for laundering. Once they could have afforded a proper laundress, and a parlormaid to help Mrs. Poole carry the tea things, and a footman to move the tea table. . . . Well, that was the past, and there was no sense wishing for it. Anyway, her former parlormaid and footman, Enid and Joseph, were happily married and living in Basingstoke.

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Poole. Come to think of it, I don’t remember ever having lunch. We got the telegram, and then Alice was injured, and we’ve been sorting through the travel documents. . . .”

  “I wish you girls would think more of your stomachs and less of mysteries and adventures,” said Mrs. Poole. “If it weren’t for me, I don’t think anyone would get a decent meal around here.”

  “That is entirely true,” said Mary. “Would you bring it in here, please? We can clear the table.”

  “And can we have jam tarts?” asked Diana. “I know there are jam tarts.” But Mrs. Poole was already out the door and heading toward the kitchen. “I’ll help. What’s the point of my being here anyway, since I’m not allowed to go, though I’m the smartest and most useful of all of you?” She followed Mrs. Poole out the door, as disdainfully as possible.

  Justine looked at Mary with astonishment. “Diana is volunteering to help?”

  “That I very much doubt,” said Mary. “Diana always has a motive of her own for doing anything.”

  DIANA: I wanted to make sure she brought the jam tarts. She keeps them in a cabinet in the kitchen, and when I go down there, she gives me one. I told you Mrs. Poole likes me best.

  MRS. POOLE: The tarts are to keep you quiet, you devilish child. And I give them to Alice, too, if she asks.

  DIANA: Alice is insipid. That’s one of my vocabulary words for the day. Quite a good one, isn’t it? I even know it in Latin: insulsus. That means unsalted. Alice is unsalted.

  BEATRICE: Did you ask me to teach you Latin just so you could insult people?

  “You’re all here!” At the sound of Catherine’s voice, Mary looked up, startled. Catherine was standing in the parlor doorway. She must have let herself in as well, just missing Mrs. Poole’s pointed disapproval. Although Mrs. Poole might have been more shocked by how Catherine was dressed than by the fact that she had let herself in!

  “What in the world happened to you?” asked Mary. “You look . . .” But Catherine’s outfit was indescribable. “It’s certainly not what you were wearing this morning. Where is your suit?”

  “I can’t go to Vienna. Prendick is still in London, and he’s been meeting with Dr. Seward. . . . What, you mean this?” Catherine looked down at herself. When she had left that morning, she had been wearing a gentleman’s suit, worn but respectable. Now she was wearing a woman’s dress, much too large for her. It was a faded lavender, and had evidently seen better days. On her head was a straw hat that looked as though it had come from a scarecrow (it had). Tendrils of hair were coming down around her face. She rolled back one sleeve to examine a long scratch. “I fell into some sort of bush and had to steal a dress from a clothesline. The important thing is that something is finally happening! Seward is meeting Prendick again next week, at an address in Soho. I have to find out what’s going on. Hello, Mr. Holmes, Dr. Watson. If you’re sitting here, something must be up. Have you discovered the same thing I have?”

  “So Prendick did survive the fire!” said Watson. “We suspected he might have escaped from that warehouse.”

  “We’re talking about Vienna and Lucinda Van Helsing,” said Mary. “She’s missing, according to Miss Murray, and we need to go find her—why, what have you discovered? You’d better sit down and tell us what happened in Purfleet. Mrs. Poole is bringing tea.”

  “The God I don’t believe in bless Mrs. Poole!” said Catherine, vehemently. “Charlie, you’ll stay for tea, won’t you?”

  Charlie stuck his head around the doorway, then stepped in tentatively, as though venturing into a pit of snakes. “Hullo, Mr. Holmes. I dunno, is Diana here?”

  “She’s down in the kitchen,” said Mary. “Would you rather take your tea down there?”

  “Yes, miss,” said Charlie gratefully, and disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, his boots echoing along the hallway.

  Mary glanced at Holmes. He had not said anything, but there was that look on his face again, as though he were amused and simply waiting for an explanation. She sometimes found his patience disconcerting.

  Catherine took off the straw hat and put it on the mantel—Mary reminded herself to put it away later, before Mrs. Poole found it there. Then she sat down next to Mr. Holmes on the sofa and started to uncoil her hair from the bun that had hidden it under the man’s hat she had been wearing that morning, which she had lost—where? And what in the world had happened to the suit? Mary thought about the money wasted. But perhaps it couldn’t be helped.

  “So what happened? We have plenty to tell you, but perhaps you should go first. It sounds as though you’ve had an eventful day.” Mary leaned forward, eager to hear what had happened in Purfleet. Justine sat on the carpet and leaned back against one arm of her chair. Holmes and Watson also looked at Catherine expectantly, waiting for her story.

  “Goodness, now you’re all staring at me. I know I must look a fright. It started well enough,” Catherine began.

  MRS. POOLE: Adventures is one thing, but I don’t hold with stealing. The trouble I had returning that dress to poor old Mrs. Potts of Purfleet!

  CATHERINE: Well, I’m sorry, but I had to change into something! They were coming after me. Would you rather I had been caught by the Purfleet constabulary, such as it was?

  And now we need to go back to that morning, just after Mary left for 221B Baker Street.

  On Marylebone Road, Catherine had flagged down a cab headed in the direction of Fenchurch Street.

  “Asking me to transport a ragamuffin like him!” said the cabbie, once they had climbed in. “One of them street Arabs he is, and a pickpocket like as not. I don’t know what a gentleman like you is doing with the likes of that one.” The cabbie glared at her.

  Catherine growled, deep in her throat. But that wasn’t going to get her anywhere. “As long as I pay you, my good man, you shall take me where I please and with whom I please. I am taking this poor runaway back to his mother, so he can live a respectable life. Now, Fenchurch Street Station!” She had learned that respectable clothes and a high-handed manner usually get you want you want—in London, anyway.

  With an oath, the cabbie turned and shouted “Gee-up.” The horse gee’d, and they were off, down the crowded streets of London. The windows were open and it was too loud to talk in the cab, although Catherine distinctly heard Charlie saying, “Poor runaway, my arse.”

  BEATRICE: I do not understand why the term “Arab” is an insult. After the fall of Rome, the scientific texts of the ancient world were preserved in Arabic, by adherents of Islam. They added greatly to our knowledge of astronomy, physiology, the art of surgery. Without them, medicine as we know it would not exist!

  CATHERINE: Well, I wasn’t about to argue that with a London cabbie, was I?

  At Fenchurch Street Station, they boarded the train to Purfleet, taking a second-class carriage. It was empty, so finally they could make plans.

  “When we get to Purfleet, I want you to talk to the boys,” said Catherine. “Boys always know things. There’s the boot boy at the Royal Hotel, to start with. I’ll talk to Joe. Three months, and nothing—Dr. Seward hasn’t gone anywhere; no one has visited him. We know he’s been getting letters wi
th the red seal of the society, but we don’t know what’s in those envelopes.”

  “Why don’t we just nick them?” asked Charlie. Boys like Charlie are always direct. Their lives on the streets of London require a strict practicality. Any sentiment they may have been born with is quickly lost: to hunger and cold and the danger of the streets. Yet there is nothing like the loyalty, the quick-wittedness, of the typical London boy. The next time you hear the expression “ragamuffin,” remember boys like Charlie, who live by their wits because they must, on the scraps society leaves them. They may not be strictly honest, but who is to blame—one poor boy, or the social conditions under which he lives as best he can?

  MARY: I’m not sure Charlie would like being a poster boy for the street urchins of London. He thinks himself a cut above them, you know. The Baker Street boys are very particular as to what company they keep.

  BEATRICE: And yet Catherine is right—these boys are treated shamefully, as pickpockets or worse. Our system of justice is deeply, fundamentally prejudiced against them. Our society casts them out with opprobrium. . . .

  MARY: See, now you’ve got Beatrice started again!

  Catherine shook her head. “Joe is already under suspicion. Dr. Seward sacked him once—when the madman Renfield escaped. We don’t want him to get sacked again. He’s too useful to us where he is. But the situation feels too quiet—like water when a fish is moving under the surface but you don’t see it yet, just a line of bubbles. Those letters are the bubbles. . . .”

  She turned and stared out the window. The shops and businesses of London gave way to houses, then to countryside.

  “I’ve never been in the country before,” said Charlie at last. “Green, ain’t it?”

  She nodded. For a moment they sat silent in the clickety-clack of the train. Then, “Are you really a puma?” he asked. “If you don’t mind me inquiring. Because Diana told me you were, and she can lie something beautiful.”

  Catherine nodded solemnly. “Want to feel?” She drew up one corner of her upper lip to reveal the canine.