She tossed the book on her bed in despair. There were four more like it on her shelves, and she had been dipping into them with increasing frustration. There was so much to learn about being a lady, and she’d had such little conscious existence in which to practice. How could she truly hope to be a proper woman? Besides, she had developed a dark suspicion that the rules in these books—which, she noticed, were largely written by men—were nonsensically constraining. Even if she could memorize them all, did she want to?
Maria needed to speak to someone. Someone who wasn’t Gideon or—bless him!—Aloysius Bent. Rowena Fanshawe had shown her friendship, but Rowena was not here in Grosvenor Square. There was no one.
However … from the floor below drifted rousing sounds, music that seemed to lift the floorboards with energy and passion.
Passion. That was what was expected of her now, wasn’t it? Somewhere in her breast, the wheels turned faster, the pistons pumped harder, the gears meshed and slipped. Something fluttered there, something not explained by engineering or hard science. Had Professor Einstein trapped a bird in her chest, or was she more woman, more human, than she gave herself credit for? Was Maria, really, more than the sum of her many and mysterious parts?
Slipping on a cotton dressing gown, she padded down the carpeted staircase in search of the music. It issued from the study, where she found Mrs. Cadwallader sitting in the armchair, nodding her head in time to the rising crescendo.
“Oh, Miss Maria!” said the housekeeper when she noticed her at the doorway. “Did the music disturb you? I was just relaxing.…”
“What is it?” asked Maria, stepping into the study. “The music?”
“Act three of Die Walküre,” said Mrs. Cadwallader, nodding to the wax cylinder that turned in the corner, the dramatic sounds galloping out of the curved trumpet. “Richard Wagner. The Ring Cycle. Do you know it?”
“It does seem somewhat familiar,” said Maria. “My … Professor Einstein liked his music.”
“I love my opera. Used to creep the boards myself, when I was younger. Strictly amateur, of course. Think I still have some of my old props and costumes somewhere.” Mrs. Cadwallader rose from the chair. “Oh, my dear, whatever’s the matter?”
The thought of music at the house of Einstein had brought with it more unpleasant memories: those of Crowe, Einstein’s despicable manservant, who when the professor had mysteriously disappeared a year ago had begun, cautiously at first but with increasing boldness, to fully investigate just how lifelike the inventor had made his automaton. Had Gideon not rescued her from the place that summer, she was sure that Crowe would have eventually worked up the courage to fully …
She pushed the thought away and brushed away the liquid that trickled down her cheeks. “Leakage from my eyes,” she said absently. “It happens sometimes. A fault in my workings.”
“Tosh,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “I know crying when I see it. Sit down, miss, and you tell Sally all about what’s bothering you.”
Maria did as she was bid, taking the armchair next to Mrs. Cadwallader’s. “I just needed someone to speak to,” she said softly. “Gideon has … oh, I can’t tell you. You’ll be scandalized.”
Mrs. Cadwallader folded her arms beneath her ample bosom. “Miss Maria, I lived here for many years as housekeeper to Captain Trigger and Doctor Reed. Two men, as in love as any courting couple you might find promenading in front of the Taj Mahal in Hyde Park. You think anything you say can shock me?”
Maria swallowed. “Gideon has asked … if I would be willing to share his bed. From tonight.”
Mrs. Cadwallader clapped her hands together. “Oh, Miss Maria! Well, it’s about time! I was starting to wonder what was up with the boy.”
“You aren’t shocked?”
Mrs. Cadwallader sighed. “Look, Miss Maria, I know that polite society would have you and Gideon married before you became involved in that side of things. But these are interesting times in which we live, and I’m afraid you and Gideon aren’t ever going to have what others might call a normal sort of relationship, are you?”
“Were you married, Mrs. Cadwallader?”
The housekeeper sat back, a faraway look in her eye. “I was. My Albert was a lovely soul, always took care of me. We never had children—well, we had two, as a matter of fact, but neither of the poor mites lived beyond a day. He was gentle but strong.” She paused thoughtfully. “Like your Mr. Smith, I think.” She shook her head and looked at Maria. “He was a soldier, for his sins. Died during the annexing of the Transvaal in 1877. I do miss him terribly.”
“And you have been alone all this time?”
Mrs. Cadwallader laughed. “Who’d have me, miss? I’m well past my best. Whereas you … but … you won’t mind me asking this, I hope. Can you … can you love a man in that way?”
“I think so,” said Maria. “I … there was a man called Crowe. He used to abuse me most dreadfully, Mrs. Cadwallader. I know that I am designed as an exact copy of a woman, thanks to him.”
“The scoundrel! And has Gideon not yet sorted him out?” said Mrs. Cadwallader stoutly. “I shall suggest he makes it his next assignment.”
Maria shook her head. “I wish to forget Crowe, Mrs. Cadwallader. But while I know that I am … anatomically correct, I’m afraid…” She took the housekeeper’s hand. “I don’t know what to do, Mrs. Cadwallader!”
Mrs. Cadwallader sat forward. “Well, my dear, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about what a woman should do and shouldn’t do. There’s a school of thought—put about by men, I should add—that says it’s a woman’s role to lie back and think of England, and just let the man get on with his own pleasure.”
“You don’t agree?”
“Do I—well, I nearly borrowed a turn of phrase from our Mr. Bent, then. No, I do not! The act of love is a partnership between a man and a woman, Miss Maria. A contract, if you will, and both sides must uphold their end of the bargain. Do you understand me?”
“Not really.”
Mrs. Cadwallader patted her hand. “Not to worry. You’ll know what to do when the time comes. Just bear in mind that your pleasure is as important as his.” She sat back, frowning for a moment, and then said, “You are going to wait in Gideon’s bed until he returns from this little investigation he has embarked upon?”
Maria nodded.
“In that case, there’s no harm in … well, finding out what you like.” Maria looked blankly at her, and Mrs. Cadwallader leaned forward, cupped her hand around Maria’s ear, and whispered at length.
“Oh!” said Maria, her hand at her breast, a flush on her cheeks. “Really? That sort of thing is allowed? The books never mentioned anything like that.”
Mrs. Cadwallader cackled. “My dear, there’s a whole world waiting for you to discover. And it’s not all in the books!” She paused then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Well, not all books. I have this volume that Dr. Reed brought back from his travels … it’s very risqué. I’m not sure I should…”
Maria bit her lip. “I think I should very much like to see it.”
Mrs. Cadwallader smiled. “It’s called the Kama Sutra. You go and settle down in Mr. Smith’s room, and I’ll go and find it and drop it in to you.”
As the housekeeper went to change the cylinder on the gramophone, Maria took herself upstairs to Gideon’s room. She slipped into his double bed and settled down to await his return, and some light reading from Mrs. Cadwallader.
* * *
Gideon stood in the snow outside the Britannia Theater on Hoxton Road, hands jammed into the pockets of his overcoat, scrutinizing the poster pasted to the wall.
Direct from Germany! The Teutonic Marvel of the Age! Be astounded as Markus Mesmer and his amazing Hypno-Array lay bare the very secrets of THE MIND ITSELF!
A raucous crowd was already filing into the Britannia, full of gin and high spirits, young men catcalling and groups of women shouting back.
“See you after the show!” yelled one tall youth in a derby
pulled over his eyes as he waved at a knot of girls, the bottoms of their dresses wet with slush.
“Not unless you’re buying the drinks,” riposted one of the young women.
“Eh, paying for it’s not allowed anymore, even in alcohol! Haven’t you read the newspapers? Lizzie Strutter’ll cut off your doodle!” another man bellowed, and the crowd rang with peals of laughter.
Close by, a voice cut through the chatter, as though for his ears only. “Lost, handsome.”
He hadn’t noticed the woman sitting with her back to the wall, a small folding table covered by a silk scarf in front of her. At first he thought she was old, due to the gray rat-tailed, dreadlocked hair tied with bright scraps of rag. But the eyes in her coal-black face were shining and bright, the shoulders exposed to the biting cold smooth and thin.
“No, I am not lost, thank you for asking.”
She smiled, a gold incisor flashing among her gleaming white teeth. “It wasn’t a question, handsome. It was a tell.”
She indicated the bones—rat, perhaps, or bird—scattered on the silk scarf covering the table. Gideon nodded. “You’re a fortune-teller.”
She shrugged those immaculate shoulders, her breasts rising from the patchwork dress she wore. “Fortunes, futures. Fates.” She locked her white eyes with Gideon’s. “Possibilities. All for a farthing.”
Gideon sat down on the crate before the folding table, handing over the coin. The woman spirited it away and snatched up the white bones, shaking them in her cupped hands and whispering into them before casting them on the faded silk. She studied the pattern of their falling.
“A lost father dies,” she announced.
Gideon smiled sadly. Too late. Arthur Smith was dead these five months, lost beneath the claws and teeth of the rampaging Children of Heqet, his bones picked clean in the caves beneath the Lythe Bank promontory near Sandsend, where Gideon and his father had lived.
“That’s the past,” he told the woman. “I thought you told the future.”
She heaved those shoulders, that chest. “Possibilities, I said.”
“Who are you?” asked Gideon.
She looked from beneath plucked brows, her eyes cold as diamonds. “Names, or at least the knowing of them, are powerful things, not to be traded lightly.” He stood to go, and she said, “Be careful, Gideon Smith. Don’t get lost.”
Gideon was looking to the lines now heading into the theater when he wondered how she knew his name. But when he turned back she had gone, crates and table and all, disappeared into the crowd.
Gideon joined the flow into the theater and purchased a ticket for the stalls at the box office, ignoring the woman with a basket of rotten fruit for sale, three items for a ha’penny to throw at acts that didn’t come up to scratch. The performance was due to finish at nine thirty; plenty of time for him to get back to Grosvenor Square and …
And what? His approach to Maria after her return from Bodmin Moor had been clumsy and awkward, and had Bent witnessed it he would have put his head in his hands. Eventually, Gideon had managed to stammer that he wished Maria and himself to have a closer relationship, and that although he had to go out on business he would not be averse to returning to find her in his bed, should she think such a thing was appropriate or indeed desirable, the latter being something that he himself considered her to be. Eventually he had brought his anguish to an end and fled to his room to prepare for the evening, being careful to clear away any errant clothing, tidy the bedside cabinet, and put on the gas lamps at their lowest setting.
He filed into the theater, pushing through the throng to get as close to the front of the stalls as he could manage. The crowd was noisy and restless, and the heavy stage curtains were still drawn, with an easel in front bearing the same playbill as was displayed outside the building. Gideon intended only to get a look at Mesmer, at his methods, and then decide what course of action to take regarding Charlotte Elmwood. Her disappearance, of course, was a source of concern to her parents, but it was in her eerie likeness to Maria that the real mystery lay.
The lights dimmed as Gideon found a seat and the curtains swung back, a stagehand removing the easel. The stage was bare, and a voice boomed, “Ladies and gentlemen, please allow yourselves to be amazed at the neurological gymnastics of the legendary master of mental manipulation, Markus Mesmer.…”
There were a few whistles and catcalls, and then the crowd quieted as a figure walked stiffly from the wings to the center of the stage. He was tall and thin, clothed in a gray serge suit and a waistcoat buttoned up to a silk cravat. His hair was parted down the middle and greased flat, his cheekbones sharp enough to catch the lights above as dazzlingly as his well-polished shoes, his eyes as steely and gray as his clothes. He carried a cloth bag that bulged with something the shape of a decent-sized cabbage.
At the center of the stage Mesmer stopped and turned sharply to face the audience, his heels clicking. One eyebrow raised, he surveyed them, the working classes of East London, then began to speak in clipped, modulated English.
“My great-grandfather Franz Mesmer postulated that there was an invisible yet irresistible force, an energy transference that occurred between all objects. This he termed animal magnetism. Since his theories were published there have been many who have followed in the study of hypnosis and the suggestion and control of the human mind.”
He paused, casting his arched gaze around the hushed auditorium. “But only I, Markus Mesmer, have perfected my great-grandfather’s early hypothesis and experimentation.”
Mesmer dug into the bag and emerged with what appeared to be a complicated skeletal structure with a series of lenses, magnifying glasses, and colored glass circles held tightly within moveable brass orbits arranged at one side. He held it up, casting the cloth bag away.
“Behold, the Hypno-Array! The ultimate marriage of animal magnetism and man’s technological ingenuity!”
Mesmer held the device reverently up for the audience to consider, then placed it on his head, the cage fitting snugly to his skull, the lenses arranged around his eyes. “Now,” he said. “A volunteer, if you please.”
There was a reticent murmuring at first, then a rangy youth stood up to applause and whistles. He gave a gap-toothed grin to the crowd and bowed to laughter. Gideon recognized him as the young man who had shouted at the girls outside. Fixing his derby on his head, he shuffled out of his row and sauntered down the aisle to where Mesmer’s aides, hidden in the darkness of the orchestra pit, helped him up onto the stage.
“A brave volunteer,” said Mesmer, lightly putting his hands together to encourage more applause. “What is your name, sir?”
“Walter Longridge,” he said, grinning again and waving at his mates in the crowd. “I work down at the docks.”
“At the docks,” mused Mesmer, steepling his fingers. “And you will work with fish at the docks, yes?”
“Crates of ’em!” Longridge laughed, then frowned. “’Ere, you’re not saying I stink of fish, are you?”
The crowd roared with laughter again, and Longridge smiled broadly, waving at them. Mesmer said, “How would you like to be a fish, Herr Longridge?”
The young man sniffed. “Not so much. Why?”
Gideon leaned forward as Mesmer manipulated a switch or mechanism on his Hypno-Array, and the wheels began to turn, the lenses rotated, and a sharp light from what Gideon surmised must be tiny electrical bulbs implanted in the array shone through the colored glass circles as they moved in an elliptical orbit around the structure, casting multi-hued lights on the surprised face of Walter Longridge.
Mesmer was murmuring something, but Gideon couldn’t make out what. Longridge seemed to relax and stared into the Hypno-Array, his shoulders slumping, his jaw slackening. The crowd remained silent, then Longridge crouched down and began to make exaggerated swimming motions with his long arms, his eyes bulging out and his cheeks puffed with air as he opened and closed his mouth, moving slowly as though through rushing water around Mesmer.
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“Behold!” said the German with a tight smile. “The man is now the fish!”
When the uproarious applause and laughter had died down, Mesmer switched off his Hypno-Array, clapped his hands, and sent the befuddled Longridge back to his seat on a wave of applause. Over the next two hours, Gideon watched members of the audience fall over themselves to allow Mesmer to humiliate them by making them think they were chickens, horses, and ballerinas. To the delight of the audience he hypnotized two burly bricklayers into behaving like a coquettish courting young couple.
When the curtain finally fell, Gideon stayed in his seat for a moment, considering. From what he had seen it was quite plausible that Mesmer had hypnotized Charlotte Elmwood into behaving in quite an unbecoming manner, and it did seem that Mesmer had to deliberately end the mind control before the subject returned to normal. But what to do about it? As he moved to join the lines of the crowd filing out of the auditorium, he was before he realized it sliding away from the flow and making toward the stairs that led backstage, where a uniformed theater employee stood guard by a velvet rope.
“Mr. Mesmer don’t want no autograph hunters,” said the man.
Gideon showed him the card that identified him and his affiliation with the Crown. “He’ll see me.”
“Mr. Smith. Very good, sir,” said the man, unhooking the rope and ushering Gideon through.
Gideon tapped his nose. “Not a word, though.”
The man winked. “Of course. Top secret, sir.”
The staircase led to a corridor at the end of which was a door marked ARTISTES. Gideon paused outside it for a moment, glancing back along the deserted corridor. He could hear voices from within—including Mesmer’s Teutonic accent, raised in controlled anger.
“Where is he? How is it that we cannot find the swordsman? Am I surrounded by assholes?”
Another voice answered, “Je suis désolé, l’ homme à épée n’ habite pas où je le croyais.”
Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper Page 8