by Viola Carr
“I am not a ‘lady doctor,’” she interrupted coldly. “I am a doctor, no more and no less. And if you persist in pestering me, you’ll be the one in distress. Good day, sir.”
She hailed an electric omnibus, and it squealed to a halt, sparks spitting from the engine’s purple-glowing coils. She clambered on, squeezing in amongst black-frocked serving maids and clerks in threadbare suits. A mustached fellow at the end smoked a cigar, and the fug clogged the small cabin.
Hippocrates sprang onto her lap, folding his legs, and she absently petted him as the omnibus lurched onwards. He clicked like a cricket, contented, his lights twinkling, and she felt a small twinge of envy.
If only she could be made content so easily. Fatigue tugged at her limbs, and her breath felt too warm in her throat. Her pulse was elevated, the beginnings of an all-too-familiar fever. The air in the omnibus was stifling, smoke and hot breath and sweaty skin. She pulled the window sash down a few inches, but it didn’t help.
Temple’s idiotic questions, his cheerful disregard for the victims’ dignity, only irritated her more. And Captain Lafayette’s sly insinuations—his very presence in her world, with his smug Royal Society attitude and poorly veiled threats—still itched under her skin like a parasite.
Were the Royal onto her? Or was it just an unhappy coincidence? And why had they sent a flesh-and-blood investigator when an impassive mechanical Enforcer would do?
She thought back to the last time she’d visited Mr. Finch, several days ago now, at his utterly respectable Mayfair pharmacist’s shop. Naturally, alchemy was forbidden by the Royal. The Philosopher himself had long ago concluded its aims to be futile. There was no aqua vitae, no vital force that held the universe together and sparked life into lifeless matter. Alkahest, the so-called universal solvent, did not exist. You could not make gold from lead, and eternal life was an impossible dream.
But Mr. Finch was a crafty veteran, with a convincing line in “doddery old man” and the mildest, most innocent blue eyes. No one who hadn’t seen firsthand his dark, smoking laboratory, with its furnaces, bubbling phials, strange symbols, and crucibles of mercury and molten gold, would ever believe him a criminal. Little chance he’d let something slip to a stranger.
Eliza squirmed in her cramped seat as the omnibus rattled past the ornate turrets of Lincoln’s Inn. Perhaps she should warn Mr. Finch. Perhaps she’d been followed to his shop . . . and besides, she was running low on her remedy.
Not her elixir. No, she still had some of that, locked away in her secret cabinet like an embarrassing relative. But Finch also brewed her a prophylactic against the addiction, a tranquil balm that—temporarily at least—banished the need that chewed in her veins, ever hungrier the longer she let it fester. The remedy let her sleep, reduced her fever, kept the gibbering nightmares at bay.
Theoretically.
She hadn’t sampled the elixir for weeks now. Hadn’t slept properly in days. And the famine in her blood was getting nasty. She needed to see Mr. Finch. But if Lafayette was following her . . .
Her heart sank. He didn’t need to. She’d stupidly told him where she was going. Such a fool she was.
“Hipp, I want you to wire Mr. Finch.” She wound the little creature up with a few brisk turns of his ornate brass key. “In cipher, if you please. Tell him I won’t be calling for my prescriptions until tomorrow morning. Oh, and ask him what he knows about a Captain Lafayette, IRS, cavalry officer.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Cogs and springs clicked as he recorded the message. He could use the telegraph at the courthouse to transmit.
The omnibus pulled up, with a bang! and a blue crackle of voltage, on the corner of Old Bailey, where Newgate Prison’s blackened stone walls loomed out of the grimy pall, topped with electrified wire. She paid the conductor threepence, hopped out into blessedly cool air, and lifted Hippocrates down.
Distant wails drifted from the prison’s dark depths, and a fetid stink hung like fog, a vile gray miasma thick with disease. Typhus was so common and deadly within that they called it “prison fever”—and during particularly bad seasons, they even moved the courtrooms outdoors in search of clean air.
Prison warders and thief-takers in dirty suits mingled with the street mob, those attending trials or visiting inmates or simply raising mischief for its own sake. Most of the visitors were women, dirty sleeves pulled down at the shoulder, hair falling loose from pins as if suggesting the condition of its wearer’s virtue.
Everything was for sale to prisoners awaiting trial (or execution) in Newgate, from better food and rum to fresh air to whores and conjugal visits, so long as you knew someone who was willing to pay. Half the inmates had been put there by the Queen’s spies—political agents provocateurs who fanned the flames of working-class discontent and then exposed the ringleaders for traitors and revolutionaries—or by corrupt thief-takers, who arranged elaborate criminal plans specifically in order to entrap the perpetrators. Those same officials were only too happy to accept bribes now. Even the Metropolitan Police weren’t immune to payoffs and sly dealings. Not all officers of the Detective Branch possessed Harley Griffin’s moral courage.
Eliza shouldered through the crowd, Hipp clunking at her heels. The system was crooked. Everyone knew that. But she, Eliza Jekyll, would do her part for justice. Honor demanded it—and if she didn’t, who would?
Who, indeed?
At the big studded doors of the Central Criminal Court, a huge clockwork sentry frisked her impassively, its magnetic hands fanning her skirts, ready to buzz and flash warning lights should it detect iron. Judges were fair game for radicals and criminal types with a grudge, and civilians weren’t permitted to carry weapons into the Old Bailey.
The sentry clicked in satisfaction and waved her inside. Hippocrates scuttled off importantly to dispatch his telegraph, and Eliza trotted down the wide stone corridor and slid into a seat in courtroom two, just in time.
Eliza jams her padded behind on the long wooden bench in the witnesses’ gallery, catching her breath, and not a moment too soon, because here’s Billy Beane climbing into the dock, in the moldy green frock coat and jaunty top hat that’s his habit. His scrawny wrists are shackled in front of him, his lice-ridden hair clipped ragged from the Newgate cells, and he’s grinning like a penny-gaff clown. Billy “the Bastard” Beane, pimp, defiler of little girls, and all-round stinker.
Now I’m all for justice, me. Innocent until it’s proven he done it, and all that. Don’t want no dirty copper fitting me up for some lay I had naught to do with. But in Billy’s case? March in the guilty scumbag, my friends, because you gotta be twelve to say “yes” to a man, and mothers and daughters all over Seven Dials know this dirty child-raper for what he is.
If Billy the Bastard’s innocent? I’m his friggin’ maiden aunt.
The prosecutors make their case. The crusher what arrested Billy, the little girl’s mother, some ratty-haired snout says he seen Billy lurking nearby, on-the-night-in-question-guvnor-sure-as-I’m-standing-straight.
And then they call Doctor Eliza Jekyll, who tells ’em some fine palaver about scratches and bloodstains and fluids on Billy’s clothes that sure sounds a whole lot like he’s guilty as Cain. I cheer loudly in her ear. You tell ’em, Eliza, my love. Can’t argue with bloodstains, can they?
But the beak is a patronizing prick—ain’t they all?—and puts air to some tosh about hysterical lady doctors that makes me want to grab him by those dusty black robes and smash his pudgy nose flat with my forehead. Eliza protests, but he cuts her off. Billy’s grinning. The coppers don’t say nothing. And now I know what’s going on here.
Prison screws, coppers, jurymen, snouts. Everyone’s for sale. And it seems His Honor is too.
Not guilty.
It ain’t right. The little girl’s mother is crying. The Bastard is laughing and joking with the crushers as they let him go. A woman in a green dress yells and throws old fruit from the gallery. Eliza just stares, her prim little throat aching with unshed t
ears.
And inside her, I rage and scream and tear my hair, and yearn with all my heart for a jagged blade.
Darkness had swallowed the sun by the time Eliza trudged up to her town house in Russell Square. Moonlight glared red through smoky clouds, spreading on the cobbles like a bloodstain, filtering eerily over the shadowy park. Electric streetlights glimmered, blue filaments buzzing. A walking carriage lolloped along, its six insectoid feet clattering over the stones. Mist drifted, wrapping wisplike along the fences and wrought-iron gates, settling over her smart brick town house. The smells and sounds of the foundling hospital along Guildford Street—waste, vomit, the wails of sick children—made a ghastly backdrop.
Normally, Eliza didn’t mind. She was used to it. But tonight, it only made her think of Billy Beane, the horrid things he’d done, his depraved giggles, his damp fingers on that little girl’s skin, his smug grin in the courtroom as they let him go. And when she thought of Billy, her unladylike anger swelled like a monster . . . and the dark shadow inside her growled to be free.
Eliza’s own mother had died in a senseless accident, with those responsible never held to account. Would the man who’d killed Irina Pavlova escape justice, too? Vanish into the night like an evil dream, a habitual monster drifting from victim to victim, unable to understand or stop? Or had it been an aberration, the only blot on a blameless character, a horrible secret that some guilty gentleman would take to his grave?
Unlikely. In Eliza’s experience, most murderers didn’t feel guilty. At best, they were angry and careless and sorry they’d been caught. At worst, they were beasts in human disguise.
Mostly. Some—an unfathomable, frightening few—defied diagnosis.
The polished brass shingle nailed to the doorpost read ELIZA JEKYLL M.D. Wearily, she stumped up the steps and let herself in, Hippocrates trotting after her.
Dim quiet greeted her, the comforting scents of herbs and medicines, a faint whiff of some tasty supper on the boil. A warm yellow arc-light gleamed in a brass wall sconce, and to the right, the doorway of her consulting room lay dark. The walls were papered in cream, the pressed-metal ceiling white. An Indian rug lay soft under her aching feet. A gilt-framed mirror adorned the hall, above an expensive inlaid mahogany hall table.
Her house was fine. More expensive than she could have afforded on her own, with the meager income from her police work and the part-time position at Bethlem. Female doctors were few and didn’t attract many patients, and by the time she qualified, first in general practice as an apothecary, then as M.D. against the wishes of a hostile, all-male College of Physicians, her late father’s practice had long since disbanded. Henry Jekyll had been a society doctor, with considerable fortune and prestige in his day—but he’d squandered both on his strange experiments, and now they were gone. Eliza lived prudently, without show or extravagance, but everything cost money.
No, she could never have afforded this address, the servants, the fine furniture. This house was paid for by her guardian, the man into whose care Father had left her in his will. She was a legal adult now, in charge of her own allowance, and she’d barely heard from her guardian since she turned twenty-one, but the house still belonged to him.
An odd fellow, to be sure. For a man she’d never actually seen face-to-face, his rough, infrequent letters could be strangely affectionate. But he’d spared no expense and no trouble. And an absent guardian better suited her purposes than an ever-present one. Better by far than a husband, meddling and disapproving, taking up her time with trivia such as housekeeping and mealtimes and children. “Wife” was a busy full-time job, for certain, and not to be sneered at. Just not her career of choice.
“Welcome home, Doctor.” Hippocrates squatted by the hallstand, a spindly brass frog.
“Thank you, Hipp. Have a nap, there’s a good boy.” Gratefully, she closed the heavy door. Her head was pounding. Dizziness lurked, threatening. Her pulse was dangerously elevated. She needed her remedy.
But she had none. Only the elixir. And inside her, angry shadows roiled, thirsting to be free . . .
Someone was talking. She shook herself, trying to focus. “I’m sorry?”
Her housekeeper bustled from the passage, dusting rough old hands on her apron. Mrs. Poole was only five feet tall, the bonnet pinned over her graying hair barely reaching Eliza’s shoulder, but she was built like a grande-dame bulldog, fierce and muscular in body and affection. “Supper’s ready, Doctor. Lay the table, shall I?”
“Good evening, Mrs. Poole. I’ll take a tray in my room, please. I’m feeling a little unwell.”
“You do look a sight,” teased Mrs. Poole dryly. “You work too hard, young lady. Just like your father, and look how he ended up, God rest him. No wonder no respectable man will have you.”
“I say, do you think not? Shocking. I shall mend my unladylike ways immediately.”
A twinkle of faded green eyes. “Make a difference, would it, the way you pull your hair back like a schoolmarm, and never wear nice shoes?”
“Mrs. Poole, as always, you are the very soul of comfort.”
“Always here to help. You look positively peaky. Shall I break out the leeches and bloodletting myself, or send for one of your charlatan physicians?”
“I am a physician, last I looked. The shingle on the door seems to think so.”
“Aye, well,” said the imperturbable Mrs. Poole, “a fool for a patient, and all.”
Eliza suppressed a laugh. “The saying is ‘a fool for a client.’ Referring to lawyers who represent themselves, not doctors who self-medicate. A small but important distinction.”
“If you say so. Go on upstairs, I’ll send for Molly.” Mrs. Poole ushered Eliza towards the big mahogany staircase. “Bless me,” she added slyly, fishing a sealed letter from her apron pocket. “I almost forgot. This came for you. Hand delivered.”
The folded paper was smooth and warm. Expensive stationery, no postage stamp, her address smudged in crude black handwriting, and a red wax seal stamped with a shape that looked like a crooked crown, or maybe a court jester’s belled hat.
Eliza’s heart clenched, dread and fascination in equal measure. “Forgot,” indeed. She knew that seal. What did he want, after so many months of ignoring her? Sometimes his letters were aimless, strange, the wanderings of a lost soul. Other letters were terse missives regarding the dispersal of funds, the house, her yearly allowance. Yet others . . . well, he had the soul of a poet, if an ill-mannered one.
Toss it away. He’s a dirty old lecher. Probably hides behind the bed curtains and fiddles with himself while you sleep . . .
Clasping the letter to her bodice, Eliza hurried up two flights of stairs, past her darkened study to her bedroom.
The fire was already lit. Twin candles gleamed in brass sconces on the elaborate marble mantel. Her ruffled bed was neatly made, pale covers beneath a gossamer canopy. Her wardrobe—Eliza’s wardrobe—stood in the corner.
Above the dressing table hung her mother’s portrait, framed in gilt. Madeleine Jekyll wore an old-fashioned, high-waisted cream silk ball gown. Her lips turned up in a secret smile. A diamond necklace adorned her slender throat, a wedding gift from her bridegroom. She looked young, happy, uncommonly pretty.
Eliza hadn’t inherited Madeleine’s looks. She’d barely known her mother. Just another scandal that people whispered about. No, Eliza took after her father: gray-eyed, sharp-chinned, compelled to meddle in dangerous secrets.
She sat at the inlaid writing desk, warming her booted feet by the fire. She turned up the electric lamp, and in greenish light cracked the letter’s seal.
Snap! Too loud in the silence. Her heart skipped. She unfolded the paper, pushing her spectacles up.
As always, his handwriting was rough, untidy with crossings-out, as if he scribbled in a hurry and didn’t care too much for his spelling. The paper was smudged with grime or coal dust, as if his hands were dirty, like a laborer’s. An odd sort of gentleman.
My Dear Eliza
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Tomorrow midnight in your Study.
You know the Rules. Don’t look behind You.
your Servant
A.R.
And beneath his initials—what did they stand for?—a little sketch of that same jester’s crown. Wicked, unhinged, the sly wink of a madman.
She swallowed, excited yet fearful. A little dizzy. Was it the fever? Why did he want to see her? Their meetings were scarce, and always shrouded in darkness, shadows, secrecy. As a girl, she’d been afraid of him, his strange rough voice behind the curtain, his masculine scent of tobacco and leather, once a hesitant hand on her hair that made her whirl, only to see no one. Now, as a woman grown . . .
Rap-a-rap! A knock at the door. Swiftly, she tucked the letter away in one of the desk’s many secret drawers. “Come.”
Molly, pretty and blond, carrying a dinner tray. “Shall I set it down here, Doctor?”
“Thank you, Molly.” The plate held hot pork pie, potatoes, warm bread, a steaming pot of tea. Her stomach swam, as if she’d swallowed seawater. Mrs. Poole’s pie was invariably excellent. But Eliza had lost her appetite.
For food, that was. For anything except the elixir, bitter and delicious, stinging her throat like salt, that glorious fire-burst in her belly . . .
Molly busied herself turning down the bed and fluffing the pillows. “Everything all right, Doctor? Mam says you weren’t feeling well.”
“Nothing a cup of tea and a good night’s sleep won’t remedy.”
“You know,” Molly remarked, “when I was just a scullery maid, I broke a cup in the kitchen, and I was too scared to tell anyone.” Her skirts billowed as she worked. “Ate away at me, it did. Never got a wink of sleep, until at last I owned up. As if a load of bricks tumbled off my back. Ever since then, if something’s bothering me, I find it’s best to talk about it.”
“I’ll take that on board.” Eliza tried a smile, but it stung false. Mrs. Poole had kept house for Henry Jekyll, and though she made a point of pretending ignorance, her sharp wits missed nothing. Molly was Molly Poole, Mrs. Poole’s daughter—or granddaughter?—and cut from the same practical cloth. Molly and Eliza were of an age, and though Eliza’s secrets were never spoken, such a clever maid had surely heard enough strange happenings late at night in the Jekyll household to realize something bizarre was going on.