Tenfold More Wicked

by Viola Carr

  Eliza hurried on, raking itchy forearms. Lizzie wasn’t really there. How could she be? “It isn’t that simple. Nothing’s ever that simple.”

  Lizzie flicked transparent mahogany curls. “Only ’cause you’re making it difficult.”

  “I am not! He’s up to something. I know it.”

  “Bollocks. You’re jumping at shadows. Delusions of persy-cootion, eh? That bonehead Philosopher lurking under every rock?” Lizzie danced a hop-step, skirts frothing. “Remy could’ve shopped us months ago, if he cared to, so what’s he waiting for?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea. I can’t read his mind, can you? Now stay where you belong. Just because you’re smitten doesn’t mean I should let down my guard.”

  Lizzie cocked one hand on her hip. “Aye. ’Cause you ain’t never acted the fool for a gentleman’s bright eyes. Green, wasn’t they?”

  Eliza stomped up the pharmacy steps, where Hipp bounced impatiently. “Shut up. That’s different. Did it escape your notice that said green-eyed gentleman was a razor murderer? That’s enough to render anyone nervous in his company.”

  “Nervous? That what they call it these days? Have you lost your friggin’ mind?”

  In the street, an enormous mauve crinoline with a woman inside tilted to stare . . . but with a ghostly giggle, Lizzie vanished.

  Had Eliza shouted those last few words aloud? Hallucinations, talking to herself. Delusions of persy-cootion. She grinned sickly. “Rehearsing for a comedy. Charity performance for addle-brained orphans. Won’t you come?”

  “Quite,” muttered the crinoline, and flounced away.

  Quite, mimicked Lizzie in posh tones, once again tucked safely away in Eliza’s mind . . . for now. I’ll “quite” you, you uppity tart.

  The bell tinkled, and Hipp charged in, skidding across the polished floor and nearly bowling over a round-faced girl in blue velvet skirts who was examining the interior window display.

  Out o’ the way, brown-eyes! Comin’ through! crowed Lizzie.

  “My apologies, miss,” cut in Eliza desperately. “Hipp, for heaven’s sake, calm down.”

  “Finch! Finch!” trumpeted Hipp, oblivious. The girl muttered and hurried away.

  Delightful warmth washed over Eliza, the familiar scents of possets and medicines and alcoholic solvents. Sheaves of strange-smelling herbs hung drying. Bottled liquids of every color lined the shelves. Smoke wafted from behind a leather curtain, bringing the throaty bubble-pop! of some viscous preparation boiling.

  She leaned over the counter, where rows of Latin-labeled drawers were stacked to the ceiling. “Marcellus? Are you there?”

  Mr. Finch popped up like a jack-in-the-box. Thin and angular, apron smudged with charcoal dust, blinking vaguely over a silver-rimmed pince-nez. “My dear girl, you look awful!” He rushed around to take her hands. “In twenty years I’ve never seen you so . . . floury.”

  “It’s Lizzie.” Her tongue stumbled in haste. “She’s growing stronger. I can’t hold her in.”

  “Remedy still inadequate?” Finch pressed his knuckles to her cheek. They felt dry, cold. Was she sweating?

  “I dosed an hour and a half ago. It’s not working.” Finch brewed her elixir, but she’d grown cruelly dependent on it, and he’d also fashioned her a remedy to bring respite. “My dreams are worse. And during the day, I see her. She talks to me. It’s as if she’s a separate person.”

  Crash! A pile of boxes toppled. Hipp charged in a circle, doggedly chasing his own rear end.

  “Hello, little fellow.” Finch eyed him dubiously. “I say, is he overwound? Excess elastic energy, eh? A tonic, say what? I’ve just the thing!”

  “Hipp’s made of brass,” she reminded. “A tonic won’t do much good.”

  “Oh. Right. Never mind, then. May I?” Finch peeled back her eyelids with his thumbs. He smelled of spicy herbal tea, a happy scent that recalled her childhood. Little Eliza in a white pinafore, cross-legged by the fire, practicing her letters on a slate while Mr. Finch read aloud. Not fairy tales, but dusty tomes bound in cracked leather, inked with alchemical symbols. Treatises on forgotten pharmaceuticals, dissection notes, arcane Latin rhymes with compelling rhythms that spoke to her.

  Finch had taken her in when she was orphaned. Until her uncouth guardian, Edward Hyde, took charge, leaving her alone in the gloomy Cavendish Square house, supervised by an endless string of strange tutors and absent-minded governesses.

  Or so she’d thought. Until she’d learned Henry hadn’t died after all. Hyde had consumed his better half, little by little, until Jekyll was eaten away. Hyde was but Henry in a darker, murderous guise. And who’d known all along? Marcellus Finch, who beneath his “vague old man” act harbored a secret sinister side. He’d fooled everyone, including her.

  Finch squinted. “Your irises are cloudy. Eat more turnips, improve your digestion.”

  “Genius, Marcellus. I shall inform Mrs. Poole directly.”

  His face paled. “Must you encourage her? Last time I dropped by, your housekeeper—” He glanced left and right, beckoning her closer. “She made conversation,” he whispered. “Fiercely.”

  Eliza hid a smile. “That only means she likes you.”

  “That’s what terrifies me.” He wriggled a finger into Eliza’s ear and examined it, frowning. “That worthy woman has designs on my virtue. Elaborate, explicit ones.”

  She giggled. “Come, a dalliance might do you good. Have you never been in love?”

  “Eek! Don’t be absurd. Why should I want to fall in love? All that sighing and mooning about with your wits in a fuddle, stricken with the urge to vomit bad poetry. Not to mention the kissing.” He screwed up his nose. “Not scientific, dear girl. Dangerously irrational. I’d steer well clear if I were you. Now, don’t blink.” He brandished a glass dropper, filling it from a tiny bottle.

  Drip! Drop! Her vision stung blue.

  “I say, how curious.” Finch leapt back around the counter like a white-haired locust. He wasn’t as old or feeble—nor quite as insane—as he appeared. He rummaged in one drawer after another, pills and powders and herbs flying left and right. “We had these difficulties with your father’s elixir. Henry, I’d say, Henry, you foolish old badger, you have to tell me when this happens. I can’t be expected to read that decrepit dustpit you call your mind, and thank heavens for that, come to think of it, so you can’t hold me responsible for titers and dilution regimes and molecular purity and so forth if you aren’t being honest with me . . . Aha!” He unearthed a tiny tin and popped the lid. “Watch your teeth,” he warned, and puffed green dust into her face.

  Poof! Sweetness fizzed, blinding her temporarily. She sneezed, tears dripping. “Marcellus, really—”

  “Egad! As I thought!” Finch tossed the tin aside and waved his arms, nearly knocking over a shelf of bottles. “But did the stubborn old parsnip listen to wise Marcellus? No! Of course he didn’t. He’d just let Eddie gad about town willy-nilly, wouldn’t he, swilling vats of gin and smoking frightful Oriental cigarettes and complaining of headaches and gout and itching eyeballs and forgetting to mention it if he should happen to overdose.”

  Eliza froze, guilty.

  Finch skewered her on his stare, no longer so vague. “Did you overdose, dear girl?”

  She lifted her spectacles to wipe streaming eyes. “I might,” she admitted, “have consumed more than sufficient. From time to time.”

  Finch clucked, scolding. “To be expected, with your dependency. But do be careful. The active ingredients will accumulate in your tissues. Once they reach toxic levels . . . well, you can ask Eddie about that.”

  “But I can’t stop Lizzie drinking it,” Eliza protested. “She thinks it’ll let her stay longer.”

  A sharp glance. “Interesting. Does it work?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “I’m losing my memory of her episodes.” Not that she’d want to remember. Dark streets creeping with ghosts, horrid laughter, the stink of gin and sweat. “I don’t suppose she’s
visited you?”

  He blinked, innocent. “Why would she? Last time, she practically throttled the tripe out of me.”

  “I—I thought she might want medicines of her own. If she does . . .”

  “Of course, dear girl. Goes without saying.”

  Inwardly, she despaired. Finch’s curiosity and compulsion to experiment sometimes overwhelmed his good sense. Could she trust no one?

  “Luckily for you,” said Finch brightly, “I’m developing a new formula. Splash of alkahest, dash of hush-hush, all that. If you’re game,” he added gloomily. “It’s erratic. I behaved quite bizarrely when I tested it. Perhaps you shouldn’t . . .”

  “I need to do something.” Suddenly, unaccountable tears burned her eyelids. Science could cure any problem. Why was this remedy so elusive? “Lizzie practically popped out in public just now! She’s putting us all in danger.”

  Finch gave a cunning grin. “Excellent! Intrepid voyagers into the unknown are we!” He plopped a bottle of luminous pink-purple liquid onto the counter. “This takes a different approach to your existing remedy. Instead of starving the, er, need, we feed it. It’s a singular sensation, but . . . well, you’ll see. Put one drop under your tongue, hora decubitus.” He wagged a warning finger. “A single drop only. Tastes vile, naturally. Can’t abide strawberries. A dose now, if you would, and monitor tonight for any adverse reaction. Telegraph if your skin starts peeling off, eh?”

  She took the bottle, fingertips sticking to the cold glass. The pink substance was frosty, calculating. Not like her elixir, seething with sinister heat.

  She eased out the glass dropper. On the tip glistened a single berry drop. She licked it. Chilled fumes wafted, heady like gin with a sickly, sugared flavor. Her skin tingled, icy yet warm. Did her pulse slow, just a little?

  “Good.” Finch’s expression darkened. “But from time to time, you need to drink the elixir. You must give Lizzie her space. Otherwise . . . well, you know what happened to Henry.”

  “You can rely on me.” She slipped the bottle away. She’d no intention of giving Lizzie space. Not if it meant getting them both thrown in the Royal’s dungeons. “I’ve crime scene samples for analysis, if you’re able?”

  He beamed. “Do my part for justice, all that. Saliva from suspected cannibals? Blood of a monster? You get all the good jobs, now you’re so practiced at catching bloodthirsty killers. How is your young man, by the way?”

  Her throat constricted. “Excuse me?”

  “Smart regimental fellow, with the badge and the wolf problem. Haven’t spied him for weeks.”

  “Oh.” She hadn’t told Marcellus about Lafayette’s proposal. Hadn’t told anyone except Harley, who’d expressed his approval by teasing her mercilessly at every opportunity, and Mrs. Poole, who’d been eavesdropping from the stairwell and knew all about it anyway. Not that Eliza didn’t want anyone to know. Only that . . . well . . .

  “He’s disgustingly well, as ever,” she conceded. “But that prophylactic you mixed him didn’t work.”

  “Full moon too powerful, eh? A formidable furry foe! Never fear, we shall renew our attack!” Finch rubbed eager palms. “Did you say samples?”

  She offered her test tube. “Cigar ash from a murder scene. Something odd in it.”

  He held the phial to the light, and his pince-nez polarized, glittering like prisms. “Odd, indeed. Let’s see.”

  He disappeared behind the stiff leather curtain and Eliza followed. She pushed aside dangling copper cables. Acrid smoke and alcoholic solvent vapor stung her eyes. Gas flames darted, and in the corner, a coal fire glowed red. Upon it steamed a vat of a strange-smelling black substance that bubbled and roiled like a living creature.

  Already, the heat made her perspire. No windows; secrecy was too vital. Just a ventilation shaft, the updraft billowing her skirts.

  She stepped over a coil of carbon-wrapped wire. Like a magician’s den, Finch’s laboratory always seemed bigger on the inside. Potions in rainbow colors bubbled over hissing gas flames. Coiled electrodes poked into beakers, soldered to silvery anodes. Hinged tubes of mercury upended themselves like pendulums, and an aetheric generator hummed and glowed, its glass globes forked with blue lightning.

  “The Royal could easily find all this. You ought to be more careful.”

  Ahead, Finch waved dismissively. “Pah! They investigated me already, years ago. Mr. Faraday’s admirer, you know, stern young lady with big brains.”

  A chill stabbed her. “You mean Lady Lovelace?”

  “That’s the girl. Not a countess then, of course. Merely the daughter of some gloomy aristocratic poet. Endless rude questions about some magical ointment of mine. Witchcraft, love potions, a cure for piles, whatever it was. I don’t rightly recall.”

  “Not the elixir?”

  “Goodness, no. Far too clever for that! Something wrong with her, I should say, the way she muttered and kept on. But she never made anything stick. Ha-ha! Brave Marcellus, victorious! Down with the tyrants!”

  Finch was already vanishing behind an array of brass scales and centrifuges, Hippocrates dashing at his heels. Charts and graphs were pinned crookedly to the walls, scribbled with formulae and alchemical symbols in Finch’s copperplate handwriting, alongside an annotated periodic table and a diagram of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

  She recalled that crucified Christ, dripping with Sir Dalziel’s blood. “Do you know anything about devil worship, Marcellus?”

  “Why? Planning to give it a whirl? A spell, say what, like Lady Lovelace, for the lover of your dreams?” Finch tinkered with a retort, adjusting a leaping yellow flame beneath an apparently empty flask.

  “You have me, sir. All over London, witty scientific geniuses with obligingly hefty fortunes shall faint at my feet.” She shoved past a pile of evil-smelling herbs. “You know I don’t believe in hocus-pocus. This murder had ritual elements, that’s all.”

  He turned a glass tap to trap some invisible gas in a phial, and jammed in the cork. “Behold! My new prophylactic against stupefying gas attacks. Steels the lungs, fortifies the intestines. Doubles as a hangover cure, and repels ants. A marvelous breakthrough!”

  “Sounds fascinating . . . No, you’re too kind, I oughtn’t.”

  He thrust the warm phial into her hands. “I insist. Grimy-fingered republicans blowing things up on every corner, disseminating frightful toxic stenches, and who knows what. We’re all doomed! Just don’t inhale too hard. Rots the tonsils, eh? What were you saying? Ritual, bah! Bad excuse for debauchery. Still,” he added happily, “one ought to try everything. No such thing as forbidden knowledge. True science knows no boundaries, all that.”

  “Bravo.” She stuffed the phial into her bag. “It isn’t as if we’ll be flattened by lightning bolts from on high, after all.”

  “Let’s hope not.” Finch stirred a beaker of scintillating blue goo. “I do enjoy a lovely murder. Gruesome, was it?” he added hopefully.

  “Particularly.”

  Finch popped the cigar ash onto a dish, poured in the blue substance, and brandished a sparking electrical wire. “En garde!”

  Bang! The ash exploded, shattering the dish in a puff of blue mist.

  Eliza cleared her throat. “Well. That was unexpected.”

  Finch sucked a scorched thumb. “Alchemy, as you say. Reactive to aether. An hallucinogenic intoxicant, by the spectral range. Did he smoke the whole cigar, perchance?”

  “It looked like it. Something one might use in an unorthodox ritual?”

  “Or a debaucherous one. Heightens the sensations, eh? Not that I’d know anything about that. Veritable stoic, that’s me. Utterly sober at all times.”

  “I’ve the victim’s blood sample, too. Might you test for toxins?” She scraped dried blood from her skirt onto a glass slide. Lafayette’s olfactory analysis still dangled, a tantalizing loose end. Chinese opium, or some such. His wolfish nose was a precision instrument. If he couldn’t identify it . . . or wouldn’t?

  Fi
nch dabbed a forefinger into the blood, and licked it. “I say. Drunk as a skunk, was he? Scotch, single malt, well aged?”

  She laughed. “You can taste that?”

  “All eminently scientific, dear girl.” Finch winked. “Fruits of hard-won experience. Your man was plastered. Sozzled. Up to his eyeballs, say what? And then he smoked enough hallucinogen to buy a week’s holiday in la-la land . . .”

  “Whereupon someone peeled his face off and cut out his heart.” Eliza’s skin tingled, anticipation and dread in equal measure. Did someone give Dalziel this drug to incapacitate him? Or had he taken it willingly? Black magic, indeed. What kind of insane shenanigans had Dalziel been up to?

  Late afternoon had crept stealthily upon her before she finally returned to her town house in Russell Square. Her muscles ached and shivered, her throat sore. The singular flavor of Mr. Finch’s pink remedy whispered across her face, lifted the hair on her arms, teased the back of her neck. She could still taste it, foreign yet sweet, like the breath of an absent lover.

  No breeze disturbed her skirts. The park’s iron railings glistened wet, rows of trees retreating into the gloom. The dirty London fog hadn’t lifted, just turned sour and vengeful, biting at Eliza’s eyes until they watered. On the corner, a pair of white-masked Enforcers surveyed the street with empty red eyes.

  Shivering, she hurried by, recalling Lady Lovelace and the green boy. Was Captain Lafayette interrogating him right now? Had the Royal sniffed her and Lizzie out, just waiting for their moment to strike?

  Inwardly, she fumed. Satisfying as it had been, this morning’s debacle with Reeve left her in a pretty spot. She’d recently spent most of her savings on urgent repairs to her house—which she now owned, thanks to her former guardian—and was short of cash for expenses and servants’ wages. Her infrequent police work paid poorly, her private practice was sadly non-existent, and as for Lafayette’s murder case . . .

  Of course, she’d access to funds in plenty, if she chose. Edward Hyde was generous with his ill-gotten gains. A doting father, by financial standards at least. She needed only to ask.