The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter

by Theodora Goss

  And there of course was the evidence that Mary had indeed spent a morning in the dregs of the city—the dirty, ragged girl beside her. What in the world was she going to do with Diana?

  The door opened. “Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Poole. “You’ll catch your chill, standing out there on the pavement.”

  Mary turned and thanked Watson, who had handed her and Diana down the steps of the cab. “Think nothing of it, Miss Jekyll,” he said. He had already paid the cabbie, once again insisting that it was a business expense, which worried Mary. Kind as he was, she disliked feeling a sense of obligation. But there was nothing to be done about that now.

  “Although of course it was a pleasure as well,” he added. “Having a young lady of—keen intellect such as yours, shall we say—involved in Holmes’s investigation makes a refreshing change. I shall see you tomorrow—at noon? Should Holmes and I meet you here?”

  “Thank you,” said Mary, not quite knowing what to make of the compliment, but certain it was not the one he had originally intended to make. “I think it would be best if we came to Baker Street. At noon, then, Dr. Watson.” She did not want Holmes—or Watson, of course—to see the bare walls, the uncarpeted floors. The places where there had once been vases filled with flowers or plaster busts of philosophers. It was pride, and pride was a sin, but still . . .

  “Ta,” said Diana. “Until tomorrow, then.”

  Watson bowed, unsuccessfully hiding a smile, and said, “Ta to you as well, Miss Hyde.” Then he strode off toward Marylebone Road.

  “Come on,” Mary said to Diana, who was examining the house and Mrs. Poole. “If you keep staring like that, your eyes will fall out.”

  Diana gave her what Mary would come to call that look—of mingled contempt and annoyance. But she followed Mary up the steps and into the front hall.

  MARY: She gives me that look all the time!

  DIANA: I wouldn’t if you weren’t so annoying.

  Diana’s trunk was waiting in the hall. Yet another thing for which they were obliged to Dr. Watson.

  “This came for you earlier today,” said the housekeeper. “It was delivered on a vegetable cart, but the man said Miss Jekyll right enough, so I told him to leave it by the staircase.”

  “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Poole,” said Mary as the housekeeper took her umbrella. “I had it sent—I’m sorry, I should have sent a note, but we were in a bit of a hurry.” She put the portfolio with the papers in it on the hall table, then pulled off her mackintosh and handed that to Mrs. Poole as well. How tired she was! She had not realized it until now, but it had been a long day, and as Holmes had pointed out, she had not eaten since breakfast.

  “Do we have a guest, miss?” asked Mrs. Poole, looking doubtfully at Diana, with her bare legs and hatless head. She checked the mackintosh for stains before folding it neatly over her arm.

  “This is Diana,” said Mary. “And she needs a bath.”

  “I don’t want to take a bath,” said Diana.

  “Yes, you do,” said Mary. “You don’t actually like being that filthy. You just want to be contradictory. Mrs. Poole will draw you one. I assure you, it will be better than anything you could get at St. Mary Magdalen. And then we will have tea, I think. If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs. Poole?”

  Diana grinned. “Oh, it’s going to be a treat living with you, I can see that already. You’re just like that detective. You tell people what to do, and they do it simply because they’re used to following orders. Well, I’m not.”

  “Obviously,” said Mary. “Nevertheless, you are going to take a bath, because you smell and I don’t want you sitting on the furniture in that state. No tea unless you take a bath first.”

  “Come on, you,” said Mrs. Poole. “Miss Mary says into the bath, so into the bath you go. And while you’re in this house, you will speak to her with respect. Miss Mary is a lady.” She took Diana by the arm and pulled her toward the stairs.

  “And what am I, a piece of dirt?” said Diana.

  “Near enough!” responded Mrs. Poole.

  When they were gone, Mary took off her hat and gloves, leaving them on the hall table. She glanced at herself in the mirror. She was still pale, but the fresh air had put some color into her cheeks. She looked more alive than she had before her visit to Mr. Guest.

  She took the portfolio into the parlor. Should she turn on the gas? It was getting dark, but she didn’t want to use it until absolutely necessary. She lit the fire, which was once again already laid—thank goodness for Mrs. Poole! The housekeeper should find other employment, but Mary did not know what she would do without her. How lonely it would be. . . . She sat on the sofa with the portfolio next to her, warming her hands and staring into the flames. It had been horrible—that poor girl. But she could not help being interested in the case—it was a mystery, and surely everyone was interested in mysteries? In untangling their various threads?

  One of the threads was sitting next to her on the sofa. Once again, she pulled the tea table in front of her, set the portfolio on it, and began pulling out its contents: the account book, the laboratory notebook, the letters and receipts. They were all she had left of her father, the only clues to the mystery of his life and death. She put them into neat piles. She had looked at them last night, but had been focused on the book of accounts and the possibility that Hyde was still alive. She would go through them more carefully now.

  Diana’s claim couldn’t possibly be true. But why had her father hired Hyde, so unpleasant, so unreliable? And as it turned out, a criminal. And why had her mother supported Diana all those years? She had not wanted to question Diana in front of Mr. Holmes and the police. This was a family matter, and she wanted to explore it privately. What had been the relationship between her father and Hyde? And her father’s fortune—was it a coincidence that it had disappeared at the same time as Hyde? Had it been a matter of blackmail? If so, for what?

  She remembered her mother, after her father’s death. So secretive, so unwilling to discuss her life with him even before the long descent into madness. Mary had assumed her reluctance was a result of grief. But maybe there was more to it.

  The documents. She would focus on them. Systematically, she began sorting through each pile, starting with those she had paid the least attention to last night. Letters first, taking each one out of its envelope. Two of them were from Maw & Sons, the scientific supply company. The other three letters had foreign stamps. Two of them she set aside, but the third, from Italy . . . She read it again, more carefully this time. She looked through the receipts from Maw & Sons. And then she looked through the laboratory notebook, knowing what to search for, although she dreaded finding it. If only her father hadn’t had such crabbed, eccentric handwriting! It was like trying to decipher the movements of a spider. The letter from Italy had given her a clue she would never have paid attention to last night. But tonight, a particular sentence in the letter had stood out, taken on a different and more sinister meaning: A scientist should not experiment on himself. What, exactly, had her father been doing?

  It could not mean—but she was starting to think it could. She looked at the letter again, then the notebook, then the receipts. She leaned back into the sofa, staring at the painting of her mother over the mantelpiece without seeing it, lost in thought. Surely what she imagined was impossible? And yet she could think of no other explanation.

  “Here’s your tea, miss.” She blinked, startled. It was Mrs. Poole with the tea tray. “I don’t know as you’ve eaten since breakfast, so I made some ham sandwiches, and some paste as well. That will be the last of the ham for a while, I’m afraid. There should be enough for the both of you, once that brat gets out of the bath, which may not be until Judgment Day. For all the screaming she did going in, now that she’s in, she doesn’t want to come out.”

  “Her name is Diana Hyde,” said Mary. “She says she’s Hyde’s daughter. She’s the one my mother was supporting, in a sort of—charitable institution.”

  “You don’
t say! Well, she does look rather like him, with that grin of hers, like an imp plotting mischief. And she’s wicked enough for anything. Tried to bite my arm when I put her in the bathtub, not that I’m going to put up with that sort of nonsense! I wonder who her mother could be. I pity her, whoever she was, getting herself involved with a man like Hyde. The ways of men are unaccountable, my mother always told me. Not that I’ve ever been married myself, thank the Lord. Where should I put these?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Mary. “Can you put them on the sideboard? I’ve made a bit of a mess on the table, I’m afraid. And would you mind pouring me a cup of tea, Mrs. Poole? I don’t want to lose my place here. She says more than that. She claims Hyde was not a man at all, but a sort of disguise my father wore to visit—well, places he should not have been, evidently. Hyde was a way to hide his activities.”

  “Surely not, miss,” said Mrs. Poole, looking astonished. “Why, the two were quite different. Dr. Jekyll was a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman, and Mr. Hyde was a low, creeping sort of thing. It’s not possible, I assure you.”

  “Did you ever see them together?” asked Mary. That would settle the question once and for all.

  “Well, no, I can’t say as I did,” said Mrs. Poole, putting the tea tray on the sideboard. “But that doesn’t prove anything, does it? Perhaps Mr. Hyde claimed to be his master. I wouldn’t put it past him, especially when it came to the matter of paying bills.”

  Mrs. Poole handed Mary a cup of tea. “Lemon and sugar, as usual. I took the liberty of putting in two, seeing as you need strength after such a long day.” Mary took a sip. Ah, that was better. Of course she should have eaten, but there simply hadn’t been time, with the visit to Mr. Holmes and then to Whitechapel. And then the body of poor Molly Keane.

  “What do you remember about my father, Mrs. Poole?” she asked. “I was so young when he died—and he was not an affectionate father, even then. He was kind, or tried to be, but I always felt a little intimidated around him. I remember him teaching me the table of elements and showing me how the flame of the Bunsen burner turned different colors in response to various chemicals.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Poole, frowning. “He was always a kind gentleman, as you say. Even to a chambermaid, as I was then. Although he smelled funny. It was those chemicals he used. Always experimenting, he was, in the laboratory. My father never believed he committed suicide. Thought he might have swallowed one of those chemicals of his by accident, and poisoned himself.”

  “He may have poisoned himself, in a way,” said Mary. She hesitated—would her idea sound foolish? Impossible? But she had to tell someone, and she had known Mrs. Poole as long as she could remember. Mrs. Poole had been like a mother to her, when her own mother couldn’t be. “These documents imply—they seem to indicate—that he was performing chemical experiments. On himself, and one of those experiments transformed him into Hyde. The disguise wasn’t just a physical change, like changing his clothes and putting on false hair, but an actual chemical transformation.”

  “Lord have mercy,” said Mrs. Poole. “Is that even possible?”

  “I know it sounds absurd,” said Mary. “But look at this.” She opened the laboratory notebook to a page she had marked and pointed to an entry written in her father’s crabbed, shaky script.

  Today, I let out the beast Hyde. He is stronger than I am. What will he do when I can no longer control his impulses?

  Last night, she had assumed these sentences meant her father had fought with Hyde. Now, they took on a different meaning. “And look, a couple of pages later.” Mary flipped past several pages of formulas and scientific notes.

  The sight of my face in the mirror. The horror! The horror! He has gained the power to transform at will, and I cannot stop him.

  “And the final entry.”

  All is lost. All, all lost, and I am a dead man.

  “I don’t understand,” said Mrs. Poole.

  How could she explain? It would sound so strange, almost absurd, and she was not entirely sure she believed it herself. And yet Mary had to try. “Why did the sight of his own face fill him with horror? And these two letters from Maw & Sons, the wholesale chemist and supplier, about some sort of powder he ordered. Look, in the first one they say they’re enclosing another batch, and in the second they apologize that it’s not working as expected. They offer a refund, but insist that it’s identical to the first batch in chemical composition. What if he transformed into Hyde repeatedly, but then the chemical transformation stopped working? What if he became stuck as Hyde? And then—committed suicide.”

  “But why ever would Dr. Jekyll want to do such a thing?” asked Mrs. Poole. She sounded completely unconvinced.

  “I don’t know,” said Mary. Suddenly, she felt very tired. Surely the whole thing was impossible? No, not impossible. Merely improbable. This was the nineteenth century, the age of science. Who knew what possibilities existed in the natural world? If a caterpillar could transform into a butterfly . . .

  “You said yourself that the ways of men are unaccountable. There are many reasons a man, even a gentleman, would assume a disguise. To visit opium dens or prostitutes. Commit murder with impunity. Do the things that gentlemen are not supposed to do. He may not have been the man we remember.”

  “You’ve started without me,” said Diana. In comparison to how she had looked earlier, she positively glowed with cleanliness. Her hair was wet and slicked back, like a seal’s, and she wore a clean white nightdress of Mary’s. The cut on her arm was neatly bandaged.

  “I didn’t realize you wanted to read through stacks of documents,” said Mary.

  “I don’t. But I want to know what you find out.” Diana grabbed a ham sandwich and sat on the other end of the sofa, drawing up her bare feet.

  “Put a plate under that,” said Mrs. Poole.

  “You’re supposed to call me miss,” said Diana.

  “I’ll call you miss when you deserve it,” said Mrs. Poole. “I’ve put her in the old nursery, miss,” she said to Mary. “I’ll brush her clothes for tomorrow, but some of them are in a disreputable state.”

  “Disreputable yourself!” Diana shoved the sandwich into her mouth and took a large bite.

  “Diana, if you’re not polite to Mrs. Poole, your stay in this house won’t be a pleasant one,” said Mary. “She’s the one who cooks for us and cleans our rooms, and makes our lives generally comfortable. Although if I don’t find a way to make money soon, she’ll have to find another employer, and we will have to fend for ourselves.”

  “I’m not leaving you, miss,” said Mrs. Poole. “This has been my home since I was a girl, and I’m staying, whether you can pay me or not.”

  “I thought you were rich,” said Diana. “I wondered why you don’t have pictures on the walls, and most of the floors are bare. And there are holes in this sofa.” She put her big toe into one.

  “Well, I’m not rich,” said Mary. “And stop that, or you’ll tear it further. When my father died, we discovered that his fortune had disappeared, and my mother’s income was only for her lifetime. Now that’s gone as well. Even the money she left to pay for your care at St. Mary Magdalen is almost gone.” Twenty-three pounds. She had meant to go to the bank this morning, after visiting Mr. Holmes, but instead she had ended up in Whitechapel. She would have to go tomorrow, as soon as the bank opened. “Once that money runs out, there will be nothing for you or me or Mrs. Poole to live on. I sold everything of value to pay for my mother’s care, because her income wasn’t enough. I’ve tried to sell this house, but no one will buy it. These are difficult economic times—not that I expect you to understand, since I doubt you’ve read a newspaper in your life. And I can’t seem to find employment, even as a nursemaid. So there’s nothing. I thought if I found Hyde, I could claim the reward, although if you’re correct and my father was Hyde, he died fourteen years ago. In the meantime, you will be polite to Mrs. Poole. Of course, if you’d rather sleep in the scullery, you’re welcome t
o do so.”

  Diana looked at Mary, then at Mrs. Poole, and said, “Thank you for the bath.” She grinned like a monkey, but still, they were words Mary had never expected to hear out of her mouth.

  “You’re welcome,” said Mrs. Poole, sounding unconvinced. “Is there anything else you want, miss?”

  “No, thank you,” said Mary. “But if I do, I’ll ring.”

  After Mrs. Poole had left, Mary sat rereading the letter from Italy in silence. Diana chewed on the sandwich with her mouth open. Then, “What is that?” she asked.

  “Aren’t you capable of being quiet?” asked Mary.

  “Oh, I’m capable, all right,” said Diana. “I’ll be as quiet as a mouse, for as long as it takes you to notice the seal.”

  “What do you mean, the seal?”

  Diana pointed to one of the envelopes lying on the table. It had been sealed with red wax. Impressed in the wax were two letters: S.A. It was the same design as on the watch fob in Molly Keane’s hand.

  For a moment, Mary could not speak. Then, “How could I have missed that?” she said. And there it was on another of the envelopes as well. Two envelopes, two identical seals.

  “Well, what are the letters about?” asked Diana.

  “I have no idea.” Mary pulled a letter out of one envelope and handed it to Diana. “Look.”

  Diana wrinkled her brow. “Is it in some kind of code?”

  “No, it’s in Latin. But I can’t read it. Miss Murray started me on Latin, but after my mother became so sick, I couldn’t afford a governess. All I remember is Carthago delenda est. They’re both in Latin, and postmarked from Budapest. Who would be writing to my father from Budapest in Latin? The other letters are the two from Maw’s, about some chemical he was trying to buy, and this one from Italy, which is in English, thank goodness.”

  “Well, what does that one say?” asked Diana.

  Mary gave her a look, sighed, and started reading it out loud.

  My dear Jekyll,

  I am glad to hear that your experiments are going well. I remain convinced that we are working along the correct lines. The important scientific advances of this century will be in the biological sciences, as the important advances of the previous century were in chemistry and physics. Darwin has shown us the way, although he himself cannot see past the end of his nose! (I have heard it is a rather long nose, but not long enough to see the truth.) We shall go where Darwin never imagined. Transmutation, not natural selection, is the agent of evolution. God is an alchemist, not a plodding incrementalist like Signore Darwin! We shall show the scientific community, shall we not, my friend and colleague? Only those who dare much are capable of changing history and shining the light of knowledge on our dark world.