They had to pass the asylum gates again, taking care not to be seen—but no one was watching. Peaceful Row was just off the main road, a paved street with modern cottages arranged neatly on either side, each with its own small garden. Joe Abernathy’s cottage was at the end of the street, before the pavement turned into a path and wandered across fields filled with clover and buttercups. Several cows looked at them curiously, then went back to tearing up mouthfuls of grass. The cottage was surrounded by a garden in which vegetables grew among the flowers. Several hens scratched in the dirt. To one side of the cottage, a woman was hanging laundry on a line.
“Pardon me,” said Holmes. “Mrs. Abernathy?”
“Aye, I’m she,” said the woman, wiping her hands on her apron and approaching the fence. “And who might you be, sir?” She looked at him warily, as though he might be selling some sort of patented medicine or mechanical broom.
“I’m Sherlock Holmes, and I’ve come to talk to Joe,” said the detective. He waited, but if he expected her to recognize the name, he was disappointed. She merely nodded and said, “I’ll see if he’s in.” She walked through the side door, then came out again a moment later.
“Aye, he says to go on in. You’ll forgive me, sir. What with this lunatic escaping, and then losing his position over it, he’s not wanting to see many people just now. Especially not newspaper men, and you have that look about you.”
“I’ll stay out here, I think,” said Mrs. Poole. “You have a way with the linen, ma’am. I’ve never seen pillowcases so white. What do you bleach them in?”
“Oh, well, I make my own washing powder, but it’s the lavender as does it. I lay them out on lavender to dry . . . ,” said Mrs. Abernathy, visibly pleased.
“There goes my vanity, Miss Jekyll,” said Holmes as they walked through the garden, avoiding the hens, which did not move out of their way. “The look of a newspaper man indeed! But our Mrs. Poole is proving invaluable. She is a mistress of the art of distraction.”
The side door led directly into the kitchen, which was spotlessly clean. Joe was sitting at the table, reading a newspaper. When they entered, he looked up.
“Well, if it isn’t you, miss! Mother told me Mr. Holmes had some ladies with him, but I didn’t expect one of them to be you. What a pleasure to see you again. I’m just reading about old Renfield’s escape. You know I lost my position over this affair? Although how they expected me to prevent it, when the man can escape from a police wagon, I don’t know. He must be a magician!”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Holmes. “He may have been helped. That’s what we’ve come to talk to you about, to see if Renfield had any associates.”
“Associates? I don’t know what kind of associates you would be meaning. He was mostly locked up in the asylum. But when he run away, which he did regular, he could have formed associates that helped him escape.”
“Dr. Seward said he was a businessman before he became mad,” said Mary. “Could he have had business associates, perhaps? Anyone he knew from his life before? Did he ever receive visitors?”
“No, never a visitor. I didn’t know he was a businessman. That must be why he kept writing numbers down, as though keeping accounts. Of the flies he was eating, you know, and how much life they were giving him. Although he called them his experiments. He would go on about those experiments of his, how each fly gave him so much life and no more. He wanted to know how much life he could get out of them, and then how much if he fed them to spiders and ate the spiders, and then how much if the spiders were eaten by birds—but we never let it get past spiders, which he could catch himself. ‘I’ll show them,’ he would say to me. ‘Someday, Joe, I’ll show them my notebooks, and then they’ll have to take me back. They can’t deny me the secret of life.’ But when I asked him who would take him back, and who was denying him the secret of life, whatever that might be, he would cringe and whine, saying they would kill him straight away if he told anyone. But that was all part of his madness, miss.”
“Yes, although there is often a method in madness,” said Mary. “Do you remember anything else he used to say?”
“No, that was about all. Just the flies, and the spiders eating the flies, and then the birds, and he wanted a cat. That’s what he wanted most, a cat to eat the birds, and he would eat the cat, I presume. And get life from it.”
Before they left, Holmes insisted on giving Joe a half-crown. “Thank you, sir,” said Joe. “And if I think of anything else, I’ll let you know. I hope they deal with old Renfield kindly when they catch him. I don’t believe he murdered those women. He was always a gentle soul, excepting to spiders and flies.”
Holmes and Mary walked away from Joe’s house in a thoughtful mood. “You’re both awfully quiet,” said Mrs. Poole, tucking away the recipe for homemade washing powder that Mrs. Abernathy had given her.
“Do you think—?” said Mary, looking at Holmes.
“I think it’s a distinct possibility,” he said. “You were right, everyone does seem to belong to this blasted society. If Renfield was once a member . . .”
“He might know some of the others,” said Mary. “Although if he had once been a member, surely Dr. Seward would have been aware of it? We know he’s a member himself.”
“Ah, that Dr. Seward was lying through his teeth,” said Mrs. Poole. “You can always tell when people are lying. It’s when they look at you too straight, as though they were angels here on Earth. And indignant, as though they can’t believe you would doubt them.”
“Perhaps,” said Holmes. “If he knew that Renfield was once a member of the Alchemical Society, he would certainly have reason to lie.”
It was a perfect spring day, not raining for once, and as they walked back to the train station, Mary imagined they were simply three people going for a walk in a country town. The sun shone down on the cottages and shops of Purfleet, and in the gardens she could see poppies and the tall blue spikes of larkspur. But then she remembered Molly Keane, dead on the streets of Whitechapel, lying in a pool of her own blood. It could not make her enjoy the day less, but it reminded her that there were still murders to investigate.
CHAPTER XIV
The Twisted Man
Mary wondered if the train ride back to London would be like the one that morning. Would Holmes spend it discussing domestic details with Mrs. Poole? But no, he and Mary went over the details of the case. If Renfield had not killed those women, who had? Evidence seemed to indicate that it was someone connected with the Société des Alchimistes, but whom? Dr. Seward’s letter had made clear that he had no knowledge of the murders—indeed, he was alarmed by them. But it was also clear that there were various factions in the society. Could this be the work of a faction that opposed Seward and his friends? Who then were they? It seemed as though they were in contact with Renfield, without Seward’s knowledge.
“So on the one hand,” said Mary, “we have my father, Dr. Rappaccini, and Dr. Moreau, who all knew each other, and who are all dead. And then we have Dr. Seward and his friend Professor Van Helsing, who knows Mr. Prendick, who knew Dr. Moreau! And then we have Renfield, and the implication that he may at one time have seen Hyde. Three different groups of people. Are they friends? Enemies? In league with one another? And who among them would be murdering women? Beatrice said it was an ancient experiment, the same process that had created Frankenstein’s monster a hundred years ago. Why would anyone want to re-create that?”
“Then there is the question of whether this is all connected to the Magdalen Society,” said Holmes. “Is it merely a coincidence that four of the murdered women had been inmates of the society? I wonder whether Miss Moreau has any information for us. Perhaps there will be a message when we return.”
“What about Mr. Prendick?” asked Mary. “Don’t we need to find him—and follow him? Deerborne Hotel in Soho. It shouldn’t be hard to find.”
“Oh no, you don’t,” said Mrs. Poole. “Neither of you seems to have noticed that you haven�
��t eaten anything since breakfast. First we go back to the house—it’s almost tea time. Anyway, you need to check for messages, don’t you? And then you can go following whoever you please.”
But when they arrived at 11 Park Terrace, there was no message. As soon as they stepped out of the cab from the station, Mrs. Poole said, “The door’s open.” And sure enough, the front door was almost imperceptibly open, as though it had been closed by a person who was not very careful.
“Beatrice! Justine!” Mary called as soon as they entered the house. Her words echoed down the hall. There was no response. Then all three of them called, even the respectable Mrs. Poole, who as far as Mary knew had never shouted before in her life.
MRS. POOLE: Of course I’ve shouted before. I’m human, aren’t I?
DIANA: Scolded isn’t the same as shouted.
There was no response. The house was empty—except, of course, for the Beast Man lying on the floor of Justine’s room, but being dead, he scarcely counted. Mary almost tripped over him when she ran upstairs, in a panic, to see why Beatrice, at least, wasn’t answering. She screamed just a little, more in surprise than fright, when she saw him on the carpet. The sound brought Mrs. Poole and Holmes upstairs after her. She stood in the entrance to the room, looking at the dead Beast Man. He lay amid a tangle of bed curtains—someone, whether a Beast Man or Justine, had torn them from the bed. And the rest of the room was a shambles. Chairs were overturned, the shaving stand had been knocked over, and its mirror was covered with a spiderweb of cracks. The clock and spill vase had been swept off the mantelpiece. They lay, smashed into pieces, on the hearth.
“Dear Lord,” said Mrs. Poole.
“They put up a fight,” said Mary. She did not know what else to say.
“They did indeed,” said Holmes. “Look at this man’s face. Although man is a generous term to use for him. Judging by his hairiness and the shape and size of his teeth, he was once a bear. He seems clumsily made. I wonder . . . well, no time for speculation now.”
On his cheeks, the Bear Man had two marks, as though he had been grasped by two red hands.
“That must have been Beatrice,” said Mary. “She told us her touch could burn.”
Holmes walked around the room, examining the overturned furniture, the tangled curtains. “I want to go outside and check for footprints. No, Miss Jekyll, you may not come with me.” Mary opened her mouth to protest. “More of them may be lurking about. So, if you please.”
She shut her mouth again, but was not in fact pleased. If there were Beast Men lurking about, two together would be safer than one. And surely she could be of help? But Holmes was already gone. She waited impatiently as Mrs. Poole walked around the room, surveying the damage. “Look at this clock. It came with your mother when she married your father, all the way from Yorkshire. It stood on this mantle for more than twenty years, and I was always grateful, miss, that you couldn’t sell it because it ran a bit slow. Well, it won’t be keeping time now, that’s for certain.”
“Surely that’s less important than Justine and Beatrice?” said Mary.
“Of course it is,” said Mrs. Poole, reproachfully. “But we can’t do anything about them at the moment, can we? Do what you can, as my mother used to say, and leave the rest to God. Or Mr. Holmes, as the case may be.”
“I would never arrogate to myself the powers of the deity, Mrs. Poole,” said Holmes. He reentered the bedroom with his long stride. “There were five of them, including our dead friend. Three wearing boots, two with feet too deformed for human footwear. All their gaits are irregular, as though they were shuffling. I saw their footprints clearly in the mud on the sidewalk, five coming and four going, although they ended at the bottom of the road, where I believe they had a carriage waiting. Going, there is a mark as of someone being hurried along and half dragged, no clear prints, but the foot is smaller than the others. Perhaps one of the ladies was dragged and the other was carried.”
“Beatrice must have killed the Bear Man, but she couldn’t have handled five,” said Mary. “And Justine was too sick to fight back.”
“I think Justine must have done some fighting too, nevertheless,” said Holmes. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be so much damage.”
“We need to summon the police,” said Mrs. Poole.
“No,” said Mary. “The police would never believe us. What would we say? You need to look for a poisonous girl and a woman who is over six feet tall, because they’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of Beast Men?”
“Miss Jekyll is right,” said Holmes. “Lestrade would laugh in our faces. We need to send Watson a message, and find Prendick. All the clues indicate that Miss Rappaccini and Miss Frankenstein were kidnapped by Beast Men, and Prendick knows how to make Beast Men. You’ll need to stay here, Mrs. Poole, in case the others return or try to contact us. And Miss Jekyll . . .”
“I’m not staying here,” said Mary. “I’m coming with you. Proper or not, I want to find out what happened to Beatrice and Justine.”
“You go right ahead, miss,” said Mrs. Poole. “Two heads are better than one, they say. I’ll straighten up here.”
“If you see Charlie,” said Holmes, “send him on to Watson with this message: ‘Miss Rappaccini and Miss Frankenstein have been kidnapped, and we’ve gone to find Prendick in Soho, at the Deerborne Hotel.’ He may have simply gotten the stationary there, but hopefully he’ll be staying either at the hotel or close by. Come on, Miss Jekyll. We haven’t had our tea, but no rest for the wicked, as they say—or for detectives either!”
Together, they set out for Soho. At the last minute, Mrs. Poole had handed Mary a tea cake, saying, “You have to eat something, miss. Otherwise, you’ll faint, and what sort of help will you be to Mr. Holmes then?” Mary walked quickly, the uneaten tea cake in the pocket of her mackintosh, worried about the two girls. Where were they? Would they be all right? She had only known them for a few days, but already they felt like family, as though they belonged together.
BEATRICE: As we do.
MARY: Despite our differences.
BEATRICE: Or because of them.
Meanwhile, Catherine had spent that afternoon sewing.
Kate Bright-Eyes had done wonders. At The Bells, where they found her, she had worked on Catherine’s face and hair. “I have all my things here,” she told them. “After what happened to Molly, I can’t live alone anymore. I get nightmares! So I’m renting a room at the inn, though it’s twice as much as my old lodgings. You’re a brave one, Miss Moreau. I wouldn’t go into that society, knowing the girls who died had been there, not for a hundred pounds. There, how does that look?” Catherine looked at herself in the cracked mirror that hung in Kate’s room. The powder Kate had put on her face and neck covered the scars. In the mirror, she saw rouged lips and cheeks, and a great deal of hair, not all of it her own. Yes, it would do just fine.
Of course, as soon as she arrived at the Magdalen Society, Mrs. Raymond had told her, rather sharply, to wash her face and rearrange her hair. She had wiped off the rouge—it had done its work, which was convincing Mrs. Raymond that she was in need of salvation. But she had not touched the powder, which was the color of her skin anyway. “It’s what actresses use,” Kate had told her. “You’re a bit darker than most of us, ain’t you? But I think it will do.” With it, she looked . . . entirely human. She liked looking human. And then she had gone to the workroom.
If you asked Catherine what she likes less than sewing, she would say being shut up in a cage, in a ship’s hold, for weeks while that ship sails across the Pacific Ocean to a mysterious island. Or, on that island, being transformed from an animal into a woman without the benefit of anesthesia. But that might be it. She would prefer eating rats on the streets of London or being chased by Wolf Men.
MARY: Must you be so melodramatic?
And she is particularly bad at it. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that her hands were once paws, but she is unable to sew even a straight seam, as Sister Margaret reported to Mrs. R
aymond.
“She’s quite hopeless. I gave her a tea towel to hem, and look at it! Perhaps we can have her do something else—mop the floors, for instance.” The new girl’s yellow eyes made Sister Margaret nervous.
“We might put her in the cleaning crew, by and by,” said Mrs. Raymond. “But for now, I want her under your supervision. There’s something about her . . .” She pondered for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I can’t place it, not yet. At any rate, I don’t want her doing anything arduous. We don’t want her to suddenly leave, do we? To return to the base luxury of her life on the streets, like those other girls? Poor Sally Hayward or Anna Pettingill? We want her to understand the value of what we offer here—the comfort and safety of the Magdalen Society. And get her a work dress as soon as possible. I don’t want her going around in that ridiculous getup.”
DIANA: How do you know what they said? It’s not as though you could hear them.
CATHERINE: I did, actually. It was the first time I tried reconnoitering, but Mrs. Raymond was in her office. I was right outside the door and heard them. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I got the details exactly right. What matters is whether it makes for a good story.
Whatever Catherine was considering at that moment, it was not the comfort and safety of the Magdalen Society. Her thread had snapped again, which meant re-threading and making sure the new stitches continued imperceptibly from the old, while overlapping enough so that neither end would come loose.
“Why are we sewing, anyway?” she asked. “I don’t see why we all have to be sewing. Aren’t there other things we could be doing that would save our souls just as well?”
“Hush! Sister Margaret could return at any moment,” said the girl sitting next to her. The girl’s name was Doris, and she had pimples on her cheeks. She was only fifteen, and rather plump. It was difficult to tell that she had ever wandered the London streets. She looked like any servant girl from Mayfair or Marylebone. “The linens and clothes we sew are bought by charitable women, who buy them to support the society.”
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Page 23