Diana stuck a fork into the piece of toast on top of the pile, moved it to her plate, buttered it lavishly, then spread a thick layer of marmalade over it.
“Just toast for me, please,” said Mary. She was hungry, but the thought of an egg turned her stomach. She poured herself a cup of tea and wrapped her fingers around it, grateful for the warmth. How long had it been since she last sat at this table? Two days? Could it only have been two days? It was as though time had passed differently. And here she was, back again at the same table, in the same room, with morning sun streaming through the lace curtains. It seemed completely different.
“Well?” said Diana, after Mrs. Poole had left the room. “Did you talk to him?”
“To whom?” Mary added two lumps from the Minton sugar bowl, with its pattern of birds and flowers, that her mother had purchased as a bride newly arrived in London, and sipped her tea. Yes, that was exactly what she needed.
“To Dad, of course,” said Diana. “Did you talk to him at all? Ask him anything?”
“No,” said Mary. “I’ll talk to him when he’s properly in prison.” And there she would ask him—what? Whether he had climbed up the wall, looked in through the window? Whether he had killed her mother? Intentionally or not, it scarcely mattered. Ernestine Jekyll lay in her grave, in the churchyard of St. Marylebone.
“Oh, you are so stupid!” said Diana. “Why didn’t you talk to him when you could? I wish I’d been there. I would have asked him all sorts of questions. Like where he’s been for fourteen years. I bet he wasn’t with Adam the whole time. I bet he traveled around and had adventures. And you didn’t even ask him about them!”
Mary felt an urge to throw her teacup at Diana. “First of all, he may be your father, but he’s certainly not mine. My father died the day yours took control of his body and life. Second, I have no wish to know about his adventures, whatever they might be. I want to know where the money went and how he could have abandoned . . .” Her mother. Her. She did not want to tell Diana about her suspicions, not yet. After all, it wasn’t Diana’s mother who had been killed. Mary had been the one to watch her mother die, to stand by the grave as her mother’s coffin was lowered into the ground. She gripped the teacup tightly. And then she reminded herself that Diana’s mother had died a pauper’s death, with no one to care for her or even bury her properly. She put the teacup back down on the table, afraid she might break it. “Third, you do not call me stupid in my own house.”
“I calls it as I sees it,” said Diana. “And he is as much your father as he is mine, sister. Do you think your precious Dr. Jekyll simply disappeared when he turned into Hyde? He’s still there. He’s always there. He may look different, but Hyde is just another name he calls himself.” She gripped the butter knife, as though at any moment she might fly across the table and attack Mary with it.
Alice stared at them both, turning from one to the other, fascinated yet fearful, wondering if there was going to be a fight right here in the morning room.
Just then, the front doorbell rang. “That will be Catherine and Mr. Holmes,” said Mary. “I didn’t expect them to return so quickly! They must not have spent much time at Scotland Yard.” Had they left Hyde there, in police custody? They must have.
A moment later, Holmes strode into the morning room, ahead of Mrs. Poole, who was looking flustered.
MRS. POOLE: And a good thing too. I don’t know what the two of you would have done without him to calm things down.
DIANA: Good thing for Mary! I would have thrown the knife at her.
CATHERINE: You mean good thing for you. Why do you think none of us notices anymore when you get angry? You get angry all the time, and then it passes, like a spring storm. But when Mary gets angry . . .
DIANA: When Mary gets angry, she sits there and stares at you. She doesn’t even say anything.
CATHERINE: It’s what she does after that. Remember Count Leopold. We had no idea she was going to shoot him.
MARY: He deserved it. Also, I don’t get angry. I just dislike it when people are rude to my friends.
[The author feels obligated to point out that this remark was greeted with a collective snort.]
“Where is Miss Frankenstein?” said Holmes, looking around the room.
“Upstairs,” said Mary. “She fainted again—she’s not as strong as she seems. You must not upset her.”
“Forgive me,” said Holmes. “My manners are atrocious.”
“You could say that again,” said Catherine, sliding into the morning room behind him, around Mrs. Poole. “I won’t allow you to endanger Justine’s health, Mr. Holmes. Not even inadvertently. She’s strong, but she’s also very sensitive, particularly to emotional strain. Every once in a while, her heart gives out. Remember that she died and was brought back to life. You can’t treat her like an ordinary woman. Mrs. Poole, are there any kippers?”
“That’s exactly what I want to ask her about,” said Holmes. “With your permission, Miss Moreau, and yours, Miss Jekyll. I can see how much you all care about each other. May I speak with her, if I am—less abrupt than I unfortunately can be when pursuing an inquiry?”
He looked so chagrinned that Mary felt sorry for him. He had not meant to be rude. He was just—well, he was Sherlock Holmes, and he always would be. She must not expect him to behave in any other way.
“She’s in bed,” said Mary. “But she’s prepared to talk to you. I think it would be all right if you went up to her. I’d rather not make her come down. Catherine, what do you think?”
“Honestly? I’d rather you let her rest, but I doubt she will until she’s spoken with you. And I think she needs to talk about what happened, or she won’t be able to let go of it. That’s how Justine is. But are there any kippers, or maybe sausages?”
Holmes nodded. “Then, if the good Mrs. Poole will countenance such unorthodox behavior, I will go up to her room and speak with her there.”
“I’ll go up with you,” said Mary. “I’m almost done.”
“I’m not going to miss this!” said Diana, shoving toast into her mouth.
“Well, we can’t all go up,” said Mary crossly. “This isn’t some sort of circus.”
“With Mr. Holmes as Atlas, the Strongman?” said Catherine, pouring herself a cup of tea, as though amused at the thought. “I’m certainly going up, if only to make sure he doesn’t give Justine a fit with his line of inquiry! Where is the milk jug?”
Alice handed it to her.
“Are you coming up too?” asked Mary, smiling at Alice. After all that had happened last night, she did not want Alice to feel left out.
“I’m just a scullery maid, miss,” she replied, shaking her head rapidly, like a sparrow. “No more adventures for me, thank you. I’ll clear up here and then bring something up for Mr. Holmes and Miss Moreau. They need their breakfasts too, I’m thinking.”
And then, despite Mary’s concern that they would all be too much for Justine, they trooped upstairs: Mary leading the way, with Holmes and Catherine and Diana trailing behind.
Justine was sitting up in bed, looking pale and tired, but composed. Beatrice was sitting in a chair by the bedside, drinking more of that green sludge she seemed to favor. Justine had toast and what looked a bowl of vegetable broth on a tray, but she had not touched it.
When they entered, Beatrice moved back toward the window and opened it a crack at the bottom, to let in air.
“Mr. Holmes,” said Justine. “You see I have been waiting. You told me that you wanted me to tell you everything I know about Adam Frankenstein. It’s little enough, I’m afraid. Before last night, I had not seen him in almost a hundred years. Even with what I know of him, I would not have thought him capable of such atrocities. Cutting up women! He was always violent, but impulsive, not calculating. I would never have imagined . . .”
Holmes sat on the edge of the bed and took her long, pale hand. “Forgive me, Miss Frankenstein. I do not mean to distress you, but you understand, I’m sure, why we must kno
w everything. Adam, Hyde, and Prendick were all involved with this secretive society, although in different ways, I suspect. Prendick seems to still be a member, Hyde was cast out, Adam was never admitted. And Renfield—what is his connection? Why did Hyde choose him to pin the murders on? You see how complicated this case has become. I doubt Renfield will give us any useful information—he is too sunk in his madness. Hyde may speak, once he has spent some time in Newgate. I have arranged for an interview with him, after he is charged and imprisoned. Meanwhile, any additional information may lead us to the Société des Alchimistes.”
Justine nodded. “I will tell you everything I know.”
“And Mr. Holmes, I found this on the bookshelf while searching for something to read to Justine.” Beatrice picked up a book from the side table and handed it to him. Over his shoulder, Mary saw the title in gilt letters on a green cover:
Frankenstein:
A Biography of the Modern Prometheus
“I believe of us all, only Dr. Watson and I have read it. My father believed it to be an accurate account of the creation and death of Adam. We know now that it is at least partly false—Justine was not destroyed, and Adam did not pursue his creator into the Arctic waste and die there. I do not know why Mrs. Shelley falsified information. Nevertheless, I believe we should all read her book.”
“I’ve read it,” said Catherine. “It was on Moreau’s island. That’s how I knew to look for Justine.”
“Well, I shall read it as soon as possible,” said Holmes, examining the frontispiece. “A pursuit through the Arctic—it sounds quite the shilling shocker. Miss Frankenstein will tell us to what extent it can be trusted.”
CATHERINE: Although it’s not at all a shilling shocker. She was a very good writer, you know.
DIANA: Why are you interrupting your own story?
“I’ve never read it myself,” said Justine. “But I will tell you my story, and you can judge. Perhaps if you will all sit down . . .”
Holmes nodded and withdrew to the other chair. Mary and Catherine sat at the foot of the bed. Diana shamelessly plopped in bed next to Justine, sitting cross-legged and with her chin in her hands, as though listening to a bedtime story.
Just as Justine was about to start, Alice brought up a tray with a plate of toast and eggs for Holmes, and a plate of kippers for Catherine. She gathered Mary’s and Catherine’s empty teacups on the tray, then headed once again toward the door.
Justine sat up against the pillows, took a sip of water from a glass on the side table, and said, “If you will pardon a preamble, I shall begin at the beginning—or my beginning, as it were.” Alice stopped and stood, half in and half out the door, leaning on the doorframe, as though even she could not help listening after all.
CHAPTER XIX
Justine’s Story
I do not remember my life before I woke on my father’s operating table, except in glimpses: my mother, a widow to whom I was simply another mouth to feed, sitting in her rocking chair by the fire, with my brother and sisters around her. She wore a faded black dress with a white lace fichu around her neck, and looked older than her years. The Frankensteins’ grand house on the shore of Lake Geneva, with its walls of gray stone, beneath mountains whose peaks were always covered with snow. In spring, we would gather wildflowers on their slopes and make crowns for ourselves, the upstairs maids and kitchen maids, even the fat old cook. Only the housekeeper was too proud to wear one. The courtroom in which I was condemned to death and the faces of the good men of Geneva, solemn beneath their white wigs, looking at me as though I were an insect, the lowest creature on God’s Earth.
I do not remember my first childhood, or how I grew up in the Frankenstein household.
But my father told me my history: how I was sent in service to his family when I was no older than Alice. How I was treated well, as part of the Frankenstein family. How his mother loved me, and how I was considered almost a sister by his cousin Elizabeth, who had lived with the Frankensteins since she was a child. I was trained as a nursemaid for the Frankenstein boys, first for his younger brother Ernest, and then for the youngest, William. Victor, the eldest, was already in school, and soon to depart for university. He told me that I was a happy girl, always laughing, with golden hair and eyes like the sky above Lausanne in summer. That is what he told me. But I do not remember.
One day, William was found dead, strangled in the woods. The house was searched, and a locket that he had been wearing, with a portrait of his mother in it, was found among my clothes. I was accused of his murder—I, who had taken care of him since birth, who would never have harmed a hair on his head.
It was Adam who had killed him, in a fit of rage when William, meeting him in the woods, called him an ugly ogre. He confessed it all later to my father—confessed to the murder, and to putting the locket in a pocket of my apron. He was responsible—both for William’s death and for mine. But the jury did not know of Adam’s existence, so I was condemned to death, and then hanged.
CATHERINE: Frankenstein should have told them.
JUSTINE: We’ve had this argument before. How could he have convinced them that he, a university student, had created a man out of corpses and brought it to life? They would never have believed him.
CATHERINE: He should have found a way. His family was one of the most important, one of the richest, in the region. The Frankensteins should have protected you.
JUSTINE: But they believed me guilty. Only my father knew the truth. And remember, I confessed. I should not have, but the priest told me I could only have absolution if I confessed to the crime. I thought that without absolution, I would not be able to enter Heaven or stand before God, who knew I was as innocent as the bluebells that grow on the mountain slopes. I know now that God is merciful and would have understood, but I was only seventeen, and frightened.
CATHERINE: I wonder which of them would win, in a contest for worst father? Frankenstein, Rappaccini, Jekyll, or Moreau?
The night after my hanging, Adam came to my father and threatened him. If he did not make a monster out of me, a monster like him, Adam would kill the members of the Frankenstein family, one by one.
MARY: Why you, Justine? Why did he ask for you specifically?
DIANA: Well, she was a convenient dead body. I mean, she’d just been hanged.
MARY: You really are the worst, you know that?
DIANA: What? It’s true.
My father told me that Adam has seen me on the day of William’s murder. I was worn out from searching for the boy and had fallen asleep in a barn, on a pile of hay. That was when he put the locket into my apron. He must have thought me . . . attractive, I suppose.
So my father agreed that he would do this thing, bring me back to life—for Adam, to be his mate. But not in Geneva. He had heard of new surgical techniques developed in England, and would travel there, to study at the Royal College of Surgeons. Then he would travel to a remote location, where he would not be disturbed in his work. He preserved the parts of my body and packed them into a trunk—very cleverly, he told me. But of course I remember none of this.
What I remember is the waking, as though coming up through water, up and up until I thought there would be no surface and I might drown. Then I took my first breath, gasping and staring wildly about me. There was a light like the moon, but it was the lantern over the operating table. The first words my father said to me were, “Justine? Are you awake?”
There was pain, a great deal of pain. Catherine and I talked about this, when we were in the Circus of Marvels and Delights. We are both made creatures. That is why I think we understood each other immediately, when she found me. She said, “Do you remember the pain?” And I said, “How can I forget it?” But I healed.
“Can you walk?” my father asked.
I stumbled like a child to a bedroom he had prepared for me. For a week, I lay on a mattress filled with straw, half awake, half in fevered dreams. Then one day I opened my eyes and the sunlight was golden, the sea co
ntinually crashing against the rocks below. I could hear birds and insects. The fever was gone. I was alive.
“I was so worried,” he said to me later. “I thought I would lose you again.” So you see, he cared for me. He loved me . . .
I thought of him as my father because I remembered no other before him. Justine Moritz’s father had died when she was a child. It was Frankenstein who gave me life again—the life I have now. I had to learn how to walk, how to eat with a fork and spoon, how to read first words and then sentences. All these he taught me, carefully, patiently. He had brought a woman’s dress for me, but it did not fit. In creating me, he had necessarily made me larger, elongated the joints. He was not a trained surgeon, just a university student. He did not have Moreau’s skill.
At first, I had to wear his clothes, although the trousers were too short for me. But I found that if I cut the bodice off the dress and sewed a new waistband, I could make a serviceable skirt. I used the same needle and thread he had used to stitch me together. . . . Over it, I wore a shirt of my father’s. When it was tied with a sash, I looked respectable enough.
Slowly, slowly, I learned. For months, we lived peacefully in that lonely cottage, with its stone walls and low thatched roof. Once a week, he would take a boat to what he called Mainland, for we were on an island—one of the Orkneys, I found out later. Despite its name, Mainland was one of the other islands, the largest of them. We were on one of the smaller islands. Once a week, he would come back with food—flour, sugar, whatever we could not grow in our stone-walled garden or procure from the few poor cottagers who lived on that island with us. No one bothered us, and I was not seen except by sheep, and once a shepherd boy from a distance.
Our days were simple: a breakfast of porridge, then a walk across the hills or down to the rocky beach, and perhaps a game of ball to increase my coordination. Then study. He taught me so much! I suppose out of sheer boredom as much as a desire to educate me. As Justine Moritz, I had been merely a servant, who could read fairy tales and add numbers as long as she was using the fingers of both hands. As Justine Frankenstein, I read Aristotle and discussed the sorrows of young Werther. My father had brought two trunks, one filled with me, the other filled with books. I soon exhausted them and started reading my favorites a second time.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Page 31