The Jekyll Revelation

by Robert Masello

  ‘So you now have two Rippers?’ Fanny said, as if that prospect held some grim sort of satisfaction. Lloyd, a young man whose interest in anything but Constance Wooldridge was lackadaisical at best, looked positively riveted at receiving this privileged information.

  ‘Possibly. But knife attacks in London are not as uncommon as some people might think. What distinguishes Jack the Ripper, as he fashions himself, is the savagery and cunning. This morning, we got the following, delivered in the Central News Agency’s morning post.’ He took from his pocket, as gently as if it were a piece of a papyrus scroll, a postal card. ‘Might I ask a small favour of you, Mr Stevenson?’

  ‘If it is in my power to grant.’

  ‘Oh, it is.’ Abberline handed me his pencil and his note pad, turned to a blank page, and said, ‘Could you write down the following words?’

  I took the pad and pencil, and as he dictated, I wrote down, ‘I was not codding, dear old boss, when I gave you the tip.’ Then he said, ‘Thank you, that’s enough.’

  As he accepted the pad from my hand, his eye fell on the gash to my wrist. ‘That’s a nasty cut, and looks fresh,’ he said. ‘How did you get that?’

  ‘Unwisely, climbing over my garden wall. The gate was locked, and I didn’t want to wake the house when I came in late.’

  ‘So that’s from last night?’

  ‘Louis, let me look at that,’ Fanny said, bustling up from the sofa, turning my wrist to get a better look. ‘Why didn’t you call me? I could have dressed that properly.’

  Lloyd, meanwhile, showed no concern whatsoever; his eyes were fixed on Abberline, who was now comparing the words I had written to the postal card.

  ‘What’s the rest of the card say?’ Lloyd asked eagerly, all but trying to snatch it from the detective’s hand. ‘You know it will be printed in tomorrow’s paper, anyway.’

  Having done with his comparison, he gave it to Lloyd, who read it aloud. ‘I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you’ll hear about Saucy Jack’s work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn’t finish straight off. had not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again. Jack the Ripper.’

  I had never heard Lloyd read with such facility, or enthusiasm. ‘Dare I ask,’ he said to Abberline, ‘is this red ink, or blood, that it’s written in?’

  ‘Ink, like the first.’

  ‘But the handwriting is nothing like Louis’s, is it?’

  Dryly, the detective admitted, ‘No, it is not.’

  Fanny whirled around, exclaiming, ‘Is that what this is all about? You actually suspected my husband of being this foul creature?’

  ‘At the Yard, I’m afraid we rule nothing out until we have proof to the contrary.’

  ‘Then it’s no wonder you haven’t caught this monster, and probably never will. How dare you even think to accuse my husband?’

  ‘We have accused him of nothing,’ he said, slipping the papers and pencil into his pocket.

  ‘I’ll thank you to leave the house right now,’ Fanny said.

  At the door, to which I escorted him with Fanny, lest she give him a slap, Abberline put his brown bowler hat back on, and said, ‘Thank you for your time.’

  ‘Don’t forget this,’ Fanny said, smacking an ivory-handled umbrella into his hand.

  ‘Oh no,’ Abberline said, though looking straight at me, ‘that isn’t mine.’

  ‘You brought it.’

  ‘You must be mistaken,’ he said, still holding my gaze. Then, he touched the brim of his hat, and went down the steps to the street.

  TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

  Present Day

  Although it was the kind of event Rafe dreaded with every fiber of his being, he couldn’t refuse Miranda.

  When she’d held out the engraved card, he’d read it—at two p.m. that Sunday, there was to be a memorial service commemorating the life of Mrs. Gladys Ashcroft, at a private home in the posh suburb of San Marino—and handed it back to her, uncomprehending.

  “That’s my great-aunt Gladys, the one who left me the money.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “And the house is my mother’s.”

  Now he could see where this was heading.

  “I can’t face it alone. Will you go with me?”

  Even without that pleading look in her beautiful blue eyes, he could not have turned her down. There were a couple of sticking points, though.

  “I don’t own a suit.” That was the first.

  “I’ll buy you one, with Gladys’s money.”

  “No way. She shouldn’t have to pay for clothes for people coming to her funeral.”

  “It’s not a funeral. She’s already been cremated, per her instructions, and she’s in an urn in the family mausoleum at Forest Lawn.”

  “I do have a sport coat. Can I just wear that?”

  “You can wear your ranger duds, for all I care. Just come.”

  “And what about Lucy?” That was the second.

  “She can come, too, if she feels up to it.”

  But when Sunday came, Rafe wasn’t so sure she did. She was staying in the canyon because she’d come down with an awful flu, and Evangelina had been thrilled to have her out of the group home for a few days. “Once a bug starts going around here,” Evangelina had said, “it’s like I’m running a hospice.”

  When Rafe popped his head into the trailer to ask her, Lucy took out her earbuds, put down her magazine, and said, “Eww. A funeral?” Tripod was lying beside her on the bunk, on his back with his paws in the air.

  “It’s not a funeral,” he said, echoing Miranda. “And it’s supposed to be at a really pretty house.”

  “I’m too sick,” she said, sniffling for fuller effect. “Do I have to?”

  “No, you don’t have to,” he said, still debating the wisdom of leaving her alone in the trailer. “We’ll only be gone for about three hours, max.”

  “I want to go to sleep,” she said.

  “You’ll do that?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  With some reluctance, he said, “Okay, then. Just stay in the trailer, with the door locked, until we get back.”

  “Then can we go out for some ice cream?” Trip’s tail thumped. Certain words he knew.

  “Sure. And I’ll tell Miranda to leave the new key to the back door under the mat, so if you want anything from the fridge, you can have it.”

  Lucy didn’t exactly jump for joy. She was already acquainted with the contents of Miranda’s fridge—fruits, veggies, unsweetened juice, nonfat yogurt.

  “Call me on my cell if there’s any problem.”

  “Okay, okay,” she said, sticking her earbuds back in. “I’m not a baby.”

  Miranda came out of the house in a dress he’d never seen her in before—dark blue with a prim white collar—a short string of pearls, and pointy, high-heeled shoes. Suddenly, he could see what she had been brought up to be, the Miranda Willoughby of the Marlborough School, the one whose mother had expected her to go on to Wellesley and then marry a Princeton banker and raise three perfect children. A far cry from the Topanga Canyon Miranda, with her long loose skirts and sandals, and a shop filled with massage oils and homemade jam.

  But that was the one he’d fallen in love with.

  At least he’d stopped kidding himself. He hadn’t actually said the words—he’d have sooner stuck his hand in a beehive—but every night, the last thing he thought about, lying on his bunk, was Miranda, and the first thing he looked forward to in the morning was catching a glimpse of her passing the window in her apartment upstairs, or maybe popping open the screen door on the store. Any other guy would have made his move by now—even Rafe was disappointed in himself—but he knew that once he did, there was no going back. If she wasn’t receptive, he’d be so humiliated he’d have to find some other place to live.

  But if she was receptive—and he had every reason to believe that that was the case—then that posed a
whole other set of questions. What about his work? What about the fact that he had no money? That the Land Management office could cut off his funding any day? Or that Lucy could finally try Evangelina’s patience to the point where she was no longer welcome in the group home? She was aging out of the home as it was, and Evangelina had dropped a hint or two already. What kind of life could he and Miranda construct, when he brought nothing but poverty and family complications to it?

  In the back of the cramped compartment that passed for a closet, he’d found his sport coat; it was still in the plastic from the dry cleaner’s, where he’d taken it after wearing it to the induction ceremony for new environmental science field officers. That had been four years ago. He put it on over a fresh white shirt and a pair of khakis he’d smoothed out by slipping them under the mattress while he’d slept.

  He’d even played a hose over the purple-and-gold Land Rover to get some of the dust off it—the soil in the canyon was so parched from the drought that the slightest breeze lifted it up and deposited it like a fine silt on everything—and put extra air in its worn tires. Miranda had hinted at taking her Subaru, but Rafe liked to be behind the wheel of his own car—even this one.

  Driving the length of the main road, with Miranda in the passenger seat, he felt as self-conscious as some kid on prom night. There wasn’t much traffic in either direction, but the hairpin turns and steep cliffs to one side or the other meant he had to keep his eyes on the road, much as they would have liked to stray to his beautiful companion.

  On the way, Miranda explained the cast of characters he was going to meet, most notably her mother, with whom he already knew she did not get along, and her mother’s third husband, Bentley. “I think I told you about him—the retired curator from the Huntington, which pretty much adjoins my mother’s backyard.”

  “But a curator? Not a millionaire?”

  “She’s already married, and buried, two of those. This time she could just marry someone she felt like having around the house. If she doesn’t have a husband, she feels off-kilter.”

  Her recitation of the rest of the family quickly became a blur, and his attention wandered. As they passed the turnoff to the sanitation and recycling center, Rafe thought of the trunk, and the horrendous story Miranda had told him about the night she’d dropped it off there.

  “I know you think I’m nuts,” she’d said, “but that was no coyote. That was a wolf that tried to eat Trip.”

  When he told her wolves were not seen this far south in the state, she’d looked straight at him and said, “Say that again, only try to make it believable this time.”

  He’d laughed, and let it go. Secretly, of course, he didn’t doubt her, but he also didn’t want to give any credence to the story. If word of the wolf reached the Land Management office, his fieldwork would be overwhelmed by outside experts; and even worse, numbskull hunters, eager to bag a renegade unwanted wolf, would descend en masse on the canyon.

  The drive from Topanga to San Marino, just south of Pasadena, was a little over an hour, but the two worlds could not have been farther apart. The streets of San Marino were wide and quiet, lined with stately homes and estates, many of them built for captains of industry and local movers and shakers back in the 1920s and ’30s. Glancing over, he could see Miranda visibly stiffening in her seat as she gave him directions for the final few turns to her mother’s home.

  “You want me to drop you off and then go park this heap a block away?” he asked, only half facetiously, but she shook her head and said, “There’s an auto court. You can leave it there.”

  She might as well have said a parking lot. Just past a pair of wrought-iron gates that stood ten feet high, there was a broad, flagstone courtyard with a guy in a red jacket guiding cars into nice neat lines. Rafe was pointed to a spot between a Lexus and a Mercedes, and when they got out of the purple SUV, the valet gave him a wary look.

  The house itself, a pale yellow stone, was only two stories high, but spread out behind a perfectly manicured line of cypress trees. The towering oak doors stood open, and a young woman in a gray suit was checking off names as the guests entered. When Miranda announced herself, the woman looked up and said, “Oh yes, your mother said to keep an eye out for you and to tell you she would be in her bedroom before the ceremony begins. You can go right up if you want.”

  Miranda looked at Rafe. “Will you be okay?”

  Though he wasn’t sure he would be, he said, “Of course. You go.”

  “The rose garden is where the ceremony is being held,” the woman said. “It’s straight out back, through the library.”

  “That would be the room with all the books in it?” Rafe joked, but the woman didn’t catch on.

  “Yes, it’s on the left,” she said, “just off this main hallway.”

  Rafe followed an elderly couple down the hallway, passing rooms filled with heavy dark furniture under coffered ceilings. The library, though, was flooded with light from the French doors that opened onto a lush, flower-filled garden. No water conservation measures enacted here, Rafe thought. One server held a tray of lemonade glasses, another a tray of bubbling champagne flutes. The other guests each took a glass and stepped out into the garden, but knowing no one, Rafe lingered in the library with his lemonade, studying the beautifully bound leather sets that lined the floor-to-ceiling shelves. These were the sorts of books that he’d found on the back shelves and in the storage closets of the facilities he’d grown up in, though by the time they got to him they were in terrible condition. Standing here now, he felt like he’d discovered the source of the Nile.

  There were books by Melville and Conrad and Dickens and Kipling, but he had other game in mind, and with his head cocked to one side to better read the spines, roamed the room, intently looking. So far as he could tell, there was no organizing principle to the library—no alphabetical arrangements—but he was sure he’d eventually get lucky.

  “Anything in particular you’re looking for?” a voice asked, and when he turned, he saw a smiling, white-haired man in horn-rimmed glasses and a business suit. “I get lost in here myself sometimes,” he said, extending his hand. “Not that I mind one bit. I’m Bentley Wright.”

  Rafe introduced himself and said he’d come with Miranda, and the man’s eyebrows went up. “So she’s upstairs with her mother right now? Alone?”

  “As far as I know.”

  Bentley cocked his head as if listening for something. “No gunfire so far,” he said with a smile. “That’s good news. I know her mother would like to see more of Miranda than she does.”

  Rafe shrugged as if he wouldn’t know about any of that, and Bentley discreetly changed the subject. “Some of these books are so valuable,” he said, waving a hand at the elegant ranks, “they belong next door, on the shelves of the Huntington.”

  “Miranda said you’re on the staff there.”

  “Retired now. I was curator of incunabula, also known as very old books. Were you actually looking for a particular book or author?”

  “Yes,” Rafe admitted. “Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  “Ah, then, come right this way,” he said, crooking a finger and leading Rafe across the Persian carpet to the other side of the room. Running a hand across a red leather-bound set, he said, “Everything from his essays to his novels.” Scanning the shelf, Rafe quickly spotted the most famous titles, from Treasure Island to The Master of Ballantrae. “This was the comprehensive Edinburgh edition begun by Longmans Green in 1894,” Bentley explained, “along with the two concluding volumes of Stevensoniana published after his death.”

  Apart from some cracks in the binding, they looked to Rafe like they’d never even been opened.

  “Are you a fan of his?” Bentley asked.

  Rafe nodded, wondering what in the world this guy would think if he knew what he was keeping in his trailer.

  “Go ahead—take one down.”

  Rafe picked The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as he had been reading in the journal
about the opening of the play in London and how, once Jack the Ripper had appeared, suspicion had fallen on the lead actor and even on Stevenson himself. Holding the old book, he felt a lot like he did when reading the journal—as if he were in close personal communion with the author.

  “His wife, Fanny, as you may know, hated the first draft of that one,” Bentley said. “He was so upset at her reaction that he burned it, then wrote it all over again. His stepson, Lloyd, claimed he did it in three days, but I think that must be an exaggeration.”

  Rafe nodded, carefully turning the gilt-edged pages.

  “She was a Californian, by the way.”

  Rafe nodded again. It was mentioned several times in the journal.

  “And her son, Lloyd Osbourne, lived for a few years not that far from here. Wrote a few books of his own, but nothing very good.”

  This he did not know.

  “In fact, he died in Glendale, of all the unlikely places, at a ripe old age. Isn’t that strange?”

  The revelation caught Rafe so much by surprise that his hand clenched for a second on the book. Suddenly, he saw a connection—however fragile, however attenuated—between Stevenson and a remote lake in Topanga Canyon. It was as if a rickety bridge, made of ropes and planks, had just been thrown across a deep ravine. It would take a lot of work to trace any actual nexus between the two, but he’d known that there had to be one. Had the trunk come to the region with Lloyd? Was he the one who had buried it in the lake? And if so, why? Before he could follow up with any questions, however, Miranda came in and said, “Hello, Bentley. I’m glad you two found each other.”

  “So am I,” Bentley said, kissing her cheek. “I miss showing off rare books to people who appreciate them.”

  “Mother’s coming down in a minute. We should grab a seat in the shade if they’re not all taken.”

  Outside, a white canopy had been set up over forty or fifty chairs, and Rafe and Miranda found two at the end of an aisle.

  “It’s nice that your mother wanted to see you as soon as you got here,” Rafe said. “It’s a good sign, right?”

  “Not really. She just wanted to make sure I hadn’t shown up in a paisley skirt and flip-flops. She actually had a replacement outfit on the bed for me.”