Tussaud

by Belinda, Lyons-Lee

  She had maintained her isolation at Welbeck, only interacting with the valet and Philidor as needed, dispensing with formal meals and forgoing visiting London completely. While in the midst of creating she preferred solitude and being able to walk the grounds and retreat to her bedchamber without the distraction or expectation of interaction. Harriet alone she continued to talk with, enjoying their growing acquaintance and then, of course, there was her correspondence with Regington. He had proven himself an ardent admirer but had been forced to travel abroad for business, which, he said, explained the large gaps between letters. He was returning soon though and wrote of his desperation to see her. As Elanor was nearing completion her thoughts turned more to him and what part he was playing in this venture.

  But for now, focusing on what was in front of her, Marie continued using a piece of wood to mix the liquid until it reached the necessary consistency. With a wide flat brush, she painted the plaster over Elanor’s clay head, thickly in separate panels. As always, this messy process splattered the mixture over her hands, dress and floor, even when the surrounding area was layered with rags. ‘Nearly there, my dear,’ she said, as she coated the limbs.

  Elanor’s plaster would have to dry overnight, so Marie returned to her bedchamber for the final session of sewing Antoinette’s hair and to continue trialling her new idea for a mechanical contrivance that could be used to enhance the appearance of life in her creations. As she fiddled with the thin wires and springs, she thought of the valet and her lie to him that Harriet was working on some intricate sewing for her thereby she was not to be disturbed from her room. He had acquiesced but still, he was concerning her.

  She could smell his curiosity, fascination even, with what was transpiring underground, and had caught him looking at her as they passed in the hallway, appraising her as if deliberating about something. She was also sure, because she noticed such things, that the papers on her bureau with her design had been moved in her absence and that the corners of the pages of the duke’s volume of drawings were sticky, as if someone had recently licked a finger and turned each one over carefully. This breach of her privacy was intolerable.

  Marie attached the last wire into the tiny metal box that held the clockwork teeth and wound it up. The spring pushed up and down rhythmically; it had a large wax paddle at the end that would press gently against the chest cavity from inside. It was exactly as she’d envisioned and the thought of how it would further animate her creation and in doing so intensify the spell surrounding it was thrilling.

  The next morning, upon returning to her workshop she swept up the dried flakes of plaster, dust, dirt and clay into a pile in the corner, next to the logs for the fire. She was dreaming. Thinking of her boys and how she would take them to be fitted for suits with the finest tailor in London when they arrived. They would see the creations their mother had worked upon and be proud of her accomplishments, and she would teach them all she knew so they could carry on the work under her name.

  The fire needed to be stoked. As she bent to pick up a log, she saw a glint of something amongst the pile of dust, blended in with the wood and the shadows: a key.

  Odd. She hadn’t seen it before or heard it clink as she swept up.

  She placed it on the table, focused on inspecting the dried plaster moulds. She gently stuck her chisel between the seams of the panels, loosening them. Each piece came away complete in her hands. After she put them together again and ensured they sealed completely, it was time to heat the wax in another metal bucket over the fire. Once it reached boiling point, she turned the head upside down and placed it in a brace, then used a funnel to stick in the upturned hollow neck of the mould and poured the wax inside.

  The troughs were filled with cold water in which she submerged the head mould, heavy with the seven pounds of wax needed for it alone. The remaining limbs and torso were submerged in the troughs alongside, all wrapped in cloth and bound with twine to enable her to pull them out easily.

  There it came again: that moan. Same as the day before. Was it the wind? No. The air was still, just as it had been before. She wiped her wet hands on a cloth, picked up a candlestick and opened her workshop door. Around the corner to her right was the bend that led out into the main ballroom area, while to the left the passage continued. She waited.

  A shuffle sounded from further down the passage on her left. Was it behind that doorway, the one she had already been drawn to the first night of her stay?

  Holding her candle up, she stepped towards the sound, aware that she was crossing over the forbidden threshold again. Aware also that this doorway had been entreating her to explore it from the borders of her subconscious mind ever since. Was it worth breaking the rules a second time to try and find out more? The pull of mystery was too strong this night.

  So she went down, down, further and further. Her footsteps quickened, reverberating through the narrow passage like the heavy tread of an army. Was she alone? She couldn’t resist turning around. No one was following her.

  Another two, three steps forward, and there it was: the wooden door, set right back into the wall with the sizeable keyhole that appeared as if it hadn’t been opened in years.

  Drip, drip, drip. She raised her candle. The low roof above her was shot through with streaks of a silver mineral that winked in the light, exaggerated by the moisture sweating through the skin of the rock.

  She tried the doorhandle again. Gritty and cold. There was no way she could get in without a key. Oh yes, the key back in her workshop! It may fit this lock. Could it be the one? Too much of a coincidence, surely. Had someone put it in her workshop for her to find? Or perhaps it had always been there, and she’d simply not been paying attention when she swept. A scrape from behind the door as if a chair was being pushed back, a clatter as of something thrownonto a table, followed by another moan. Marie looked down and saw a faint light underneath the door.

  She hastened back to her workshop and closed its door behind her. Had she been heard? No, impossible – she was as quiet as a mouse. There was someone down here, that much seemed certain. But who was it?

  She walked passed Antoinette who now sat in the corner complete, to the table where the key lay. Did she hear a voice, a woman’s voice? A faint vibration in the air. A whisper. Marie picked up the key and turned to face her. ‘The key,’ Antoinette seemed to breathe.

  She opened her workshop door. Yes, the moaning had stopped. She would take the key back with her for another look. She approached the cavern door, noticing that the light was extinguished. Her ears strained but she heard no sound.

  The key slid into the lock. She turned it sharply, and it clicked. She waited, then pushed. The door resisted. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she grabbed the handle and shook it, the noise seemed excruciating loud, betraying her invasion. No matter – if someone was behind the door, they would be just as frightened of her as she of them.

  With a final thrust, the door screeched open. A small cavern lay before her, filled with a stench so vile she raised her hand to her mouth. She stepped inside and slowly pushed the door shut. She could not focus with that black empty doorway standing open behind her.

  She moved towards the table in the centre of the room. On it lay a mound of Enchanter’s Nightshade carcasses in varying stages of decay: a fresh bundle on top, then layers of rotting petals of yellow, brown then black. The rest of the table was littered with drawings of Elanor’s face. A chair sat a few feet away, presumably the one she had heard being pushed back.

  The drawings were simple lines in pen and ink. As with the flowers, there were layers of them. Elanor in a tree, tongue poking out. Here she was now in profile, her hitched-up skirts exposing her inner thigh, hair streaming behind her as she ran through a field. One of her bending over a stream, its water in her cupped hands, as she stared straight at the observer with a mischievous smile. In another, she sat cross-legged under the oak tree, amidst the enchanter’s nightshade.

  It struck Marie that E
lanor was like the enchanter’s nightshade. Thin. Pale. Fine featured. Delicate but hardy. Marie could see it in her eyes, her mouth, her expression. This girl looked as if a breeze would blow her over, but her energy, her will was strong at the roots and thriving.

  Marie turned from the table. A narrow wrought-iron bed sat in the corner, with rumpled blankets as if someone rested there.

  Was it possible someone had walked past her workshop to reach this cavern? But the door had clearly not been opened for some time, considering the stiffness of the lock and the build-up of silt. No, the visitor had not entered that way which left only one alternative, a secret passageway leading back to the manor. Given the labyrinth of tunnels underground and the narrow railtracks already linked to the kitchen, it was conceivable. She ran her eyes quickly across the stonework of the room, nothing discernible that announced itself immediately as the outline of an entrance, but all thoughts of a passageway were driven from her mind when she saw something else: a newspaper article stuck to the back of the door with a knife.

  The Worksop Village Times

  MISSING GIRL A MYSTERY

  A girl of sixteen has been reported missing from Welbeck Abbey, the estate of His Grace Henry Cavendish, 4th Duke of Portland Elanor Hemmings, the daughter of Mr and Mrs Hemmings, tenant farmers on the duke’s land, was last sighted in her bed, having eaten her evening meal as normal and bidden her mother goodnight. Her bed was found empty in the morning, but parish

  Constable Trickett, reported there were no signs of a struggle. There have been rumours from local villagers that a group of hawkers, camped in a nearby field, may be involved in her disappearance as they departed suddenly on the same morning. Constable Trickett followed the band a considerable distance before coming upon them and making enquires. Despite the threat of being put in the stocks for three days and whipped, the hawkers denied their knowledge or involvement and have been allowed to leave the area. The girl is described as being of slight build with brown hair and green eyes, and wearing her nightgown and a shawl.

  The article was dated 1795.

  So Elanor had lived at Welbeck then, just as Harriet had said. But long ago, before something had happened. Something so terrible that she disappeared. Had Elanor been kept prisoner in this cavern, then? By whom? Or perhaps her bones had been stored down here under lock and key. What, then, did Harriet know? Did she plant the key in her workshop? The valet? Or did the duke lose it somehow?

  Marie knew she was working for a madman – that much had been evident from the beginning – but was she also working for a murderer? She had heard and seen him consumed by grief and remorse by the tree. Was this evidence enough of the hand he had played in her disappearance and demise?

  Another twelve hours at least for the moulds to set in the water before they could be withdrawn and placed on a towel on the workbench. She would retire now and try to sleep. But sleep did not come easily as her mind sought to draw closer to understanding what went on in this house. And how she could use it all to her own advantage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Marie

  MARIE HAD BEEN working for the two days to finish the final stage of the process and now her workshop resembled an anatomy dissection room. Each limb was now complete, ready to be sliced open for the insertion of the mechanics with Philidor’s assistance. The wax had shrunk as it cooled, so the plaster mould, when again prised open, came apart easily in Marie’s hands.

  And the final piece revealed. A wax head.

  Her new invention was also finished: a mechanism to sit in Elanor’s chest, with wires linked to the central cam so that when wound up the creature’s chest would rise and fall as if breathing. Philidor considered himself the expert at building mechanisms, and Marie was satisfied when he begrudgingly expressed his approval. She made it clear, however, that it was her idea, her design and her device; he was not permitted to see the drawings. They had then spent two days together assembling and joining the respective parts and now the figure stood whole before her.

  Now Marie could begin in earnest to create Elanor’s likeness. She detached Elanor’s head, then with a long fine needle, she began to insert each hair at the root into the scalp – this took more time than any other part of the process, weeks actually. This was interspersed with the application of the oil-based paint for the skin, layered precisely to obtain a realistic tone and texture. It was now that Marie felt her connection to Elanor pull the strongest.

  It was as if a part of Marie’s own soul had been mixed in the metal bucket with the wax, then heated, cooled and poured into the mould to set. Something of Marie had transferred into Elanor in the same way Elanor had sprung from Marie’s imagination and been embodied by her hands working wax.

  At last, at the conclusion of three weeks working on Elanor’s head, with a final touch of her pig bristle brush, Elanor was finished. Marie had pushed herself beyond her usual capabilities to effect this, being possessed with an almost unnatural fever of strength and energy that seemed to never dissipate but only grow stronger the closer she came to finishing. During this time she had seldom seen Philidor, left to his own he had only remarked in passing that he was working on some new ideas for a future show. She had not permitted him entrance to her workshop and she knew in consequence that his stifled impatience and curiosity must be straining his temper. Regington’s letters had also revealed his temper straining, she needed to see him soon if the liaison was to continue. And it must.

  But this day, Marie had informed the valet and Philidor that she would not be attending supper. To Philidor she had also added that Elanor would be ready to unveil the following morning. She had failed to mention she would be spending the night in her workshop with Elanor, as was her tradition with all of her newly completed waxworks.

  All she had left to do was to clothe Elanor, and she would accomplish that in the morning – for her trap to succeed that night, it would be better for Elanor to remain unclothed. Elanor was not as aesthetically beautiful as Antoinette in her regalia as queen. But the girl possessed an indefinable quality. Perhaps it was because she could breathe; perhaps because of the finer Parisian materials from which she was built, or the stability of the temperatures that had allowed the wax to set, or their increased expertise in building this second automaton. Or was it that her likeness in every particular was somehow discernible on another level of human awareness?

  The room felt increasingly claustrophobic. Though the sun had long since set, Marie was sweating in a manner she hadn’t experienced before down here. The air was too hot, and she found it hard to get enough – the atmosphere was suffocating, really. Yet Elanor seemed to be breathing easily, the device completing the illusion that she had been brought to life.

  And then Marie smelt something. Not a scent but a stench that had snuck in under her door to catch her unawares. The thickness of it constricted her throat. She attempted to swallow. The smell became a taste, and her mouth filled with saliva. She reached for her handkerchief, excreted the saliva into its folds, and scrunched it up to put back into her corset. Then she saw it was drenched in blood. Blood that ran across the back of her hand in rivulets to snake down her wrist.

  She gasped and dropped the handkerchief onto the floor, where it fell upon a pile of bones crawling with grave worms. The stench was inside her now, living and thrashing, filling her being. She started coughing. Raised her hand to her mouth. Smeared the blood inadvertently across her chin. She felt its wetness. Smelt the metal tang of it.

  No, stop. Swallow. Blink once, hard, be ready. There is no stench. Another breath. Look closer. Those bones were really logs; the grave worms were just splinters. And when she picked up her handkerchief, she saw there was no blood aside from on the usual corner. She touched her face again; her fingers came away clean. But the crescendo in visions, the return of her fancies, were portents that foretold bad luck.

  Steadying herself, she put the handkerchief back into her corset and returned to studying Elanor. The girl’s brunett
e hair fell below her shoulders and was left unadorned, according to the instructions from Cavendish. Marie took another deep breath and looked into Elanor’s eyes, a beautiful green. Elanor’s hair was parted in the middle; her forehead, like the rest of her face, was clouded with freckles that had been painstaking to apply. Still, Marie was satisfied with the finished product, in particular the pattern over the rounded nose that dipped slightly at the bridge. Elanor’s lips were the deep red he had ordered. And her teeth were faultless. Everything was according to his specifications.

  Elanor’s clothes lay over the arm of the chair: a plain green dress with a scoop neck and three-quarter sleeves, drawn in at the waist above a full skirt puckered at the seam, with the chemise and drawers beneath. She would look beautiful in it, so different to Antoinette, who seemed embarrassingly plain without all the embellishments of colour, jewels, gowns and hair adornments.

  Elanor was a different sort of beauty: unrefined yet more pure because of the lack of artifice. Naked, her white skin glimmering in the lamplight, she looked for all intents and purposes like a young bride about to share her bed with her husband for the first time. She was infused with the vitality of youth. This girl would easily hitch up her skirts and run through the fields, splash water on her face from the stream and sit beneath the oak barefoot. An independent life that would have been denied to her as a real woman. This girl, if she were really alive, would be a servant, soon beaten into obedience, literally or not, by the men around her who determined the place of every woman in society.

  Or would she have fought against it? Marie pulled back Elanor’s hair and leant closer to those eyes. Yes, perhaps she would have. Elanor’s will was strong, like the enchanter’s nightshade. She would not bend to the demands of a man, but explore, seek adventure. But Marie was no closer to understanding who she was, in actuality. Who could she have been had she lived? Marie had not brought the subject up again with Harriet. A delicate matter such as this needed time to build further on the trust already established.