It was indeed a fair piece down, but I had the sudden urge to attempt it. “I’m going to try,” I said, pleased that my voice did not quiver in the least. “You can help me balance.” So saying, I slid my legs out of the little door and straddled the beam.
Elise gasped. “Maybe I should go first, Mam.”
It was too late. I was already a foot away from her and then two and then I was right over the pulley assembly. I stopped to consider the best course of action.
“Throw one leg over the beam,” advised Elise as if she had done this sort of thing before, “and lie across it on your stomach. Then you can wrap your legs about the ropes and let yourself down until you can get a foot on the pulley.”
She was right, of course. “Smart girl,” I applauded her, then set out to do as she’d suggested. I had just gotten sideways on the beam on my stomach, when I heard the sound of a door being unlatched. The rear door of the coach house, I realized. I froze.
“Miss!” hissed Elise and held her hand out to me.
I wriggled around trying to throw my leg back over the beam so I could scoot to safety.
The rear door creaked open.
All that separated it from this room was the narrow expanse of the tack room, which was little more than a broad hallway. I got my leg over the beam, but overbalanced and almost went down head-first.
Light spilled into the laboratory from the tack room.
I wobbled for a moment, then felt Elise’s hand grasp my habit at the shoulder. She had come half out onto the beam, herself, to get me. I righted myself and frog-hopped in ungainly fashion the two feet to the loft. Elise, exhibiting surprising strength, hauled me in and shut the door.
“Who’s that?” said a man’s voice. There was silence, then: “Paolo? Is that you?”
Directly below us on the ground floor, the door between the stable and coach house rattled and opened with a sigh. We held our collective breath.
“Sì, medico. È me.”
“Ah,” said Polidori. Then, “Lights, Paolo. Luminosi, per favore.”
We waited—we fine, brave spies—until they had gone off to work at the far end of the lab before we made our escape from the hayloft, through the stable and back to the house.
Only when I reached the safety of my bedroom and stood before my mirror did I realize that in my haste to escape the laboratory, I had dropped my toque.
John Polidori did not accost me the next morning, though I went to breakfast in full expectation that he would do so at any moment. I tried to tell myself that that was silly. It was a man’s cap, for one thing, and certainly not traceable to me. After a quiet breakfast, during which the doctor seemed distracted and agitated, but said nothing, I relaxed. Still, I spent the rest of the day torturing myself with indecision: should I tell Percy what I saw? Or George, perhaps? Should I reveal my espionage to all, then laugh it off? If I told George, might he confront our good doctor and make him reveal the meaning of that gleaming and inexplicable machine and the two tables? I had never seen anything like them nor, I wagered had my companions.
My curiosity was like one of those caged animals; it prowled the inside of my head hungrily, desperate to be let out.
Finally, in the late afternoon, I walked to Petit-Lancy though it was raining sporadically, and went to the bookstore, hoping against hope that Immanuel might be there. He was not, and at last, as the Sun settled toward the horizon, I left and walked home.
I entered the house just before supper and quickly divested myself of my wet coat, boots and stockings. Changed and dry, I went down to supper. Dr. Polidori was still not in company as the cheese course was served. I relaxed a second time and began to anticipate the hour when I might repair back upstairs and have a quiet conference with Elise. I’d had no opportunity to speak to her during the day with servants (and Clara) constantly within earshot, and I was eager to exchange notes with her and get her impressions of Dr. Polidori’s laboratory.
“Join us this evening, Mary?” Percy asked as we got up from the table. “You were sorely missed last night. George was in one of his moods and could not be persuaded to do more than snipe at John and try to extract information from him.”
I blushed, for I had been trying to extract information from his untenanted lab. “Perhaps after I’ve checked on William,” I said. “Elise said he had a fitful nap.”
“Don’t be too long, my love,” Percy begged me, and bent to give me a kiss.
“I shan’t,” I promised, and watched him cross the entrance hall to the drawing room, before I scurried upstairs to the nursery.
William was asleep and Elise had apparently gone downstairs for her supper. I determined to wait for her. I watched the baby sleep for a time, then retired to my sitting room. I was still there reading, when the door behind me opened. I smelt cigar smoke and started guiltily, reminded of my broken promise to Percy.
I dropped my book into my lap with a sigh. “I’m sorry, my love,” I started to say when something soft and slightly damp landed atop my book. A few stems of gleaming golden straw fluttered down atop it. I touched it gingerly—my black toque. I looked up to see John Polidori gazing down at me with huge, solemn eyes.
I pretended innocence. “What’s this, sir?”
“I believe it is your bonnet, madam. Along with some of the wheat straw you tumbled from the hayloft into my lab during your...excursion.”
His voice was soft, almost gentle, with no hint of anger. I immediately distrusted him.
“Surely that’s a man’s cap,” I objected. “Why would you think it’s mine?”
“Your husband, madam, recognized it as having once belonged to him. He gave it to you early in your courtship, he said, when you admired how ‘jaunty’ it was.”
“Well, perhaps someone else—” Had I actually been going to suggest that Elise had stolen my cap and invaded the doctor’s sanctum on her own? I blanched at my own wretched instinct for self-preservation. “It seems you have me, Doctor. Yes. I sneaked into your lab. My curiosity was unquenchable when you refused to let anyone know what you were doing.”
He moved to stand before me at the hearth where a little fire burned against the cool and wet of the spring evening. Amusement and surprise were written on every feature. “And you sought to lower yourself from the hayloft? You are a singular young woman, Mrs. Shelley. What is it you imagine I’m doing?”
I looked up at him, my head suddenly full of mysterious sixteenth century alchemists and distant castles and machines that channelled electricity to shock the sensibilities—and perhaps more. “You have built a machine after the fashion of Herr Dippel and you intend to use it to shock Lord Byron in the hope that it might set his mind to rights.”
Silken brows rose in a surprised arc and I knew a moment of absurd smugness. “Do I, indeed?”
“Yes, you do. The only thing I can’t fathom is how that will have any effect on his club foot.”
Dr. Polidori smiled at me. “I hate to disappoint you, my dear Mrs. Shelley—may I call you Mary?” At my hesitant nod, he continued, “I hate to disappoint you, Mary, but you are mistaken. I have no intention of shocking Lord Byron out of his dark moods. I intend to do far more than that.”
“What?” I asked, mesmerized by the glow of zeal in that dark gaze.
“Ah, no, I cannot tell even you. Not yet. But soon, I think. Very soon.”
He left me then, sitting before the fire with my spy’s cap and a tiny pile of straw.
Puzzles
I fully expected the doctor to tell the others what I had done, that they might all have a good laugh at my expense. He did not. He even came to breakfast the next morning and, though he sent me several enigmatic and wry looks during the meal, he said nothing of my intrusion into his laboratory.
For the next fortnight it rained on and off and kept all of us indoors. I was even loath to take my usual forays into Petit-Lancy and instead worked on my journal, toyed with writing a couple of short stories that I was unable (or unwilling) to finish
, and played with my baby. Elise begged continually to be allowed to try again to breach the doctor’s defences and ferret out what was happening in the lab. I was just as curious as she—even more so—but I was chastened by my exploits...at least enough that I preferred to wait, pretending that I believed Dr. Polidori meant to confide in me.
He did seem to spend more time with us in the evenings, which I thought meant he was having some success in his pursuits. One singular evening we were all together in the drawing room of the villa. Yes, even Clara and Dr. Polidori were among us as the fire warmed the cool, damp room and the rain tapped at the window like a thousand desperate finches seeking asylum from the storm.
I stared out the window, thinking of Immanuel, while in the room behind me, the already desultory conversation fell away to nothing.
At length, Clara sighed hugely and said, “I am bored to tears. We cannot even go into town to the Tea Room with it raining so. Invent something for us to do, George.”
“Cards?” he suggested. “We have enough of a party for Whist. Or even Hearts.”
“I am sick to death of cards. If I never behold another playing card, I’m sure it will be to my benefit.”
“Shall I read to you then, my love?” asked George. “I have a new poem I’ve not quite finished.”
“And it is a wonderful poem, I’m sure, but I am too restless to be read to. Think of something else.”
She did not look in the least restless, draped as she was across a chaise near the hearth. Lord Byron rose from his own chair and moved to sit at her feet.
“Well, my darling, if you are too distracted to read a work, perhaps you would be better disposed to write one.” He looked around at us brightly. “Yes, that’s what we should do. We are all writers of one sort or another, let us put that talent to use. Let’s have a competition. Let us each write a tale of these haunted days in an effort to terrify and amaze.”
Clara’s laughter came out in a musical trill. “Haunted? What about these days seems haunted to you? Drowned days, rather.”
“Nonsense! What is this weather suited to if not the creation of haunted tales?”
He had a point, and I had to admit that I might easily describe my life of late as being haunted. Haunted by my dead daughter, by my beloved’s living wife, Harriet, by constant fear for William. I counted off my personal ghosts and added Immanuel to their number. I needed no haunted tales. George was nothing if not avid once he’d conceived an idea; it would do me little good to demur, so I agreed, if reluctantly.
George leapt up and ran into the hall to zealously command the butler to bring papers and pens to the drawing room. He passed them out among us and we each commenced to pondering our tales.
John Polidori announced that he intended to write about vampires—and waxed poetic about their wraithlike qualities: “Flitting down from above, dark and gossamer.” He gave me a sly look as he said it, and I feared he would reveal my espionage then, but he did not.
Still, I couldn’t meet his gaze, for my scattered thoughts focused on secret laboratories in which dark things were done. My pen was idle.
When at last the weather was fine enough for me to return to my walks, I all but ran from the villa. I was no more informed of what was happening in the laboratory; Polidori had said nothing more to me of his work and when he did speak to me, it seemed to be in riddles as if we shared a fine secret—which I suppose, in a way, we did.
I went to the bookshop and lingered there the afternoon, even missing Tea. Immanuel did not come and M. Bardeau had not seen him. Still, I crossed the street and went into the little park to our bench and there I sat until sunset. I rose, then, dejected, and started for home. I had gone perhaps ten feet, when I saw a silhouetted figure move between two trees. Surely that was the very hat Immanuel had worn at our last meeting. I turned and pursued the figure, circling an elm to cut him off.
He stepped out from behind the tree and into a shaft of ruddy, dying sunlight just as I came around to confront him. His face was lit in lurid hues, which, to my mind, took on the aspect of the fires of hell. How can I describe that horrific visage? Twisted. Yes, that is the single word that best conveys it. The heavy brow that cowled the eyes, the wrenched mouth, the ape-like jaw. Oh, it was not Immanuel...but it was.
I cringed back, terrified, my hand to my throat. “What have you done?” I cried.
“I?” His expression was unreadable, inhuman. “Ask God, rather, what He has done to saddle me with this affliction.” His words were slurred—barely decipherable.
“What is it? What has happened to you?”
The grotesque mouth twisted further. “I don’t know. I’ve no name for’t. Nor has any doctor that’ll see me. Ought to turn myself over to the college for classes. What a fine cadaver I’d make, eh, Mary?”
I realized as he spoke, his voice strangled and garbled, that his face was very near the level of my own. His body was also bent and awry, his shoulders sloping.
“Don’t think it, Immanuel. Don’t ever say such things. Surely some doctor might help you.” I thought of Polidori. “I may even know one who—”
“No, you mustn’t try to help, Mary. Surely I’ve done something to deserve this. I must have done. I would die if my disease cast shadows on another life.” He ground his teeth and I knew he thought of Lucille.
“Does Lucille—?” I started to ask, but he shook his head spasmodically.
“Lucille and I are done. She cannot know of this.”
It took every ounce of courage I owned to put my hand on his sleeve, but I did it. And I leaned close to him and murmured, “I will help you. I must help you. Let me speak to my doctor friend. Meet me here tomorrow at this same hour. Please, Immanuel,” I begged when he shook his head again. “Please.”
He relented, nodded, his head low. Then, pulling his hat down over his face, he shambled away into the twilight.
The doctor was at dinner that evening and I chafed all through the meal awaiting an opportunity to speak to him. I rose from table swiftly at the end of the meal and stopped him as he opened the front door of the house, intent on returning to his work. The others had gone through into the drawing room.
“Doctor, may I have word?”
“Now, Mary, I told you, I will confide in you only when I am ready.”
“It’s not about your work, doctor,” I assured him.
“The evening is fine—for once,” he observed. “Shall we walk?”
We took a turn around the front garden and I described to him all of Immanuel’s symptoms as nearly as I could catalogue them: the thickness of feature, the increasingly guttural quality of his voice, the twisting of his body. I had not quite reached the end of my recital when I knew that John Polidori was fascinated. He asked me a series of questions, his eyes intense and glittering in the light of the gas lamps.
“I know I’ve read of these symptoms, if I could but remember where,” he said when at last I had answered all to his satisfaction. He shook his head and smiled at me. “Mary, you are a demon in disguise. I have hours of work to do tonight and now I want only to consult my medical books.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, uncertain how to take the comment.
He laughed and raked his fingers through his hair, his eyes alight with strange zeal. “Don’t apologize, Mary, for bringing me a puzzle to solve. I thrive on puzzles.”
The next morning, Dr. Polidori came late to breakfast, dark circles beneath red eyes that took on an exultant gleam when he saw me. He sat down across from me, and snapped open his napkin. “I have found it, Mary,” he said, smiling at me.
Conversation around the table ceased as the others turned to stare at us. John Polidori and I rarely spoke two words to each other in company.
“Found what?” asked Percy, his gaze darting between me and the doctor.
“I had asked about a peculiar set of symptoms I had—” I started to say that I had observed, but the logical question would have been “where” and I did not wish to reveal
poor Immanuel’s condition to all and sundry. “—come across in my research,” I concluded.
“Ah,” said George. “For your story. What symptoms are these?”
“Now, George,” said the doctor. “Would you have her reveal her plot aforetime? You might resolve to steal it for your own story.”
“Oh, very well. Be secretive.”
They returned to their breakfast conversation, though Percy gave us a final bemused look.
“Come to the lab later,” Dr. Polidori told me, sotto voce.
To the lab! Was this what it took to win his confidence—presenting him with a puzzle to solve? I nodded and finished my meal in child-like anticipation of that “later.”
“It’s called Noel’s Disease at present,” John Polidori told me as he let me into his lab. “For the French physician who first described it in Le Journal de Médcin almost eighty years ago. I knew I’d read of it.”
“It’s been known for sometime then,” I said, trying not to stare past him at the contents of the room. I needn’t have bothered. He’d covered everything of interest with drop cloths. “Then there’s a cure, surely.”
“None, I’m afraid. It’s extremely rare and not many cases have been studied.”
My heart fell. “Then nothing can be done for him?”
“Not by conventional medicine. His body, you see, is accumulating bone mass, and it will continue to do so until he can no longer function. Or so Dr. Noel writes. For your friend Immanuel, there is no going back.”
The tears stung my eyes as they fell. “Hopeless, then.”
“This means much to you.”
I nodded. “He is such a sweet soul. So gentle and kind. He had been destined for such happiness, I thought. He was to be married, and studies to be a doctor.”
“I said that conventional medicine could not help him. But I do not practice conventional medicine.”
Dr. Polidori moved further into the lab, beckoning me to follow. He led me past the shrouded Machine and over to a row of animal cages in which were several cats, a ferret and a rabbit. The rabbit slept, but the cats looked up at us expectantly, the ferret with some distrust.
Shadow Conspiracy Page 3