Her Dark Curiosity

by Megan Shepherd

  By the time I looked up, I found the professor’s attention had strayed to his newspaper. I returned to my baked hen, stabbing it with my fork. Why hadn’t I seen Edward’s secret? Why had I been so naïve? My thoughts drifted to the past until the professor let out a little exclamation of surprise at something he read.

  “Good lord, there’s been a murder.”

  My fork hovered over my plate. “It must have been someone important if it’s reported on the front page.”

  “Indeed, and unfortunately, I knew the man. A Mr. Daniel Penderwick, solicitor for Queensbridge Bank.”

  The name sounded vaguely familiar. “Not a friend of yours, I hope.”

  The professor seemed absorbed by the article. “A friend? No, I’d hardly call him a friend. Only an acquaintance, and a black one at that, though I’d never wish anything so terrible upon the man as murder. He was the bank solicitor who took away your family’s fortune all those years ago. Made a career of that dismal work.”

  Uneasiness stirred at the mention of those darker times. “Have they caught his murderer?”

  “No. It says here they’ve no suspects at all. He was found dead from knife wounds in Whitechapel, and the only clue is a flower left behind.” He gave me a concerned glance above his spectacles, then folded the paper and tossed it to the side table. “Murder is hardly proper dinner conversation. Forgive me for mentioning it.”

  I swallowed, still toying with the fork. The professor was always worried that whenever an unpleasant topic of conversation arose, I’d think of my father and be plagued by nightmares. He needn’t have worried. They plagued me regardless.

  After all, I had helped kill Father.

  When I looked up, the professor was studying me, the laugh lines around his eyes turned down for once. “If you ever need to discuss what happened while you were gone…” He shifted, nearly as uncomfortable with such conversations as I. “I knew your father well. If you need to resolve your feelings for him…” He sighed and rubbed his wrinkles.

  I wanted to tell him how much I appreciated his efforts, but that he would never understand what had happened to me. No one would. I remembered it as if it had happened only moments ago. Father’s laboratory burning, him locked inside, the blood-red paint bubbling on the tin door. I feared he would escape the laboratory, leave the island, and continue experimenting somewhere else. I’d had no choice but to open the door. A crack, that was all it had taken, to let Jaguar—one of my father’s creations—slip inside and slice him apart.

  I smiled at the professor. “I’m fine. Really.”

  “Elizabeth is better with this sort of thing. You’ll feel more comfortable with another woman in the house, someone to speak with freely. What would a wrinkled old man know about a girl’s feelings? You’re probably in love with some boy and wondering what earrings to wear to catch his eye.”

  He was only teasing now, and it made me laugh. “You know me better than that.”

  “Do I? Yes, I suppose so.” He gave his off-balance smile.

  It wasn’t my way to be tender with people, but the professor was an old curmudgeon with a kind heart, and he’d done so much for me. Kept me from prison. Given me elegant clothes, kept me fed on French cuisine, and done his best to be the father figure I should have had.

  On impulse I went to his end of the table, where I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and kissed his balding head. He patted my arm a little awkwardly, not used to me showing such emotion.

  “Thank you,” I said. “For all you’ve done for me.”

  He cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “It’s been my pleasure, my dear,” he said.

  After dinner I climbed the stairs, jumping as the cuckoo clock sprang to life in the hallway. I considered ripping the loud-mouthed wooden bird out of its machinery, but the professor adored the old thing and patted the bird lovingly each night before bed. It was silly for him to be so sentimental over an old heirloom, but we all have our weaknesses.

  I went to my room, where I locked the door and took out the silver fork I’d stolen from the dinner table, pressing my finter against the sharp tines. The professor had set up accounts at the finer stores in town for me, but what I needed was cash—paper money for my secret attic’s rent, for the equipment and ingredients for my serums, and grafting roses only paid so much. I stared at the fork, regretting the need to steal from the man who’d given me a life again. But as I looked out the window at the dark sky and saw the snow falling in gentle flakes, flashing when hit by the lights of a passing carriage, I told myself I was desperate.

  And desperation could lead a person to things one might never do otherwise.

  THREE

  THAT NIGHT, LIKE MOST nights, I lay in my sprawling bed, staring at the ceiling, and trying desperately not to think about Montgomery.

  It never worked.

  When I had moved into the professor’s home, he had wallpapered my bedroom ceiling in a dusky pale rose print. Now, my eyes found hidden shapes among the soft buds, remembering the boy who would never give me flowers again.

  “He loves me,” I whispered to nothing and to no one, counting the petals. “He loves me not.”

  When I’d been a girl of seven and he a boy of nine, he’d once accompanied us to our relatives’ country estate. One morning after Mother and Father had gotten in a terrible row, I’d found a small bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace on my dresser. I’d never had the courage to ask Montgomery if he’d left them. When Mother found the flowers, she tossed them out the window.

  Weeds, she had said.

  Years later, he’d given me flowers on the island, when we were no longer children and he’d outgrown his shyness. He’d won my affection, but his betrayal had left my heart dashed against the rocks, broken and bleeding.

  “He loves me, he loves me not,” I whispered. “He’ll forget me, he’ll forget me not. He’ll find me, he’ll find me not… .”

  I sighed, letting the sounds of my whispers float up to the rose-colored wallpaper. I rolled over, burying my face in my pillow.

  You must stop with such childish games, I told myself, as the place beneath my left rib began to ache.

  THE NEXT MORNING THE professor took me to the weekly flower show at the Royal Botanical Gardens, held in the palatial glass-and-steel greenhouse known as the Palm House, where I found myself surrounded by ranunculus and orchids and spiderlike lilies, and where the only things more ostentatious than the flowers were the dozens of fine ladies sweating in their winter coats. A year ago I’d never thought I would find myself wearing elegant clothes once more, amid ladies whose perfume rivaled the flowers, who tittered about my past behind my back but wouldn’t dare say anything to my face.

  It was shocking how much one’s fate could twist in a single year.

  The professor, who I was quite certain wished to be anywhere but in a sweaty greenhouse surrounded by ladies, wandered off to inspect the mechanical system that opened the upper windows, leaving me alone to the sly looks and catty whispers of the other ladies.

  . . . used to work as a maid…

  . . . father dead, you know, mother turned to pleasing men for money…

  . . . pretty enough, but something off about her…

  Through a forest of towering lilies, a woman in the next aisle caught my eye. For a moment she looked like my mother, though Mother’s hair had been darker, and she’d been thinner in the face. It was more the way this woman hung on the arm of a much older white-haired man, dressed finely with a silver-handled cane. The woman wore no wedding ring—so the man was her lover, not her husband.

  The couple paused, and the woman stopped to admire the lilies. I was about to leave when I overheard her say, “Buy me one, won’t you, Sir Danvers?”

  Sir Danvers. I gave him another look, discreetly, studying the expensive cane, the bones of his face. Yes, it was he. Sir Danvers Carew, Member of Parliament, a popular lord and landowner—and one of the men who used to keep my mother as his mistress. He’d seemed kind, like
his reputation, until he turned to drink. He had once knocked Mother around the living room, then struck my leg with that same cane when I’d tried to stop him. I hadn’t thought of him in years, and yet now my shin ached with phantom pain from that day.

  I turned away sharply, though there was no danger of him recognizing me. Back then I’d been the skinny child of a mistress he hadn’t kept but a few weeks, and now I was one of the elegant young ladies come to admire hothouse flowers in winter.

  “May I show you these lilies, miss?” a vendor across the aisle said. I turned my head, still a bit dazed by the memories. “They’re a new hybrid I developed myself,” she continued. “I cross-pollinated them with Bourgogne lilies from France.”

  Eager to be away from Sir Danvers, I pretended to admire the flowers. The blooms were beautiful, but the hybridization had made the stems too thick. They would have done better crossed with Camden lilies to keep the stems strong but delicate. I didn’t dare start talking aloud about splicing and hybridization, though—I’d have sounded too much like Father.

  I swallowed. “They’re beautiful.”

  “There you are!” called a voice at my side. Lucy came tripping along the steam grates in a tight green velvet suit, fanning her face. “I’ve been up and down every hall looking for you. Oh, this blasted heat.” With her free hand she dabbed a handkerchief at the sweat on her forehead. Beneath our feet, the boilers churned out another blast of steam that rose as in a Turkish bath. I inhaled deeply, letting it seep into my pores. I felt healthier here, in the tropical warmth, where the symptoms of my illness never seemed quite as bad.

  Lucy glanced rather disdainfully at a bucket of mangled daisies with broken stems. “Good lord. It looks as though someone pruned those flowers with a butter knife.”

  “It isn’t about the sharpness of the blade,” I said. “It’s about the hand that holds it.”

  “Well, if you ask me, that hand isn’t anything special either. Must we come here every week? What do I care for flowers, unless a young man is giving them to me?”

  I smiled. “Which dashing young man would that be? You seem to have quite a few these days.”

  Her powdered cheeks grew pinker as she brushed by a display of orchids, absently knocking their petals to the floor. “Papa prefers John Newcastle, of course, and I know he’s handsome and a self-made man and all that, but he’s so boring. And then there’s Henry, and my goodness, I simply can’t abide him. He’s from Finland, you know, which might as well be the end of the earth. He hadn’t even seen an automobile until one practically ran him over in Wickham Park.”

  As I watched her carelessly knock over an entire plant, I said, “For a boy you keep claiming to dislike, you certainly seem to dwell on him.”

  She gasped with indignation and rattled on more about her other suitors, but I only half listened. I’d heard all this before, time and time again, different young men depending on the week. I nodded absently while I stooped to clean up the flowers she’d knocked over.

  “Really, Juliet,” Lucy said in exasperation. “You must remember you’re not a maid anymore.”

  I paused. She was right. I lived with a wealthy guardian now and was back in good social standing. Seeing Sir Danvers and remembering my mother’s fall from grace had made me relive my former shame all over again. At the far end of the aisle, Sir Danvers and his mistress admired some orchids. He tapped the cane on the steel grates at his feet, sending vibrations all the way to where we stood. I had the sudden urge to stride over, snatch the cane from his hand, and slam the silver tip into his shin, as he had once done to mine. For a man his age, it wouldn’t take much force to shatter the bone.

  My hands itched for that cane. More tittering laughter came from behind me, cruel and high-pitched, and I imagined the flower show ladies whispering among themselves.

  . . . violent tendencies…

  . . . well, with a father like hers…

  Itch, itch, itch. But I forced myself to turn away. The professor wanted to prove I could be a respectable young lady despite who my father had been. The only problem was, being respectable wasn’t nearly as second nature as I had thought it would be.

  I turned my back on them, facing the frost-covered wall of the greenhouse, beyond which I could make out the shadowy shapes of falling snow. As I watched, a black police carriage pulled up outside. My breath froze. Ever since Scotland Yard officers had arrested me in response to Dr. Hastings’s accusations, I’d been jumpy around policemen.

  All that is behind you, I reassured myself.

  But the carriage stopped, and a handsome officer perhaps ten years my senior climbed out, and through the glass panes dripping with condensation, he looked directly at me.

  I TURNED TOWARD THE sprays of ferns, Sir Danvers forgotten, thoughts racing. If this had been Father’s island, I could have disappeared into those vines with silent steps I’d learned from his beast-men. But large as the greenhouse was, the police would find me in minutes.

  Lucy gave me a strange look, dabbing at her brow. “Whatever’s the matter with you?”

  “The police are here,” I whispered. I jerked my chin toward the door at the far end of the palm court, where the groan of the heavy iron door sounded. I should get away from Lucy. It would only humiliate her to have her friend arrested so publicly.

  I started for the door to intercept him, but Lucy grabbed my arm. “The police? Oh, don’t tell me you’re still afraid of the police. That was ages ago, and everything was sorted out. And look at you; you’d look like royalty if you’d just stop slouching so much. Only criminals slouch.”

  My heart pounded harder as the officer appeared through the vines that draped from the catwalk above. He was a tall man with a sweep of chestnut hair that matched Lucy’s, and he walked with the confidence of the upper classes. Not a beat patrol officer, then. They’d sent someone important for me—how thoughtful. He was dressed in a fine dark suit with an old-fashioned copper bulletproof breastplate beneath his cravat, and a pistol at his hip.

  My muscles twitched, urging me to flee, but Lucy’s arm still held me.

  “Oh, him?” She sighed. “You’ve nothing to worry about. He’s not here for you. Papa must have sent him to collect me.”

  I looked between the officer and Lucy, still not understanding. “What do you mean?”

  “That’s John Newcastle, the suitor Papa’s so fond of,” she said. “I was just telling you about him. Weren’t you listening? Really, Juliet.”

  I stared at her. “You didn’t say he was a police officer!”

  “He isn’t a police officer,” she said, fluffing her hair where the humidity had made it go flat. “He’s an inspector. Scotland Yard’s top inspector.” Her voice dropped to a mutter. “He’s rather fond of telling me how important he is, not to mention handsome. He’d marry himself, I do believe, if he could.”

  “Lucy—” I started, but Inspector Newcastle reached us then and gave us a dashing smile, his eyes only darting to me in a perfunctory manner before settling on Lucy.

  “Lucy, darling.” He bent forward to kiss her cheek, which left a glistening mark that she dabbed at with the handkerchief.

  “Papa sent you, I presume?”

  “He invited me to supper, and I offered to come collect you.”

  She pounced on my arm again. “John, this is my friend Juliet Moreau. Oh, Juliet, I’ve a fine idea. Go ask the professor if you can join us for a bite to eat.” Her insistent wink told me she didn’t want to spend an extra moment alone with her suitor.

  “Yes, you’re welcome to join us, Miss Moreau.” He extended his hand to take mine, but as soon as my fingers were in his, his hand tightened. “Have we met before? Your name sounds somewhat familiar.”

  I glanced at Lucy. “I don’t believe so, Inspector. I think I would remember.” I extracted my fingers from his grasp, wishing I could just as easily remove his suspicions about my name from his thoughts. I nodded my chin toward his copper breastplate. “What an unusual piece. Is it an
antique?”

  “Why, yes,” he said, clearly pleased. “It belonged to my grandfather. A lieutenant in the Crimean War. Kept him alive despite five bullets and a gunpowder explosion. I try to be a modern man, and we have better protective garments these days, but a little sentimental superstition can be healthy, don’t you think?” He tapped his breastplate good-naturedly.

  I smiled, relieved I’d managed to distract him from my name.

  Lucy slid her arm into mine and said, “Juliet’s quite a tragic case, I’m afraid. Both parents dead, left penniless. She even had to work at one point.”

  She started to lead me toward the door, but I pulled away a little too fast. I had errands to run before returning home, errands I had to keep secret.

  “Thank you for the offer, but I’ve plans with the professor. It was a pleasure meeting you, Inspector. I’ll see you soon, Lucy.”

  I ducked away from them and found the professor amid the crowd, still engrossed by the rusted mechanics of the greenhouse. He smiled warmly when he saw me.

  “I wondered if you’d mind if I had a bite to eat with Lucy,” I said.

  “Well, certainly,” he said, eyes twinkling. Now he could go home to his books and a thick slice of Mary’s gingerbread cake. I kissed him on the cheek and hurried through the tunnel of palms to the doorway, where I could at last be on my own. I took one last breath of the thick, warm air, before pushing the heavy door open and bracing for the cold.