The Diabolical Miss Hyde Page 6

  Tastes me. Just because he can.

  My heart hammers. I want to squeeze my eyes shut, but I can’t look away.

  And I take a deep breath and bolt.

  But Mr. Todd is too quick. His foot snakes around my ankle, tripping me. He grabs my flailing hand and pulls, our bodies collide, only this time it’s he against the wall with me in his arms and he’s warm and strong and his body feels . . . well, it feels, don’t you see. I ache and I shiver and his eyes glitter with dark purpose, and for some reason . . . I can’t escape.

  I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Has he bewitched me? Maybe it’s because his wild hair gleams like fire and he smells of absinthe and sorrow and forbidden sin.

  Maybe it’s just the razor at my breast, threatening to slice my bodice apart and gut me like a rabbit.

  But the beat of his heart against mine is more dangerous than any sharpened steel edge. God help me, I’m terrified, but I’m fascinated, and I want to blame Lizzie but I can’t.

  Because Lizzie isn’t here.

  “Do I disgust you, Eliza?” His whisper is small, forlorn. Tragic. And the truth slashes horror into my soul.

  Mr. Todd is lonely.

  Oh, sweet Jesus.

  I open my mouth to answer, but for once in my life, I can’t think of a single thing to say.

  He glides the razor’s edge along the line of the bone in my bodice. It whispers through a layer of golden silk, effortless. No resistance at all. “Do I frighten you, perhaps? You’re thinking, ‘What’s the right answer? What can I say to convince this madman not to slice me up?’”

  My voice withers, leaving only a dry whisper. “It . . . it had crossed my mind.”

  A tiny laugh. “No. You understand me better than that. You and your shadow. Admit it. We’re the same.”

  A scream bubbles in my chest, and I choke it down. “You’re wrong, Mr. Todd.”

  “And you’re lying, Eliza. We’ll work on that. You needn’t be shy with me.” His lips are so close to mine, and he eases closer, to brush a hot kiss on my ear. “I like you just the way you are . . .”

  THE ILLUMINATION OF MATTER

  ELIZA GASPED AWAKE, AND THE FAMILIAR DREAM-memory shimmered away like a ghost.

  Uhh. Stale smoky stink sickened her. She pushed up on her elbows, raised a feeble hand to ward off the glaring sun . . .

  From the left. Her bedroom window was on the right.

  She groaned. She was still wearing Lizzie’s cherry-red dress, too big around the chest now and greasy with sweat. Her hair tumbled in knots, most of the pins missing. Her skull ached fit to crack, and her stomach had peeled raw inside. Her mouth tasted like a small creature had died in it. Oh, my. Did we get drunk again?

  She sat up, stretching cramped limbs. A whitewashed ceiling, broken wooden beams and soot. Her searching fingers met rough woolen cushions, the burred wooden edge of a chaise. Across the room, a bar, barrels of gin stacked three high, scattered tables and a few revelers passed out snoring on the floor. Some public house . . .

  Lizzie must have had herself a fine night on the town. At least, thankfully, she’d woken alone.

  Memory taunted her, dancing just out of sight. Warm whispers and laughter lingered at her mind’s shadowy edges, a world of forbidden experience that Eliza secretly longed to taste.

  She flushed. Such dark, unspeakable envy. Unthinkable . . .

  Oh, many times she’d examined herself. Checked her body for signs of . . . well, of whatever Lizzie had been doing. But she never found anything. Always unbruised, unhurt, intact. As if the elixir remade her. Washed away Lizzie’s sins, and kept Eliza innocent.

  Except for this fearsome headache. What a pity Mr. Finch couldn’t brew a potion to magic that away. And like a sniggering idiot in the basement lurked the uncomfortable notion that Lizzie knew a whole lot more about Eliza’s doings than Eliza did about Lizzie’s. Lizzie hovered every day in the back of her mind, waiting to spring alive . . . but when Lizzie was in control? Eliza slept, the fitful slumber of nightmares, and later, the events of those dark-lit nights seemed ghostly, confused, a fevered dream. Especially when Lizzie went drinking.

  And Lizzie always went drinking.

  Eliza scrambled up, tugging the red satin over her bust. It gaped annoyingly, the edge of her corset exposed, and a big stain had soaked into the skirt. She sniffed. It smelled like urine. Charming. But the pub was deserted. So far, so good.

  She spied a dusty purple coat in a heap on the floor and slipped it on. It reached to her knees, and she wrapped it tight. It smelled strangely of flowers. For a moment, a glassy world of elusive memory swamped her, shapes and colors and textures tantalizingly out of reach . . .

  She knotted her blond hair into a pinless chignon—was that her hat, trodden into the floor?—tugged her coat lapels up around her ears, and pushed the door open.

  Cold air flared her headache afresh. Out on the street—where was this? Seven Dials? yes, there was the corner of Broad Street—pale dawn slanted through the narrow gaps between pubs and rotten tenements. Probably six o’clock, no later.

  Vomit puddled on the threshold, and she sidestepped it carefully, lifting her skirts. Her ankles wobbled in Lizzie’s too-high heels. Sleeping children made dark blobs in doorways, and blurry costermongers pushed woolly-edged carts on their way to buy fish or fruit at Covent Garden, or meat scraps at Smithfield Market.

  She blinked, patting her belt for spectacles . . . Ah. No. She’d have to do without. But she knew her way home. She’d sneak back in before Molly came for her. A wash, a change of clothes, then a quick trip to Mr. Finch’s on the way to work . . .

  Hoarse shouts rang from the stinking side alley. A crowd babbled, adults and children jostling to see.

  “Keep it back, there!” “Don’t step on ’im!” “The man’s murdit, I tell ya!”

  Cold water flooded her guts. Compelled, she fought through.

  A dead man sprawled in the dirt of the pub’s backyard. Blood stained his trousers, crusted the ground, splashed the walls. She craned her neck, and her heart skipped a pace.

  He wore a familiar torn green frock coat, with a moth-eaten patch on the shoulder.

  She didn’t need to see the dead man’s skinny rat-whiskered face to know it was Billy Beane.

  Billy the Bastard, murdered. In the very pub where Lizzie had spent the night.

  Oh, my. Lizzie was furious when Billy was acquitted. Eliza had felt it, the poisoned tide of rage rising in her blood. Heavens, Eliza had been angry too. But surely not . . .

  Determined, she pushed closer. She had to see the body, determine the cause of death . . . but above the heads of the crowd, a pair of dazzling blue eyes stopped her short.

  Alarmed, she ducked, hiding her face. Out of uniform in an old dark coat, unshaven, his curling hair tucked under a cap. But even sans spectacles, she’d know those arc-light eyes and that arrogant chin anywhere.

  Captain Lafayette.

  Her spine prickled cold. The Royal, in Seven Dials? Surely not. They couldn’t arrest everyone. No, Lafayette had some other purpose.

  Something involving a dead child-rapist, and the person or persons unknown who’d killed him. And Eliza didn’t fancy answering Lafayette’s questions. Not wrapped in Lizzie’s scandalous red satin, a borrowed coat, and the stink of gin.

  Not when she didn’t know the answers.

  Her palms itched, frustration crawling like bedbugs under her skin, but she gritted her teeth and slunk away.

  The bell tinkled as Eliza, with Hippocrates in tow, pushed open the glass-paned door of Finch’s Pharmacy on New Bond Street, just a few blocks from the stately homes in Grosvenor Square. The twin bay windows twinkled in the sun, polished to perfection.

  The familiar, spicy scent of rare plants and chemicals greeted her. Rows upon rows of apothecary’s drawers towered to the ceiling, each labeled in Latin. Bunches of fragrant herbs and drying leaves hung above the glossy counter. A wheeled stepladder on rails was shoved into the corner, where the o
bligatory portraits of Newton, Boyle, and Halley hung, the giants of times long gone. Behind her, glass-fronted shelves held phials of bright rainbow liquids—medicines and tinctures, philters and prophylactics, and poisons—and a coal fire shed a comfortable glow from a blackened iron grate.

  “Mr. Finch?” Eliza shrugged off her mantle, wriggling her shoulders gratefully in the warmth. The morning sun had vanished behind a layer of yellowish London miasma, and on the cab ride from Russell Square, the cold dank air had crawled up her sleeves and beneath her petticoats. But the familiar, homely sights and smells of Finch’s soothed her, as they always did. Even Lizzie relaxed, a contented sigh within. She was distant, sated, just a faint shifting presence in Eliza’s heart.

  This morning, she’d managed to creep up the back stairs unnoticed, hide Lizzie’s stained dress and that oddly scented purple coat, unlock the bedroom door, and hop into bed before Molly came to wake her. The maid had dressed her and combed her tangled hair without comment.

  But her head still hurt, her stomach scoured raw. She’d taken longer than usual to breakfast and make ready. Now she was late for work.

  Hippocrates buzzed eagerly at her skirt hem, jigging up and down. She adjusted her spectacles, wincing. “Mr. Finch?”

  “Eliza, my dear girl.” Finch trotted from behind the leather curtain, dusting stained hands. He wore a white apron over his waistcoat and rolled-up shirtsleeves. Strange-smelling yellow smoke snaked after him, and he coughed and swiped the air. “Sorry. Don’t breathe that in, my dear. My new cholera prophylactic. Works like a charm, I say!”

  “Congratulations.”

  He beamed, his faded blue eyes vague through the pince-nez perched on his crooked nose. “Unfortunately, it’s quite toxic. Kills rats, you know,” he added gloomily, and then he brightened and ruffled his wispy white hair into a bird’s nest. “Perhaps a new vermin bait. Aha! What a breakthrough! Smoke the vile critters from the sewers, say what?”

  Eliza covered her nose and waved the smelly smoke away. “Genius, Marcellus. At least the dead rats won’t have the cholera.”

  “Indeed,” he said happily. Marcellus Finch wasn’t yet fifty—he’d been very young when he brewed potions for her father—but he looked older, frailer. Like someone’s doting grandfather. Quite mad, naturally. But her only confidant . . . at least, the only one she trusted.

  “I received your telegraph,” he announced. “Or rather, your little metal pet’s telegraph. Where are you, tiny fellow? I’ve a sweet for you.” He fished a barley sugar from his pocket.

  Hippocrates bounced on his hinges, brass cogs spinning, and flashed his happy light.

  “Hipp doesn’t eat sweets,” she reminded him. “He’s made of metal, remember?”

  A disconsolate boing! of springs.

  “Oh. Well, never mind. I’ve something for you, too.” Finch popped the sweet into his mouth and rummaged in drawer after drawer, tossing aside packets of herbs and pills and scraps of paper. He gulped the sweet and smacked his lips. “Aha! Here we are.”

  He twisted the lid from a cylindrical tin to show her the dark powder inside. “Fresh yesterday,” he explained. “Same as before. Put twelve drams in half a pint of aqua pura, mane et vespere. It should alleviate your symptoms.” He shot her an oddly shrewd glance. “How are your symptoms, by the way?”

  She slipped the tin into her pocket. “Not good,” she admitted. “The fever is worse. I’m having nightmares again.”

  “Hmm.” He frowned. “I’d hoped the dependence would be easing. Have you, er . . . indulged?”

  She sighed. “Last night.”

  “Oh, I say.” Finch’s eyes gleamed, confidential. “For how long this time?”

  “At least eight hours. More, perhaps. And I think she might have . . .” Eliza shivered and glanced around, making sure no one was listening. She lowered her voice. “I think I might have done something unspeakable.”

  “Unspeakable,” scolded Hipp, but his happy light gave a gleeful gleam. He wasn’t helping.

  “Really,” Finch murmured coolly. “What kind of something?”

  “A man was murdered. I don’t know for certain, but . . .”

  Finch poked his pince-nez. “Ah. Well, these things happen.”

  “These things happen? Is that all you have to say? I might have killed a man!” But even as she spoke, her own indignation rang false, and it made her shiver. Billy Beane had deserved his punishment. No one would miss him . . .

  “But it wasn’t you, was it?” Finch flicked a smear of ash from his sleeve. “I used to tell Henry the same. He’d get so dreadfully upset, you see. But Henry, I’d say, Henry, old chum, don’t you understand? That’s what the elixir is for. The shadow feels the rage so you won’t have to. It sets you free.”

  Laughter, sighs, the heady scent of flowers, a hoarse male yell and a hot crimson splash . . . Her cheeks warmed. “But—”

  “Take your remedy, Eliza.” Finch patted her hand fondly. “Eat well. Build your strength, and we can keep these . . . accidents . . . to a minimum. Hmm?”

  She swallowed. She’d been too young to understand or remember her father’s experiments. Any truth in the scandalous gossip—that he’d done something appalling—had long since disintegrated into rumor. And Finch was a formidable secret-keeper. She’d long since given up fishing for information. But today . . .

  “Have you ever tried the elixir, Marcellus?”

  “Oh, bother me, yes.” He waved a hand, dismissive. “A long time ago. Experimental, you see.”

  Hipp jigged at her feet. “Nullius in verba,” he offered. “Scientific method.”

  “Precisely, tiny fellow, precisely. Henry and I had to be certain of the proportions.”

  “And?” asked Eliza.

  “It was . . . fascinating. Such a night we had.” Finch’s expression darkened, troubled, but then he smiled and the shadows fled. “But you know I’m forbidden to tell you. When Henry died, the rest of us burned his notes, his equipment, everything. He was quite adamant. Now, your prescriptions.”

  He handed over a carton of glass phials, containing medicines for use in her daily practice at the madhouse. “As ordered. Tincture of poppy, infused with ginger and peppermint to settle the stomach adstante febri. A decoction of valerian root to cure hysteria. And, you know. Ex tenebris.” He touched a fingertip to the cork of a narrow green flask.

  It was an experimental medicine for the demented, based on the same active ingredient as her remedy. Lux ex tenebris: “light from darkness.” In theory, if the shadow side could be kept at bay, even briefly, perhaps the lunatics would respond to further treatment.

  She’d had mixed results. It didn’t always work. And sometimes . . . Eliza suppressed a cold shudder. Sometimes, it even had the reverse effect and brought the darker side to the surface. Was her remedy similarly treacherous?

  “Give them one small sip only,” Finch reminded. “It’s volatile. And . . .” He reached under the counter and produced a pair of black flasks. “Your elixir.”

  Her mouth dried. She wanted to flee. She wanted to rip the corks out with her teeth and gulp the lot right now.

  “This is all I have left,” he warned. “One ingredient in particular is scarce. From the Orient, you know. There’ll be more. But not soon, so take care.”

  “Thank you, Marcellus.” The flasks murmured in her hands, warm and clammy like flesh, and a hint of that glorious sharp-sweet scent teased her. Tonight. She could drink it tonight, sate her thirst, ease this burning need . . .

  Sweating, she tucked the flasks into her bag and proffered a swab in a glass tube. “I’ve a sample I’d like you to analyze. I found this in a murder victim’s mouth. Some kind of stupefying substance, fast-acting. Not fatal, at least not immediately or in small doses.”

  Finch held the tube to the light. His glittering pince-nez polarized, prisming the light into rainbows. “Hmm. Not an opiate. Not an alcohol-based solvent, either. I smell . . . cherry blossoms, or . . .” He popped the cork, snif
fed at the contents, and swooned, stumbling against the counter. He fumbled for his smelling salts and waved them under his nose. “Brr! Yes, I see your concern.”

  “I’m wondering if it’s . . . well, you know.”

  “Hmm? Did you say something?”

  Hipp’s cogs whirred, an electric guffaw, and Eliza hid a smile. Marcellus was being even more vague than usual. “I said, do you think that substance could be unorthodox?”

  “Aha! Alkahest, say what? Ignis fatuus, a splash of aqua vitae?” Finch beamed and wiped his dripping nose. “What did I say it smelled of, again?”

  “Cherry blossom.”

  “Ah. Fascinating.” He stuffed the cork back in the tube and scribbled a note. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you. Come along, Hippocrates.” She turned to leave. “Oh,” she added over her shoulder, casually, as if it were an afterthought, “I received a letter last night. From him.”

  Finch didn’t look up from the berries and salts he’d started crushing in a little stone mortar. But his grip on the pestle whitened. “Oh? And what did he want?”

  “He wants to see me. Tonight.”

  A tiny warm smile. “Be on your best behavior, then. Wouldn’t do to upset him.”

  Ever since she’d grown old enough to wonder, it had baffled her that Henry Jekyll had left everything to this A.R. and not to her, his only child. Sometimes it hurt, distantly, like a long-healed wound. As if Father hadn’t wanted her to be her own person. As if he hadn’t trusted her. If she were a boy child, would he have done the same?

  She’d often suspected Finch knew more than he was saying about her father’s mysterious friend. But what if A.R. was Finch? Disguising his handwriting, hiding in shadow so she wouldn’t feel in his debt? She depended on him enough already. Trained as a physician she might be, but she was no alchemist, to brew arcane potions.

  And heaven knew, Marcellus had always been fond of her, watched over her, kept her secrets safe. It was he who’d taken her in when Henry died, wrapped her in a blanket before the crackling fire in his laboratory and placed a cup of strange-smelling tea into her chilled little hands. I’ve a very sad thing to tell you, Eliza. Promise me you’ll be brave. He’d walked beside her in her father’s funeral cortege, held her hand when she cried.