DIANA: But I didn’t, did I? And you said it yourself—I rescued Lucinda. If it weren’t for me—
LUCINDA: For which I am most grateful, I assure you.
DIANA: Oh. Well, it was nothing. I mean, it was something, all right—especially when we set all those sheets on fire and everyone began running out of the building, and they called the fire brigade! That was prime.
The next morning, Justine walked across the courtyard to the building that had once been Hyde’s laboratory and was now converted into Beatrice’s greenhouse of poisonous plants. Before she had left Budapest, Beatrice had said to her, “When you are once again in London, please look in on my plants. I do not know if Dr. Watson’s ingenious arrangement of rubber tubes actually worked. I hope they are still alive—but I am anxious about them. Sometimes I think of them as my children, the only ones I shall ever have.”
As she crossed the courtyard, Omega followed her, meowing at her heels. She picked up the kitten. “You can’t come with me,” she said to him sternly. “It’s poisonous in there. Un petit chatton like you would not last a minute.” She kissed him on the head, then put him down again and said, “Shoo! As Mrs. Poole always says, although I do not understand the reference to footwear. Go back and bother her, mon petit. I have no time for you this morning.” He walked off disdainfully, tail in the air, as though having been rejected in that fashion, he could not be bothered with her either.
The door of the greenhouse, once an operating theater with a high glass dome to let in light, opened with a creak. The moisture inside had rusted the hinges.
Inside, it was warm, humid—and green. Justine breathed a sigh of relief. Here and there she could see patches of brown—the Digitalis purpurea had not survived as well as some of the hardier specimens, and the henbane was drooping. But most of the plants arranged on the semicircular wooden ledges where students had once taken notes were lush and thriving.
Justine checked all the tubes, made any necessary adjustments, and moved the Digitalis to a shadier location, although she was not certain if that would help. Beatrice knew more about such plants than she did, although she had done well enough raising vegetables for her own consumption during the hundred years she had spent in Cornwall.
Were they indeed the only children Beatrice would ever have? She herself was not capable of having children. When he had re-created her, Victor Frankenstein had made sure of that. When Adam had held her captive in the small cottage in the Orkneys, when he had insisted that she behave as his wife, she had been glad that she could not conceive a child. But now? She would never have the life Justine Moritz might have had, the life of an ordinary woman. There was a man who might love her—at least, she had seen marks of attention from him. The small courtesies, the poetry… Atlas, the Strongman of Lorenzo’s Circus of Marvels and Delights, who was as tall as she was, although not as strong. How did she feel about him? She did not know. Adam’s death had changed something, she was not sure what—but now she felt as though, for the first time since Victor Frankenstein’s death, she could think about the future. What did the future hold for her? She had no idea.
Well, it was no use standing here in a state of uncertainty and indecision. She must go join the others—there was a great deal to do today!
While Justine was crossing the courtyard from Beatrice’s greenhouse to the tradesmen’s entrance, Mary was waiting in the parlor for her and Diana. She paced back and forth, then paused and looked up at the portrait of her mother over the fireplace. She had not come into this room last night—the fire had not been lit, and it had been a cold, dark cave. But now, morning light streamed in through the windows, illuminating the sofa and armchairs Beatrice had recovered in a floral pattern, the Turkish rug she had bought at a church sale. Mary looked up at the painting of her mother over the mantel, between two Chinese jars that, yes, Beatrice had chosen. The Poisonous Girl was, after all, their resident aesthete and decorator. There was Mrs. Jekyll, with her golden hair and cornflower-blue eyes, dressed in the romantic and slightly ridiculous fashion of a previous generation. Mary walked to the fireplace and stood beneath the painting.
Mother, if you could have been there, she thought. In that castle in Styria where her father—well, Edward Hyde—had told her the terrible story of his experiments: how he had tried to become his better self, how he had fallen to his lower impulses. And while he was still trying to become the higher man, a more rational, evolved human being through chemical experimentation, he had given his wife something, some drug created through his experiments, that allowed her to have the child she had so long desired. He experimented on you too. And I was the result of that experiment. If her mother were here now, what would Mary tell her? She did not know. Perhaps it was better, after all, that Ernestine Jekyll was lying in the graveyard of Marylebone Church. What characteristics had Mary inherited from that version of her father? No wonder she and Diana, who was born of her father’s lower, more bestial self, were so different. But the higher man—could he not be as inhuman as the lower? She was, perhaps, as much of a monster as her sister.
DIANA: Oy! Anyway, you’re worse than me any day. At least I’m never a sanctimonious prig.
“Mary, are you ready?” asked Justine. There were Justine and Diana in the doorway, both dressed in men’s clothes—well, boys’ clothes, in Diana’s case.
“Is it absolutely necessary for you to dress like that?” said Mary. “Where in the world did you get that suit anyway, from Charlie? You look like one of the Baker Street Irregulars. Indeed, there’s no need for you to come at all. Why can’t you just stay here and do something or other with Archibald?”
“You never want to include me!” said Diana, putting her hands in her pockets and planting her feet wide, like Charlie Sutton or another of the Baker Street boys. “Well, I’m coming—nohow.”
“I am not certain that word means what you intended,” said Justine.
“Words can mean whatever you want them to,” said Diana. “You just have to pay them enough. Anyway, what do you know about English? You’re Swiss.”
Mary had no time to waste on such nonsensical chatter. “Come on, then. Honestly, half the reason we bring you anywhere is that it’s usually more trouble to leave you behind!”
She walked at a brisk pace out the front door of 11 Park Terrace, then across Regent’s Park, annoyed at Diana and anxious about what she would find at Baker Street. In the park, the trees and shrubs, which had still been green before they left for Vienna, were draped in their autumn finery. A few leaves, yellow and orange, already littered the ground. The roses of summer had turned into red hips, and the ducks and geese on the river looked ready to depart for warmer climes.
BEATRICE: That’s lovely writing, Catherine.
CATHERINE: Thank you. I must have rewritten that description three times. I wasn’t sure about “climes”—it may be too Wordsworthian? But “climate” sounded so ordinary. I wanted it to sound, you know, poetic.
At 221 Baker Street, Mrs. Hudson greeted Mary with voluble joy. “Oh, Miss Jekyll, I’m so glad to see you safely back!” she said. “No, I’m afraid I don’t have anything more to report. Nor hide nor hair I’ve seen of either Mr. Holmes or Dr. Watson since I spoke with Mrs. Poole. Sometimes the gentlemen are away for long periods of time, but they generally let me know where they’re going, although Mr. Holmes can be secretive, to be sure. Yes, of course you may search their rooms—I know they wouldn’t mind you doing so. And this is Miss Frankenstein! I wouldn’t have thought you were a lady, in that getup—look quite gentlemanly, you do. But Mrs. Poole told me all about you, miss. Such a nice time we have on her days off—we go to the Aerated Bread Company for tea, and then on to Harrods or a walk down Piccadilly to look at the shops. And Miss Hyde, too, of course. She’s told me all about you!” Mrs. Hudson looked at Diana disapprovingly. “Mind you behave yourself upstairs! No monkey business.” She took a large set of keys from her apron pocket. “I’ll just unlock the flat for you, shall I? How were your travels on the continent?”