“I’m going to miss everyone too,” she said to Justine. “But it will be lovely to see Mrs. Poole again, and sit in our own parlor, and walk in Regent’s Park. If only I weren’t so worried about Alice and Mr. Holmes! And Dr. Watson, of course, if he is indeed missing as Mrs. Poole indicated in her telegram. Perhaps he’s simply on the case, as Mr. Holmes would say? It would be like him to go after Mr. Holmes and try to rescue him from whatever predicament he’s in. I hope Dr. Watson hasn’t actually disappeared, despite Mrs. Poole’s statement.”
“If so, would Mrs. Hudson not know his whereabouts?” asked Justine.
“Not necessarily. You know he and Mr. Holmes are—well, despite how much I like and respect them, they’re not always considerate. Sometimes they do not let anyone know where they are going, or what they are doing there.”
“Perhaps,” said Justine, seeming unconvinced. Then she added, “We’ll find them, Mary, wherever they are. We are the Athena Club, after all.” But she looked worried as well—Mary could see the small frown lines between her eyebrows.
Well, thought Mary, we have reason to be worried, the both of us! She remembered that afternoon in the basement storage room of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences—had it really only been four days ago? She, Justine, and Beatrice had been going through the files of the Alchemical Society when Catherine had rushed in, breathless, and said, “Telegram from Mrs. Poole!” The telegram had informed them that Alice, Mary’s kitchen maid, had been kidnapped. And then Frau Gottleib, who had once served in the Jekyll household as nurse to Mary’s mother, but whom they had discovered was actually a spy for the Alchemical Society, had told them that Alice was not who they had thought either. Although Alice herself did not know it, she was Lydia Raymond, daughter of the notorious Mrs. Raymond, who had been involved in the Whitechapel Murders.
MARY: How in the world do you keep all this straight in your head? It’s like a giant tangle of string. The hardest thing about our trip to Budapest was finding out that no one was who I thought they were—Nurse Adams, who took care of my mother for so long, was actually Eva Gottleib, and Mina wasn’t just my governess, but had been spying on me for the British Society’s Subcommittee on Bibliographic Citation Format, and Helen Raymond wasn’t just the director of the Society of St. Mary Magdalen, but the result of an experiment in biological transmutation by Dr. Raymond, who had been the chair of the British chapter of the Alchemical Society.…
CATHERINE: I keep notes, of course. Although sometimes it’s hard to remember things like dates and train schedules. You’re better at those sorts of things than I am.
As soon as they had learned that Alice was missing, Mary and Justine had packed their bags—and Mary had packed for Diana, to make sure she did not sneak a wolfdog into her suitcase! They had left the next day. Catherine and Beatrice had stayed to fulfill their contract with Lorenzo’s Circus of Marvels and Delights, which was performing in Budapest to packed houses, but they would leave as soon as their obligations were over. Mary would be glad when they were all back in London! Where were Alice, Mr. Holmes, and Dr. Watson? As soon as she and Justine arrived back at 11 Park Terrace, Mary would try to find out. Mrs. Raymond might be connected in some way—Mary still remembered the formidable director of the Magdalen Society, with her iron-gray hair and cold, hard eyes. Was the mysterious Dr. Raymond connected as well? This was another adventure, coming right on the heels of the last one—adventures seemed to do that. They never gave one enough time to rest. Whatever dangers awaited them in London, they would need the full strength of the Athena Club.
MARY: Are our readers going to know what the Athena Club is?
CATHERINE: They will if they read the first two books! Which they should, and I hope if they are reading this volume and have not read the previous ones, they will go right out and purchase them. Two shillings each, a bargain at the price!
While Mary was staring out the train window at the houses of Calais with their neat gardens, and mentally calculating how many francs she would have to pay for ferry tickets, Justine was also remembering their adventures in Europe. For the first time since she had been resurrected by Victor Frankenstein, she had been—not quite home, but almost. Hearing French and German, eating food whose flavors were familiar from her childhood, she had felt closer to home than she ever did in England. Driving in the coach through the mountains of Styria, even though they had been driving into a trap set by the despicable Edward Hyde, she had felt a sense of joy from the air and altitude. And then confronting Adam again! Frankenstein’s first creation, who had loved her and tortured her, if anything so cruel and desperate could be called love. In his letter to Mary, Hyde had written that Adam was dead. Justine wondered if she could believe him—she had once seen Adam die in a fire with her own eyes, and yet she had found him again, terribly injured, in Styria. But reason told her that he must be dead indeed, that he could not have survived those injuries much longer. When she had read Hyde’s letter, she had felt, for the first time in her second life, a sense of release from bondage, of that peace the Bible spoke of which passeth all understanding. It was wrong to rejoice in his death, and yet she could not help doing so. Well, she would pray about it in St. James’s, the church she and Beatrice attended across from Spanish Place. It would be nice to speak with Father O’Brian again!
How fortunate she was to have everything she needed: friends who loved her, a home to return to. The one thing she had truly missed had been her painting studio. That study of flowers in a blue vase was still sitting on her easel, unfinished. Would she have time to finish it when they got home? Perhaps after they had found Alice. Poor little Alice… where could she be? And then, like Mary, Justine worried about the kitchen maid, and Mr. Holmes, and Dr. Watson, all so mysteriously vanished.
While Mary and Justine’s train drew into the station at Calais, Catherine—
DIANA: What about me? You haven’t said anything about me. I was on that train too.
Diana continued to snore in her sleep. She woke only when the train lurched and she almost rolled off Justine’s lap and onto the floor. The first words out of her mouth were: “Bloody hell!” Since she had been asleep for the entire journey, she had not said or thought anything worth reporting.
CATHERINE: There, satisfied? Oh no, you don’t! If you kick me again, I’m going to bite you so hard.…
Meanwhile, Catherine was eating a very good sausage, flavored with red pepper, in the dining room of Count Dracula’s house in Budapest. Madam Zora, the circus’s snake charmer, had just been thanking Mina Murray for inviting her to stay at the Count’s town residence while the circus was performing.
“Don’t thank me,” said Mina with a smile. “I’m not the mistress here. The Count decides who stays or goes—sometimes unceremoniously! But he likes having all of you girls here—he says it gives this old mausoleum a semblance of life—and you are welcome to stay as long as you wish.”
“Beatrice and I would have gone already if the circus hadn’t been held over until Thursday!” said Catherine. “But Lorenzo’s making so much money—he says everyone who’s anyone is in Budapest right now, for the Emperor’s visit. The theater is packed every night. And if anyone deserves it, he does—considering all those years we traveled around the countryside in wagons, barely able to afford food for the trick ponies or performing dogs!”