Godspeed (21 page)

“Thank you.”

She drew in a deep breath, and as she thought now of the words she was about to speak, the color drained away from her face and she appeared to become only a shadow, a ghostly apparition of the girl that I knew her to be.

“The doctor and Schuyler have known each other since boyhood. The doctor never had much family, and so was taken into Schuyler's and in some fashion, sort of adopted.”

This was not news to me. “Yes, that much I do know. Go on.”

“Well, this is the mystery we have not been able to solve. It seems that after Schuyler's mother died but before his father did, there was some sort of falling out between their family and Doctor Godspeed. But there is more to it than just a minor disagreement between friends.

“Doctor Godspeed actually left the country, and from all the evidence that Penn has been able to find in his research…” She paused.

“Go on!” I urged, a little too eagerly.

“I don't know. Perhaps it's best if I stop.”

“Please, Marielle.” I was not above begging if that was what it took. Any small piece of information she may have might be the thing that finally made him make sense.

“Well, when Penn came here, he was actually seeking to find the great Doctor Quinn Godspeed. He came to the last known location, based upon a newspaper clipping that his father had saved, telling of a doctor working ‘miracles’ on those no one else could help. He was told that Doctor Godspeed was dead by his own hand.”

“Yes, I know that too, but why?”

“Despondent, over a loss of some kind.” She drew in a long breath and then continued. “He and Schuyler Algernon apparently mended fences somehow, and the doctor began to work with him, repairing
watches and clocks, just as his father had. But he was known by the name Jonah Godspeed. Supposedly a long-lost twin brother that Quinn never spoke of. When he goes out in public, outside the walls of this house, that is
still
the name that he is known by.”

“But if he was a doctor, why did he stop practicing medicine? Why the false story of the suicide?”

“That, we have not been able to ascertain,” Marielle replied, with marked irritation. “We think that Jib's family knows more of the story, but if they do, they either haven't told him or he's not willing to tell us. The one time I ever saw Jib angry,” she shuddered at the memory now, “was one night when Penn pushed him too far in asking for answers. Jib told Penn that if he was able-bodied he'd have regretted ever asking the question.” She took up her knitting again and the needles clicked together once more. “Penn has never spoken of it to Jib again.”

I nodded, trying to take in all that I had just heard and reconcile it with what I already knew. I never left the house, and so was not exposed to anyone that would question me if I spoke of Quinn, though I remembered now, once in a fevered haze I had heard Schuyler warning Quinn that they must tell me I was not to speak of him to anyone.

Quinn's response had made no sense to me before, but now it gave me pause.
“Who would believe her?”

C
HAPTER
23

I FOUND MYSELF WITH MORE QUESTIONS
than answers after my discussions with Marielle and Penn. The mystery gnawed at me night and day, even as my love for Quinn continued to deepen.

I watched him go through his paces, saw how he tended to all in his charge, and I refused to believe that there could be anything so dark or deeply disturbing in his past that I could love him one whit less.

Now I only wanted to know what that history contained, so that I might find a way to help ease his burden, if I could. He had sacrificed much and risked everything to care for all of us, especially me, and I wanted nothing more than to help bear the weight of his own pain.

He seemed, however, entirely determined to keep that pain under lock and key. There were times I wondered how a human could tolerate such emotional distress, but then I didn't believe that he was completely human and thought that explained a lot of the mysteries about him.

Perhaps he really was much more ghostly creature than man of flesh and blood.

There were, after all, times I would have sworn he appeared out of thin air, moving from one room to another in the house without use of the standard doors or even the windows or balconies as points of access.

This night, the doctor had been called to visit Jib. The hour was late. Schuyler and Penn slept as I paced my room, alight with nervous energy. I adjusted the curtains, tidied up all the trinkets on the vanity, fluffed and fluffed again the pillows on my bed.

I stoked the fire and examined the mantle for dust, but found Schuyler's meticulous nature shone through again; there was not a speck upon it.

As my inspection of the space continued, I found that a painting on the wall, the one I had admired so in the shop and which had mysteriously appeared in my room the following evening, was hanging slightly askew. Instinctively I straightened it, and to my surprise I discovered that the panel in the wall behind it was actually hollow, and with the right leverage and very little actual strength it could be moved aside.

I grabbed a candle and lit it, shining it into an open space the panel had exposed. Its light revealed a very narrow door, and an even narrower staircase.

I almost expected the steps to give beneath my weight when I tried the first one, but found them to be solid as any thick wood floor in the house, and as I tread them they made no sound.

Just a flight below my room I found another door, and I considered my intentions carefully as to whether or not I should open it. I came to the conclusion very quickly that I was only doing this because I desired to help Quinn, and that reason gave me the boldness to continue that no other could.

I promised myself that if it were locked I would not search for a key, but turn away and continue down the steps to see where they ended up at the last. If the handle turned, however …

The handle turned.

A rising swell of panic washed over me. What if it was Schuyler's room and he was sleeping inside? Or Penn's? How would I explain where I was and what I was doing? I could hardly claim sleepwalking. Even if I had not been turned into a nocturnal creature by the doctor, I had never shown tendencies toward it before and the tale would be utterly unbelievable.

I finally pushed my fear aside; after all, I was doing this for Quinn. If I got caught I would tell exactly what I had been doing: I would tell the truth.

The door creaked as I opened it; a menacing sound, and one I realized I had heard before. When I had questioned Schuyler as to its origin he had simply replied that the floors were old, and prone to complain.

My solitary candle was too dim to afford me much sight here, so I sought out the mantle and found several more in holders upon it.

They were brand new, wicks untouched, and with them burning I soon had a much better view of the room in which I stood.

It was Quinn's room.

It did not take long for me to deduce this, as one of his waistcoats was tossed over the remarkably plain chair in the corner. The room was cold, and from the look of the hearth no fire had been lit in it for some time.

The wardrobe door had been left half open, and one of his shirts was hanging upon it. Cautious not to get my candle too near the fabric I held it up closer, and examined identical pairs of pants and shirts, black and white respectively, all lined up in perfect rows inside.

Schuyler again
, I thought.

I had never, not once in my life, been tempted to steal before this moment; but by the heavens I swear, how I wanted to take with me just one of his pure white shirts so I could sleep with it folded up and hidden beneath my pillow.

I turned around and moved toward a single bed, made so precisely and with such crisp linen that it looked as if it had never been slept in before. I could not resist the urge to pick up the pillow to see if it contained any hint of the barely detectable cologne he always wore, as his coat had the time I'd worn it. To my disappointment, I found not a trace to indicate it had ever touched his skin.

No, this room was not where Quinn Godspeed lived. This room was a closet for his clothing. His laboratory…
that
was where he lived.

One by one I extinguished the candles upon the mantle, and after a moment of silence to breathe in this place, with great reverence I closed the door.

I continued on and found the narrow staircase led only one place more; directly down into that hidden laboratory where he had turned me from merely human into something much more contrived.

I began to wonder, given there were hidden stairways and entire rooms unknown to all but just the few who needed to know of them, if there was more to that laboratory than I had previously seen.

Now that I found myself alone in it at last, I began to take note of the placement of every picture, every piece of furniture, and every mechanical component present.

I touched nothing of his machinery or upon his desk for fear of causing irreparable damage to some important work in progress.

I did, however, search the walls high and low, and just as I was about to give up I detected it: that same hollow sound in the wall I had heard inside my room.

I held my breath, placed both palms on the panel, and pushed.

I walked into the next room and instantly stopped where I stood. There was something not right about this place, something truly dark.

Something unnatural.

It was, for one thing, much colder in temperature than the room adjacent to it, and I shivered from the shock.

It was also unlike the laboratory, which had so many tools and instruments and books scattered about, in that it was absolutely spotless.

It was for the most part empty. There were bookshelves lining almost every inch of wall I could see, and every spine was straightened and displayed in precise order.

Dim gas lamps all around illuminated the space, and those lamps had to be tended, which meant someone visited this room quite often.

Though difficult to see in the light as it was, I feared allowing my candle to burn on in this place; I'd already considered what it might do, should anything nearby be flammable. I extinguished it with one breath, and still clutched the holder in my hand as I squinted to try to get a sense of exactly where I was.

It appeared to be neither library nor study, and I could not comprehend what its actual use might be or why it was kept hidden away as it was, merely to house a store of books.

I walked on, slowly moving forward.

It was only upon making a profound, shocking, and deeply disturbing discovery that I began to grasp the slightest glimpse into the magnitude of Quinn's genius, and his madness.

She lay encased in glass, like a porcelain doll in a toyshop's window. Each bright blonde curl upon her head was a perfectly formed ringlet that cascaded down far beyond her shoulders, over her bodice and down to her waist. She looked to be made of spun glass, but I knew she had once been far more than that.

She had once been alive.

There was something more to this woman imprisoned in a transparent coffin; there were lines and tubes and wires running to the pedestal beneath it, and as I staggered forward in shock and stumbled, I placed my hands upon the top of the sparkling, flawless crystal lid and discovered that it was cold.

It was freezing.

She was frozen.

I felt dizzy and thought I might faint, but I fought to hold on to reason through my horror. I knew that so many of the answers I sought were to be found in this room, and I could not risk letting the opportunity to find them slip away.

If I could just see enough and grasp hold of what it all meant, I could finally begin to understand him.

I locked tear-filled eyes upon the face of the woman before me, and thought now that she looked incredibly familiar. There was something about the slightly upturned curve of her nose, the dimple in her chin that I recognized. I had seen these features before, but where?

In whom had I seen this resemblance?

I willed myself to analyze her in greater detail: her sloping arms, her curving, feminine form not too dissimilar to my own. Her arms were crossed gracefully over her chest and on her left hand, a ring…

An engagement ring.

I was forced, now, to look away. My heart knew already what my mind could still not accept. This was the ‘she’ that Schuyler and Quinn battled over, whispered and screamed of. This was the woman they had both loved, and lost.

This was the woman who still held Quinn Godspeed's heart within the strangling confines of her icy, lifeless fingers. She was the reason that he had never seen me, would never hear me and could never love me.

I pulled my hand back from the surface of the enclosure now and rubbed it against the skirt of my gown. My fingers ached and stung, still burning from the cold.

The question that formed in my mind now was as simple as it was devastating.

Had he ever really wanted to save me, or had he only tried to spite Death because he could not save her?

I heard a gasp from the doorway and jumped. I could not turn, I was too afraid to see in his eyes the rage I knew I would if Quinn was the one who found me in this room.

“God in Heaven, woman, what have you done!” It was Schuyler, and he rushed forward toward me. In three long strides he had reached me, and he grasped hold of me, shaking me by the arms with a violence I did not, until this moment, know he was capable of.

“Stop, please!” I begged, but he was too possessed by fear to hear me.

“Do you know what he will do if he finds you here?” His fingers were bruising my arms, and tears fell down my face. My heart beat a frenzied pace in my chest, out-ticking the timing of its artificial mechanism in a way that made my entire body ache. Unconsciousness was not far off now, and I wondered if this would be the heartbreak that finally silenced my soul in death.

“Who gave you the right?” he demanded.

It was hearing the indignant tone in his voice that finally inspired in me the will to resist.