Her Dark Curiosity (5 page)

I took in the crime scene in flashes of the flickering match, my mind whirling as I stumbled closer, then away, then closer yet again, my instincts caught in a frantic fight-or-flight, curiosity winning in the struggle. I could only see tears in her men’s clothing, smell the blood. In my delirium, it brought back too many memories from the island.

A crack of ice sounded behind me. I gasped, afraid I wasn’t alone, and broke into a frantic run with Sharkey barking at my heels. I raced through the snow, ignoring the burn in my lungs. Sweat poured down my back like oozing fear, and my strangled breath grew shallower the farther I ran, past the row of closed doors, past the dress shop with headless mannequins, into the wider street where lights shone like beacons of safety.

I collapsed in the doorway of a closed bakery and glanced behind to make sure I wasn’t being followed by anyone other than the little dog, who trotted up beside me. Visions of the girl thief’s body haunted me. Steam still rising from the body, signaling a fresh kill. The murderer must have been there moments before—the murderer Scotland Yard was so desperately hunting. The man who had killed Daniel Penderwick. Annie Benton. An unnamed victim.

And now one more.

The wind blew cold enough to make my teeth ache. A rusty hinge groaned, and I jumped back into a run. It all threatened to trip me—the thief’s body curled in the snow, the bloody flower—and I had to choke back a sob. At last I reached the church on the corner and turned onto Dumbarton Street, where I slowed to a jittery walk. Sharkey trotted beside me, still shivering. I picked him up and wrapped him in the folds of my coat as best I could, mindless of the blood getting on the fabric.

It wasn’t easy to climb the professor’s garden trellis with the dog tucked inside my coat, but I managed. The window had a keyed lock, but I had broken through that my second night in the house. Hydrochloric acid was easy enough to get from the chemist’s, and it dissolved iron even in small doses. After that it had been a simple matter of replacing it with a similar lock of which I held the key.

I eased the window up as quietly as I could and climbed inside. I wiped Sharkey’s paws with a handkerchief before setting him on the rug, then tore off my coat and stripped out of my dress and corset and all the trappings I was made to wear, leaving it all pooled in the corner of the room.

Tomorrow I’d hide the bloody clothes from the maid.

Tomorrow I’d see things clearly again.

Today, though, all I could manage was to dress in fresh clothes and grab my old coat, then climb back out of my window and return to the front door so the professor wouldn’t suspect anything was wrong. I smoothed my hair back, checking my hands one last time for flecks of blood, and then pressed a trembling finger against the door chime.

An eternity passed before Mary answered, drying her hands on a cotton towel, her face flushed from the kitchen fire. She had the smell of ginger on her and a streak of rust-colored cinnamon across her apron, but all I could think of was blood, and my stomach lurched.

“Afternoon, miss.” She barely glanced at me as she brushed away the streak of cinnamon. I had to force my body to step into the foyer. Close the door behind me. Lock it tight.

From the dining room came a half-strangled sound like a cat dying, and my nerves flared to life again. I should tell someone about the body. I must. And yet the police would have certainly found her by now. If I said anything there would be questions; why I was in such a rough neighborhood, not at tea with Lucy where I belonged. . . .

Mary sighed as another shriek came from the dining room. “It’s that clock of his,” she whispered. “Broke this morning while you were out, and he’s gotten it into his head to fix it himself.” Another strangled cry of the wood bird sounded. “Maybe
you
can convince him to take it to the clockmaker.” She sniffed the air suddenly. “The gingerbread!”

As she fled to the kitchen, I undid the buttons of my coat, glancing up the stairs toward my bedroom where the little dog was hidden from the world along with the bloodstained coat. My fingers felt stiff, my limbs like wood. I entered the dining room like a ghost, and I must have looked the same, but the professor was so occupied by the broken clock that he didn’t glance at me as I sank into one of the straight-backed chairs.

I wanted to rest my head in my hands. I wanted to tell him everything.

“Blast these tiny parts,” he muttered, holding up a spring no larger than his fingernail. “They were made for nimbler fingers.”

The wooden clock sat upright on the table, its insides laid out as the professor performed his mechanical autopsy. He hadn’t practiced surgery in over a decade, but his skill was apparent in the way he cataloged the clock’s parts, testing each one methodically for faults. I kept my hands clasped under the table, my mind still too numb for words.

Mary brought out a plate of gingerbread cut into star shapes, warning us not to eat too many and ruin our appetites, though that hardly stopped the professor. I couldn’t yet face returning to my room, to the dog who had trod in a dead man’s blood, and the stains on my coat. Besides, watching the professor work calmed me. He was careful and attentive, but he paused for bites of cake and idle chatter. So unlike my father, who had been so serious. So unlike me, too.

I stayed up quite late to avoid the secrets stashed in my bedroom, long after Mary left for the day and the professor retired to bed. Then, by the light of a lantern, I worked on the clock myself, using an old book of mechanics to repair the broken gears that were too small for the professor’s arthritic old fingers. At last I replaced the final screw and closed the clock’s wooden door. When the professor woke in the morning, it would be to the god-awful squawk of that blasted bird he loved so much.

It wasn’t much to repay his kindness, but it was something.

At last I climbed the stairs with weary limbs and closed myself in my bedroom. The fire had long since gone out. When I called Sharkey, he came out from under the bed, blinking, and something broke inside me.

I grabbed him and slid between the covers, my body wracked in shivers, and pulled the little dog against me. We shivered together under the expensive duvets and sheets, neither of us belonging in so fine a house.

There was no sleep for me that night. I tried to picture the alleyway again, to remember exactly what the thief girl’s wounds had looked like, but the match light had been so faint, and my fear had been a distorting lens. Certainly it wasn’t strange that a girl who’d tried to rob me had later ended up dead. She was a criminal, after all, and Shoreditch was a dangerous neighborhood. Maybe she’d tried to pick the wrong pocket, or gotten in a brawl, or someone had found out there wasn’t a man’s body under that clothing.

I let these dangerous thoughts unfurl beneath the sheets, exploring them cautiously, feeling their weight. After some time, when I was certain the professor was fast asleep, I climbed out of my warm bed where the little dog snored softly, and knelt by my pile of crumpled clothes. I could smell the blood on them, along with something more fragrant—pollen.

I dug through until I found the flower. Why had I kept it? I should have thrown it to the street, but for some reason I’d slipped it in my coat pocket instead.

I could still get rid of it. Burn it in the fire. Throw it out the window.

Instead, with trembling fingers, I carefully placed the pressed flower within the pages of my journal. I don’t know what instinct made me keep it, this bloody memento of a murderer. Call it sentimentality. Call it curiosity.

Just don’t call it madness.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

SIX

I
N THE MORNING, THE
previous day’s adventures seemed as unreal as nightmares, and yet the flower pressed within my journal was real enough, as was the sleeping dog beside me.

All trace of my bloody coat had burned in the fireplace except for the silver buttons, which I slipped into my pocket. I wasn’t looking forward to telling the professor I’d need a new one. I pulled out the newspaper and reread the article again. The familiar names of the victims stared at me from the page, as did another name—Inspector John Newcastle. Lucy’s ambitious young suitor had been chosen to lead the investigation of the Wolf of Whitechapel, and I wasn’t certain whether this news was welcome or not; as much as I loathed the idea of seeking information from the police, Inspector Newcastle might be able to give me more clues about the murderer and his victims. But how could I possibly explain my interest to the inspector? Well-bred seventeen-year-old girls weren’t fascinated by murder suspects, as a rule. If I said three of the four victims had personally wronged me, I’d become the number one suspect.

My fingers clenched the newsprint. If only Montgomery was here, he’d know what to do. He had always been better than me at these things: investigating, tracking,
lying.
For the longest time I’d thought him a terrible liar, and yet in the end, he’d fooled me well enough. I could still remember his voice:
You shouldn’t have anything to do with me. I’m guilty of so many crimes.
He’d warned me plain as day, and yet I’d still fallen in love with him, believed we had a future . . . and now here I was, alone with ink-stained fingers, only a dog for company and an old man who didn’t begin to know the truth about me.

I skipped over Inspector Newcastle’s name and let my gaze linger on the last line of the article, a line that I’d barely glanced at in my hurry yesterday: “The bodies are being kept in King’s College of Medical Research until autopsies can be performed to shed light on the exact nature of the deaths.”

King’s College—I knew those dark hallways only too well. I’d scrubbed blood from the mortar there, dusted cobwebs from between skeleton’s bones. That was where Dr. Hastings had decided a simple cleaning girl wouldn’t dare refuse his sexual advances, and I’d slit his wrist. I still remembered the crimson color of his blood on the tile.

The last thing I wanted to do was return to those hallways.

And yet those bodies called to me, promising to tell me the answers buried within their cold flesh.

It was a call I couldn’t resist.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
I dressed early and came downstairs with a lie prepared about needing to do some Christmas shopping in the market. To my surprise, I heard sounds of arguing and found the professor in the library with a visitor, a stout man with stiff waxed hair and thick glasses whose face froze when he saw me standing in the doorway.

“Ah, Juliet, you’re awake,” the professor said, rising to his feet. His mouth was still held tense from their argument, but he forced a smile as he pulled me into the hallway.

“Who’s that man?” I asked, trying to peek around his shoulder.

“Isambard Lessing. A historian, one of the King’s Club men. No need to concern yourself with him; he’s here to inquire about some old journals and family heirlooms. Did you need something?”

“I was thinking of going shopping. This close to Christmas—”

“Yes, yes, a fine idea,” he said, herding me toward the stairs. He fumbled in his pocket for some bank notes and pressed them into my hand. “I’ll see you back here for supper.”

I muttered a silent prayer of thanks that he was distracted and wasted no time hurrying from the house with Sharkey. I took the dog to the market and firmly deposited him with Joyce, so by the time I got to King’s College—wearing an old apron over my fashionable red dress—classes were already in session for the morning. I entered through the main double doors into the glistening hallway with polished wood inlay floors and wall sconces covering the electric lights. My boots echoed loudly in the empty hallways. I’d never felt comfortable on this level, the realm of academics and well-off students from good families. Grainy photographs lined the walls showing the illustrious history of the university and its construction. One brass frame bore the crest of the King’s Club, the motto underneath.
Ex scientia vera.
From knowledge, truth. I thought of stiff Isambard Lessing and his red face. I paused to look at the date on the frame’s inscription.

1875. Four years before I was born. The photograph documented the King’s Club membership at the time, two lines of a dozen male faces wearing long robes and serious expressions. Lucy’s railroad magnate father, Mr. Radcliffe, was among them, his beard much shorter, standing next to a stout man I recognized as Isambard Lessing himself, and with a shudder I recognized a young Dr. Hastings. I also found the professor’s face among them, decades younger but with the same wire-rim glasses and a hint of a smile on an otherwise stern face. On his left was a young man whose face I knew all too well—my father.

I shifted in my stiff clothing and drew in a deep breath. The professor had mentioned they’d met in the King’s Club, so perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. In the photograph Father had dark hair cut in the fashion of the time, and his eyes were alert and focused, so unlike his wild-eyed, gray-haired visage I had known more recently. The face in the photograph was the face I knew from my earliest memories, long ago when I’d idolized him, before madness and ambition had claimed him.