Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper (10 page)

*   *   *

It was slow going through the snow-packed streets, for which Rowena was alternately thankful and miserable. Thankful because the roads the carriage took were potholed and pitted, and more than once she was almost rattled loose; any faster and she would certainly have lost her grip. Miserable because the cold was intense and the wheels threw up freezing slush and, once, a slurry of horse dung. But just as she felt she could hold on no longer, the driver reined in the horses and the brougham pulled up on a well-paved street lined, as far as she could see from beneath the carriage, with plane trees and hedges bordering long gardens.

Before Gaunt could descend from the carriage she dropped down to the road and crawled out from the back of the brougham, rising to a crouch and running for the nearest of the trees. She stood behind it, shivering and wet, and tried to get her bearings. From the location of such landmarks as she could make out in the misty, snowbound night—the distant crown of the Lady of Liberty flood barrier, the tall ziggurats of the financial district—she surmised they had traveled west from Southwark, and the grand facades of the houses put her, she thought, somewhere around Kennington.

Edward Gaunt had not done badly for himself while his wife languished in Midgrave. Not badly at all.

Rowena watched Gaunt arguing with the brougham driver over the fare, then stomping off through the snow toward a tall gate garlanded with climbing evergreens, beyond which lay a mid-terraced house with the lights burning, well tended and most desirable. After he let himself in and the carriage departed, Rowena risked slipping from behind the tree and following Gaunt’s tracks. He had let himself into the house by the time she reached the gate and she stood there, hands on the ironwork, watching his silhouette pass through the hallway and into the parlor.

She hated him as she had hated no human being ever before in her life.

Something settled in her gut, something hard and cold, like the iron she grasped. It would be but a moment’s work.… She could be in there and teach Gaunt a lesson. A proper lesson. Finally, after all this time …

She was idly playing with the latch when there was a cough from beside her. Rowena looked around to see a girl, aged no more than ten or twelve, swaddled in a muffler and a thick coat.

“It’s you, isn’t it?”

Rowena blinked. “Sorry?”

The girl took a deep breath. “Sorry. That was rude. You’re Rowena Fanshawe. The Belle of the Airways.” In her gloved hand she held a copy of
World Marvels & Wonders,
damp from the snow. “I read about you all the time. I just saw you and couldn’t believe it. But it’s you.”

Rowena stared at the girl, then at the periodical. She asked, “What’s your name?”

“Maud, Miss Fanshawe. You’re my favorite. I mean, Gideon Smith is all right, but … well. I can’t be Gideon Smith when I grow up.” She put her face down shyly. “But I could be Rowena Fanshawe.”

The weight in her belly turned out not to be iron after all. It was ice. And it was thawing. She crouched down in front of the girl. “Maud. Maud, you can be whatever you want to be. I promise. And thank you.”

“What for, miss?”

Rowena stood up, gazing back at Gaunt’s house. “I couldn’t put it into words, Maud. But thank you. Now you run along home, yes? It’s cold and dark, Maud. Yes, so very cold and dark.”

She hardly noticed the girl, clutching her magazine, running off through the snow, so intent was she on the black shape of Edward Gaunt in the parlor of his Kennington house.

7

I
DENTITY
C
RISIS

What are you?

Maria studied her reflection in the mirror on her dressing table. She had brushed her hair and applied a little perfume to her neck. She had selected a long silk nightgown that tied at her breast with a soft bow. She looked like a woman. A beautiful young woman.

She considered the words dispassionately, without pride or vanity. “Beautiful.” “Young.” “Woman.” Was she any of these things? By the standards of other women she supposed she was beautiful; her features were symmetrical, her hair blond and straight, her lips full, her eyes clear. Gideon told her she was beautiful, and she caught the surreptitious glances of other men when she walked in London’s streets. But if she pressed her stomach
just so
her torso would open up, miraculously, revealing the secrets within: pistons and gears, rods and wheels, copper tubes and glass pipes through which pumped viscous, dark liquids. And in her head sat the brain of a murdered woman, poor Annie Crook, killed for the crime of loving above her station.

Young? From the notebook left behind by her errant creator, Professor Hermann Einstein, Maria knew it had been a mere three years since the brain of Annie Crook, the mysterious Atlantic Artifact, and the hitherto mechanical yet lifelike automaton Professor Einstein had created for his own amusement had been brought together to create Maria.

And … a woman? “I refer you to my previous answers,” she muttered, tugging the brush viciously through her yielding hair.
Was
she a woman? Did she deserve to sit here, in these pretty night things, with scented skin—skin made of the finest kid leather!—and dare to hope that a man like Gideon Smith could love her?

Maria picked up the book from the dressing table that Mrs. Cadwallader had lent to her.
Hints on Etiquette and the Usages of Society; With a Glance at Bad Habits.
The page she had kept with an embroidered bookmark began, “Ladies of good taste seldom wear jewelry in the morning; and when they do, they confine themselves to trinkets of gold, or those in which opaque stones only are introduced. Ornaments with brilliant stones are unsuited for a morning costume.”

She tossed the book on her bed in despair. There were four more like it on her shelves, and she had been dipping into them with increasing frustration. There was so much to learn about being a lady, and she’d had such little conscious existence in which to practice. How could she truly hope to be a proper woman? Besides, she had developed a dark suspicion that the rules in these books—which, she noticed, were largely written by men—were nonsensically constraining. Even if she could memorize them all, did she
want
to?

Maria needed to speak to someone. Someone who wasn’t Gideon or—bless him!—Aloysius Bent. Rowena Fanshawe had shown her friendship, but Rowena was not here in Grosvenor Square. There was no one.

However … from the floor below drifted rousing sounds, music that seemed to lift the floorboards with energy and passion.

Passion. That was what was expected of her now, wasn’t it? Somewhere in her breast, the wheels turned faster, the pistons pumped harder, the gears meshed and slipped. Something fluttered there, something not explained by engineering or hard science. Had Professor Einstein trapped a bird in her chest, or was she more woman, more human, than she gave herself credit for? Was Maria, really, more than the sum of her many and mysterious parts?

Slipping on a cotton dressing gown, she padded down the carpeted staircase in search of the music. It issued from the study, where she found Mrs. Cadwallader sitting in the armchair, nodding her head in time to the rising crescendo.

“Oh, Miss Maria!” said the housekeeper when she noticed her at the doorway. “Did the music disturb you? I was just relaxing.…”

“What is it?” asked Maria, stepping into the study. “The music?”

“Act three of
Die Walküre,
” said Mrs. Cadwallader, nodding to the wax cylinder that turned in the corner, the dramatic sounds galloping out of the curved trumpet. “Richard Wagner.
The Ring Cycle
. Do you know it?”

“It does seem somewhat familiar,” said Maria. “My … Professor Einstein liked his music.”

“I love my opera. Used to creep the boards myself, when I was younger. Strictly amateur, of course. Think I still have some of my old props and costumes somewhere.” Mrs. Cadwallader rose from the chair. “Oh, my dear, whatever’s the matter?”

The thought of music at the house of Einstein had brought with it more unpleasant memories: those of Crowe, Einstein’s despicable manservant, who when the professor had mysteriously disappeared a year ago had begun, cautiously at first but with increasing boldness, to fully investigate just how lifelike the inventor had made his automaton. Had Gideon not rescued her from the place that summer, she was sure that Crowe would have eventually worked up the courage to fully …

She pushed the thought away and brushed away the liquid that trickled down her cheeks. “Leakage from my eyes,” she said absently. “It happens sometimes. A fault in my workings.”

“Tosh,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “I know crying when I see it. Sit down, miss, and you tell Sally all about what’s bothering you.”

Maria did as she was bid, taking the armchair next to Mrs. Cadwallader’s. “I just needed someone to speak to,” she said softly. “Gideon has … oh, I can’t tell you. You’ll be scandalized.”

Mrs. Cadwallader folded her arms beneath her ample bosom. “Miss Maria, I lived here for many years as housekeeper to Captain Trigger and Doctor Reed. Two men, as in love as any courting couple you might find promenading in front of the Taj Mahal in Hyde Park. You think anything you say can shock me?”

Maria swallowed. “Gideon has asked … if I would be willing to share his bed. From tonight.”

Mrs. Cadwallader clapped her hands together. “Oh, Miss Maria! Well, it’s about time! I was starting to wonder what was up with the boy.”

“You aren’t shocked?”

Mrs. Cadwallader sighed. “Look, Miss Maria, I know that polite society would have you and Gideon married before you became involved in that side of things. But these are interesting times in which we live, and I’m afraid you and Gideon aren’t ever going to have what others might call a
normal
sort of relationship, are you?”

“Were you married, Mrs. Cadwallader?”

The housekeeper sat back, a faraway look in her eye. “I was. My Albert was a lovely soul, always took care of me. We never had children—well, we had two, as a matter of fact, but neither of the poor mites lived beyond a day. He was gentle but strong.” She paused thoughtfully. “Like your Mr. Smith, I think.” She shook her head and looked at Maria. “He was a soldier, for his sins. Died during the annexing of the Transvaal in 1877. I do miss him terribly.”

“And you have been alone all this time?”

Mrs. Cadwallader laughed. “Who’d have me, miss? I’m well past my best. Whereas you … but … you won’t mind me asking this, I hope.
Can
you … can you love a man in that way?”

“I think so,” said Maria. “I … there was a man called Crowe. He used to abuse me most dreadfully, Mrs. Cadwallader. I know that I am designed as an exact copy of a woman, thanks to him.”

“The scoundrel! And has Gideon not yet sorted him out?” said Mrs. Cadwallader stoutly. “I shall suggest he makes it his next assignment.”

Maria shook her head. “I wish to forget Crowe, Mrs. Cadwallader. But while I know that I am … anatomically correct, I’m afraid…” She took the housekeeper’s hand. “I don’t know what to
do,
Mrs. Cadwallader!”

Mrs. Cadwallader sat forward. “Well, my dear, there’s a lot of nonsense talked about what a woman should do and shouldn’t do. There’s a school of thought—put about by men, I should add—that says it’s a woman’s role to lie back and think of England, and just let the man get on with his own pleasure.”

“You don’t agree?”

“Do I—well, I nearly borrowed a turn of phrase from our Mr. Bent, then. No, I do not! The act of love is a partnership between a man and a woman, Miss Maria. A contract, if you will, and both sides must uphold their end of the bargain. Do you understand me?”

“Not really.”

Mrs. Cadwallader patted her hand. “Not to worry. You’ll know what to do when the time comes. Just bear in mind that your pleasure is as important as his.” She sat back, frowning for a moment, and then said, “You are going to wait in Gideon’s bed until he returns from this little investigation he has embarked upon?”

Maria nodded.

“In that case, there’s no harm in … well, finding out what you like.” Maria looked blankly at her, and Mrs. Cadwallader leaned forward, cupped her hand around Maria’s ear, and whispered at length.

“Oh!” said Maria, her hand at her breast, a flush on her cheeks. “Really? That sort of thing is allowed? The books never mentioned anything like that.”

Mrs. Cadwallader cackled. “My dear, there’s a whole world waiting for you to discover. And it’s not all in the books!” She paused then dropped her voice to a whisper. “Well, not
all
books. I have this volume that Dr. Reed brought back from his travels … it’s very risqué. I’m not sure I should…”

Maria bit her lip. “I think I should very much like to see it.”

Mrs. Cadwallader smiled. “It’s called the
Kama Sutra
. You go and settle down in Mr. Smith’s room, and I’ll go and find it and drop it in to you.”

As the housekeeper went to change the cylinder on the gramophone, Maria took herself upstairs to Gideon’s room. She slipped into his double bed and settled down to await his return, and some light reading from Mrs. Cadwallader.

*   *   *

Gideon stood in the snow outside the Britannia Theater on Hoxton Road, hands jammed into the pockets of his overcoat, scrutinizing the poster pasted to the wall.

Direct from Germany! The Teutonic Marvel of the Age! Be astounded as Markus Mesmer and his amazing Hypno-Array lay bare the very secrets of THE MIND ITSELF!

A raucous crowd was already filing into the Britannia, full of gin and high spirits, young men catcalling and groups of women shouting back.

“See you after the show!” yelled one tall youth in a derby pulled over his eyes as he waved at a knot of girls, the bottoms of their dresses wet with slush.

“Not unless you’re buying the drinks,” riposted one of the young women.

“Eh, paying for it’s not allowed anymore, even in alcohol! Haven’t you read the newspapers? Lizzie Strutter’ll cut off your doodle!” another man bellowed, and the crowd rang with peals of laughter.