Her Dark Curiosity (32 page)

I dropped the letter, stunned. It fell on a tin of tobacco and a handful of personal trinkets. Cuff links, a cigar clipper, an old pair of spectacles.

Trembling, I lifted the spectacles to the light. They were simple, well-worn, with wire rims that curved around the ear. There was a scratch on the left lens and a single drop of blood on the right.

They belonged to the professor.

I dropped them back into the drawer and slammed it shut, skirting away from the desk as though it had singed my flesh.

There was only one reason Inspector Newcastle would have the professor’s missing spectacles among his personal effects, not carefully catalogued into the evidence room as they should be: The Beast had been telling the truth. He didn’t kill the professor. Inspector Newcastle must have arranged for the professor’s murder—or had killed him himself, though I couldn’t imagine it.

Either way, I was in the den of the enemy.

I flung open the door, racing down the polished-wood floor. I nearly tripped on the stairs in my hurry to get back to Montgomery and tell him everything—that Newcastle was a King’s Man, was Moreau’s protégé, had framed Edward in what must have been a bid to get me to cooperate—but I ran into Newcastle himself coming up the stairs.

“Miss Moreau,” he said, shocked to see me. “The tea will be up momentarily. Why are you—”

“I’m nauseous, I’m afraid,” I stuttered. “It came upon me all of a sudden. We can continue this conversation later.”

“You were going to tell me a theory.”

“Oh, it was nothing. Excuse me.” I pushed past him and stumbled down the rest of the stairs.

Montgomery rushed over when he saw the state I was in. I slipped my hand in his and stood on tiptoe to reach his ear.

“I was wrong about being safe here,” I whispered. “We need to get out.
Now.”

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THIRTY-FIVE

I
DIDN’T DARE EXPLAIN
what had happened until we were safely within the walls of the professor’s house. Elizabeth gave us a questioning glance when we entered, but I walked straight past her to the kitchen, where I threw open the cellar door and hurried down the dark stairs.

“Edward,” I whispered. Through the bars in the cellar door I saw hints of a figure pacing back and forth. “Edward, I must speak with you.”

The shadowy form moved closer until the light from the stairs spilled over the edges of his face. The eyes that met mine glowed unnaturally, like cats’ eyes. I drew in a quick breath.

“Come to visit me, love?” the Beast asked.

“I need to speak to Edward.”

“You’ll be waiting a long time, then.” Behind me came the sound of Montgomery’s boots on the wooden stairs as he joined me by the cellar door. The Beast smiled slowly. “Ah, Moreau’s hunting dog. I thought you would have gotten yourself killed by now. No bother; I’ll remedy that soon enough. Now, why have you come to see me?”

My heart clanked in my chest like the rattling of chains. “It’s about the professor’s murder.”

His glowing eyes grew closer. “I told you already I wasn’t responsible, and if you’re here asking me that question, it’s because you know I was telling the truth.” He cocked his head. “Let me guess. There was no flower left with the body, was there?”

“How did you know that?” I gasped.

The Beast threw his head back and laughed. “Those fools at Scotland Yard never did figure out where I got the flowers from. I know
I
didn’t kill him, so whoever did wouldn’t have left a flower.” He studied us again, cold and calculating. “Let me out, and I’ll help you find his real murderer.”

“We don’t need your help,” Montgomery snapped. His words were so cold. I understood his anger, but where was that boy I had known, who knew the world wasn’t black and white, who believed in second chances even for a man as ruthless as my father?

But the Beast wasn’t focused on Montgomery. “Let me out, my love,” he whispered. “I’ll do what you cannot. I’ll rip his heart out and get you your justice.”

There was a purr to his voice, both alluring and dangerous, and it spoke to the parts of me that were like him: restless, prowling. He was close enough to reach through the bars, but he didn’t. I had the sudden urge to touch his face instead, rough features that were so like Edward’s but weren’t.

Montgomery pulled me away from the door. “Come on. We’ll get only lies from him.”

I let him lead me up the stairs into the kitchen, though I couldn’t quite tear my mind away from the haunted face behind that door.

The Beast was many things, but I didn’t think a liar was one of them.

E
LIZABETH WAS WAITING ANXIOUSLY
for us in the kitchen. Balthazar had gone to bed, so we made tea and I told her about what I’d discovered at Scotland Yard.

“Newcastle is part of the King’s Club,” I said. “He knew I was protecting Edward, so he framed him in hopes I’d turn against him and help the police catch him. I nearly did.”

“The King’s Club already used Juliet as bait at the masquerade,” Montgomery added. “Now they’re willing to commit murder. They aren’t going to stop at anything until they have Edward. There’s only one thing to do.”

He meant killing Edward.

I studied his face to gauge how serious he was. I didn’t like this side of him—the hardened hunter—yet at the same time I feared
I
had been the one to make him into this. I’d shattered his faith in my father, I’d brought about the regression of the beast-men, I’d made him face the terrible things he’d been doing with his own hands.

“No,” I breathed. “We can’t.”

Elizabeth paced behind the sofa. Her jaw was clenched tight, but her hands were surprisingly steady. “Perhaps he’s right, Juliet.”

“It would be murder!”

“He’s killed a dozen people!” Montgomery countered. “And twice that on the island. The fact that he didn’t kill the professor hardly makes him innocent. Why are you so desperate to protect him?”

Because he protected me,
I thought.
Because you weren’t here, and he came back for me, and in his own way tried to save me. Because the Beast was right when he said we weren’t so different.

“The professor gave me a second chance,” I said. “He gave me a life when everyone else thought I was suitable only for prison. My hands aren’t clean either, nor are yours. We owe it to Edward.”

“If we open that cellar door, the Beast will go on a rampage.”

“I’m not talking about setting him loose. I’m talking about curing him.”

“We’ve tried—”

“And we’ll keep trying!” I snapped. “There’s a piece of Edward still in that body. I can feel it. We still have time. Father did this to him, don’t you see? If Edward dies, Father wins.”

Montgomery was looking at me strangely. “Is this about saving Edward?” he asked, voice suddenly dangerously quiet. “Or about besting your father at his own work?”

A strange feeling crept up my spine. Elizabeth’s eyes flickered to mine. Besting Father at his own work? I wanted to shake my head. To deny it. This was about giving Edward another chance. Giving
me
another chance. I’d always felt that our fates were intertwined, the beast in him not so unlike the animal in me. Both headed toward our own destruction; him lost to the Beast, me lost to my illness.

If there was no hope for Edward, what did that mean for me?

“This isn’t about besting Father,” I said in a tightly controlled voice. “This is about doing what is right. Give up if you want, but as long as there’s still good in Edward, I will keep trying. If you kill him, know that you’re killing a part of me, too.”

I turned and hurried upstairs. I heard him calling my name, and Elizabeth’s voice telling him to let me have space. I paused on the landing. I didn’t want to be alone now, in that empty bedroom with a cold fireplace and stiff pillows. I wanted something simple, something that wouldn’t twist and stab at me, a single moment of peace in this crashing time.

I looked toward the attic. My feet took me there, to the little bedroom Elizabeth had given Balthazar. I knocked softly, but no answer came. When I pushed open the door I realized the room was a nursery, filled with small furniture and toys. I remember Mother having talked about the professor’s wife who had died years ago, not long after their young son.

In the little bed, Balthazar was curled like an infant with his long feet hanging off the end, a stiff doll on the floor by his side. He slept soundly; I didn’t want to wake him. I pulled up a rocking chair and sat next to him, picking up the old doll. It must have been a hundred years old, well loved, stitched back together in the places where it had begun to fall apart over the years. I ran my finger down the perfect row of stitches, clearly made by a surgeon’s hand. I could picture the professor lovingly patching the old doll for his son. I tucked it at the foot of the bed from where it had fallen.

The darkened room was eerie now with moonlight streaming through a gauzy curtain, landing on one of the old family portraits. This one of a boy, the nameplate lost, and I remembered the professor telling me that his son had died at the same age as one of their ancestors.

I rocked in the chair, in the room that had been left exactly as when the professor’s son died, the ghosts of toys long covered in dust. A rocking horse, a wooden puppet theater, a set of blocks. I ran my fingers lightly over the roof of an old dollhouse, feeling sad for everything the professor had lost, sadder still that I could never tell him how much I’d cared. Montgomery wasn’t the only one who longed for family.

I hadn’t intended on staying long, but my body was heavy with exhaustion, and at some point I must have fallen asleep there by Balthazar’s bedside. I dreamed I was standing in an island creek stained with blood, grass rustling as beast-men surrounded me on all sides.

When I woke, it was to a heavy arm shaking my shoulder. I jerked with a start and found Balthazar’s face very close to mine.

“Something outside, miss,” he said.

I pushed back the curtain in a hurry. It was snowing fast and hard pellets. I could barely make out a carriage on the street below, with a swinging lantern at the driver’s seat.

Suddenly a pounding upon the front door shook the house. I let the curtain fall. It must have been one of the small hours of the night, caught between midnight and dawn. Why would someone come at such an hour?

Balthazar gripped onto my arm. “Best to stay quiet, miss.”

I heard someone on the stairs heading for the front door—Montgomery, from the heavy sound of the steps. The pounding came harder, along with voices I couldn’t make out. I turned back to the window, squinting through the snow, to read the thick block letters on the side of the carriage.

Scotland Yard.

“Oh no. This can’t be good,” I muttered. “Come downstairs with me.”

But he held my arm. “Wait, miss.”

“Montgomery’s down there,” I whispered. “It might be Newcastle for all we know. He might try to arrest him.”

But Balthazar’s face was deeply wrinkled as he cocked his head, listening. His hearing was keen, but could he truly make out words from three stories down?

At last his lips folded in.

“It’s you they’ve come for, miss.”

More footsteps came from below, inside the house now, amid the sounds of arguments. My heartbeat sped. Five men at least, and then came a crash, and lighter footsteps on the stairs as Elizabeth must have rushed down to investigate.

I fumbled with the window, but this wasn’t my bedroom with the broken lock. This one held fast. “I need your help, Balthazar!” I cried. He picked up the lock in his meaty hand, examined it, then fumbled through the dusty collection of toys until he found a stick horse, which he rammed against the lock until it broke. I pushed open the window as bitter-cold snow stung my face.

“Go downstairs,” I urged him. “Help Montgomery and Elizabeth. I’ll hide somewhere outside and come back when it’s safe.”

“Please take care, miss,” he said, and pointed to my feet. “You haven’t any shoes.”

“I’ll manage.” I climbed out of the attic window, stomach shrinking at the four-story fall to the garden. A copper drain spout, ancient and corroded, clung to the exterior wall. I made my way down it carefully, freezing in only my nightdress. I slipped near the end and tumbled to the garden, landing in a pile of snow that broke my fall but left me with a terrible scrape on my shin. When I looked up, the lights were on in my bedroom. If I’d spent the night there instead of the nursery, they would have already caught me.

Cold bit at my bare limbs. Pain would come soon, and then terrible numbness.

I scrambled to my feet. I would freeze in minutes without coat or boots, not enough time to race across town to my attic in Shoreditch. Perhaps not even time to make it to Lucy’s in Cavendish Square, but I had no choice. I stamped through the snow toward the garden gate, eyes blinded by flurries.

Someone was waiting for me.

I felt his hands on me before I saw his face. The shock of it made me scramble and claw, but he had another man with him wearing leather driving gloves, and the two of them together were too strong. It wasn’t until the lights from the house shone on his white hair that I recognized his terrible visage.

“You won’t get away from me this time,” Dr. Hastings said.

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THIRTY-SIX

A
NGER SEETHED IN ME.
I had overpowered him once, and I could have done it again if not for the driver holding me. He had twelve inches on me, and I had no knife, no mortar scraper, nothing to give me an advantage.

“Put her in the carriage,” Hastings said with no little relish. “And notify Newcastle that I’ve got her.”

The driver shoved me in, despite how I scratched at his face and kicked at the soft parts of his body. I winced, shivering in nothing more than my nightdress, as I landed in the carriage. It rocked as Dr. Hastings climbed in after me and locked the door.