Shadow Conspiracy (4 page)

 I opened the door and gasped aloud. There was nothing between us and the cobbles far below but the broad, heavy beam from which hung the pulley and rope necessary to hoist hay up to the loft. But that was not what made me gasp. My surprise and awe was for the collection of items that inhabited the shadowy interior of Dr. Polidori’s laboratory.

There two tables or beds—both really, and yet neither. Both were fitted with odd leather harnesses. And there were cages, just as Elise had reported, each with an occupant or two. I saw dogs, cats, rabbits, and yes, the capuchin monkey. He must have had them all brought in under cover of night, while we were asleep or otherwise engaged in the main house. I promised myself I would try to be more wakeful from now on.

The thing that captured my attention most awfully was the Machine. It sat between the tables and was half-again as long—perhaps nine feet. It was, as Elise had said, an amalgamation of wheels and gears and rods and strange little cylinders, and at its apex, which was perhaps four feet from the low trestle it sat upon, were two thin rods that curved toward each other like lovers frozen just short of embrace.

The hay rustled and Elise whispered, “Is there a way down, Mam?”

I peered at the beam. “Just that. We could possibly lower ourselves to the floor using the ropes and pulleys.”

Elise looked at the apparatus sceptically. “I don’t know, Mam. It’s a fair piece down.”

It was indeed a fair piece down, but I had the sudden urge to attempt it. “I’m going to try,” I said, pleased that my voice did not quiver in the least. “You can help me balance.” So saying, I slid my legs out of the little door and straddled the beam.

Elise gasped. “Maybe I should go first, Mam.”

It was too late. I was already a foot away from her and then two and then I was right over the pulley assembly. I stopped to consider the best course of action.

“Throw one leg over the beam,” advised Elise as if she had done this sort of thing before, “and lie across it on your stomach. Then you can wrap your legs about the ropes and let yourself down until you can get a foot on the pulley.”

She was right, of course. “Smart girl,” I applauded her, then set out to do as she’d suggested. I had just gotten sideways on the beam on my stomach, when I heard the sound of a door being unlatched. The rear door of the coach house, I realized. I froze.

“Miss!” hissed Elise and held her hand out to me.

I wriggled around trying to throw my leg back over the beam so I could scoot to safety.

The rear door creaked open.

All that separated it from this room was the narrow expanse of the tack room, which was little more than a broad hallway. I got my leg over the beam, but overbalanced and almost went down head-first.

Light spilled into the laboratory from the tack room.

I wobbled for a moment, then felt Elise’s hand grasp my habit at the shoulder. She had come half out onto the beam, herself, to get me. I righted myself and frog-hopped in ungainly fashion the two feet to the loft. Elise, exhibiting surprising strength, hauled me in and shut the door.

“Who’s that?” said a man’s voice. There was silence, then: “Paolo? Is that you?”

Directly below us on the ground floor, the door between the stable and coach house rattled and opened with a sigh. We held our collective breath.

“
Sì, medico. È me.
”

“Ah,” said Polidori. Then, “Lights, Paolo.
Luminosi, per favore
.”

We waited—we fine, brave spies—until they had gone off to work at the far end of the lab before we made our escape from the hayloft, through the stable and back to the house.

Only when I reached the safety of my bedroom and stood before my mirror did I realize that in my haste to escape the laboratory, I had dropped my toque.

John Polidori did not accost me the next morning, though I went to breakfast in full expectation that he would do so at any moment. I tried to tell myself that that was silly. It was a man’s cap, for one thing, and certainly not traceable to me. After a quiet breakfast, during which the doctor seemed distracted and agitated, but said nothing, I relaxed. Still, I spent the rest of the day torturing myself with indecision: should I tell Percy what I saw? Or George, perhaps? Should I reveal my espionage to all, then laugh it off? If I told George, might he confront our good doctor and make him reveal the meaning of that gleaming and inexplicable machine and the two tables? I had never seen anything like them nor, I wagered had my companions.

My curiosity was like one of those caged animals; it prowled the inside of my head hungrily, desperate to be let out.

Finally, in the late afternoon, I walked to Petit-Lancy though it was raining sporadically, and went to the bookstore, hoping against hope that Immanuel might be there. He was not, and at last, as the Sun settled toward the horizon, I left and walked home.

I entered the house just before supper and quickly divested myself of my wet coat, boots and stockings. Changed and dry, I went down to supper. Dr. Polidori was still not in company as the cheese course was served. I relaxed a second time and began to anticipate the hour when I might repair back upstairs and have a quiet conference with Elise. I’d had no opportunity to speak to her during the day with servants (and Clara) constantly within earshot, and I was eager to exchange notes with her and get her impressions of Dr. Polidori’s laboratory.

“Join us this evening, Mary?” Percy asked as we got up from the table. “You were sorely missed last night. George was in one of his moods and could not be persuaded to do more than snipe at John and try to extract information from him.”

I blushed, for I had been trying to extract information from his untenanted lab. “Perhaps after I’ve checked on William,” I said. “Elise said he had a fitful nap.”

“Don’t be too long, my love,” Percy begged me, and bent to give me a kiss.

“I shan’t,” I promised, and watched him cross the entrance hall to the drawing room, before I scurried upstairs to the nursery.

William was asleep and Elise had apparently gone downstairs for her supper. I determined to wait for her. I watched the baby sleep for a time, then retired to my sitting room. I was still there reading, when the door behind me opened. I smelt cigar smoke and started guiltily, reminded of my broken promise to Percy.

I dropped my book into my lap with a sigh. “I’m sorry, my love,” I started to say when something soft and slightly damp landed atop my book. A few stems of gleaming golden straw fluttered down atop it. I touched it gingerly—my black toque. I looked up to see John Polidori gazing down at me with huge, solemn eyes.

I pretended innocence. “What’s this, sir?”

“I believe it is your bonnet, madam. Along with some of the wheat straw you tumbled from the hayloft into my lab during your...excursion.”

His voice was soft, almost gentle, with no hint of anger. I immediately distrusted him.

“Surely that’s a man’s cap,” I objected. “Why would you think it’s mine?”

“Your husband, madam, recognized it as having once belonged to him. He gave it to you early in your courtship, he said, when you admired how ‘jaunty’ it was.”

“Well, perhaps someone else—” Had I actually been going to suggest that Elise had stolen my cap and invaded the doctor’s sanctum on her own? I blanched at my own wretched instinct for self-preservation. “It seems you have me, Doctor. Yes. I sneaked into your lab. My curiosity was unquenchable when you refused to let anyone know what you were doing.”

He moved to stand before me at the hearth where a little fire burned against the cool and wet of the spring evening. Amusement and surprise were written on every feature. “And you sought to lower yourself from the hayloft? You are a singular young woman, Mrs. Shelley. What is it you imagine I’m doing?”

I looked up at him, my head suddenly full of mysterious sixteenth century alchemists and distant castles and machines that channelled electricity to shock the sensibilities—and perhaps more. “You have built a machine after the fashion of Herr Dippel and you intend to use it to shock Lord Byron in the hope that it might set his mind to rights.”

Silken brows rose in a surprised arc and I knew a moment of absurd smugness. “Do I, indeed?”

“Yes, you do. The only thing I can’t fathom is how that will have any effect on his club foot.”

Dr. Polidori smiled at me. “I hate to disappoint you, my dear Mrs. Shelley—may I call you Mary?” At my hesitant nod, he continued, “I hate to disappoint you, Mary, but you are mistaken. I have no intention of shocking Lord Byron out of his dark moods. I intend to do far more than that.”

“What?” I asked, mesmerized by the glow of zeal in that dark gaze.

“Ah, no, I cannot tell even you. Not yet. But soon, I think. Very soon.”

He left me then, sitting before the fire with my spy’s cap and a tiny pile of straw.

Puzzles

I fully expected the doctor to tell the others what I had done, that they might all have a good laugh at my expense. He did not. He even came to breakfast the next morning and, though he sent me several enigmatic and wry looks during the meal, he said nothing of my intrusion into his laboratory.

For the next fortnight it rained on and off and kept all of us indoors. I was even loath to take my usual forays into Petit-Lancy and instead worked on my journal, toyed with writing a couple of short stories that I was unable (or unwilling) to finish, and played with my baby. Elise begged continually to be allowed to try again to breach the doctor’s defences and ferret out what was happening in the lab. I was just as curious as she—even more so—but I was chastened by my exploits...at least enough that I preferred to wait, pretending that I believed Dr. Polidori meant to confide in me.

He did seem to spend more time with us in the evenings, which I thought meant he was having some success in his pursuits. One singular evening we were all together in the drawing room of the villa. Yes, even Clara and Dr. Polidori were among us as the fire warmed the cool, damp room and the rain tapped at the window like a thousand desperate finches seeking asylum from the storm.

I stared out the window, thinking of Immanuel, while in the room behind me, the already desultory conversation fell away to nothing.

At length, Clara sighed hugely and said, “I am bored to tears. We cannot even go into town to the Tea Room with it raining so. Invent something for us to do, George.”

“Cards?” he suggested. “We have enough of a party for Whist. Or even Hearts.”

“I am sick to death of cards. If I never behold another playing card, I’m sure it will be to my benefit.”

“Shall I read to you then, my love?” asked George. “I have a new poem I’ve not quite finished.”

“And it is a wonderful poem, I’m sure, but I am too restless to be read to. Think of something else.”

She did not look in the least restless, draped as she was across a chaise near the hearth. Lord Byron rose from his own chair and moved to sit at her feet.

“Well, my darling, if you are too distracted to read a work, perhaps you would be better disposed to write one.” He looked around at us brightly. “Yes, that’s what we should do. We are all writers of one sort or another, let us put that talent to use. Let’s have a competition. Let us each write a tale of these haunted days in an effort to terrify and amaze.”

Clara’s laughter came out in a musical trill. “Haunted? What about these days seems haunted to you?
Drowned
days, rather.”

“Nonsense! What is this weather suited to if not the creation of haunted tales?”

He had a point, and I had to admit that I might easily describe my life of late as being haunted. Haunted by my dead daughter, by my beloved’s living wife, Harriet, by constant fear for William. I counted off my personal ghosts and added Immanuel to their number. I needed no haunted tales. George was nothing if not avid once he’d conceived an idea; it would do me little good to demur, so I agreed, if reluctantly.

George leapt up and ran into the hall to zealously command the butler to bring papers and pens to the drawing room. He passed them out among us and we each commenced to pondering our tales.