The Diabolical Miss Hyde (43 page)

“Like Lizzie . . .” She swallowed. “Like me, the night Billy was murdered.”

“Excellent, say what?” Happily, Finch scratched his head, raising more tangles.

“And where would our killer obtain such a substance?”

“Well, either he's an alchemist . . .”

“Makes it himself?” Lafayette wrinkled his nose. “Busy chap, isn't he? Talented, too.”

“. . . or he ordered it from one.” Finch yanked his fingers from a nest of knots and peered at the white strands caught under his nails. “Thing is, you see, the method is obsolete.”

Eliza frowned. “So?”

“It's clumsy technique. That's why the effects are so alarming if it's overdosed. No one's done transformation this way for thirty years or more. If they had, I'd know about it. We alchemists have principles, you know.
Primum non nocere
—first do no harm, all that.”

“So what, the killer's had it in storage for thirty years?”

“More or less.” Finch gave a rueful shrug. “It's even possible . . . well, it could have been I who made it, by accident, back in the day. I wasn't always so careful.”

“And who,” cut in Lafayette, “would have stockpiled this drug, so long ago?”

“See, that's the thing.” Finch picked at his fingernails, scowling at a broken one. “It's a very specialized psycho-active substance. Alters higher cognitive function. Used for targeted narco-analysis, on delusional or recalcitrant subjects.”

Eliza blinked, baffled. “Narco-analysis? But—”

“Interrogation by hypnotic suggestion,” explained Lafayette coolly. “We have such things at the Royal. Recalcitrant
subjects being our speciality. What he means to say is: it's a truth drug.”

“Just so.” Finch grinned. “Brilliant, say what? A tool for torturers. And—”

“Mad-doctors,” cut in Eliza suddenly, her bones rattling cold. “Delusional subjects. Hypnotic suggestion. Oh, my.”

“What?” Lafayette and Finch spoke together.

“Mr. Fairfax's new experimental regime at Bethlem.” A torrent of broken thoughts rushed out. “Electroshock, sensory stimulation, mind-altering substances. It's like my remedy, see?
Lux ex tenebris,
‘light from darkness.' Only my remedy
suppresses
the truth, whereas
this
drug . . .” Mr. Todd wired to the wall, drugged, hypnotized, plied with questions about blood and razors and exactly how long it takes a mutilated body to die . . .

“It doesn't matter,” she cut herself off impatiently. Outside, lightning erupted, a brilliant triple flash. “Mr. Fairfax has supplies of this drug. He uses it to pierce his patients' delusional state and get at the truth. He's been interrogating the criminal lunatics, don't you see? Discovering the best method to kill!” She finished, breathless, but her blood stung, acid poison staining her heart.

If you want instruction, all you have to do is ask.

What a fool she'd been. Mr. Todd, who knew so much about the murderer. Because Mr. Todd knew exactly who the murderer was. And craftily he'd guided her to the solution, for sick and secret reasons of his own. It was all just a game.

Then again, Todd loathed Fairfax. What if . . .

Marcellus Finch stared, bewildered. “Oh, Jedediah. For shame. I thought we'd been through this with Victor.”

Lafayette's eyebrow cocked. “Fairfax? But—”

“That's where I got the book about the teleporter,” she explained. “His secret library at Bethlem.”

A flintlock flash of vintage Lafayette smile. “Secret library? Do tell.”

“Never mind,” she said hastily. “He has the means to build the machine. He has access to the drug. What more?”

Lafayette considered. “You know what we saw at Temple's,” he said at last. “Do you mean to say Fairfax is a—”

“What other explanation is there?” Eliza thought of Fairfax's mild eyes, his careful smile, and shuddered. He covered the monster inside well. “Perhaps he caught it from a patient. Maybe he even infected himself with the disease. You never could fault his experimental rigor.”

“But what about the missing body parts?” asked Lafayette reasonably. “Fairfax is a surgeon. He can get all the cadavers he wants from medical schools, not to mention the dead from Bethlem itself. Why go to such dangerous lengths to collect these pieces?”

“Why, indeed?” murmured Finch.

Eliza's thoughts collided, fighting for an explanation that made sense. “Because they're special,” she offered at last, desperate. “Because the parts themselves mean something. A ballerina's feet, a pickpocket's hands and eyes . . .”

Her throat corked.
He's making them perfect,
she'd told Mr. Todd. But it wasn't the victims who were being perfected. The victims were leftovers. Discarded. Their admirable parts removed and stored, and anything broken or unfit for the killer's purpose thrown aside . . .

Images jumbled and coalesced, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.

The cover of a crumpled pamphlet, a stiff-limbed figure in mummy wrappings stalking Waterloo. W
ALKING
D
EATH
!! N
ONE
C
AN
E
SCAPE THE
M
ONSTER
!

A cadaver riddled with wires, striding jerkily across the amphitheater floor at the Crystal Palace. Matthew Temple's blithe grin.
The fellow's dead, isn't he? Can't bring him back to life with a spark up his arse.

Mr. Todd's sly whispers, electric light glistening in his hair.
Your killer isn't angry or vengeful. He's hopelessly in love.

That pale, wrinkled human brain, floating in the jar on Fairfax's desk.

Victor's ready. But we have to be quick. Before the decay sets in.

And the portrait of dead Lady Fairfax, edged in black . . .

Oh, my.

“Marcellus,” she cut in, “who's Victor, and what's he ready for?”

“Say what?”

“‘I thought we'd been through this with Victor,' you said, just a moment ago. Been through what?”

Lafayette touched her arm. “Am I missing something?”

“Victor,” she insisted. “Enough secrets, Marcellus. Tell me.”

Reluctantly, Finch sighed. “Well, it was a long time ago. I don't suppose it matters now.” And he opened a drawer and plucked out a faded sepia photograph.

The same photograph that hung on the wall at Bethlem. A dusty laboratory, her father's associates, stiff in starched suits
and cravats, pausing impatiently for the camera, as if they'd better things to do.

Finch laid the image on the counter and pointed to each figure in turn. “Here's me. Goodness, I'm a mere child, eh? This one with his nose in the air is Fairfax. The rest are all dead now. Henry, of course. The bright-faced fellow in the pale suit is Mr. Faraday, rest his tactless soul, and God rot the fools who burned him . . . present company excepted,” he added hastily.

Lafayette managed a twist of smile. “Before my time, Mr. Finch. No offense taken.”

“This older fellow here by the name of Davy, a friend of Faraday's. Fairfax electrocuted him once,” Finch added moodily. “Set his hair on fire. Never saw much of him after that. And . . . yes. Here, on the end. Tall fellow in a top hat, looks like a foreigner.”

Lightning flashed, illuminating the photograph. A thin man of middle age, pointed beard, dark hair curled in the European fashion. His wide eyes held a fanatical glow. He stood apart from the others, as if he wasn't quite part of the group. As if they feared him.

Finch tapped the man's face. “That's Victor. Not an Englishman, you know, the most frightful Teutonic accent. Spent years in Bavaria as a student. Family seat some crumbling stone pile outside Geneva. I heard he died abroad . . . let's see . . . twenty years ago?” He gave a sickly grin. “Well, there you go. Old memories, eh? Nothing else to see.” He began to return the picture to the drawer.

Eliza grabbed Finch's arm, desperate. “No. I read his diary. The one with the electrical teleporter in it.”

“Don't know what you're on about, dear girl. I say, is that the time?”

“In German, to be sure,” she persisted, “so mostly I looked at the pictures. Title page torn out, half the book missing? Locked in a secret cell at Bethlem? Ringing any bells?”

Finch ruffled his hair, sheepish. “Oh, dear. I told Fairfax to get rid of that when Henry passed. Jedediah, I said to him, Jedediah, you foolish old fox, are you mad? We can't keep this now, not after what we've done—”

“And what exactly did you do, Marcellus?” She felt sick. Bells clanged in her skull, as if she were locked in the belfry while a frenzied mob pulled the ropes. “Don't lie to me anymore. I know the pair of you covered up my mother's death. What did you do that drove Henry to . . . be consumed?”
His death,
she'd been about to say.

Finch's gaze slid away, sullen. “Ask Eddie. He was heartbroken. It was his idea.”

Mr. Hyde's words razored into her memory, ripping flesh from bone.
Oh, how she died, that woman.

Emphasis on the
died
. Oh, how she
died,
and
died,
and
died
. . .

“The diary's back half was torn out,” she stammered. “Wh—what was in it?”

Finch didn't reply.

“It was a different kind of electrical machine, wasn't it?” she accused. “Animal electricity, like Dr. Percival's. The kind that animates flesh. Tell me!”

“You really don't want to know—”

“I was there, Marcellus!” Her voice rose, frantic, and Lafayette put a hand on her arm. She shook him off. Sucked in
a breath she had no room for. “I was outside Mother's bedroom that night. I heard everything.”

“Ah.” Finch pursed his lips. “I see.”

“You mentioned Victor's name, and Henry hit you. ‘Never,' he said, ‘not for her.'”

Finch rubbed his jaw, as if in rueful memory. “Fellow was upset. Recently bereaved. Not himself. You know how it is.”

“But you did it anyway, didn't you?” Crazy laughter hurt her throat, but it was distant, echoing pain. As if it wasn't really her throat. “You and Victor and Eddie Hyde. You brought Madeleine back to life. And Henry had to kill her all over again.”

“Victor did it anyway,” retorted Finch. “Eddie was brutal with grief. Homicidal. A difficult man to deny. And Victor was a scientist, not a coward. He didn't give up on his experiments just because things went wrong—”

“Wrong?”
Eliza tugged poor Mr. Temple's pamphlet from her bodice—W
ALKING
D
EATH
!! N
ONE
C
AN
E
SCAPE THE
M
ONSTER
!—and shook it before Finch's nose. “He was resurrecting the dead! Making them into . . .
things!
What on earth isn't ‘wrong' about that?”

Lafayette blinked, as he'd woken from an incomprehensible dream. “I'm sorry, can someone please explain what just happened?”

Eliza folded her arms and stared at Finch, merciless. “Mr. Fairfax is building his dead wife's brain a new body. A body made from the best parts of other women. He always did esteem her above all others, didn't he, Marcellus?”

Finch snorted. “Esteem? Worshipped the floor she crossed. His third wife, you know. The others barely caught his
attention, but this one . . .” He shook his head. “Wept over her body for weeks when she passed. Smell was terrible.”

“Because he couldn't make Victor's machine work, could he? He couldn't resurrect her in time.”

“There was no machine,” explained Finch, “not anymore. Henry destroyed it, after Madeleine. In any case, it requires quite astounding voltages. Victor's technology was before its time. The batteries Fairfax had just weren't up to it. And Victor and Faraday couldn't help him, you see. Victor had escaped to the Continent. Ended up in the Arctic, so I heard, on some wild chase or other. Mr. Faraday wasn't so lucky.”

“So Fairfax has had to build another, all by himself,” mused Eliza. “And he's been testing it out on cadavers from Bethlem. Hence the ‘Walking Death'
!
”

She looked again at the lurid cover drawing and bit her lip. She could still feel Temple's blood, gushing hot over her wrists. “For once, he wasn't making things up,” she murmured. “Poor Matthew.”

Lafayette tugged at a curl over his ear. “So Temple found out, and Fairfax got rid of him?”

“It appears so.”

“Then what about Billy Beane? What's Fairfax's interest there?”

“I should very much like to ask him.” She glanced at the covered window, where lightning erupted, the thunder boiling ever closer. The storm was about to break. A foul night, indeed. She stuffed the paper back into her bodice. “No time like the present. Are you coming, Captain?”

“To Bethlem? On a night like this? Voltage exploding everywhere, thunder bellowing, lunatics going doubly off their
heads?” Lafayette's eyes glinted eagerly. “Do you really want to see what Fairfax is up to tonight?”

Her blood thrilled, a cocktail of excitement and dread. “Resurrecting a stitched-up corpse with his wife's brain inside? Absolutely I do. It's potentially the ground-breaking experiment of our age.”

“Well, when you put it like that . . .”

“The end of mystical superstition and irrational fear of death,” she added. “If you care about that sort of thing. Oh, and the chance to bring a ruthless murderer to justice. Wouldn't miss it for the world.”

“How inappropriately fascinating.”

“Thank you.”

Lafayette grinned. “Telling, that you should think it worthy praise.”

“For shame, Captain,” she scolded lightly. “I fancy it's the highest praise of all.”