A Curious Beginning (6 page)

I tamped the newspapers into neat bundles without sorting them, skimming the headlines to see what I had missed in the years I had been abroad. The Irish question appeared often, as did the Mahdist War in the Sudan. The Prussians featured frequently, but that was no surprise. The Prussians were always up to something nefarious. And there had been an impressive number of gunfights in cities in the western United States. But that, too, was no great surprise. In my experience, Americans were very friendly and very fond of their firearms. I put these aside and moved on to the shelves holding bottles of chemicals. He had a collection of them, many potent, all flammable, and quite a few capable of producing nasty burns if permitted to touch bare skin. Most bottles contained preservatives in various dilutions, although one bore a label that crumbled at the tentative poke I gave it. I sniffed experimentally and was assaulted at once by the cloying pickled smell of formaldehyde. I gave it a wide berth and continued on, tidying until I had brought a reasonable semblance of order to the place. I was intrigued to find a florilegium of Romantic poetry tucked under a pot of hide glue and was just about to settle in to read when I heard a roar of outrage.

“Holy Christ, I told you not to touch anything.” Mr. Stoker had come awake, wincing a little as he sat up and worked the stiffness from his muscles.

“I did not move anything,” I assured him. “I merely stacked the books and correspondence so they would not fall over, and I cooked a meal. I would have replaced the preservative solution in some of those appalling jars, but it does not seem to be plain ethyl alcohol, and I did not wish to damage the specimens by changing the solution.”

“At least you have that much sense,” he said grudgingly. “The solution is of my own devising.”

“And not very effective,” I told him, pointing towards the jars of suckling pigs floating in scummy yellow fluid.

“Those were early efforts, designed to show me where the flaws were in the formula,” he said nastily. “And if Your Highness would care to look at the specimens on
that
shelf, I think you will find the solution is clear as Irish crystal.”

I did as he bade, nodding in approval. “Well-done. That is perhaps the finest preserving work I have seen. Did you use plain formaldehyde? No, of course, you will not tell me. I ought not to have asked. I should love to see you preserve something. I have only ever managed to fix butterflies, and of course, mounting Lepidoptera is nothing so difficult as mounting mammals.”

He gave me a curious and not wholly friendly stare. “How did you come to be interested in butterflies? They are the usual province of the lady naturalist, but I am rather surprised you didn't find yourself studying something with teeth.”

“Hm.” I was examining another of his little pigs, marveling at the curl of its pink tail. “How extraordinary. One can almost hear it squealing.” The specimen, one of his best, was so arrestingly lifelike I was not entirely certain it had not moved. Like my butterflies, it gave the impression of cessation, as if it had paused in whatever it was doing but only for a moment. Stillness coupled with expectancy; these are the qualities all good preparations must convey.

I shook myself free of my reverie. “What was that? Oh, butterflies. They afforded me the chance to get away from the villages where I grew up. Girls are not supposed to go roaming about the countryside without purpose. It is considered eccentric. So I bought a butterfly net and a killing jar, and that made it quite all right.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “That I can understand. I was always thought odd for stuffing my pockets with jars of frogspawn and dissecting rabbits instead of eating them.”

I smiled at the notion of him as a boy with a pocketful of bottled tadpoles, but he suddenly tired of conversation. With an abruptness I had noted before in his manner, he gave me a cool look and picked up his pot of glue. “I think I will return to my elephant. I have wasted quite enough time already.”

He strode back to his pachyderm, leaving me to amuse myself with Huxley. I did not mind. “Reclusive men are a good deal of work,” I murmured to the dog. Mr. Stoker was not my first encounter with a fellow uncomfortable in the company of women, and would assuredly not be the last. He might have a pathological dislike of women in general, but with a certainty borne of experience, I put his thorniness down to a heartbreak in his tender youth. Some people never recovered from their early losses, I reflected. I ladled out bowls of soup for Huxley and myself, pointedly ignoring Mr. Stoker as he worked at the elephant. The fragrance of the soup rose in a steamy cloud, inviting and rich, and the dog and I sipped contentedly until Mr. Stoker threw down his spatula and stalked to the soup pot. “What is this, then?”

“Food for the dog,” I said evenly.

He gave me a sour look and ladled up a portion. There were no other bowls, so he took his in a chipped porcelain basin that was clearly a piece of laboratory equipment.

“It is a miracle you have not poisoned yourself,” I observed.

He shoveled a spoonful of soup into his mouth. “I would make a rather cutting remark about poisoning myself on your cooking, but I cannot. This is sublime. I can't think when the last time was I had hot food.”

He ate three bowls, each more slowly than the last, until he scraped the final savory spoonful and gave a sigh of repletion.

“You do not take very good care of yourself,” I said. It was an observation, not an accusation, and he seemed to take it as such.

He shrugged. “Too much work, too little time, and too little money. You were not wrong about my habits. I sleep when I can and grab the odd bit of food when I think of it to keep myself going. And there is always gin,” he added with the jaded air of a practiced debauchee.

I said nothing but went to my bag and retrieved the flask. “Here. Something I picked up on my travels. I find it quite bracing.”

He took it from my hand and swallowed deeply, then spluttered so hard he nearly choked. “Good God, what the devil is that?”

“South Americans have a specialty called cachaça, something like rum but made from sugarcane rather than molasses.”

“I am familiar,” he said with a rueful look. “I lost the better part of a year to the stuff in Brazil. But it was nothing like this.”

I deliberately overlooked the reference to his past. If he had worked so diligently to conceal his true identity, it was not my place to unmask him. At least not yet. “When I was butterflying in Venezuela, my host was a gentleman with extensive sugarcane fields in Brazil. He finds cachaça to be a trifle tame for his tastes, so he distils it twice. This rather more potent aguardiente is the result.”

He took a second swallow, this one more modest, and wiped the neck of the flask upon his sleeve as carefully as a lord. He blinked heavily. “I think I have gone blind. And I am quite certain I do not care.”

I capped the flask and replaced it in my bag. He flipped up his eye patch, and to my astonishment, I saw that his eye was whole and unblemished as the other, aside from a narrow white scar crossing the lid. I noticed also they were blue, not the striking bright blue of a Morpho but the very dark blue of
Limenitis arthemis astyanax
, a Red-spotted Admiral I had hunted successfully in America. Compared to the frivolous Morpho, the Admiral was a very serious sort of butterfly.

“You have sight in that eye,” I said, almost accusingly.

He nodded, pressing his knuckles into his eyes. “As much as in the other, believe it or not. But it fatigues easily, and when it does, my vision becomes blurred. I see two of everything instead of one. Then I've no option but the patch to rest it.”

“Thereby fatiguing the other,” I pointed out.

He replaced the patch and shook his head as if to clear it. “No help for it if I am to get that bloody elephant finished.”

Just at that moment there came a scraping noise from the doorway.

“I've brought the evening papers, Mr. S.,” Badger said brightly. “And your sweets.”

He handed over the newspapers and a twist of peppermint humbugs to Mr. Stoker, who fell on them greedily. I turned to the boy. “I am so glad you've come. I have a bowl of soup that will go to waste if you don't eat it up, and if I give more to the dog he will be terribly sick. Would you mind?” I ladled out the soup into Mr. Stoker's basin and wiped off the spoon.

Badger washed neither his hands nor his face, applying himself directly to the food. He slurped as happily as Huxley had, finishing the bowl in minutes as Mr. Stoker flicked through the newspaper. Suddenly, he sat forward, every muscle in his body so still I knew something very bad indeed had happened.

“What is it?” I demanded.

He did not speak. He merely gripped the newspaper, his knuckles turning white. I came to stand behind him, reading over his shoulder.

“No!” I exclaimed, dismayed. “It cannot be.”

The headline was sensational, but it was the details of the story that gripped my attention. A German gentleman, identified as the Baron von Stauffenbach, had been found dead in his study. The room had been ransacked and the police were treating the death as suspicious. There were no clues as to the identity of the assailant. It ended with a note that an inquest was to be held in two days' time.

“It cannot be,” I repeated.

“It is,” Mr. Stoker said flatly. “He must have been murdered just after he returned home.”

“Murdered!” Badger looked up from his soup bowl. “Who's been killed, then?”

I glanced to Mr. Stoker, but he seemed unable to reply, his expression one of frozen horror. As I watched, the newspaper trembled slightly in his hand. Clearly he was in the grip of strong emotion, and in no fit state to react.

“A friend,” I told the boy. “Perhaps you ought to go now, Badger.”

He licked the last of the soup from his bowl and rose obediently. The action seemed to rouse Mr. Stoker, and he stood, flinging aside the newspaper.

“Not so fast, lad. I have telegrams to send.” Having thrown off his torpor, he moved like one possessed, his actions swift and desperate. He tore a bit of paper from a scientific journal and scribbled in the margin. “You will send twelve copies of this wire—one to each of these twelve offices. Send them and wait for replies, do you hear? Most of them will be in the negative. You can throw those away. But the one that is in the affirmative, that one I will have.” He scrawled another missive and handed it over. “This telegram only goes to Cornwall, to be delivered by the messenger directly into the hands of the addressee and no other,” he instructed. He rummaged through a collection of tins and jars to cobble together a handful of coins. “More when you come back.”

Badger pocketed the coins and ran to the door, saluting smartly. “You can rely upon me, Mr. S.”

A heavy silence fell then, punctuated only by the crackling of the fire in the stove and Huxley's damp snores. I felt quite helpless in the face of Mr. Stoker's rage, for he was clearly angry, his lips thin, his color high, his hands working themselves into fists and loose again as he strode the length of the workshop and back. It was right that he should be angry, and grief and horror would have their parts to play as well. But as I watched him, I realized something else assailed him, driving him to pace like a caged lion—fear.

At length, he abandoned his pacing for action, moving swiftly to a decrepit old Gladstone bag, which he began to pack. He rummaged amidst the various trunks and shelves, extracting sundries that he threw into the bag, including the florilegium of Romantic poets and a stack of enormous scarlet handkerchiefs. After a moment's hesitation, he returned to one of the trunks. He made a grimace of distaste as he plunged his hand into it, and I could not see what he withdrew, but he tucked the item into the pocket of his trousers and slammed the lid of the trunk closed with vehemence. I went to him and put out my hand.

“Mr. Stoker, you have been very generous to extend your hospitality to me, but I am clearly intruding upon a time of quite personal grief. I will take my leave of you now and thank you.”

He whirled on me, his anger as palpable as a lash. “Leave? Oh, I think not, my girl. You and I are bound together, at least until this is finished.”

Appalled but sympathetic to his strong emotion, I strove for patience. “Mr. Stoker, I understand you are naturally distressed at the death of your dear friend, and I extend my deepest sympathies to you. I am clearly in the way and have no business here. I must leave you.”

“You do not understand, do you?” His voice was frankly incredulous. “You
are
my business now.”

“I? That is impossible.”

He threw a rusty black suit into the moldering bag and strapped it shut. “Think again, Miss Speedwell.”

“Mr. Stoker, again, I am sorry for your loss, but I must insist—”

He reached out and clasped my wrist. He was demanding, not coaxing, and I could feel the weight of his emotion to my bones.

“My dearest friend and mentor is dead, and as nearly as I can comprehend, you are the reason. Until I discover why, you do not stir an inch from my sight.”

“Be reasonable, Mr. Stoker! How can I possibly be the cause of that poor man's death? I was with you from the time he left me here until he was killed. You must see that.”

“The only thing I see is that he brought you here, convinced you were in mortal danger, and that was the last thing he ever did.”

“I will not go with you,” I said, pulling my wrist free and folding my arms over my chest.

“I think you will. Max told me to guard you—with my life if need be—and I do not intend to let him down. Now, whoever murdered him has almost twelve hours' advantage on us. We must leave as soon as Badger returns with replies to my telegrams. I am arranging for us to depart London and meet up with friends of mine who will provide us with a sort of refuge until the inquest is concluded and we have answers. At this moment, I am not certain if you are a victim or a villainess, but believe me, I will discover which.”