The Diabolical Miss Hyde (34 page)

Picking her way through the filth, Eliza followed. One cell lay empty, separating the lone man in the next from the others. Geordie Kelly sat cross-legged in the mud, fiddling with a stick. Black hair fell across his forehead. His frock coat's skirt flopped in the muck, once a fine blue fabric but now old and torn. His trouser hems hung ragged. Somewhere he'd lost his boots—stolen?—and his bare feet curled, long toes twitching.

He didn't look up as they halted in front of his cell.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Griffin murmured, and Porter dipped his hat and strode away.

Eliza's throat tightened. Questioning was important. If Griffin made a mess of it, they'd get the wrong answers. Kelly was innocent. She was sure of it. A scapegoat.

But whose? The Chopper's? Or someone else's?

“Geordie.” Griffin spoke softly, so as not to alarm.

Geordie looked up. A boy, really, barely in need of a shave. He blinked, bewildered. A bruise reddened one slanted
cheekbone, and his nose was crooked, an old break. Handsome lad, even with a few pox scars.

“Is that your name? Geordie Kelly?”

The boy nodded—three times quickly,
down-up-down-up-down-up
—and fiddled with the stick in his lap.

“You're in the Bow Street cells. My name is Detective Inspector Griffin. I'm a policeman, and I'm going to ask you some questions. Do you understand?”

Down-up-down-up-down-up.

“Where do you work, son?”

“For Mr. Underwood, sir.” Not the rough weird-city drawl. More of a West End accent, as if he came from a good family. “At the theater. I work the lights.”

“Are you acquainted with Miss Ophelia Maskelyne?”

Geordie rocked back and forth, clutching his knees.

“When did you last see her?”

He rocked harder, his head down.

Eliza crouched, heedless of the muck, and gripped the bars. “Geordie, look at me. You're not in any trouble. We just need to know when you saw Ophelia last.”

His soft mouth trembled. “She was so pretty. I liked her. She was nice to me, and now she's dead.”

“What happened to her, Geordie?”

“I saw her lying in the yard. There was blood. The police were there. I ran away.” Tears leaked, unheeded. He didn't seem to realize he was crying. Perhaps he cried a lot. “Someone did something bad, ma'am. Will the police find them?”

“I'm sure they'll do their best,” she murmured. “Why did you run away, Geordie? Were you afraid?”

“The other lady was there. She'd chased me away. She always chases me away. She doesn't like me.”

She glanced up at Griffin, who nodded slightly:
go ahead
. “Do you mean Mrs. Maskelyne?”

“The other lady,” Geordie repeated, and gulped a big wet swallow. “Miss Ophelia's friend.”

Eliza's memory bounced back to the crime scene. Clara Morton, in her plain gray servant's dress. “Do you know her name?”

A vague shrug. “Miss.”

“What does she look like?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Pointy face. She frowns all the time. Not pretty like Miss Ophelia.”

“And what was she wearing, this other lady?”

Geordie nodded at Eliza's dress. “Like you, only not as nice.”

Eliza's skin tingled. Clara, then. An electrical expert. “And what about the night before Ophelia died? Did you see Ophelia then?”

Down-up-down-up-down-up.
“In the yard. I waited, by the fence where I always wait. She was crying. The other lady arrived, and they . . .” He muttered something under his breath, his face darkening.

“They what?”

“Don't know.” He rocked again, gripping his knees. “Don't know.”

“Did they argue, Geordie?” offered Eliza gently. “Is that what you saw? Were they fighting?”

“Miss Ophelia cried. Her face was all bruised and bloody. The other lady tried to get her to leave. Then Mr. Lysander
called, and Miss Ophelia went back inside. The other lady left.”

“What happened then?”

“I went back to Her Majesty's and I swept the wings and the dressing rooms, like always. Then I went to sleep.”

“In your loft?”

His gaze slid aside. “Don't know.”

Griffin scribbled in his notebook. “What time was this, when you saw Miss Ophelia in the yard?”

Geordie squinted, confused. “It was dark. The ballet was finished. I'm not allowed out until the ballet's finished. I work the lights, see. Without me, there's no lights.”

“Sometime after eleven, then. Which makes it after the magic show had ended.” Griffin made a note. “And what time did you go to bed?”

A sullen shrug. “Don't know.”

“Well, you must know, lad. It's what, a fifteen-minute walk back to Her Majesty's?”

“Don't know.”

“How long does your cleaning usually take?”

“Don't know.”

Eliza sighed. His hair was dark, coarse, long like a choirboy's. Just like the strand she'd found on Ophelia's pillow. “Tell the truth, now. You didn't sleep in your loft that night, did you?”

“Don't know,” he muttered again, tucking his chin to his chest.

Instinctively, she reached through the bars and touched his hand. He was sweating, his skin warm under her palm. “It's all right. You can tell me. You won't be punished. Did you go back to the Egyptian?”

“She wasn't there!” More tears washed his cheeks. “I went in to look for her, but she was already gone. I only wanted to make her smile again.”

“She wasn't in her bedroom?”

“No.”

“But you lay down on her bed, didn't you?”

He sniffled. “It smelled nice,” he said indistinctly. “I didn't mean anything by it. Please don't tell Mr. Underwood.”

“We won't,” she soothed. “What did you do then?”

“I stayed until morning. I hid, but she didn't come back. When I came out, the police were in the yard.”

“And did you hear any strange noises in the night? Say, a gunshot?”

He shook his head.

Wordlessly, Griffin handed Eliza his notebook and pencil.

Eliza offered them through the bars. “Will you write your name for me, please?”

“Uh?” Geordie stared blankly at the paper.

“Your name,” she prompted. “Can you write ‘Geordie Kelly'?”

He took the pencil and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Balanced the book on his knee. His brow furrowed with concentration, and he chewed his bottom lip. “There,” he said at last, and held it out to her proudly.

His sweaty hands had stained the paper, and the pencil lead was smudged. His handwriting looked like an eight-year-old's, irregular, with some letters larger than the others. He'd drawn the “K” backwards at first and crossed it out.

A flash of memory, Lafayette scrawling on Sergeant Porter's
notepad:
Your handwriting is a tragedy.
If anyone's writing was tragic, it was Geordie's. His name was likely the only letters he had. Not the same hand as Ophelia's correspondence, by any stretch.

If Geordie was faking, he was extremely good.

Griffin retrieved his notebook. “Did you ever give Miss Ophelia gifts, Geordie?”

“What's gifts, sir?”

“Flowers, jewels, presents. Such as a gentleman gives a lady.”

Geordie's brows crunched together. “Once I found some pansies in the street. But I gave those to Miss Irina.”

“I see,” murmured Griffin. “Nothing else?”

“No, sir. I don't have anything like that. Mr. Underwood only gives me sixpence a week.”

Eliza frowned. A straight answer, in fact.

She recalled the flowers in Ophelia's room, the housemaid's rehearsed response:
Miss Ophelia is much admired.
It seemed Mrs. Maskelyne had told only half the truth. But if the flowers weren't Geordie's—then whose?

“One more thing,” she added. “You operate the electric lights at Her Majesty's. Can you tell me how they work?”

He nodded vigorously. “I pull switches, and they come on and off. Sometimes they go bang, and there's a fire, and I have to use the sand bucket.”

“Indeed. How many amperes does the array draw?”

A puzzled pause. “I pull switches,” he repeated.

“What kind of power source is it? An aetheric generator, or a rack of galvanic batteries?”

Geordie just frowned, bewildered.

Griffin touched Eliza's shoulder. “I think that's enough for now.”

She stood, dusting her skirts. “Thank you, Geordie. We'll be back.”

Back in Griffin's office, she waited until he closed the door before she rounded on him. “Tell me you still think he did it.”

Griffin perched on the desk's edge, leaning back on his palms. “Well, in the absence of more evidence, he's still our chief suspect. I can't let him go. But I admit, it doesn't seem likely.”

She laughed. “Harley, the boy can barely write, and he has no money for a scribe. He doesn't even have the wit to invent a convincing lie.” She ticked the points off on her fingers. “One: those letters to Ophelia aren't his. Two: he didn't give Ophelia the flowers. But Mrs. Maskelyne wanted us to think he did. Three: he has no clue how an electric light works, let alone a more sophisticated machine. And four: the ‘other lady,' who tried to convince Ophelia to leave the night Lysander beat her? Whom Geordie saw at the crime scene? That's Clara Morton, assistant to the scientist Percival, whose electrical demonstration I attended.”

Griffin frowned. “What's that to do with anything?”

“Clara lied to me. Pretended she didn't know me, or Ophelia. And she's an expert on high-voltage electrical apparatus. Not many machines will produce the type and weight of discharge we found at the scene.” Eliza pointed to the open journal. “I did some research. This is how the killer is getting away.” She took a breath. “It's a teleporter.”

“A what?”

“An instantaneous long-distance travel machine.” She showed him the diagram. “You build two machines, one positive, one negative. The power source attaches to this one, the main system. The other is portable. You activate that one
here
”—she pointed—“and the machine transports you back home to
there
.” She looked up, triumphant. “With a very loud bang, and a pile of black aetheric discharge. This thing has a spark gap like this.” She held her hands a foot apart. “No wonder the stone in the wall was melted.”

Griffin studied the page. “Where did you get this?”

“It's unorthodox. I'd rather not say.”

He stroked his mustaches. “Very well, I shan't press. But there must be several scientists with sufficient expertise to build this. Imagine this Clara Morton to be the killer. She's supposed to be Ophelia's friend. What's her motive?”

“Lysander beats Ophelia, Clara tries to convince her to run away,” mused Eliza. “Ophelia refuses, out of family loyalty, so . . . better dead than unhappy?”

Griffin winced.

Eliza sighed. “I agree, it's flimsy.”

“Also, what's the connection to Irina Pavlova?”

“Well . . . what if Clara isn't the killer? What if she's just helping the killer? He needed a method of escape, so he hired her to build this machine for him. She's short of money. She might very well take such a job.”

“Or the killer blackmailed her somehow and forced her to help him.”

“Clara's under investigation by the Royal, or at least Percival is. That's an easy threat for a blackmailer.”

“Hmm.” Griffin considered. “She poses as Ophelia's friend, lures her into the killer's clutches . . . ?”

“Maybe she did the same to Miss Pavlova.”

“Far-fetched but possible. But then who's ‘G,' and how is he involved?”

“I don't know. Maybe he isn't. Just an unfortunate admirer, in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Eliza smoothed her hair absently. “Hmm.”

“Oh, dear,” said Griffin dryly. “I know that ‘hmm.' It means trouble.”

She bit her lip. “It's probably nothing . . .”

“But?”

“Do you recollect what Geordie said, when I asked what Ophelia and Clara were talking about in the yard?”

Griffin didn't need to refer to his notebook. “He said, ‘Don't know.'”

“The same thing he said every time he wanted to lie. As if . . .”

“As if he knew, but didn't want to tell us?”

“Exactly.” Eliza tucked the diary under her arm. “He might not be our murderer, but he's definitely hiding something.”

“Could it be the same thing that Mrs. Maskelyne was trying to cover up? The identity of the real secret lover? The mysterious ‘G,' in fact?”

“I think it's time I paid Miss Morton another visit, don't you?”

Griffin grinned. “I couldn't possibly say, madam. This is a police investigation, I'll have you know. But suddenly, I find myself strangely powerless to stop a civilian asking questions.”

Eliza grinned back. “For shame, Inspector. At this rate,
the Met will be hip-deep in private investigators before sundown.”

“Scandalous, isn't it? Do take care, Eliza. If Reeve catches you, the Home Secretary won't care how many razor murderers I've caught. There'll be nothing I can do for you.”

D
R. PERCIVAL'S EXPERIMENTAL LABORATORY WAS
at the Royal Institution, a grand edifice fronted by fourteen marble columns, quite near Mr. Finch's shop in Mayfair. Eliza hopped up the steps, clutching her bag close, and Hippocrates scuttled inside after her, towards the rear of the building.

She hadn't telegraphed ahead or made an appointment. She wanted to ambush Clara, give her no chance to absent herself. And sure enough, when Eliza ducked under the low doorway to approach the array of buzzing electrical machinery by a row of soaped windows, there stood Clara, sleeves pushed up to her elbows, cleaning a pair of bright silvery anodes with a chemical-soaked rag.