She nodded, pursing her lips. “Occupation?”
I paused again. “Match girl.”
“And what makes you say that?”
“The jar in which you preserved the hand was in shadow before you took it down. There was a very slight greenish glow suggesting the presence of yellow phosphorus. And the only workers who consistently have traces of yellow phosphorus on their hands are match girls.”
She gave me a grudging smile. “Full marks, Miss Speedwell. We will make a proper scientist of you yet.”
“I think you will find that lepidoptery is—”
She flapped a hand, waving me to silence. “Butterflies and pretty bugs. They are nothing to what we are about here. Watch now.”
She donned a pair of thick, dark spectacles before putting on a heavy leather apron and matching gauntlets. “Stand back,” she instructed. She tinkered with the voltaic pile Stoker had noted, arranging various plates and wires as she worked. The noise was ghastly, a loud thrumming and clicking that echoed off the stone walls and floor until the reverberations filled our ears and made conversation impossible.
As we watched in horrified fascination, she touched the ends of twowires to the hand. The fingers twitched, making small, delicate movements, little flutters suggestive of a butterfly’s wings.
Stoker and I stared in open-jawed astonishment as Parthenope Fleet increased the voltage and applied the electric current again. This time, the hand contracted as if in pain, the nails clawlike, scraping at the linen beneath. And then it began to creep forwards. It was horrible to watch, that dreadful, disembodied hand moving slowly, inexorably along, dragging itself like a living, thinking thing.
She dropped the wires and the hand gave a final shudder, surrendering to its death throes. A shiver passed along the index finger, and it remained extended as if to point the way ahead. She snapped off the machine and removed her spectacles.
“Now, imagine that with an entire corpse,” she said. “That is why Aldini came to London. Unlike the Bolognese, we do not decapitate our criminals—we hang them. Aldini wanted an intact body upon which to perform his experiments.”
“To what end?” Stoker managed finally, never taking his eyes from the hand still flexing gently on the table.
“To reanimate the dead,” Parthenope said. “He thought he could challenge Death, reverse the course of Fate.”
“To retrieve souls from Hades itself,” Stoker mused.
She shook her head. “You are a romantic, Mr. Templeton-Vane. It had little to do with souls and everything to do with bodies. Aldini wanted to create a process by which a human being could be revived.”
“And your work?” I inquired.
“I have far more modest ambitions. I work with limbs that have been severed in hopes of preserving the tissues and eventually attaching them once more to the body. There are industrial accidents by the thousand in this country,” she said. “Imagine the possibilities! Reuniting a hand or foot with its body, restoring use and purpose to those whose livelihoods depend upon their fitness for work.”
“A noble ambition,” Stoker told her.
“A futile one,” she returned with a ghost of a smile. “I have yet to master proper preservation, and even when I manage to animate the limbs, it never lasts more than a quarter of an hour. And even if I solved those insuperable problems, how could one possibly persuade healthy tissues to accept the reintroduction of those that have been removed? No, I fear it is a folly to nurture such hopes, but I persist.”
She guided us up the stairs and towards the door, our visit nearly at an end.
“Your work is fascinating,” I told her with perfect truth. “I suspect Miss Eliza Elyot’s is as well.”
She puffed a sigh of irritation. “I cannot think of Eliza without considerable vexation. She ought to have been a name of distinction by now, but her spirit has been sorely tested. The loss of her brother was a terrible blow, of course. She was devoted to him, although I have found it best to be wary of working with men. They always seem to take the lion’s share of whatever acclaim is to be had. Such is the nature of the world,” she added somewhat bitterly. “In that regard, his death might have freed her to choose her own path, but she has been singularly lacking in ambition. It is as though his brilliance was a necessary spark to her own, and without him, she is groping in the darkness.”
“And she never married?” he asked.
Parthenope Fleet’s gaze was level. “She has not. Julius’s death was very hard on her. They were terribly fond of one another.” She paused, thinking. “Julius also had a partner in his work to whom Eliza was very much attached. There was a suggestion of an understanding between them, but it is not surprising that the connection was severed with Julius’s death. Sometimes the pain of a shared loss can be as sharp as inconstancy.” She fell silent a moment, perhaps ruminating on a failed love affair of her own before she took up her narrative once more. “Eliza has found some measure of consolation these past years. She lives witha member of our club, Miss Speedwell. I am sure you have heard of Undine Trevelyan.”
“Undine Trevelyan! Indeed I have,” I assured her. “Her paintings are... most original.”
“They aredreadful,” Parthenope Fleet said with a thin smile. “Garish colours and far too many male nudes. One can only contemplate so many scrota with equanimity. She is a forward creature. You should get along famously with her. No doubt she will be attending the tableaux vivant at the club this week. Eliza seldom accompanies her, but even if she is absent, you may apply to Undine to speak with her. Mind you, Undine is very protective of Eliza. She will most likely refuse you, and if she does, she shan’t be polite about it.”
I bared my teeth in a wolfish smile. “Never fear, Miss Fleet. I am impervious to insult.”
She shook hands with Stoker, the pair of them exchanging warm remarks. An invitation to call again was issued—to him, not to the pair of us, I noted archly—and immediately accepted.
Stoker stopped to scratch the hound’s ears in the course of our departure, and the pause gave me a moment to put one last question to Miss Fleet. I do not know what possessed me to pose it, for until that exact moment, I had not entertained the slightest notion of asking. But with a certainty borne of irrepressible instinct, I turned to her.