“What can I say to my credit? I ought to have opposed him. But I too was gripped by his ambitions. I can plead only my youth and my fondness for my brother that I was so easily led into aiding his endeavours. I worried, constantly, about the implications of what we were doing, the moral considerations of playing God. And yet I could not bring myself to leave. If Ambrose played the accomplice, then so did I. I wrote up his notes and prepared the serums and injections and chemical baths as Julius instructed. I brought him food and made up a pallet in thelaboratory. He would not leave her, you see. Not from the moment he brought her to us.”
“How did he manage to gain possession of her?” I asked, careful to keep my voice as neutral and soft as Stoker had done.
“He paid Plumtree,” Eliza said with a shrug. “The old fellow had overextended himself by building a railway of the dead and needed the money badly.”
“We have seen the railway,” I told her.
She roused herself to an expression of surprise. “It still exists then? I am surprised. It was poorly built and unsound even then. But that is how Julius got her away. They thought it would be more discreet. Under cover of darkness, she was carried to the cemetery as if for burial, but once there, Julius and Plumtree, with Ambrose’s help, transferred her into a cart to bring her to the laboratory. Plumtree entered her burial into his ledgers so it would appear she had been properly laid to rest, and that was the end of her existence, officially.”
“And the beginning of her time in your brother’s care,” Stoker finished.
She nodded. “Yes. Ambrose was very involved in the work. His pet interest was in the preservation of dead tissues, and it was essential to keep her wholesome until Julius’ work could be carried out.” Possibly without intending to, Undine made a little face of distaste, doubtless contemplating the effects of decomposition upon the poor girl as she lay in Julius Elyot’s infernal laboratory.
Eliza spoke again. “So Ambrose helped him, as did I. It would have been far simpler to remove her viscera as the Egyptians did when they preserved the dead, but Julius was adamant that she remain intact. So she was submerged in baths and injected with chemicals, foul things that had to be pumped through each of her systems—digestive, circulatory, nervous. It went on for weeks, the stuff of nightmares. I began to wonder what was real and what was illusion. We worked all hours, dayand night, never resting properly. At last, the work was finished. She was, to all appearances, exactly as she had been the day she arrived in the laboratory, only better. She was perfectly preserved against destruction. And once she was perfectly preserved, the next step was inevitable.”
“To resurrect her,” Stoker said.
“To resurrect her,” she echoed. “It was a fantastical notion, like something out of Verne. We quarrelled about it, loudly and at length. But Julius would not be swayed. He insisted that he was in the right, and nothing I said could persuade him otherwise. He cast me out, without a friend, without a penny.”
She drew a deep breath, as if steeling herself. “I am not proud of what I did next, but I did not see an alternative at the time.”
“Because there was not one,” Undine Trevelyan broke in fiercely. Her face glowed like one of the fanatical saints bound to a pyre and awaiting the first flames. But her religion was Eliza Elyot, and I wondered how much she would suffer, how much she would endure for the sake of her beloved.
Eliza smiled, the gentle indulgent smile of a parent towards an excited child. “You will excuse me anything, Undine. A wiser woman might have found a different way. But I was young and badly frightened—not just of being sent away from my home but because of what my brother had become. There was no reasoning with him. I saw that Ambrose too was caught up in Julius’ plans. He was afire with enthusiasm for the project, but I knew there was one person who would not stand by and let that happen.”
“His father, the marquess,” Stoker guessed.
She nodded. “Yes. I went to him and told him everything in hopes he would intervene. I only meant for him to go and speak with them, perhaps to take Ambrose away, because without Ambrose’s help, Julius could never have managed. But his lordship was not prepared to limithis efforts to curbing his own son. He had a friend with the Metropolitan Police—the head of Special Branch.”
“Sir Hugo Montgomerie?” I asked in astonishment.
“I cannot recollect the name, but that sounds familiar,” Eliza said. “The marquess said he would enlist this gentleman’s help and have my brother’s laboratory raided and Julius taken up on criminal charges. You must understand how shocked I was by this,” she said earnestly. “I had no idea the marquess would be willing to go so far with the matter. I thought he would fear the scandal of public denunciation when his son’s involvement became known. I pleaded, but he would not be moved. He was confident he could use his influence to keep Ambrose’s name out of the newspapers and out of official reports. He said he would give me a day’s grace to make arrangements for my own future before he set the authorities on them.” Her mouth twisted bitterly. “I was treated with as much consideration as a hunter shows his best bitch. A pat on the head and sent away to have my supper. I begged him not to do this, not to make a criminal of my brother, not besmirch our name for generations. But he would not be moved.”
“You did your best in an impossible situation,” Stoker said. “You were very brave. I doubt I’d have done half so well in your shoes.”
She shook her head. “Do not speak kindly to me, Mr. Templeton-Vane. You have not yet heard the worst of my sins, and they are weighty indeed.”
“Go on,” he coaxed.
She took a deep breath, the thin chest rising and falling slowly. “I had not told the marquess that Julius had cast me out. That was my own private shame. I thought to purchase a little dignity for myself by keeping that secret, but in the end, it was the only reason the marquess delayed. Some misguided notion of chivalry, I suppose. He wanted me to have enough time to return home and collect a few things, and begone when the police came. But I employed those few hours rather differently than he intended.”
“You warned Julius,” I guessed.
The eyes she turned to me were anguished. “Wouldn’t you? I knew my brother, Miss Speedwell. He would have repented of his coldness to me. Indeed, by the time I returned home, he already regretted much of what he said. I think Ambrose must have reminded him of our natural affection for one another, of how it had been the two of us against the world for so long. And so I related to him what the marquess intended.” She hesitated as bright tears sprang to her eyes. “I thought all of his anger had been exercised that morning, but it was nothing compared to the rage that fell upon my head when I told him. Ambrose was struck by guilt and horror that his own father meant to be the instrument of Julius’ destruction. He vowed to do all that he could to help, but Julius was beyond listening. He flew at me, and if you look closely enough in strong light, you can still see the scars of what he did.” She paused, her smile mocking. “But then betrayal should leave its mark, shouldn’t it? The mark of Cain? That night, the laboratory was completely consumed by a fire—set, I believe, by Julius’ hand. There was no police raid because there was nothing left. The fire brigade recovered a signet ring from the ashes.” She touched the fourth finger of her hand where a glimmer of old gold revealed what had become of the ring. “It was our father’s, and Julius was never without it. They said the fire burnt hot from all the chemicals—too hot for any trace of him to survive. So I had nothing to bury. His notebooks, his life’s work, his body. Everything was lost. I might have starved if it were not for Ambrose. He kindly made me an allowance, a small amount, but enough to keep me from beggary. I took rooms and kept to myself for a long time. I had suffered too many shocks to move easily amongst people, you understand. But after some years, I grew interested in work again, and I began to attend lectures, to makea friend or two,” she added with a look at Undine. “I am lucky to have such a companion as Undine to help me.” Undine made no reply, and Eliza Elyot canted her head towards Stoker, her gaze sharpening. “How is it that you came to know about the girl from the canal? Of her connection to Julius?”
“We made the connection through Plumtree’s,” I said smoothly. “The new owner of the establishment is a recent acquaintance of ours. He was surveying the records and noted a curious thing—an anonymous young woman who was listed as buried in a spot that could not possibly hold a grave. There was a further note that her likeness had been sculpted by Julius Elyot, and so we hoped to find him to see if we could discover more about this unfortunate girl’s fate.” I saw no point in giving out more information than necessary, and Stoker remained silent, allowing the conversation to unspool as I wished.
Eliza stared steadily at me. “But you said there was a suggestion of murder,” she pressed. “How would you know that unless you had seen her?”
“It is the likeliest explanation for a body pulled from Regent’s Canal,” I replied.
“Surely suicide would be more probable,” Undine Trevelyan put in.
I shrugged. “It is difficult to know at such a remove. Fifteen years is a long time. Besides, how would we have seen her?”
Eliza’s nostrils flared just a little, the only sign of emotion. “I believed all of Julius’ work was lost in the fire. If there is any suggestion that this young woman’s body survived, I should like to know it. I deserve to know it,” she added fiercely.
“You have suffered a great deal in the past,” Stoker said, his tone heavy with sympathy.