“He did,” Elyot confirmed. “Ambrose was the truest of friends. He helped me get to Germany and to secure employment. We have continued a correspondence, but he took care to make certain Eliza did not suspect that I survived. We believed it for the best.”
“To continue this charade for fifteen years?” Stoker asked. “Do you really believe it was for the best that your sister grieved your death for a decade and a half?”
Elyot flushed to the tips of his ears. “What I did was done for the best. I believed so at the time, and I do believe so still.”
“You do not seem completely surprised by our theory that LordAmbrose’s murder may have been accomplished at the hand of your sister,” I said.
“No.” The voice dropped to a whisper again, faint and infinitely sad. “Ruthlessness, I am afraid, is in her nature.”
“She called here two days ago,” I told him. “And related a tale about your work—a very particular experiment.”
“The girl from the canal. But the work was not mine. She was Eliza’s experiment from the beginning. I sculpted her death mask, but it was Eliza who insisted upon preserving her, upon attempting to resurrect her. Eliza was playing God, and I feared for her.”
“And you did not stop her?” Stoker asked. It was not an accusation, but Elyot’s expression was pained.
“Could one harness the sun and keep it from rising? I could no more have held back the sea than stopped her. She was a force of nature, even as a girl.” His eyes took on the dreamy veil of nostalgia as he began to explain. “I tumbled and stumbled, flinging myself about as all children seem to do. But Elizaobserved—everything and everyone. She never crawled, as babies do, in preparation for walking. She simply waited until she was ready to haul herself upwards and then toddled off, serious as an owl. She did the same with speaking, reading. Nothing was attempted until she believed she understood it. Mastery was everything to her.”
He paused, as much to rest his creaking voice as to gather his resolve to tell us the rest. I refreshed his tea, adding a spoonful of clover honey to soothe his voice, and he sipped, his eyes closed. When he opened them, he spoke again, stronger now.
“Her scientific studies were the same. I began them, but she soon surpassed me. Our father did not believe in formal education for girls, so she was forced to remain at home whilst I went away, but at the end of every term, I carried home my texts. She read them all in a matter of a few weeks, and I tutored her. She was a sponge, veritably thirsting forknowledge. Our mother died when we were very young, and our father followed, just after I finished school. Shortly after we established our little household, Ambrose came to live with us. He was always deep in pocket, and the additional monies were useful. They made all the difference, in fact. We were able to undertake projects of real significance. Ambrose was intrigued by methods of preservation whilst I was devoted to galvanic studies. It was Eliza who saw the potential for combining our efforts. She had been observing both of us, and it was she who first suggested marrying Ambrose’s specimens to my electrical applications. “
“Did you not consider the ethical implications of what you were about to do?” Stoker inquired softly.
“Oh, no, not at all,” Elyot said ruefully. “We were so caught up in the possibility of it all, the novelty, that Ambrose and I never once considered Eliza might have intended something as horrifying as her ultimate endeavour.”
Stoker and I exchanged quick glances. To imagine that these two brilliant male scholars had been entirely led by a young woman was too much to swallow. They had been willing partners, of that I had no doubt, but I understood Elyot’s attempt to whitewash himself of culpability. A look at Stoker’s face told me he was thinking much the same. Elyot was not attempting to deceive us as much as he had already deceived himself. He was giving us the only version of events that was palatable in light of the tragedies that followed.
“So she led you into the ways of destruction,” I suggested dryly.
If Elyot perceived my scepticism, he overlooked it entirely. “We were her creatures,” he said simply. “I do not know how it happened, it was so slow and subtle a thing. But before I knew it, she was directing experiments and giving orders in the laboratory. We had some early successes, exciting and thoroughly innovative work. It was not until we reanimated a specimen of a squirrel that I understood what she meant to do.It was a tiny thing, that squirrel,” he said, the small smile in evidence once more. “But watching it flutter to life again, it was a miracle, something out of a mediaeval mystery play. One moment it was lifeless and still. The next, the paws began to twitch, then the limbs, waking one by one, until the eyes opened.”
He paused and sipped again at his tea. “It was beyond anything I had ever imagined. Anyone who has ever worked with voltaic coils understands how easy a thing it is to give the suggestion of life. It is merely a series of electrical impulses stimulating, say, the leg of a frog to kick. When the leg moves, it appears the frog is living, but it is not. It is no more than a party trick. Galvani and Volta entertained masses with such flummery. They were attempting to illustrate sound scientific principles, and there is not a travelling show in Europe that failed to replicate the demonstration. But this squirrel—I tell you it was alive. Its eyes shone with understanding, it leapt up and ran about the laboratory. We had createdlife.”
His voice dropped to a thrilled whisper, and I could see it plainly, the laboratory, the trio of young people watching in awe as their subject rose from the dead. They were conjurers as much as scientists, and the knowledge that they could ape their Creator must have been heady stuff indeed.
“What became of the squirrel?” Stoker asked.
Elyot shrugged. “It died. Again. It lived only a few minutes, and we were dismayed at the brevity of its animation. But Eliza worked feverishly to understand where we had gone wrong, and within a few weeks, she was ready to try again. This time with a dog.”
I darted an involuntary look at our little family of dogs, from Huxley, the elder statesman of the group, to tiny Al-‘Ijliyyah, shivering in the little jumper Stoker had knitted for her. A considerable portion of my sympathy for Julius Elyot died in that moment, but he went on.
“This time we were more successful. The puppy we used lived a fortnight. And after that it was a pig which lived two months. After that, Eliza believed she was ready to attempt something... greater.”
“So you found her a body,” Stoker said. The tone was neutral, and only someone who knew him well would have detected the distaste for what Elyot had done.
“It sounds rather grim when you put it like that,” Elyot told him. “But yes. I was tasked with finding a suitable specimen. I already had a relationship with old Plumtree, a devious reprobate who would do anything for a coin. When he came to me with a commission for an unknown young woman pulled from Regent’s Canal, it seemed a godsend, Providence itself blessing our work. I completed the sculpture of the death mask with the understanding that if the girl were not claimed, she would be turned over to us. In the meanwhile, he permitted Ambrose access to her in order to begin the preservation process. It would have all been for nothing if she had been allowed to decompose, you see.”
His cup empty, he held it out for a freshener. I obliged and he gave me a smile of such charm, I could see for a moment the engaging and handsome young man he must once have been.
“Thank you, Miss Speedwell. I have met with little kindness these past years, and that meagre civility is still more than I deserve. I do not know at what point I sold my soul to the Devil, but I did. I accommodated Eliza’s schemes—no, I aided them. I funded them and supported them, and in this, I am as guilty as she. More so, for I was her superior in status and ought to have guided her in right principles. If I speak dispassionately about anything we did, it is only because I cannot bear to permit myself to feel. I have cut off my emotions as decisively as any surgeon hacks off a gangrenous limb, and I am left with nothing but the shell,” he added with a dismissive gesture towards his body. “I have had fifteen long years in exile to contemplate my sins. They are too heavy forexpiation. I can only hope that if there is a god, I will receive mercy, for if justice is meted, I am doomed.”
His discourse had taken on a maudlin tone, and if I allowed him to continue, I had little doubt he would succumb to tears. (Men who claim to be beyond the grip of strong emotions are, in my experience, the very ones most likely to fall prey to them.) And since the best remedy for hysteria is a sound slap and I had little desire to strike him—if only because he was still holding his teacup and a second broken cup was simply too much to bear in one evening—I took up the narrative in a brisk tone.
“So you secured the corpse for Eliza’s purposes, and Lord Ambrose accommodated by preserving her with his preparations. Eliza told us that she grew uneasy about the course of your experiments and went to the late marquess for assistance. She said that he threatened to use the full force of the authorities to bring your efforts to a halt and that in retaliation, you offered her physical violence. After this, the laboratory burnt and you with it. We perceive these are lies,” I assured him as he opened his mouth to reply. “I suspect the reverse happened. Your conscience got the better of you and you went to Lord Ambrose’s father yourself. What did you do? Propose to lock her in an asylum if she did not comply with your demands to stop her experiments?”
He flushed, a dull, ugly shade of red that blotched his grey complexion. “Ambrose and I had grown exceedingly worried about her. She was in the grip of an obsession, you understand. It was only when we were far into the process that I saw it for what it was—madness.”
“And the cure for inconvenient females is always to lock them up,” I finished dryly.