The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club, #1)

by Theodora Goss

Yours most truly, Abraham Van Helsing

MRS. POOLE: In my day, young ladies had nothing to do with masked men, or princes, or madcap chases through the streets. I can’t stop you from having these adventures, but I insist on keeping a decent house.

another doxy was killed, same way as the last one. And her brain was missing!”

“Professor Petronius and a woman are sitting at a table, counting money. And there’s a dog, a big black one, sleeping by the fire. Beatrice isn’t there.”

Sure enough, Diana was removing her hat, gloves, coat, boots, and stockings. Mary could see her in the dim light that came from the window, standing beside the wall in only her dress and bare feet. Then she clutched at the drainpipe that ran down the wall and began climbing, pulling herself up the pipe with her bare hands and feet, now and then supporting herself by putting her toes on the joints.

“Fidelis, sweet Fidelis,” she said, coaxingly. “Come to me, sweetheart. Who gave you gingerbread yesterday?” Evidently, Fidelis remembered the gingerbread. He stopped barking and drew nearer. Beatrice put her hand on his head, then leaned down and breathed on him, long and steadily over his entire face. The black dog sat, then lay down as though tired, and twitched for a moment. And then he was still.

Beatrice looked up at them, and even in the darkness Mary could see that her face was wet with tears. “I did not mean to . . . Oh, he has made me too poisonous! I meant only to render Fidelis unconscious for a while.”

what did she mean—who had made her too poisonous?

“You must lower the windows,” said Beatrice. “Cover your mouths with handkerchiefs, and do not breathe too deeply. Forgive me, I would change my nature if I could. I shall always be what I am—a danger to others. But my toxicity will lessen with time. Professor Petronius insisted that I ingest poison every day, to make certain I would kill his specimens as effectively and dramatically as possible. Tonight, I am sorry to say, it has ensured our escape. Under ordinary circumstances, I could not have killed Fidelis so quickly. Would that he had survived! He was a good creature, and did only as his master bade him.”

“You’re among friends now. We’ll help you as best we can.” But how could she help the Poisonous Girl? A perfume seemed to emanate from Beatrice, like the scent of an exotic flower. That’s the poison, she thought. She put her head out the window to gulp mouthfuls of London air,

She stared into the darkness, feeling a sickness that had nothing to do with Beatrice’s poison. What was this secret society that seemed to have its members everywhere? What experiments were those members conducting? If she included the most recent murder, five girls had been killed and parts of their bodies removed. Why? She had a sense of something wrong in the order of things, some evil. She remembered having felt it once before—yes, when she was a child. That night, when she had seen the face of Edward Hyde.

have no need of food, you see. Only the nutrients themselves, and sunlight. It will take several days for the strong poisons to leave my system. The dandelion greens I picked in the courtyard will help with the detoxification process. Until then, we will need to be particularly careful. Do not touch me, and I will try to keep away from you as much as I can. Once the strong poisons are out, I will be toxic, but not to such a degree. My breath will be able to kill only the smallest living beings: insects, birds, mice, and voles. After spending some time in a closed room with me, you will begin to feel faint, but I will not be lethal unless we are in close contact. Still, my touch will burn, as though you had touched a strong alkaloid.”

BEATRICE: But my English is not so good. You know the whole story, Cat. Why can you not write it? You are the writer among us. You would make it, you know, lively. Truly, I cannot write it.

A son would have been less useful to him. He would have raised a son as his apprentice, to continue his scientific studies. But a daughter could be both an apprentice and a subject for his experiments.

As she tended his poisonous plants, I grew in her belly, absorbing their poisons. I believe they affected me even in the womb. While they weakened her, I was so imbued by their essence that they made me strong and healthy. On the day I was born, she died—giving birth to me. Already weakened, she could not bear the rigors of childbirth.

“I suckled at certain plants that nourished me as a nurse would have.

He told me with no hesitation or shame—nay, he gloried in it! I was the perfect woman, he told me—more beautiful and stronger than ordinary women. I would entice men, but they could never touch me. I did not question his actions or motives—he was my father, and I believed he loved me.

What occupied them more than anything else was the search for eternal life—the transmutation of the dead into the living. And so they began to experiment on biological matter. A century ago, a university student named Victor Frankenstein proved that it could be done, that dead matter could once again be brought to life. He paid a terrible price for the success of his experiments. But my father believed his aims could be achieved by other means. Frankenstein was his inspiration, and the inspiration for those who, like him, wished to transmute not base metals, but human beings.

“And so they were trying to transform girls into—what?” asked Mary. “What were they doing, and why would it require murder? These girls who’ve been killed in Whitechapel. They had limbs missing. Why would transmutation require that?”

There is only one reason to take limbs—but the experiment is ancient, a hundred years old! It is Frankenstein’s original experiment. Why would anyone want to re-create his experiment in this day and age?

My father wished to strengthen humanity through the incorporation of plant essences.

Dr. Moreau and your father were exploring what separates the human and animal, in an attempt to raise the human even higher, above our animal natures. They were attempting to refine and purify humanity.

“My father did not speak of it with me, only to say that Dr. Jekyll was trying to defeat our animal nature, raise man to new spiritual heights—and that no scientist should experiment on himself.”

He concocted what he believed to be an antidote and gave it to Giovanni, telling him that if we drank it, we would be cured. Giovanni brought me the antidote and told me that it would cure us both. We stood in the garden together, not touching. Even then, he did not know I had intended to make him poisonous—he thought it was an accident, that I had not been aware of my own nature. How trusting he was! He loved me, and wanted us both to be normal.

He did not want to be a monster—that was the word he used. He did not want to be separated from humanity. That day, I realized what I was—a monster among men.

I took up the vial he had let fall and drank the remaining antidote, intending to die myself. But nothing happened.

So you see, I killed my mother and Giovanni. Perhaps I killed my father as well, who knows.

MARY: Cat, you’re the one who insisted we tell our own parts of it. And now you’re upset that we’re interrupting the plot. This isn’t one of your thrillers. We’re trying to recount how we all came together, describe who we are. That’s not just the story of how we solved the Whitechapel Murders. It’s the story of us.

Did he kill the other women, but not this one? Is that why the brain was taken again? Or were all the murders committed by someone, or some persons, else? As you know, I’ve always inclined to the latter theory. And who helped Renfield escape? He could not have done it himself—he did not have the means, or even the courage.”

“Frankenstein!” said Watson. “I remember that name. Was there not an account—written by the wife of the poet Shelley, I believe? Frankenstein: A Biography of the Modern Prometheus, or some such. I remember reading it in my university days. But Miss Rappaccini, that was a popular novel, not a scientific treatise. It gave me a proper fright, but as a medical student, I considered it the worst kind of bunk.” “No,” said Beatrice. “It is no more bunk than I am. The public may have considered it fiction, but the members of the Société knew that Frankenstein had existed, and he had created a monster. At least, so my father told me.”

DIANA: You can’t feel yourself blushing. That’s lady novelist talk.

“I did not want to say this in front of the gentlemen, but there is a third line of investigation, in addition to the two Mr. Holmes laid out. When they arrived, I was about to tell you that I too have a letter to share. I received it a month ago, or rather, I found it in Professor Petronius’s desk. He had no intention of delivering it to me, I’m sure.”

They took three omnibuses to get to the Thames embankment. They could have taken two, but as they were leaving the house, Mary thought she saw—what? Perhaps nothing. Leaning against one of the houses in the row was a beggar, hunched over in a peculiar way. But then beggars often were hunched over, weren’t they? The man was probably a drunkard. There was nothing unusual about his appearance—beggars appeared even here, in the respectable streets around Regent’s Park.

“Beatrice,” she said, “how long would it take you to poison that girl?” “You would poison your own sister?” asked Beatrice, sounding shocked. Mary could imagine Beatrice’s expression behind her veil. Was it because she was Italian, or because she was poisonous, that she did not understand sarcasm?

Zulu Prince performed his bloodthirsty native dances with abandon, but Mary could see that on the stool he occupied when not performing, he had left a copy of Middlemarch, with a stray ticket marking his place.

“I’m so glad that’s over!” she said. She no longer spoke in a low growl—now, she sounded like an ordinary Englishwoman. “I usually don’t mind the performance, but in this circumstance I wanted to get away as quickly as possible.”

“His daughter! I suppose you could call me that. He did, and gave me his surname himself. But I am, more accurately, one of his—creations. Perhaps we should talk of this after you’ve introduced your friends?” Without her cat suit, Catherine looked like an ordinary woman, but her yellow eyes still had something wild in their depths.

A pale hand reached around and drew back the curtain. Mary saw the tallest woman she had ever seen, taller than most men, but thin and stooping. She had a long, gentle face and sad eyes. “Hello,” said the woman, hesitantly. She had an accent Mary could not place.

“This is the Giantess,” said Catherine. “Also known as Justine Frankenstein.”

“Frankenstein was a liar,” said Catherine. “He and that brother of his . . .” She paused, and sniffed. “Miss Jekyll, are you sure you weren’t followed?”

Listening to Justine, Mary felt as though she had stepped into a story she did not understand. Everyone—well, at least Catherine and Beatrice—seemed to know so much more about what was happening than she did. And everything was happening so quickly. If only the world could be ordered and comprehensible again, just for a moment.

But when she had put on the shirt and trousers, she realized what freedom they would give her. How easily she could move, without petticoats swishing around her legs! No wonder men did not want women to wear bloomers. What could women accomplish if they did not have to continually mind their skirts, keep them from dragging in the mud or getting trampled on the steps of an omnibus? If they had pockets! With pockets, women could conquer the world! And yet she felt, too, as though in putting off her women’s clothes, she had lost a part of herself. It was a confusing sensation.

DIANA: Why do women have to wear such rotten clothes? I mean, you’ve got the chemise, and then the corset, and then the corset cover, and that’s before you’ve even put on the shirtwaist. What’s the point?

BEATRICE: Clothing is one means of enforcing women’s social and political subordination. That is why we must support Rational Dress . . . CATHERINE: Are you seriously going to have an argument about this in the middle of my book? BEATRICE: Our book, as you keep reminding us. And I know you agree with me, Catherine. You have criticized women’s fashions many times in my hearing. CATHERINE: Yes, but I don’t wear those ridiculous Dress Reform outfits either. How are they any better? Women should just wear men’s clothes. They’re easier to move in, more hygienic . . .

MARY: What, pray tell, is the point of this argument? Catherine can wear whatever she likes and be a man one day, a woman the next. You all know perfectly well that dressing as a woman can be an effective disguise. It can be useful, being overlooked and underestimated. No one expects a woman to pull a pistol out of her purse. . . . Although I do wish you’d grow your hair back, Diana. It’s so pretty when it’s long. DIANA: Sod off, sister.

It’s impossible, but these men smell like . . . well, maybe I’m wrong.

What had happened? Certainly, Catherine wasn’t trying to blend into the crowd any longer. “They found us!” said Catherine, panting and out of breath, when they met at the northern end of the bridge. “Look, you can see them. There and there!”

“They’re following by scent, not sight. You see, they’re not even looking this way. If you take a cab, they’ll lose your scent and keep following us. Diana and I can lead them on a chase through London.”

JUSTINE: I gave a backward glance. I was so nervous! I did not know you then, and I did not know London. There were so many streets. . . . BEATRICE: And you see how well it turned out! We are together now, all of us. Like sisters.

“What are they?” said Diana. “They don’t look right. Are they deformed?” She was panting as well. She had been able to keep up, although Catherine ran with the speed and grace of a puma.