The Peculiars (19 page)

He dropped his voice. “I tried every door on the first floor. Those that weren’t locked opened to rooms that were empty or looked like they’d not been used in years.”

They were sitting at the scarred old kitchen table now. Lena had wrapped her gloveless hands around a mug of hot tea, but still she felt chilled to the core.

“Just before I was ready to give up and move on, I heard a dreadful banging. I opened a door into a laboratory filled with test tubes and instruments. There were two long padded tables with manacles on each end. They must hold the hands and feet. It looked like an operating room.”

Lena gripped the mug more tightly. “What was the banging?” She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer and had a strong impulse to cover her ears.

“In the middle of the room was your red-haired man. He was wearing a mask and heating something that he gripped with iron tongs, and then he would bang away at it. His shirt was off and sweat was pouring down. I don’t think he saw me. It was like a scene out of a horror story. Did you ever read Shelley’s
Frankenstein
?”

“Of course I’ve read
Frankenstein
. But what was he doing?”

“I don’t know, but the worst of it was all the surgical tools laid out.” Jimson shuddered. “I’m going to talk to Mr. Beasley.”

“You can’t!” Lena almost knocked over her mug of tea. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

She recounted her meetings with the marshal, describing his suspicions that Mr. Beasley was experimenting with
Peculiars, and the marshal’s desire to free them. “After we found the wings, I couldn’t wait any longer. I showed him the sketchbook and told him about the lady you saw with wings.”

But Jimson didn’t praise her ingenuity. Instead, his face grew very white. “You
what
? You told him without us talking to Mr. Beasley first? I thought we had a deal—we’d talk to each other before we did anything.”

At first Lena cowered under his disapproval. Then she felt a spark of anger ignite, and the flames filled her until her body shook. “It’s better than doing nothing, Jimson Quiggley. I can’t stand by and let him hurt people, even if they are unnatural. What good would it do asking someone who is in the business of deception? He’s lied to us from the beginning. At least I did something!” She pushed away from the table.

The more she raised her voice, the quieter Jimson’s became. “You have to give Mr. Beasley a chance. I admit it looks bad, but you can’t turn on someone without hearing his side of the story. Now I’ve got three days to sort this mess out.”

“What do you mean
you
have three days?” Lena grabbed her gloves and balled them in her fists. Her voice was loud and rough.

“Well, I can’t very well trust you!” Jimson slammed the kitchen door, and the blast of cold air caught Lena full in the face.

WHEN PANSY DEMPLE ARRIVED AT ZEPHYR HOUSE, SHE CAME
in a Cuthbert coach, which dropped her right at the front steps. Lena had been working and saw the arrival from the library window. She hadn’t spoken to Jimson since their argument in the kitchen. All morning he’d picked in the apple orchard with Milo, and neither of them had appeared at lunch. When the coach arrived, Mr. Beasley stuck his head in the library door and invited her to come greet Pansy. Lena was not in the mood to greet anyone but put her work down and followed Mr. Beasley.

The first frost had killed the potted flowers on the steps. Their blackened leaves drooped sadly. If Arthur Pollet had been there, Lena thought, they would have been replaced already with stouthearted golden chrysanthemums. This was a bleak welcome for any guest. The air was sharp, and Lena paused on the front steps, glad for the warmth of her winter
tweed jacket over her gray skirt. Her breath exhaled in a puff of white.

Jimson was helping Pansy from the coach, as Mr. Beasley hovered nearby. She extended a small white-gloved hand. Her jacket and skirt were pale blue and tailored. A small veiled hat rested on a cluster of bright yellow curls. She stepped onto the gravel drive with a dainty booted foot, a foot so small it barely protruded from beneath the ruffled hem of her skirt. Lena folded her arms across her chest, hiding her hands in her armpits. She looked down at her ink-stained gray skirt and saw feet that stuck out like two reptiles’ snouts beneath the hem. It was going to be a very tiresome day.

“Lena, come and meet Pansy. Pansy, Lena is my other librarian.” Mr. Beasley smiled up at Lena as she stood frozen on the steps. There was no recourse but to descend the steps, hoping she wouldn’t trip over her own large feet, and meet Pansy Demple face-to-face.

“I am charmed to meet you.” A dimple winked fetchingly in one cheek, below eyes like violets.

“It’s nice to meet you as well.”

Jimson, Lena noticed, did not catch her eye; in fact, he was doing everything he could to avoid her glance.

“In his letters, Jimson has said some very nice things about your work. My, this is the most unusual house I have ever seen.” She used one hand to hold her hat to her head as she looked up at the staggered roofline.

“I’ll get your bags, Pansy, and Mrs. Pollet will show you to
your room. I hope your journey wasn’t too strenuous.” Jimson gathered her leather traveling case in one hand.

His voice was so formal that Lena had a strange desire to giggle, but she strangled the laugh before it could escape. “Yes, not discommodious, like our journey with an escaped convict on board,” Lena said. “Did Jimson tell you there were gunshots and a man dressed as a nun? Well, I’d better get back to work in the library, but I’m sure I’ll see you later.”

Lena fled back up the steps, longing for the comfort of the library. What had possessed her to say those things to Pansy? She paused just inside the doorway, listening as Pansy exclaimed in shock. Perhaps Jimson had left out that part of his adventure when he invited Pansy to the wilds of Knob Knoster, she thought with satisfaction.

Then Pansy’s voice floated through the open door. “Jimson, what’s wrong with that girl? Her hands and feet are grotesque.”

Lena felt something inside her shrivel. She had heard those words so many times before, but never, ever at Zephyr House. She straightened her spine, preparing to walk down the long corridor to the library, but she couldn’t leave—not until she heard Jimson’s response.

“Lena’s a fine librarian, Pansy. Her hands and feet can’t be helped. You’ll like her when you get to know her.”

A fine librarian? Is that all she was? Jimson could have Pansy Demple, with her dainty hands and feet. Lena, a fine librarian, had her own work to do, and the first thing was
to examine the book from Cloister. She marched down the corridor.

Alone in the library, Lena slid open the small drawer in Jimson’s desk where he kept the keys to the glass cabinets. If she kept working, kept focused, she would not hear the echo of Pansy’s words.

She unlocked the cabinet. Even when set next to the other books bedecked with precious stones, the book from Cloister gleamed. Besides the magnificent illuminations, what else could this book contain that would make it safer here than at Cloister?

Lena rubbed her gloves on her skirt to make sure that they were clean. She shot a look over her shoulder and, assured that no one other than Mrs. Mumbles was watching, picked up the book. The intricate mother-of-pearl inlay still made her catch her breath. Her long fingers delicately turned to the title page that Jimson had translated from the Latin:
A History
. But a history of what? If only she had attended the type of school that taught Latin.

If she couldn’t translate, then the pictures would have to do. In the midst of flora and fauna there were small people as well. A man and woman standing among flowers and trees, animals . . . each picture was so intricate she could gaze at it forever. She flipped more pages. The man and woman were hunched together, their faces contorted, the woman’s mouth open in a scream. Lena turned to the next page. The flowers, trees, and animals were gone. The man and woman had covered
themselves with leaves; they were alone. A sudden chill; she knew this story. The story progressed. The man and woman were tilling the land; they were surrounded by children. Lena bent close to examine the detail. In the woman’s arms was an infant, an infant with disproportionately large hands and feet. Lena almost dropped the book.

The family grew; there were animals again. Lena searched the minutiae of each drawing, looking again for the child with hands and feet like hers. What had happened to that baby?

A murmur from behind made her freeze. But it was just Mrs. Mumbles twining herself about Lena’s legs. Lena looked at the brass clock on the wall, the one that showed the time in London and India as well. It was later than she had thought, and there was still more that she had to do before they were all summoned to dinner. Heart pounding, she carefully locked the book back in its case and returned the key to Jimson’s desk.

Jimson had described walking to the end of the first-floor corridor trying various doors. Lena hoped that Jimson was absorbed now with his Pansy. Mr. Beasley should be in his study, and Mrs. Pollet busy in the kitchen with dinner preparations. Lena considered. She should take something to protect herself. The brass letter opener was sharp enough to slice her finger. She slipped it into the waistband of her skirt and pulled her tweed jacket down over the bone handle. With Mrs. Mumbles at her feet, she made her way quickly to the south wing.

Lena remembered Jimson’s description of banging and
heat. But she heard nothing as she walked, as silently as possible, down the carpeted hall. Stopping outside the last door, she felt her own heart banging, her breath tight. She swallowed and pushed open the door.

It was a laboratory, just as Jimson had described, gleaming with instruments. On an examination table in the center of the room a woman was hunched forward. Her naked back was turned to Lena, and along her back ran two ragged scars. A growth protruded just below the shoulder blade on the left side. Mr. Beasley, his back also to Lena, rested one hand on the woman’s sharp shoulder. In his right hand he held a syringe.

Before Lena could cry out, Mrs. Mumbles streaked across the floor and jumped daintily onto the examining table. Startled, Mr. Beasley and the woman turned to find Lena standing in the doorway, the brass letter opener clutched in her gloved hand.

“Mrs. Pollet!” Lena cried.

“Ah, Lena . . . Not how I planned to introduce you to my work.” Tobias Beasley’s voice was smooth and reassuring, his painted eyebrows raised in a question.

Leticia Pollet’s face was pale, her eyes wide with terror. She uttered a guttural sound. Lena looked at the letter opener in her hand. How silly she had been to think that she could do anything! She turned and ran.

Panic propelled her through the south wing and back into the main house. Jimson was not in the kitchen, nor was
he in the library. Down the long corridor of the north wing, doubling back toward the kitchen, she saw no one. The image of Leticia Pollet’s scarred back and agonized face drove her on. There was a flicker of motion on the terrace. Lena called out. Jimson and Pansy walked arm in arm, oblivious to her cries. Pansy turned to look up at Jimson and laughed, a head-back, full-throated laugh. In another wing of the house, in another world, Mr. Beasley was about to do something dreadful to Leticia Pollet.

Lena threw open the terrace doors. “Help! Mrs. Pollet is the winged woman, and Mr. Beasley is doing something unspeakable right now!”

Pansy looked at Lena with her mouth slightly open, her perfectly arched brows drawn together in a V.

Jimson dropped her arm. “What? The woman I saw was not Mrs. Pollet. You saw her too—at the cemetery. Mr. Beasley’s in the laboratory now?”

“Yes, he’s holding a syringe, and her back is covered with horrible scars!”

Even before Lena finished the sentence, Jimson was running full-tilt toward the south wing with Lena at his heels.

“Wait!” Pansy hoisted her skirt with one hand and followed. Lena could hear her voice floating from behind. “Jimson Quiggley, you wait for me!” But there could be no waiting now.

Jimson burst through the laboratory door seconds before Lena. It was empty. Mrs. Mumbles slept curled contently on
the examination table. As the adrenaline left her body, Lena began to shake.

“What is this place? What are you two doing?” Pansy peered through the doorway. Her yellow curls had come unpinned and tumbled down around her small face. She was breathing hard, and a bead of sweat shone on her upper lip. “Somebody please tell me what’s going on.”

Lena still found it difficult to speak. Her words came out in gasps. “They were here. Mrs. Pollet was sitting on the table. Her back was bare, and there were two long scars and something growing from them. Mr. Beasley said, ‘This isn’t the way I wanted you to find out.’” To her embarrassment, Lena began to cry. It wasn’t a ladylike cry, but great sobs that shook her body and made her nose run.

“Lena, don’t.” Jimson pulled a wadded handkerchief from his pocket. “I believe you. I just can’t make sense of it all.”

She dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.