A Curious Beginning

“I did not move anything,” I assured him. “I merely stacked the books and correspondence so they would not fall over, and I cooked a meal. I would have replaced the preservative solution in some of those appalling jars, but it does not seem to be plain ethyl alcohol, and I did not wish to damage the specimens by changing the solution.”


“At least you have that much sense,” he said grudgingly. “The solution is of my own devising.”

“And not very effective,” I told him, pointing towards the jars of suckling pigs floating in scummy yellow fluid.

“Those were early efforts, designed to show me where the flaws were in the formula,” he said nastily. “And if Your Highness would care to look at the specimens on that shelf, I think you will find the solution is clear as Irish crystal.”

I did as he bade, nodding in approval. “Well-done. That is perhaps the finest preserving work I have seen. Did you use plain formaldehyde? No, of course, you will not tell me. I ought not to have asked. I should love to see you preserve something. I have only ever managed to fix butterflies, and of course, mounting Lepidoptera is nothing so difficult as mounting mammals.”

He gave me a curious and not wholly friendly stare. “How did you come to be interested in butterflies? They are the usual province of the lady naturalist, but I am rather surprised you didn’t find yourself studying something with teeth.”

“Hm.” I was examining another of his little pigs, marveling at the curl of its pink tail. “How extraordinary. One can almost hear it squealing.” The specimen, one of his best, was so arrestingly lifelike I was not entirely certain it had not moved. Like my butterflies, it gave the impression of cessation, as if it had paused in whatever it was doing but only for a moment. Stillness coupled with expectancy; these are the qualities all good preparations must convey.

I shook myself free of my reverie. “What was that? Oh, butterflies. They afforded me the chance to get away from the villages where I grew up. Girls are not supposed to go roaming about the countryside without purpose. It is considered eccentric. So I bought a butterfly net and a killing jar, and that made it quite all right.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “That I can understand. I was always thought odd for stuffing my pockets with jars of frogspawn and dissecting rabbits instead of eating them.”

I smiled at the notion of him as a boy with a pocketful of bottled tadpoles, but he suddenly tired of conversation. With an abruptness I had noted before in his manner, he gave me a cool look and picked up his pot of glue. “I think I will return to my elephant. I have wasted quite enough time already.”

He strode back to his pachyderm, leaving me to amuse myself with Huxley. I did not mind. “Reclusive men are a good deal of work,” I murmured to the dog. Mr. Stoker was not my first encounter with a fellow uncomfortable in the company of women, and would assuredly not be the last. He might have a pathological dislike of women in general, but with a certainty borne of experience, I put his thorniness down to a heartbreak in his tender youth. Some people never recovered from their early losses, I reflected. I ladled out bowls of soup for Huxley and myself, pointedly ignoring Mr. Stoker as he worked at the elephant. The fragrance of the soup rose in a steamy cloud, inviting and rich, and the dog and I sipped contentedly until Mr. Stoker threw down his spatula and stalked to the soup pot. “What is this, then?”

“Food for the dog,” I said evenly.

He gave me a sour look and ladled up a portion. There were no other bowls, so he took his in a chipped porcelain basin that was clearly a piece of laboratory equipment.

“It is a miracle you have not poisoned yourself,” I observed.

He shoveled a spoonful of soup into his mouth. “I would make a rather cutting remark about poisoning myself on your cooking, but I cannot. This is sublime. I can’t think when the last time was I had hot food.”

He ate three bowls, each more slowly than the last, until he scraped the final savory spoonful and gave a sigh of repletion.

“You do not take very good care of yourself,” I said. It was an observation, not an accusation, and he seemed to take it as such.

He shrugged. “Too much work, too little time, and too little money. You were not wrong about my habits. I sleep when I can and grab the odd bit of food when I think of it to keep myself going. And there is always gin,” he added with the jaded air of a practiced debauchee.

I said nothing but went to my bag and retrieved the flask. “Here. Something I picked up on my travels. I find it quite bracing.”

He took it from my hand and swallowed deeply, then spluttered so hard he nearly choked. “Good God, what the devil is that?”

“South Americans have a specialty called cacha?a, something like rum but made from sugarcane rather than molasses.”