CATHERINE: Oh, all right, I’ll finish it up for you and revise what you’ve written to make it sound like a proper narrative. And to take out the cursing! Go do whatever it is you do.
DIANA: Wouldn’t you like to know!
CATHERINE: Not particularly.
Yes, her mother must have known. About her father and the experiments, about Hyde . . . Mary imagined Mr. Utterson, in his somber frock coat and black top hat, with the gold chain of his pocket watch just visible, getting into a hansom cab and ordering it to take him to Barstowe’s. The cabbie must have grinned, to indicate that he understood what a gentleman such as Mr. Utterson would be doing there. It would have been so distasteful.
And then arriving at the whorehouse, walking in and speaking to Mrs. Barstowe herself, asking for the child. Being presented with Diana, with her tangle of red hair, got up like a—well, like one of those girls. She could imagine him shuddering.
He must have been acting for her mother. Mary had wondered how her mother, who was already ill, had managed to set up a bank account and bring Diana to the Magdalen Society. This explained it: the lawyer had done all. And of course Mrs. Jekyll could not have gone to a whorehouse to pick up the daughter of her husband’s assistant—or, if Mary’s hypothesis was correct, her husband’s daughter by another woman. Mary put her head in her hands. This affair resembled a jigsaw puzzle. One corner of it was starting to fit together, to show a picture. But there were so many other pieces that had no place as yet: Beatrice Rappaccini, the poor girl this morning with her brain cut out, and S.A., whatever that meant.
“So, are there any more sandwiches?” asked Diana.
“Not for you!” said Mrs. Poole. “I have a bit of jelly roll left, and that will be for Miss Mary, because she’s barely eaten anything. You’ve eaten quite enough! But that’s the last of the sugar, I’m afraid.”
“I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and close the account Mr. Utterson opened,” said Mary. “I didn’t have time today, what with the corpse and long-lost sister and all.” That will be the agenda for tomorrow, she thought, mentally making a list. If she could arrange it neatly in her head, then perhaps the events of the day wouldn’t seem so bewildering. Clerkenwell, wherever that was, Bank of England to deposit the funds so they could buy sugar, Royal College of Surgeons to see the Poisonous Girl, back to Regent’s Park to meet with Holmes and Watson. She wondered what Beatrice Rappaccini could tell them. Would she know what their fathers had been doing, what sorts of experiments they had been conducting? Would she know what S.A. stood for?
Diana gave an enormous yawn.
“All right, to bed with you,” said Mary. One problem at a time, and the immediate problem was Diana.
MARY: As it so often is!
And then began the ordeal of getting Diana into bed, which involved several trips to the bathroom, innumerable glasses of water, and a headache for Mary, since Mrs. Poole declared early in the process that the heathen could stay up all night, as far as she was concerned. Mary ended up giving Diana half of the jelly roll Mrs. Poole had brought up for her.
Finally, the admonition “You say you’re fourteen, but you behave like a child” had its effect. Diana lay tucked into bed in what had once been Mary’s nursery, and Mary collapsed into a chair in her own bedroom. She was so tired!
Once, her days had passed quietly, one after the other, in the routine of caring for her mother. She had ordered meals, responded to the nurse’s complaints, paid bills. That “once” had been only a fortnight ago. In that fortnight, her life had changed completely, and she had the disquieting sense that it would continue to change, perhaps in ways that were not particularly pleasant. She had longed for adventure, and now that it was happening to her, she was not sure how she felt about it. Today she had been to Whitechapel, seen a corpse, and gained what was presumably a sister. What would tomorrow bring?
The most difficult part, the part she did not want to think about quite yet, was the revolution a day had made in her memories of her father. The tall, kind, distant father she had known . . . At least he had not been a Dr. Rappaccini, experimenting on his own daughter! Or daughters, because there was after all Diana. Was Diana, in a sense, the product of his experiments? Why had Hyde wanted a child, and a girl specifically? Perhaps he had simply been jealous of his alter ago and wanted a daughter of his own—if Dr. Jekyll had Mary, then he would have Diana. Or was there something more nefarious behind it? Those thoughts went around and around in Mary’s head. Would it never stop aching? She should have asked Mrs. Poole for something, one of those patent medicines the housekeeper kept in her dispensary. But Mary did not want to wake her, or make a trip downstairs through the dark house.
There was nothing to do now but get some sleep. She pulled on her nightgown and slipped between the covers. The nursery was next to her bedroom, and until she fell asleep, Mary could hear, through the walls, Diana snoring. It was a strangely comforting sound.
The next morning, Diana was up before she was. Mrs. Poole had dressed her in one of Mary’s old dresses, which would have been given to Alice in another year. “Her own clothes will need to be washed,” said Mrs. Poole. “Though I don’t know what good it will do—I’ve never seen dresses that have been mended so many times! They’re about to come apart at the seams. And such cheap material, that scratchy gray wool! Thank goodness her coat is in a reasonably decent state, and I’ve made her polish her boots. But I’ve had to give her a pair of your gloves, and one of your hats.”
After a breakfast of toast, eggs, and coffee as a particular treat for Diana—“Coffee, heavenly coffee!” Diana sang, dancing around the morning room, and Mary had to admit that she had a good singing voice—they walked first to the bank where Mrs. Jekyll had kept an account for Diana, and then to the Bank of England, to transfer funds. Thirty-five pounds, five shillings, three pence, in what was now Mary’s own account. She withdrew a pound, in change, and put it into her purse. Oh, to have money in her purse again! Mrs. Poole would be able to buy sugar, and perhaps there would be jelly roll for tea. And then, with Diana complaining that her boots pinched, they made their way to the Royal College of Surgeons, to see the Poisonous Girl.
CHAPTER VII
The Poisonous Girl