“Why?” asked Diana. “She’s probably right, you know. I’m not saying it’s her fault, but her mother died giving birth to her. Facts is facts.”
“My father did not hire a wet-nurse,” continued Beatrice. “I suckled at certain plants that nourished me as a nurse would have. As a child, I thought my father and I were the only beings in the world, and our garden walls were the limits of that world. There was a woman who lived in the house next to ours, a Signora Lisabetta. One of her windows overlooked our garden, and I sometimes saw her peering over our wall, but having seen her only from the torso up, I did not regard her as a person, and assumed she was an angel who sometimes looked down on me. For years, I played happily with my sisters, the flowers, and was sad that I could not play with the butterflies, crickets, or worms. But they died when I came too close.
“Eventually, I learned the world was much larger than I had realized, that there were people in it like me, yet not like me. My father did not keep my nature a secret. He explained to me that I was poisonous to others of my kind. 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. Indeed, I helped him with his experiments, and he told me all about the work of the Société des Alchimistes. He hoped that one day I would become a member. Both as a scientist, and as living evidence of his theories of transmutation.”
“Transmutation!” said Mary, leaning forward. “That’s what your father’s letter mentioned. Experiments in transmutation. Wait just a minute!” She had left the portfolio in her mother’s desk. It occurred to her for the first time that she should have locked the desk drawer. She would have to find the key. Now she stood and went over to the desk, pulled the portfolio out of the drawer, put it on the table, and took out all the documents. There was the letter from Italy. She read it to Beatrice. “?‘Transmutation, not natural selection, is the agent of evolution. . . . I am pleased to report that my Beatrice is flourishing. . . . Our colleague Moreau was right to conjecture that the female brain would be more malleable and responsive to our experiments.’ What are these experiments in transmutation? What does it all mean? Do you know?”
Beatrice took the letter from Mary. For a long moment, she could only look at it, her hand trembling and her eyes filling with tears. Clearly, she was thinking about her father. At last, she looked up. “I do, alas,” she said, wiping her eyes with one hand. “You know, of course, of the medieval alchemists?”
“No,” said Diana.
“Yes, of course,” said Mary. “They tried to turn lead into gold.”
“That was the medieval idea of transmutation,” said Beatrice. “One form of matter turned into another. In the Middle Ages, alchemists were considered magicians and burned at the stake. But truly, they were scientists. 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.
“My father sent papers about me to the Société. He often complained about what he called the traditionalists, the anti-evolutionists who believed that man was divinely created, that transmutation of the human was against God’s plan. ‘Evolution is the greatest discovery of our age,’ he would tell me. ‘We evolved from the apes. What may we yet evolve into? The forces of natural selection are no longer acting on man. So it has become our duty to direct evolution, to create the higher forms that man will become. But do they see that? No, they do not, the grandi idioti!’ He would wave his hands, shouting, ‘idioti, idioti!’ Thus would he speak of the traditionalists in the Société. But he and his colleagues were working on advancing evolution through transmutation. They believed they were assisting the species, unasked and unappreciated, to rise higher. . . .”
“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?”
Beatrice looked at her with astonishment. “Missing limbs? From girls murdered in Whitechapel? But that does not make sense. 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? The experiments of my father and his colleagues were subtle and theoretically sophisticated. They sought to advance humanity in particular directions. 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. Their goals were noble, and when I was young, I thought they were the wisest men in the world, that they would lead us to a new golden age. Since then, I have come to question their methods. But this matter of the missing limbs—I cannot understand it.”
She drank the rest of her noxious tea and put the empty mug on the windowsill. Diana shoved the last of her toast and poached egg into her mouth and chewed loudly.
“Well, the girls are dead,” said Mary. “And their limbs are missing: legs, arms, head. And two sets of brains. That’s the mystery we’ve been trying to solve. You said there’s only one reason to take limbs from these girls, but you didn’t say what it is. What was Frankenstein’s original experiment?”
“To take parts of the dead and create a living being,” said Beatrice. “To sew those limbs together into a woman and bring her to life. That is what Frankenstein did—not with a woman, but with a man, a living corpse who became a monster.”
“Awesome!” said Diana, her mouth open, with half-chewed food in it.
“But that’s horrible!” said Mary. “I can’t imagine what would prompt someone to do such a thing.”
“The love of science for its own sake,” said Beatrice. “But also for the promise it holds of raising us above our limited human selves. Surely you see the beauty of such an ambition, even if you cannot approve of how it has been pursued. And of course the murder of five women is inexcusable, however noble the aim. But Frankenstein’s experiment was crude, inelegant. My father’s methods—”
“Left you poisonous,” said Mary.