“Of course it is,” said Mrs. Poole, reproachfully. “But we can’t do anything about them at the moment, can we? Do what you can, as my mother used to say, and leave the rest to God. Or Mr. Holmes, as the case may be.”
“I would never arrogate to myself the powers of the deity, Mrs. Poole,” said Holmes. He reentered the bedroom with his long stride. “There were five of them, including our dead friend. Three wearing boots, two with feet too deformed for human footwear. All their gaits are irregular, as though they were shuffling. I saw their footprints clearly in the mud on the sidewalk, five coming and four going, although they ended at the bottom of the road, where I believe they had a carriage waiting. Going, there is a mark as of someone being hurried along and half dragged, no clear prints, but the foot is smaller than the others. Perhaps one of the ladies was dragged and the other was carried.”
“Beatrice must have killed the Bear Man, but she couldn’t have handled five,” said Mary. “And Justine was too sick to fight back.”
“I think Justine must have done some fighting too, nevertheless,” said Holmes. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be so much damage.”
“We need to summon the police,” said Mrs. Poole.
“No,” said Mary. “The police would never believe us. What would we say? You need to look for a poisonous girl and a woman who is over six feet tall, because they’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of Beast Men?”
“Miss Jekyll is right,” said Holmes. “Lestrade would laugh in our faces. We need to send Watson a message, and find Prendick. All the clues indicate that Miss Rappaccini and Miss Frankenstein were kidnapped by Beast Men, and Prendick knows how to make Beast Men. You’ll need to stay here, Mrs. Poole, in case the others return or try to contact us. And Miss Jekyll . . .”
“I’m not staying here,” said Mary. “I’m coming with you. Proper or not, I want to find out what happened to Beatrice and Justine.”
“You go right ahead, miss,” said Mrs. Poole. “Two heads are better than one, they say. I’ll straighten up here.”
“If you see Charlie,” said Holmes, “send him on to Watson with this message: ‘Miss Rappaccini and Miss Frankenstein have been kidnapped, and we’ve gone to find Prendick in Soho, at the Deerborne Hotel.’ He may have simply gotten the stationary there, but hopefully he’ll be staying either at the hotel or close by. Come on, Miss Jekyll. We haven’t had our tea, but no rest for the wicked, as they say—or for detectives either!”
Together, they set out for Soho. At the last minute, Mrs. Poole had handed Mary a tea cake, saying, “You have to eat something, miss. Otherwise, you’ll faint, and what sort of help will you be to Mr. Holmes then?” Mary walked quickly, the uneaten tea cake in the pocket of her mackintosh, worried about the two girls. Where were they? Would they be all right? She had only known them for a few days, but already they felt like family, as though they belonged together.
BEATRICE: As we do.
MARY: Despite our differences.
BEATRICE: Or because of them.
Meanwhile, Catherine had spent that afternoon sewing.
Kate Bright-Eyes had done wonders. At The Bells, where they found her, she had worked on Catherine’s face and hair. “I have all my things here,” she told them. “After what happened to Molly, I can’t live alone anymore. I get nightmares! So I’m renting a room at the inn, though it’s twice as much as my old lodgings. You’re a brave one, Miss Moreau. I wouldn’t go into that society, knowing the girls who died had been there, not for a hundred pounds. There, how does that look?” Catherine looked at herself in the cracked mirror that hung in Kate’s room. The powder Kate had put on her face and neck covered the scars. In the mirror, she saw rouged lips and cheeks, and a great deal of hair, not all of it her own. Yes, it would do just fine.
Of course, as soon as she arrived at the Magdalen Society, Mrs. Raymond had told her, rather sharply, to wash her face and rearrange her hair. She had wiped off the rouge—it had done its work, which was convincing Mrs. Raymond that she was in need of salvation. But she had not touched the powder, which was the color of her skin anyway. “It’s what actresses use,” Kate had told her. “You’re a bit darker than most of us, ain’t you? But I think it will do.” With it, she looked . . . entirely human. She liked looking human. And then she had gone to the workroom.
If you asked Catherine what she likes less than sewing, she would say being shut up in a cage, in a ship’s hold, for weeks while that ship sails across the Pacific Ocean to a mysterious island. Or, on that island, being transformed from an animal into a woman without the benefit of anesthesia. But that might be it. She would prefer eating rats on the streets of London or being chased by Wolf Men.
MARY: Must you be so melodramatic?
And she is particularly bad at it. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that her hands were once paws, but she is unable to sew even a straight seam, as Sister Margaret reported to Mrs. Raymond.
“She’s quite hopeless. I gave her a tea towel to hem, and look at it! Perhaps we can have her do something else—mop the floors, for instance.” The new girl’s yellow eyes made Sister Margaret nervous.
“We might put her in the cleaning crew, by and by,” said Mrs. Raymond. “But for now, I want her under your supervision. There’s something about her . . .” She pondered for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I can’t place it, not yet. At any rate, I don’t want her doing anything arduous. We don’t want her to suddenly leave, do we? To return to the base luxury of her life on the streets, like those other girls? Poor Sally Hayward or Anna Pettingill? We want her to understand the value of what we offer here—the comfort and safety of the Magdalen Society. And get her a work dress as soon as possible. I don’t want her going around in that ridiculous getup.”
DIANA: How do you know what they said? It’s not as though you could hear them.
CATHERINE: I did, actually. It was the first time I tried reconnoitering, but Mrs. Raymond was in her office. I was right outside the door and heard them. Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I got the details exactly right. What matters is whether it makes for a good story.
Whatever Catherine was considering at that moment, it was not the comfort and safety of the Magdalen Society. Her thread had snapped again, which meant re-threading and making sure the new stitches continued imperceptibly from the old, while overlapping enough so that neither end would come loose.
“Why are we sewing, anyway?” she asked. “I don’t see why we all have to be sewing. Aren’t there other things we could be doing that would save our souls just as well?”