We rode for almost an hour. After taking smaller, winding roads along one of the lakes, we were released from the coach at a path that disappeared into an overgrown garden. This led us to a cottage that had also been hidden from view. The house was of a charming design typical of the old style, but had been left in an apparent state of disrepair. It seemed the height of odd timing to me that Davenport in his haste would pause to light one of his beloved cigars before we entered, but I was mistaken. Shutters and musty curtains were drawn closed inside, and Davenport was lighting our way with a match.
At the door to the last room, he stood on a chair and unfastened a series of latches. Inside, there was a single dim lamp burning; I could make out a bed, dresser, and table with a pitcher and a basin of water.
“Light stings her eyes,” Davenport said in a whisper, “so I keep it low.”
Only then did I notice the small figure of a woman crouched in the corner of the room, shivering. Davenport picked up a blanket from the floor and draped it over her. Then the light caught her doughy face as he tried to lift her up and she revolted against his touch. She scratched and shrieked, kicked and screamed. I jumped in to help restrain her. Her pupils were contracted, her hair long and wild, her pulse racing.
She finally stopped struggling after fifteen minutes, and as Davenport settled her under the bedclothes, I stumbled out of the room into the dark hall. I was having trouble getting my breath back in those stale quarters. Outside, dark clouds were drifting overhead, and the slight sunlight that broke through rescued my senses. I found myself at the bottom of a hill, facing a larger house situated beyond this one. It struck me: I had seen all of this before.
I wheeled around when the door opened.
“She sleeps again,” announced Davenport, whose feet crunched the gravel behind me. His shoulders slumped, his head was down, his expression abashed.
“You told me back at the hotel that you hadn’t found Kitten!” I was trembling with confusion and fear. I was shouting.
He did not look up at me. “You saw her, Fergins. No. I did not find Kitten. I found a . . . a body deprived of a soul, a being abandoned by its maker. That is not the woman I have loved for eighteen years.”
That was the only time he ever said it to me.
“That house up there on the hill—I have seen it in illustrations. That’s Villa Diodati, isn’t it?”
Davenport slowly nodded his head. Villa Diodati had once been the summer cottage of Lord Byron. He named it after the family who had lived there long before him, patrons of the great John Milton. The often-heretical Byron savored the connection with the Christian poet and loved to invite friends to visit. It was there, so close to the cottage where we were standing, that young Mary Shelley first began to invent the story of a medical student who experiments with animating a corpse, a trifle to entertain Byron and his friends; she became so preoccupied with the idea, she saw it in her nightmares. That meant the cottage we had just exited had to be the Maison Chappuis, rented by the Shelleys that summer more than sixty-five years before. I asked him if it was so and he swallowed hard.
“Kitten was a sight to behold after she came back to London with the Shelley story. Had you noticed?” he asked me with wide-eyed curiosity. “She was flush with the success. Watching her . . . well, she was stepping on clouds. It was every bookaneer’s dream, to do what she had, to improve the knowledge of literature and be showered in money for it.”
His words caught in his throat. He dropped his head again, and I realized his haggard appearance did not come from sickness or a lack of sleep alone. His red and puffy eyes and cheeks, his runny nose—he had been crying.
“She had been through Germany and here in Geneva before she completed her mission.” He went on with his explanation. “After she returned to London, I didn’t really spend time with her. She would refuse to reply to my notes, would usually not be at home when I called on her. Her problems sleeping multiplied until she was no longer sleeping at all. Other missions came her way, some that she said she would accept, but then it was as though she would forget all about them. I came to believe, Fergins, that she must have seen something in the Shelley papers—something that suggested more to be found, something even bigger and better than what she had sold to the anonymous collector. After she disappeared, her trail led me back to Geneva, and I knew she had to be here to track this other Shelley discovery.”
“What was it?” He raised an eyebrow to my question, and I could see he was curious to hear my own guess, so I tried my best. “Something else about Frankenstein. Another discarded draft. A different beginning or ending. Or, no, nothing of Mary’s at all. A piece of writing of Percy Shelley’s that could have been mixed in unnoticed with some Mary Shelley material—why, could it be? The final section of his ‘Triumph of Life’ that he was writing before he drowned?”
“I do not know. Any of those are possibilities. I couldn’t find out the details, and as you can tell she has not been in any condition to tell me very much. Here is what I could gather about what happened here: While Kitten was searching for whatever it is she sought, she must have sustained some kind of injury—probably from crawling around one of these damned abandoned houses littering these mountains. I have come to believe she was prescribed a mixture of opiates by a local doctor. Soon, she must have been drowning herself in it. I found her not in her right mind, wandering in and out of this cottage, which I have been told was allowed to deteriorate more than ten years ago, though was once fine enough, as you remembered, for Percy Shelley to rent for himself and Mary to be close to Byron. I have been able to keep her inside here, where she seems calmest, and have brought some doctors around, but we must get her well enough to return to London as soon as possible to receive proper care. I do not want her reputation damaged. We must keep this between us. I need your help to do that, Fergins.”