Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman's Daughter 2)

I laughed again until I saw the flower market stalls pressing in on us, and I was reminded of my twisted rosebushes and the attic where I sheltered the city’s most terrifying murderer.

You’re keeping him contained, I reminded myself. It’s working.

That evening, my feelings were still torn about Edward. The professor, Elizabeth, and I dined on carré d’agneau, and as I hid some of the meatiest pieces in my napkin to take to Sharkey later, my thoughts went from Edward to my father’s letters. If Father indeed had maintained a correspondence with someone in London the entire time he was on the island, then Montgomery must have known about it, since he had been the one to travel to Brisbane and London for supplies, and post letters if there’d been any.

But Montgomery had said nothing. More secrets, just as Edward said. It left the hurt of Montgomery’s betrayal even more raw, as though perhaps I’d never known him at all.

“Well, we aren’t much of a social bunch, are we?” the professor said. “Two weeks till Christmas, and the three of us sit home like lumps of coal.”

I set down my soup spoon, then cleared my throat of my hesitation in bringing up a subject I knew they wouldn’t like.

“I was thinking of Father.”

The professor’s good-natured smile wilted.

“The holidays,” Elizabeth said tenderly. “They always make one think of family.” She dipped her spoon into her soup as though that ended the conversation, but I couldn’t let it go. I needed to discover who Father’s colleague was—and prove that it wasn’t the professor.

“What was he like before?” I asked.

Elizabeth exchanged a look with the professor, who leaned forward with his hands folded. “Yes, a girl should know what sort of man her own father was. When I met him, he was quiet. Focused. A lot like you, though considerably less pretty.”

I smiled.

Elizabeth reached over and squeezed my hand. “Your mother was a lovely woman.”

The professor had his head turned, almost as though listening for voices on the streets outside, or perhaps from his memory. “A brilliant man,” he muttered, and then, “a shame, the way it all happened.”

It seemed he spoke of Father’s banishment, but there was a far-off tone to his voice that tickled the back of my mind and made me wonder if his words weren’t in reference to some other, darker memory instead.

“Did it happen quickly?” I asked, looking between them. “His madness, I mean.”

The professor drew in a deep breath. “Oh, these things are difficult to know. There were times, early on, when he and I would share a cigar at the Hotel du Lac and talk of the possibilities of science. Grand conversations about experiments that would lead to saved lives and better medicine. Looking back, there were things he said that I should have taken note of. We had an argument once about using rabbits for medical trials—he didn’t seem to think there was any morality involved at all. And he started keeping to himself more. Lying. He lied so easily. Only later did we discover he’d been slipping out nights, without even your mother being aware. Other nights he came home smelling of the butcher’s. The dogs used to follow him around the city.”

My hands beneath the table shook as I thought of Sharkey following me because of the meat in my pocket. “When did you know for certain that he’d gone mad?”

The professor braced his arms on the table, as though the motion could hold back all those painful years. “Are you quite positive you want to hear all this?” he asked. I nodded stiffly, as Elizabeth cleared her throat and stood to pour us more wine, and the professor leaned back in his chair, though his body never quite relaxed. “Our friendship had begun to drift apart by that point. I’d heard from colleagues—men I’d known in the King’s Club—that his experimentation had gotten more severe, that he’d been reprimanded by the dean. Then my Helena had died, with little Thomas. Just six years old, he was. Your father didn’t come to the funeral, and after all the lying and disappearing, I drank too much and got irate and went to confront him.” He took a long draught of wine. “I found him in the laboratory with some poor animal. A dog, I believe it was, though so mangled you could hardly tell. He told me he was pioneering a new science, had been tinkering at it for years, and that it was going to change the world. The entire time the dog whined in terrible pain, and he didn’t even seem to notice.”

“And that was when you turned him in?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from shaking.

The professor rubbed his temple. “It was clear he’d gone mad. I’d no other choice. He fought me, and the dog managed to get away.”

He sank deeper into his chair, as though speaking the memories weighed him down. I felt the shape of them, too, like ghosts in the room, winding among the forest of candlesticks.

“And you never heard from him after that?” I asked.

He must have caught the strange note in my voice, because he looked up and said, with perfect frankness, “Heard from him? No, my dear. As I understand, no one heard from him ever again, until you stumbled upon that young assistant of his.”

I met his eyes boldly, trying to read the truth there. He seemed so sincere, such a hero to the world for ridding it of a mad butcher and then taking in the orphan daughter. I had a hard time believing anything else could be the case. But I’d made the mistake of trusting my father, once. If the professor turned out to be lying, too, I didn’t think I could take another betrayal.

Elizabeth blew out the candles one by one, then turned to me in the faint light from the tall windows.

“Come upstairs, Juliet. Enough of all these old memories. Let me draw you a bath, and after a good soak, you’ll feel new again. I promise.”

AS SCALDING WATER TUMBLED into the claw-foot bath, Elizabeth poured in a handful of foaming salts that filled the room with the smell of roses. I balled myself up in the tub, na**d beneath the foam but not self-conscious. Elizabeth had a motherly way about her, though she was childless. She took a comb to my hair and hummed a slow little tune while the water crept higher. The melody filled the room like steam, and at last I recognized it.

“The Holy and the Ivy,” an ancient carol with pagan roots.

I closed my eyes and hugged my legs harder, laying my cheek on my knee. I liked how the sound of the water mixed with Elizabeth’s carol singing to drown out my thoughts. My mother had never prepared a bath for me like this. We always had servants to do it when I was young, and then after the scandal we were lucky to clean ourselves in a neighbor’s tepid bathwater.