The Jekyll Revelation Page 32

  He decided to take a chance and trot south, and around the next bend he was rewarded with the sight of Seth and Alfie, huffing and puffing and climbing into their old red truck.

  “Wait up!” he shouted at them, waving his arms. He really didn’t feel like riding Jake’s Harley right now; the road was getting congested and his arms felt too weird to hang on to the raised handlebars. “I’m coming with you!”

  Alfie, at the passenger side, stared at him like he wasn’t even sure who it was, said something to Seth across the hood, and they both jumped in and locked their doors. By the time Laszlo had staggered to the turnoff, they were backing out so fast they were burning rubber.

  “Hold up!” Laszlo shouted, banging one hand on the rear wheel cover as they pulled away. The last button popped off his shirt, and now his whole chest was exposed—darker, and weirdly hairier, than usual. Just what had all those chemicals in that explosion done to him?

  The bike was still right where he’d left it, though, and now he had no choice but to ride it back to the Compound. Unless that guy Jake was stoned into oblivion, by now he had come to and figured out his bike had been stolen, and when Laszlo showed up with it, he’d be in the mood for murder. But instead of worrying about it at all, which he might have done at one time, Laszlo thought it was simply funny. He looked forward to a confrontation, something he’d never have done in the past, except on those rare occasions when he knew he was bigger, stronger, or better armed than his opponent. Now he didn’t care anymore. He felt powerful, impervious, and itching for a fight.

  He pulled on the silver helmet—it felt like it didn’t sit quite right on his skull anymore—slithered onto the leather saddle, booted the kickstand up with his bare foot, and revved the throttle. True, his arms felt oddly cocked and it wasn’t easy to grab the handlebars, but he also felt stronger than usual, and it was as if the massive horsepower of the Harley was channeling itself right up into his body. He leaned back on the seat, his grimy soles stuck on the footpegs, the hems of his jeans dragging on the dirt, and shot into the passing stream of cars and vans and campers. He was king of the road, lord of all he surveyed, and all these other people were just peasants passing through his world. And he was okay with that, really . . . just so long as they didn’t cross him.

  10 November, 1888

  I had downed several glasses of the finest whiskey the Aldgate Arms had on hand before my nerves calmed enough from the attack in the coach to allow my faculties to return. I was looking at the peculiar font used to inscribe the hotel name above the back mirror of the bar (writers are perhaps the only creatures besides typesetters to take note of such things) when it came to me. I had seen it on my own hall table, imprinted on the envelopes marked Second and then Third Notice, and addressed to one Mr Osbourne.

  A few of the men who had attempted to capture and chase Josef had filtered back into the bar, despondent at allowing the notorious Jack the Ripper to slip from their grasp. ‘It’s like ’e just melted into the damn fog,’ one of them remarked.

  ‘But at least we’ve all got a good look at ’im now,’ another commented. ‘He’ll know not to show his face around Whitechapel any more.’

  ‘Or talk that German. He won’t dare do that, neither.’

  ‘It’s just like the papers said all along. A foreigner. No Englishman would ever do such things.’

  And perhaps they were right, I thought—not about the relative barbarity of various nationalities (I have seen enough of the world to know that vice and virtue are evenly distributed)—but in concluding that Yannick’s son was indeed the infamous killer. Did he not fit the description in some of its most salient aspects? Had he not appeared in London, with murder on his mind, during the dread epoch of Jack’s emergence? Was a butcher’s knife not his choice of weapon? While I might have been the ultimate target—and for that I began to feel a crushing burden of guilt—who was to say that he did not keep his blade sharp in the meantime by whetting it on the necks of the slaughtered women?

  ‘Can I get you another, sir?’ the proprietor said from behind the bar. ‘This one’s on the house. You helped us almost nab him.’

  ‘Thank you, but no. You can do me one other service, however.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘Do you, by any chance, have a hotel guest named Lloyd Osbourne?’

  The proprietor put the bottle down on the bar. ‘We have a Samuel Osbourne by that last name. But why would you be asking that?’

  My guess had been correct.

  The man leaned in closer, and lowering his voice, said, ‘Are you a friend of the gentleman?’

  ‘I have reason to believe that he is behind on his bill.’

  At this, he perked up considerably, and extended his hand. ‘Donohue’s the name. And you?’

  ‘Stevenson.’ I left it at that. ‘He keeps a room here, then?’

  ‘That he does.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  ‘Well, now,’ he said, rubbing his stubbly jowls, ‘I don’t know that that would be quite right.’

  I took two ten-pound notes from my wallet and slid them across the bar. ‘Does that settle his account?’

  ‘If you will just follow me,’ he said, drying his hands on a bar cloth and slapping it over his shoulder.

  We went up a back stairway on a worn carpet runner, and down a hall to a room at the farthest end and around a sharp corner. ‘Professor Osbourne, he likes his privacy. Comes and goes at all hours. Most of the time, I don’t see no more of him than the back of his coat.’

  ‘Professor?’

  ‘He’s a gentleman, with a house on Cavendish Square, but a scholar by trade. Teaches at Oxford, I believe he said, but does good works at the Whitechapel Union infirmary on Charles Street, not more than a mile from here.’ He stopped before unlocking the door and said, ‘If you’re a friend of his, why don’t you know that?’

  ‘I simply thought he kept his charitable work a secret.’

  Donohue snorted—the ten-pound notes were still having their effect—and turned the lock. He lit the gaslight just inside the room, and once he’d gone, I leaned back against the door, surveying Lloyd’s private sanctuary.

  Like the rest of the Aldgate Arms, the room showed signs of having once been more respectable. There was an intricate William Morris wallpaper—the trellis pattern in pink and green—but patches of it were missing. The washstand in the corner was sturdily made, though nicked and scratched, and the basin atop it needed a thorough scrubbing. The canopied bed, like the seat of the wing chair by the casement window, sagged. Of Lloyd himself, there were few indications—just a spare shirt and trousers hanging in the wardrobe, a pair of velvet slippers that I remembered seeing him wear at home, a few books by Wilkie Collins and Thomas De Quincey, both of whom I knew he admired. I tried the bottom drawer of the wardrobe, but found it securely locked.

  The only thing that looked new was a mirror, much like the cheval glass in my study. It stood beside a writing desk on which I saw a stack of papers and blank postal notes, a clutch of pens, and bottles of ink.

  Sitting in the chair, which creaked even beneath my insubstantial weight, I picked up the top pages of the stack and quickly saw that it was a novel in progress—a farcical story involving some complicated scheme to win a fortune in a tontine. So he was writing something, after all. Its theme was no surprise—Lloyd’s thoughts never strayed far from fortune and fame.

  I had read no more than a few pages before the events of the day, and the night, took their toll. My eyes closed, and I drifted into sleep. My Brownies slumbered, too, leaving me to dream of nothing more than men in deerstalker hats, skulking through fog-bound streets and alleyways, in search of easy prey. I awoke with a start when a key turned in the lock, and in the flickering light of the gas lamp, I saw a figure in a top hat and black cloak, the collar turned up all around the face, slipping into the room. He did not see me at first, but stood, as if puzzled, before the burning light.

  ‘I fell asleep with it on,’ I
said, and he whipped around so hastily his cape swirled like a matador’s.

  In his hand, he held a leather satchel, just like one a teacher might carry to hold his books and papers.

  ‘Were you giving a late lecture, Professor?’

  His head remained buried in the folds of the cape, his hat was squashed down low on his brow—all I could see were his eyes, dark and angry, as he took in the sight of me.

  But it was enough. It was then that I suddenly realized the truth.

  ‘My God, Lloyd. My God.’

  I heard a grunt of acknowledgement.

  ‘You have broken into my cabinet.’

  ‘Hardly a challenge.’

  ‘You have drunk the elixir.’

  ‘What’s good for the goose,’ he said, his voice hoarse but recognizable.

  ‘Let me look at you.’

  ‘So you can gloat?’

  ‘So I can pity.’

  ‘There’s no cause for that,’ he retorted, dropping the satchel onto the bed. ‘I like it.’ Opening the wardrobe doors, he hung his hat on a hook, then his cloak, straightened his vest, and turned to me, arms akimbo, legs spread. ‘Ecce homo.’

  The sight was almost more than I could bear. His features were contorted into a hateful mask, his body was misshapen and stunted. Even the curls of hair on his head, matted down from the top hat, seemed coiled like snakes. And all I could think was that I—in the desperate search for my own cure—had brought this about. This was all my doing.

  ‘You must have settled my bill with Donohue, or he wouldn’t have let you in. I don’t even allow the maid. He knows that only Constance is to be admitted in my absence.’

  ‘That’s a lie.’

  He sat on the edge of the bed, taken aback by my rejoinder. ‘Is it?’

  ‘I have spoken to Constance.’

  ‘What won’t a woman say?’

  ‘I have seen you assault Desmond.’

  ‘Have you now.’ He studied the tips of his wet boots. ‘Seems you’ve been acting the sleuth. What else do you know?’

  ‘I know that before dawn breaks, you will undergo another agonizing metamorphosis. Don’t forget, I have lived through it myself. I was its reluctant pioneer.’

  ‘Ah, but there’s the difference between us. You regret the change; I regret the return.’

  ‘You can’t mean that.’

  ‘Wait and see,’ he sneered.

  I had every intention of doing so. ‘What do you do here?’ I asked, taking in the four tattered walls of the room.

  ‘Live,’ he retorted. ‘My own life, my own way. Without my mother snooping into my affairs, asking if I’ve had my breakfast yet or how I slept or where I went the night before. Without you forever asking how my work is progressing.’ He jutted his sharp chin at the pages on the table. ‘That’s how it’s going, by the way; you can see for yourself.’

  ‘I read a bit. It’s good.’

  ‘I don’t care if it is, or isn’t. I don’t care what you think, Louis. I’m my own man now—Samuel Lloyd Osbourne. I’m not some worthless fop like Desmond, from some godforsaken shire in the middle of nowhere. I’m an American’, he said proudly, ‘from California. It’s time I acknowledged as much.’

  ‘Is that where you want to go, then?’

  ‘In due time.’

  Though I would not have missed the burden of Lloyd, I knew full well that his mother would feel compelled to follow him anywhere he chose to go, and I wondered at what hard choice this might present for me. Without Fanny, I would feel as bereft as Robinson Crusoe.

  His voice, as he had been speaking, had grown more strained, his words slurred, and I knew that the transformation was beginning to take place. The cords in his neck had begun to bulge, and it was almost as if one could see the blood pumping through the arterial passageways. His head drooped; his eyes became unfocussed.

  ‘Take some water,’ I said, filling a cracked teacup from the pitcher beside the basin and bringing it to him.

  He took the cup and slurped at it, as an animal might do. Water ran down his chin and onto his waistcoat, spotted with dirt and gravy and red wine.

  ‘Lie down,’ I said, lifting his legs onto the bed and plumping a dilapidated pillow under his head. He did not resist. A palsy appeared to be taking over his limbs, a slight shiver that gradually became more and more pronounced and uncontrollable. I remembered an occasion when I had experienced a seizure so violent that I had bitten my tongue raw. I looked for something now to wedge between Lloyd’s teeth, but all I saw was a bit of embroidered lace on the bed stand. I quickly rolled it into the shape of a horse’s bit, and tucked it firmly between his jaws. The protruding end bore the distinct initials CW.

  His trophy from Constance’s laundry basket at the Belvédère Hotel.

  The shaking became so powerful that the entire bed rocked on its spindly legs. I dipped my handkerchief in the water basin and mopped his brow with it. Sweat glistened on his skin, still dusky from the effects of the elixir, and his eyes rolled up so far into his head that only the whites—bearing a yellowish cast of their own—showed. His jaws clamped down on the lacy cylinder so hard that, without it, I feared his teeth might have broken. How often had he taken the drug? How had I been so blind to the theft of it? More than once, I had noted that the amount seemed unduly diminished, but I had always put it down to my own immoderation. Under its influence, I assumed that I had lost any sense of my own actions and intent.

  I heard the church bells toll five and then six o’clock before the change had been completed. Lloyd, restored to himself, lay on the bed, sleeping the sleep of the dead. His skin was white again, his features recognizable. I went back to the armchair and fell into it, exhausted beyond words. Dawn was breaking, its feeble light bathing the dismal room and its even more dismal tableau in a pale blue wash, the same blue light of an Edinburgh morn. But oh, what a vast chasm yawned between those days and this. What, in God’s name, I wondered, had I done?

  TOPANGA CANYON—CALIFORNIA

  Present Day

  Even from a distance, Rafe had noticed the helicopters heading toward Topanga Canyon. At first he thought it might just be part of a police chase—every few weeks one of them was caught on tape and endlessly replayed on the evening news—but then he saw that at least one of them was traveling from the west with a full bucket of ocean water, up to twenty-six hundred gallons suspended from a cable, and he knew it spelled trouble.

  His first thought was of Lucy, alone at the trailer, and he told Miranda to fish his cell phone out of the pocket of his sport coat and check it for messages.

  It was an older model, and she had to fumble with it for a second.

  “Sorry,” she said, extending it to him, “it might be time for an upgrade. Now it’s on again.”

  “It was off?” he said, suddenly remembering the admonition to do so at the memorial service. Ever since, he’d been totally absorbed in what Bentley had told him about the Stevenson family connection to this very part of the world, and as a result he’d forgotten to turn it back on.

  “Check the messages for me,” he said, keeping both hands on the wheel of the Land Rover and both eyes on the road. Already, twenty minutes from the Cornucopia, the two lanes were getting snarled, and a flood of animals—always the most reliable harbingers of trouble—were scampering or scooting south across the road. Raccoons, skunks, rabbits, opossums, deer—he’d already seen more sad roadkill in an afternoon than he had all year.

  “You have five texts, all from Lucy,” she said.

  “What do they say?” he asked, trying to quell the panic rising in his chest. He should never have left her alone there. What had he been thinking? “Did she get sicker?”

  Miranda was uncharacteristically silent as she read them, and it was only after Rafe pressed her again that she said, “It sounds like she had a visit from Laszlo.”

  “She says that?”

  “She says it was the man who used to live here with me. She can’t remember his name.”
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  “What happened?”

  “Well, I think it’s all okay in the end,” she said, still studying the messages.

  “For God’s sake, Miranda, what happened?”

  “He went into your trailer. She couldn’t stop him. He took a book from the bed. The old book, she says.”

  “The journal.”

  “And he said you could have it back if you gave him some money.”

  “Where is he now? Is he gone? Is she okay?”

  “Yes,” but there was a tiny note of reservation in her voice.

  “Miranda,” he repeated, “is Lucy okay?”

  “She says he hit her.”

  And for a second Rafe saw red—a flash as bright as a traffic light.

  “But she seems like she’s okay now,” Miranda said, laying a hand on his arm to calm him. “I mean, she’s texting, isn’t she? And he’s definitely gone.”

  He grabbed the phone from her hand and hit the speed dial. But as expected, the call did not go through. The canyon was always bad, but with all the choppers overhead, the police and fire engines starting to emerge, plus the fact that everyone in the canyon was trying to make or take a call of their own, it was impossible. All Rafe could do was step on the gas—to make matters worse, the low-fuel light had just gone on—and try to weave around the slowest-moving vehicles in his way. Normally, they’d have slowed down or pulled over to let him pass—it was canyon etiquette—but today they weren’t doing the courteous thing and edging into the turnoffs—probably because they knew no one would ever let them back onto the road again.

  Rafe’s fingers were clutching the wheel so hard they’d turned white.

  “Rafe,” Miranda said, “it’s going to be okay. Really. It won’t do any good if we get into an accident trying to get there. It’s only another ten minutes. She’ll be fine.”

  But she hadn’t been fine—she hadn’t been fine that day he left her—for only ten minutes—at that community pool. He had the awful sensation that he had done the same thing, all over again. He’d failed her, even if the repercussions this time were not nearly as bad. He’d left her alone, and now look what had happened. Given the chaos in the canyon, look at what could still happen.