The Monster's Wife(19)

15


May curtsied hastily and went back to stuffing minced onion into the pheasant’s hole. Wishing she had some fresh task to fall to, Oona clasped her hands together. They were numb and red-knuckled from being plunged into the potato water. Frankenstein closed the door behind him, beaming at the domestic scene he’d come upon like someone pleasantly tipsy or just very happy. His eyes, though, were unknowable slits behind pale lashes.

“Ah, ladies. Hard at work or hardly working?” Eyes on Oona, he chuckled at his little joke.

“Can I do something for you, Sir?” May’s question was so informal it sounded insulting. “I’ve got giblets on my hands, but—”

The doctor held up a hand, chuckling. “No May, do carry on. You have the manner of a person fruitfully occupied. Your friend, though, appears quite idle and must to be set to work. Come Olga, follow me.”

May smirked. “I can manage here, Olga.” She shook her head very slightly in the direction of the stairs as if to say, quick, go upstairs.

Upstairs in the laboratory. Upstairs with the corpse, where she would have to wait until the doctor was distracted. Oona forced a polite smile onto her lips, curtseyed a bit ridiculously and walked to where the doctor stood, jovially patient. He turned, running a hand through his chaotic hair, then halfway out, turned back, smiling charmingly.

“And May, perhaps you could prepare me a little something, a sort of hors d’oeuvre.” His voice was a parody of aristocratic speech, playing the Laird. “A scone with small raisins in it, perhaps? I have a terrible craving for sweetness.” He winked at Oona.

May sighed. “If I’ve flour enough.” Her tone of weary familiarity struck Oona as odd. She’d said they were strangers. Shouldn’t a maid be polite? Oona cast a sly glance at Frankenstein, trying to gauge his response.

He took a step towards the hallway, before answering. “Very well,” he said, his smile fading so that his face wore a troubled look. Not just troubled. Lost.

She followed him up the staircase in noon light that had dulled to a sleepy grey. A foot or so behind him, she felt his nervousness like the prickly air before a lightning storm. There was something fascinating in his excitable walk, the agitated tap of his fingers on the bannister.

Each time she looked away from him - at the walls with their red shapes (open mouths, cruel teeth) or the birdcages lining the gallery - her eyes were drawn back to the doctor like coins to a lodestone. She didn’t know what she was watching for. Perhaps a layer would peel back and reveal what lay beneath or he would transform into his true self like a charmed beast in a fairy tale. Then she would see the murderer hidden under his smiles.

In the music room, the stench was unbearable. She pressed her hand to her mouth. Something was rotting in the laboratory and each day was making it worse. Without wanting to, she imagined the girl’s body distending and blackening as the frogs on the beach had after they began to attract flies.

Gulping back bile, she crossed the camel-patterned rug to where he held the curtain open. Beneath the sweep of his arm, a nebula of candles cast shadow devils onto books and papers piled on a music stand, spilling over on to a lady’s escritoire. His body blocked her way. She looked at him, confused.

He looked back, brow creased, grey eyes intent. “This is rather more than a social visit, I hazard. You wish to know what I am doing in the fine house, here on your island.”

She tried to smile, but the wire in her spine was too close to snapping. It was sure to show. She’d never been good at hiding things. “You said you were in need of help and for my own part, I desire work, Sir.”

He waved her words away, seemingly either bored or disappointed. The thread of connection between them broke. “Of course you will be paid. Although there is more to life than filthy lucre, for wisdom...” He scratched his arm contemplatively. “Wisdom is dangerous. The Faustian pact. The Promethean flame.” He leaned close, his voice a whisper. “Is deadly.” His fingers clawed harder and left four red lines.

He snatched up a book from the music stand, rifled the pages and turned it towards her. There were words written in a language she did not know. Underneath them was an engraving. A naked man was strapped to a table and connected by wires to a pole with levers on it. A man in a top hat touched his hand to one lever. A coin leapt from the strapped man’s hand. Perhaps this was the sort of experiment the doctor performed up here - strapping people to tables, putting them in machines. Perhaps it was why he needed her and May. Her skin buzzed with the remembered terror of a recurrent dream, one where her lungs filled with water and life left her body and she jolted up sweat-drenched.

Instead of turning away from the picture that so repulsed her, she felt compelled to peer closer. The man on the table had a large head, misshapen. His hair stood on end and his face contorted in a freakish grimace. “The look on his face, Sir. It’s terrible, like someone hag-ridden.”

Frankenstein frowned thoughtfully. “I suppose death is a kind of nightmare, from which most do not wake. This man is fortunate.”

Oona gasped. “How can you say that? He looks like a sinner being tortured in Hell.”

He shrugged. “He cannot feel it. He’s been hung by the neck. His nerves, his brain, are dead, the tissue decaying. Besides which, in life he was the worst sort of murderer.”

“He is alive here still!” She jabbed her finger at the book, no longer able to disguise her agitation.