She did not know what she expected to find, but perhaps her father had left something, anything that would answer the questions she had begun to ask, after looking through the documents in the portfolio.
The laboratory, which had once been an operating theater, was lit by a domed skylight. The gray light of a rainy London day streamed in over wooden desks and seats arranged in tiers, as in an amphitheater, so students could watch anatomical demonstrations. Now, they were covered with a thick layer of dust. On the central table, once used for operations, her father had performed his chemical experiments. She still remembered what it had looked like, so many years ago, covered with equipment: a Bunsen burner, two microscopes, mortars and pestles in various sizes. Equations had been scribbled on the chalkboard behind him. The shelves on either side of the room had been filled with books. She had seldom been allowed in the laboratory, but sometimes he had called her in to observe his experiments. The table of elements with its symbols that meant so much when you understood them, the colored flame of the Bunsen burner when he passed various chemicals through it, more to amuse her than for any practical purpose, had always seemed magical to her. She had laughed and clapped at the performance. . . .
Now, there was nothing. The theater was entirely empty.
She mounted the steps of the amphitheater, up to a second half-story where her father’s office was located. The door was almost off its hinges, as though it had been forced open. A window that looked onto a back alley was covered with dust, and there were cobwebs in the corners. The office was still furnished: a desk and chair, a sofa, a mirror in one corner. Glass-fronted cabinets that had once held chemicals, now as empty as the bookshelves in the laboratory. But here, too, was a thick layer of dust. She looked in the desk drawers . . . nothing. As she was descending the steps back down to the first floor, Mrs. Poole poked her head through the doorway.
“Well, miss? Did you find anything?”
“No, nothing. Do you know what happened to my father’s papers? I remember his desk being covered with them. . . .”
“Why, miss,” said Mrs. Poole, looking around the dusty theater with professional disapproval, “everything was burned after your father’s death. I still remember that night, although it was so long ago. My father and Mr. Utterson breaking down the door to the office, and then my father telling all the servants that Dr. Jekyll was dead. An accident, he told us, but we all whispered the word suicide. And Mr. Utterson up with your mother half the night. The next day Mr. Utterson and my father carried him out themselves, in a plain wooden box. That made us certain it must have been suicide. Why else were none of the servants invited to the funeral? It was just Mr. Utterson and your mother, and he was buried without even a proper stone to mark where he lay, just that plaque in St. Marylebone. After that, everything was cleared away—all the chemicals, the papers, even the books. Your mother bore it all so well. It was later she broke down, from the strain, I suppose.”
“So the documents my mother deposited at the bank are all I have left,” said Mary. All she had left of her father and the mystery of his life . . . and death.
“I suppose so, miss. Will you be wanting anything else? Now that you’ve opened this room, I want to give it a good airing out, and then I’m going to bring my broom in here, and as many cloths as I can find. Just look at this, will you?” Mrs. Poole drew her finger along the top of a desk and held it up. It was gray with the dust of years.
“Just my mackintosh and umbrella, if you don’t mind. Yes, I’m going out again. I have an errand to run this morning.”
“To that bank, miss?”
“Not quite yet. I’ll tell you about it when I get back.”
MARY: If I had known then what I know now . . .
JUSTINE: Would you have acted any differently? I think not.
MARY: But I might have felt differently. Although I don’t suppose that makes much of a difference. You know, when I was a child, I thought my father was a magician. I thought he was the most wonderful man in the world.
JUSTINE: What happened later doesn’t have to destroy that memory of him.
CATHERINE: For goodness’ sake, Justine. You are way too forgiving.
Twenty minutes later, Mary rang the bell at 221B Baker Street.
Miraculously, just as she had reached the front door of the building, the rain had finally stopped. It had been a short walk around the perimeter of Regent’s Park. She had stopped for a moment in St. Marylebone Church to kneel in one of the pews and had tried to pray for her mother . . . and yes, for her father as well. She had stopped by the plaque on the wall that said only Henry Jekyll, Benefactor. She did not even know where he was buried, although Mr. Utterson had assured her that it was in holy ground. Wherever his spirit was now, she hoped he was at peace. But she had been distracted from her prayers by the mysterious payments, the letter she had read last night, the laboratory notebook. If only it were all clearer!
Had she come to the right place? She would find out soon enough.
MARY: You’re making me sound like the heroine of a popular novel. That’s not at all what I was thinking at the time.
BEATRICE: What were you thinking, then?
MARY: How much it would cost to buy new boots. If I was going to be walking around London, I would need a stouter pair, and wasn’t sure if I could afford it. That’s what I was distracted by, if you really want to know. The state of my footwear.
Mary, who was not thinking about the price of boots because that is so boring, shut her umbrella, awkwardly because she was carrying the portfolio Mr. Guest had given her under one arm. She stood waiting while the rings reverberated, trying to brush mud off the hem of her dress and wishing she could have worn a walking suit—but she could not afford one in black. Not that it was much use; she would get just as muddy on the way home. As though to reinforce the point, a cart rumbled by, its wheels running through a puddle and sending up an arc of muddy water that narrowly missed her.
For a moment, she wished she weren’t a lady, so she could swear at the driver.
MARY: Well that, at least, is accurate!
Why wasn’t anyone answering the bell? She rang again.
“I’m so sorry, miss.” The woman who opened the door had gray hair under an old-fashioned mobcap and had evidently been dusting. She still held the ostrich duster in one hand. “I was all the way up on the third floor. My hearing isn’t what it used to be, and the first time you rang, I thought I was just imagining it. And then you rang again . . .”
“I’m here to see Mr. Holmes,” said Mary. “I’m afraid I don’t have an appointment, but it’s important that I see him. Is he available?”