A Death on Clink Street

I slammed the door shut against the church bells that tolled for vespers, lest the sacred sound mingle with the profane air of Dr. Shriver’s laboratory. The rain had claimed me for itself on my way here. I dripped with it as I peeled off my gloves. The storm battered the windows, trying to reach me still. I wished for silence—no bells, no rain, just room for my tumultuous thoughts.

The laboratory was still. No hissing steam or gurgling liquids, no shuffling of papers or murmuring of formulae. Only a rat scuffling in a cage. It was finished. We had succeeded. The tincture was complete.

Dr. Shriver was off at Blackwood’s parlour to share the news with his colleagues. I had gone out too. I had taken my misgivings and turned them into betrayal. I was Judas to the only man who’d ever shown me an ounce of kindness. It was the only way to save his soul. And mine. This tincture we’d concocted—only abomination could come out of it. But I had to flee London now, before he found out. I had to leave the only home I’d ever known.

My hands trembled against my heart as I attempted to slow my breathing. Nerves rattled up and down my limbs. I whispered in the darkness, trying to soothe myself, “He’ll be gone all evening, Ada. First, a light. Then, your things.”

The flame rose to life on the wick and the greasy stench of whale oil cut through the ether that was ever present here. The lamplight flashed a dozen times over in the copper alembics cool between experiments, the glass vials half-full of secrets, and the jars of specimens languishing in formaldehyde, the reflections all together peering at me like a many-eyed Seraph. The eyes of mirrored flame followed my movements, scrutinizing me as I rushed past them and up the half-rotten stairs to the attic where I had lived these past four years.

I didn’t have much: another dress, a nightgown, a summer bonnet, my writing tools, and a large valise into which everything was stuffed.

As I gathered up my papers, it occurred to me: a note. It was the least I could offer him. Four years of lodging and sustenance, of employment, of friendship, even—how could I not at least assure him I was safe? He would go mad if I just vanished.

But what would I say? How could I possibly explain? Perhaps just a simple apology and a short goodbye. No, that was not enough. But how could anything be enough to repay him for all he’d done for me?

My pencil trembled over the paper, and my mind grappled with words, too many to put down. I shifted on my feet, knowing I was wasting time with all this pondering.

Downstairs, the door to the laboratory groaned open.

I froze. Fear slithered up my insides and coiled around my throat. The footsteps that crossed the creaking floor, I knew them. Dr. Shriver was here, back from Blackwood’s parlour. I looked to the small window, the only one in my meager bedroom. But even if I could fit through, my bag would not, and besides it was a thirty-foot drop to the cobblestone below.

Perhaps if I waited, he would leave again.

“Ada?” he called out, his voice echoing up the stairwell. “Where are you?” A pause. “I’m going to put your gloves on the coat rack to dry.”

My heart sank within me. The gloves. I had left them downstairs. He would soon come searching for me.

I shoved the valise into a dark corner as he mounted the stairs, taking them two by two as he always did.

He appeared on the landing before my door, a smile tight on his lips. He was a handsome gentleman when he was happy, which was rare. Usually he was too deep in the labyrinth of his own mind, wandering over and around his formulae, to manage his moods. Therefore I’d become accustomed and unafraid of the furrowed brow, the stormy eye, the clenched jaw. It meant progress, not peril.

Looking at him now, I expected to see that pleasing physiognomy unperturbed, for his work was complete, finished that day. But in the light of the single lamp, I could not be sure if he was glad to see me. The smile was there, yes, and his eyes were clear and vivid. But happy?

“Come to the sitting room, my dear,” he said, his voice unusually light.

I followed him down the stairs like a little lamb. It was time to meet my fate.

He stoked the fire, revealing the chamber of green that was our sitting room: the worn green damask of our couches, the faded green wallpaper that wrapped around us on all sides, the heavy green curtains that failed to keep out the draft. I always imagined myself to be in a forest in this room. Now the colour reminded me of how I felt. Ill.

“We’ve done it.” He pierced me with a wild look as he bent over the fire. “They didn’t believe me. But we will prove them wrong, won’t we, Ada?”

I suppressed the quiver in my voice. “You told your colleagues?”

“Yes. Dr. Jekyll was the only one who would entertain the notion that a tincture could produce the transformation we have observed in the rats.”

I gulped. “Dr. Jekyll was there?”

“He came in as I was leaving, high and mighty as usual. He’s been working on a similar potion. But we arrived at it first, didn’t we?”

I stared into the fire dancing over the coals. It did nothing to warm the dread that chilled my blood.

I had seen Dr. Jekyll that very evening. And if he had revealed our meeting, or that I had given him Dr. Shriver’s formula …

“He thinks he’s doing God’s work.” Dr. Shriver scoffed. “God’s work.” He pulled a small vial from his breast pocket and held it up to the flickering light. “As if there is such a thing.”

The vial twinkled red in the firelight, dark as blood.

“One drop of this, and your rotten soul will be revealed, etched onto your features for the world to see. The ugliness of man cannot hide from us, can it, Ada? No more lies.” His eyes bored into me and I held his gaze, lest he suspect my guilt. But it burned in my cheeks like the hot coals. He gave me a wry smile and brushed a thumb over the rosy glow. “What do you say to some sherry?”

He rose and crossed to the sideboard. “I know you don’t normally drink, but—” He shot a glance over his shoulder as he poured. “Indulge me this once, won’t you? I would like to toast to our success.”

I searched for an excuse, but before I could produce one he presented me with a tumbler. He’d made the drinks with his back turned and with the vial in his hand. I felt the stab of shame that I would ever think so low of him. But think of my welfare, I must. I looked up into the doctor’s face, searching for any sign of his own guilt. He only gazed down on me, as unreadable as granite. His hands were steady, his demeanor impassive, his eyes icy wells. He looked as he always did. Except for one thing. His breath came fast. Faster than I would expect for a healthy man relaxing in his sitting room.

I reluctantly accepted the glass and studied the dark, mahogany liquid, then put my nose over the drink as I’d seen Dr. Shriver do so many times. It smelled sweet, like caramel or raisins, but I didn’t drink often enough to know if this was how uncorrupted sherry was supposed to smell.

He lifted his tumbler. “To our discovery, and to us.”

I lifted my glass in return and, under his watchful eye, slowly raised it to my lips. The sweet smell intensified under my nose, and I could almost taste it on my tongue when a pounding erupted downstairs.

Dr. Shriver’s hand shot out and stilled my cup. Then he took it away from me and set it on the sideboard, far away from me, along with his own.

“Don’t move,” he commanded. “I’ll go see who is trying to break down the door.”

As soon as I heard the stairs creak, I leapt up and hurried to the sideboard. I swapped the tumblers, careful not to bang the heavy glass down on the wood.

The stairs creaked again and I cursed the swish, swish, swish of my skirts as I rushed back to my seat. He found me breathless and wide-eyed.

“Nothing to worry about, my dear,” he said, his tone hard as flint. He slapped an envelope down on the mantel. “Just a letter from our esteemed Dr. Jekyll. We can read it later. Now.” He took up the glasses and placed the one he thought was mine in my hand, looking hard into my face.

I gave him a reassuring smile and raised my glass high.

He smiled stiffly and lifted his glass as well. “To our discovery—”

“And to us,” I finished quietly. We put the sherry to our lips, mirroring each other, movement by movement, and drank. As I took a sip I watched his face morph from inscrutable to triumphant.

“So, you little viper,” he spat. “That innocent face of yours hides a wretch, doesn’t it?”

I gave no answer to the accusation. I was watching for a change, to see if my suspicions were correct. And, in the silence thick with condemnation, it began: the almost imperceptible widening of his shoulders, the lengthening of his arms, the shifting of the shadows on his face.

“Selling my secrets to the highest bidder, that’s how you repay me for my generosity?”

He was taller now, and swelling still. Second by second his face became more twisted, more ghastly, uncanny in its horror. Gazing upon it repulsed me, made me think I might get sick on the carpet.

I took in a shallow breath. “I only told Dr. Jekyll that he might save you from destruction—from damnation. What you’re doing—what we’ve done—it flies in the face of all that’s holy.”

“You ingrate!” he raged. His voice was deeper now, as if he’d been possessed by a fiend of hell. He smacked a table, flipping it over. I recoiled as it crashed at my feet. “How dare you defy me!” He stopped, hearing himself. Then he looked down at his hands, as huge as a bear’s and gnarled at every joint. When his eyes met mine again, I saw the flash of utter terror. “What have you done?”

I stammered and shrank.

“What have you done?!” he bellowed, sending his glass flying at my head. It soared over my chair and smashed against the wall, shattering into a thousand glittering shards.

He roared in anguish, for his tongue had grown long and thin and forked and his teeth had fallen to the floor, pushed out by sharp fangs that jutted from his mouth. His fingernails too had been replaced by claws and his clothes stretched and split across his monstrous frame. My friend and master was gone. And I had put the damned tincture in his hand.

He picked up the armchair and hurled it at me. I dove to the ground, but a leg knocked my forehead, splitting my senses open with pain and my skin open with blood. Resolve hardened within me. If I cowered any longer, I would perish.

I scrambled for the shovel on the hearth, plunged it into the white-hot coals, and flung them.

The doctor shrieked as the coals showered over him, turning his skin a sizzling, withering black wherever they landed. The carpet smoldered beneath him, filling the room with smoke.

“I trusted you,” he howled, his words dulled by his inhuman tongue. Glowing yellow ribbons crept in all directions under his feet, growing brighter and hotter as they consumed the carpet, sputtering and bursting and threatening to ignite.

Angry tears ran down my cheeks as the flames arose. “I trusted you!” I screamed back. “You’re the one with a rotten soul!”

He stared at me, stunned by my defiance. Then he took a staggering step forward. “Get out,” he growled. Then louder—“Get out! Get out! Get out!”—until he was wrenching out each word like an evisceration.

I heeded his orders one last time, took the stairs and saved myself, left him baying in the sitting room like a rabid dog. Sobs seized me as my handiwork raged upstairs—for that is what he seemed to me. I had aided in the creation of that tincture. I had given him that glass. I had turned him into that beast.

I stumbled outside—no hat, no gloves, no coat. Remorse stripped my soul bare and hollowed out my insides until there was nothing else left. The rain met me on the other side of the laboratory door, claimed me for its own again, baptized me anew. As I hurried to the river, I prayed. I prayed for the first time in many months. I prayed the prayers my father had taught me.

It wasn’t long before the shouts began, Fire! Fire! The hysteria rippled in both directions along Clink Street. People poured out to see the conflagration. From the mouth of Southwark Bridge, I watched the roof cave in and heard the windows shatter. The fire brigade could do nothing but keep everyone at a safe distance. There are chemicals in that laboratory. Highly volatile. When the ground floor caught, the explosion rocked the street, blowing fire out every orifice of the building and sending inky black smoke up to heaven. The rain lashed the flames, but did not quell the inferno.

There was an assistant too, people murmured around me. A young girl. God rest her soul. Such a tragedy.

By morning, all was ash and rubble. Smoke rose from the heap like a soul newly released.

The sky drew on the rosy cloak of dawn. I dragged my aching feet east, towards the light, towards the church bells that tolled out their steady call to matins. Come, all who are weary. I answered them, staggering up the steps of the cathedral, bone-weary and soul-sick, and dropped like a dead woman into the arms of my new life.