The Automaton's Wife (Society for Paranormals Book 2) Page 13

  At the mention of progeny, Mr. Elkhart smiled, a soft and warm expression gracing his handsome features. And those eyes: warm pots of dark tea I could stare into…

  “Ah yes,” he said, his voice as soft as his eyes. “If we are that fortunate. But you would be surprised with what ease a person can maintain secrecy from a spouse if necessary, even with children involved. It has happened. Why, just consider the case of your own parents as evidence to this point.”

  My shoulders stiffened to such an extent that not even Liam could have moved them. “Don’t speak ill of my parents,” I said in an icy tone as I stood up and glared at him.

  I’ve been informed that in my angrier moments, the light hazel tone of my eyes brightens into a golden glow and holds such fierceness that can intimidate werewolves into submission.

  But not the Popobawa.

  Mr. Elkhart shrugged, unconcerned about my wrath or my glowing eyes. “I speak no ill, only a fact. Your mother maintained the appearance of a perfectly normal, empty-headed socialite to such a degree that even her enemies were fooled for some time. And her husband – your father – never learned the truth of the matter.”

  I had ceased breathing during this revelation and only realised this when the room wavered.

  “My dear Mrs. Knight, surely you knew?” Mr. Elkhart said as he rose up and lowered me back into the chair.

  I barely registered the change in position as my entire focus was on this new vision of the woman I thought I had known, a vision that cast light on a few previously inexplicable mysteries of my childhood and indeed of my very nature.

  “Oh dear,” Mr. Elkhart tutted as he offered me a glass of something. I know not what, for I downed it too rapidly for my senses to take note on the nature of the substance.

  “I’m so deeply sorry. What a shock this must be,” he continued with great sincerity. “I assumed you knew, else I should never have mentioned it so casually. Then again, you were so young when your parents died. Perhaps your mother thought it best not to burden you with this secret.”

  I grimaced, whether as a delayed reaction to the drink or to Mr. Elkhart’s words I wasn’t sure. I said in a squeaky voice, “Surely you don’t expect me to believe…”

  I didn’t finish the useless denial, for of course I did believe it and he could see that. It was the missing piece that fit the puzzle of my life too neatly to be anything but the truth. We sat in silence that was surrounded by the afternoon chatter of the savannah.

  “What nature of paranormal being was she?” I finally dared to ask, my voice too timid to raise itself above a whisper.

  I dreaded the response. What if she’d been a werewolf? Wouldn’t that be poetic, given my dislike for all things canine.

  And just before Mr. Elkhart responded, I thought, And what if she had been? Would that change anything? Could I love her less?

  Still, I was more than a tad bit relieved when Mr. Elkhart gazed with all the sympathy of a priest comforting the dying, patted my hand and said, “She was a witch, Mrs. Knight, and one of the greatest of her generation.”

  Having a witch for a mother wasn’t half so bad, I reflected, although in some places and times, it could lead to pitchforks and burnings, or worse. I wondered what my father would’ve said if he’d learned the true nature of his wife. Given his great discomfort at my own abilities exhibited in childhood innocence, sentiments my mother was impelled by her deception to mimic, I could well imagine. How had my mother managed such isolation?

  And then the more important question finally surfaced out of the shock and confusion.

  “Why?” I demanded, glaring at Mr. Elkhart as if all my life’s miseries were his fault. “Why did she hide the truth from me?”

  He sighed – a soft sound weighed down with a lifetime of trials and tribulations – and said, “For much the same reason my father left England in self-imposed exile. To escape the clutches of the Society and, in your mother’s case, to protect you.”

  “From what?” I pushed myself to my feet, my initial frailty consumed in my rage.

  “I suppose she was worried what the Professor would do if he learned of your abilities,” Mr. Elkhart said, every syllable softened with sympathy.

  “Prof. Runal?” I spluttered. “He’s been nothing but kind and…”

  I wasn’t sure how else to describe him, apart from loud and smelly like a wet dog, neither of which would sit well in the defence I was presenting on his behalf. “Besides, my parents took me to see him. To help me. And he prevented them from sending me away, or locking me up in an institution.”

  “He prevented your father from doing so,” he corrected me. “Your mother wouldn’t have consented to such an action.”

  As he spoke, I remembered the first visit to the Director of the Society. My mother hadn’t been there, only my father. But surely he took me with her knowledge, with her approval?

  I persisted in arguing. “But to him I was taken. She must have known my father took me to him, to Prof. Runal. Why would she have let him?”

  I stood before him, crossed my arms and silently dared him to try and overthrow my childhood hero and mentor.

  “She wasn’t there with you, was she?” Mr. Elkhart asked gently. “Are you sure she knew?”

  My resistance crumbled and I slumped into the chair again. “No. She wasn’t there.”

  I thought back to that day, when I’d arrived home and my mother had hugged me with an unusual intensity. I’d assumed at the time she was relieved to learn there was nothing wrong with me. But what if she had instead been hiding her horror that her daughter had been delivered to the Society she’d been hiding me from?

  But why had she felt she needed to hide me?

  Mr. Elkhart was closely observing me and must have deduced from my expression the train of thoughts that led to one conclusion: he was telling me the truth, at least as far as my parents were concerned. I still couldn’t believe that Prof. Runal had held anything but noble intentions.

  “But why?” I finally asked, and to my own ears I sounded childish. Since when had the universe felt obliged to be fair to me? “If what you’re saying has any truth to it, why? Why would she not want Prof. Runal to know about me?”

  He gazed serenely past me and out the large window of the living area, his hands loosely clasped in his lap, a trickle of smoke curving around his face. “It’s because of the Fourth Mandate.”

  “There is a fourth mandate,” Prof. Runal said as he re-entered his office. “A fourth one indeed, but we don’t need to bother about that one, now do we?”

  “The Professor mentioned something about that when I first met him,” I said, remembering his words. “What does it mean?”

  A trilling voice interrupted the conversation. “Mr. Elkhart, dearest,” and Lilly appeared at the entrance to the room, her face glowing triumphantly. “The wedding dress fits.”

  Chapter 23

  I had no further opportunity to converse with the Popobawa after that interruption, and I was abandoned to my dark musings about the true nature of my mother and her relationship with Prof. Runal. The more I reflected on the details of my mother’s response when I arrived home after my first visit with Prof. Runal, the more I was reluctantly drawn to the conclusion that she truly hadn’t known beforehand, nor had she approved, of my father’s decision to take me.

  While her reaction to the discovery was blurred by the passage of time and a child’s incomprehension, I now discerned that her welcoming hug had in fact been full of tension and unspoken dismay. For if she truly had been hiding me from the Society, what else could she have felt at discovering that her husband had unwittingly delivered me so neatly to the Director?

  But what had she feared?

  How I needed someone to discuss this with, and at this juncture, how I intensely deplored the absence of Gideon. Never mind that he was deceased and a nuisance at times. Even in such a condition, he was able to brighten my mood and re-cast any situation in a humorous light. But now the imbecile h
ad allowed himself to be ghost-napped by that temptress.

  Even dead, men are so easily seduced.

  I contemplated riding over to the Timmons residence, but two issues presented themselves: I would have to ride Nelly and I hadn’t yet recovered my sense of dignity to risk another ignominious ride; and I hadn’t yet heard from Cilla, despite requesting her godfather to pass on my regards.

  I did consider wallowing in the moat of self-pity that all the above reflections were creating, but I’m not so inclined to wallow in anything. So I did what any sensible young woman in such a predicament would do: I went to visit a mad scientist.

  Such a tidy solution overcame the difficulties of a ride, for Dr. Cricket was no more than a brisk walk away. It was a justifiable use of my time, for perhaps I could discover some clue as to Mrs. Cricket’s intent, beyond absconding with my husband.

  I didn’t dwell too deeply on the details of my decision: it is my experience that often the best of plans are those with minimum premeditation and maximum spontaneity (unless of course the plan is completely ill-conceived, in which case a disaster is sure to result).

  Either way, I put on my walking boots and avoided informing the Steward ladies of my departure. If alerted to my presence, they would (I was sure) recruit me into the scheming and plotting involved in the painfully prolonged wedding preparations.

  As I stomped along the network of goat paths that connected the few houses scattered along the top of the gently sloped hillside, I briefly contemplated how I should manoeuvre Dr. Cricket into a useful conversation. After all, I had denied him an affirmative answer to his logical, albeit not very persuasive, marriage proposal. What would he imagine when I showed up, unannounced, uninvited and unescorted?

  “Goodness,” I said aloud, halting my walk conveniently under the shade of a thorn tree. “What if he comes to a similar conclusion as Mr. Timmons, and believes I’ve changed my mind regarding his proposal?”

  I shuddered and was briefly amazed at my slip in decorum. If this had been London…

  “But it’s not,” I informed a yellow weaver bird that had paused in its incessant nest weaving to stare down at me. “For better or for worse, there’s considerably less concern for such social trivialities here, so there’s hardly the need to overly fuss about protocol and Mrs. Beeton’s rules in a place that has none, now is there?”

  The weaver bird cocked its little yellow head, the large black eyes unblinking, and resumed its work, chirping and trilling to a neighbouring weaver, quite likely gossiping about the strange two-legged creatures that talk to themselves while strolling about aimlessly.

  “Aren’t you a snob,” I told it and pushed on. After all, I had an investigation to conduct and that took precedence over social niceties and bird chatter.

  By the time I reached Dr. Cricket’s abode, my shiny boots and the hem of my ankle-length skirt were coated in red dust from the clay earth. I didn’t bother trying to brush the dirt off, for in my brief time here, I’d learned two important characteristics regarding the red soil of Africa: it was able to host a dizzying abundance and diversity of plants, trees, shrubs, flowers and insects; and it was impossible to remove without soap, water and a stiff washing brush.

  Pausing only to ensure that my chewed up right ear was covered by hair and sunhat, I rapped firmly on the door with the fisted end of my walking stick. A moment passed and I repeated the act.

  After another pause, I concluded that either the man was unconscious or not home. In the first case, I should most certainly enter to ensure his good health; in the latter, I could most certainly avail myself of the opportunity to investigate without having to make excuses. I took a moment to peer through windows and confirmed that he wasn’t sprawled out anywhere or tied up or in any wise present.

  “How convenient,” I said. I turned a knob on the iron oxide walking stick. A slim drawer popped out with a set of small, metal tools that normally are found in the possession of thieves but are very useful for one of my profession as well.

  I gazed about but the landscape was devoid of human life. A black and white Colobus monkey chattered at me as it scampered up the side of a sizeable Bombax tree that was covered in large pink flowers and more weaver birds.

  I set to work and within a few heartbeats, the front door swung open into the stuffy laboratory of Dr. Cricket.

  My first visit here had been with Cilla and Bobby. It was at that juncture I’d had the dubious pleasure to be introduced to the Life Imitating Automaton Machine (otherwise known as Liam). The large front room was as airless now as then: Dr. Cricket refused to open any windows, for fear a spec of dust should mar any of his numerous contraptions and experiments that cluttered the space.

  I have to admire a man who prioritises his work over breathing, not enough to marry him, mind you, but enough to… well, admire him.

  Meandering between the tables, I perused their contents without any preconception of what I was searching for. Only when I noticed at the back of the room a head on a pedestal did I feel a flicker of anticipation and delight.

  The head in question was devoid of any skin covering, but it did have a striking set of eyes, perfect teeth and a wig of hair. Dr. Cricket had mentioned a replacement to his lost masterpiece, and he clearly had lost no time in creating it.

  “Good day, Liam the Second,” I greeted the automaton’s head. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  Ignoring the metal head that was staring at me, I scrutinized the jumble around the pedestal. A journal lay conveniently open amidst bits and bobs of gears, screws and metal rods. The entry curiously was more than a year old and described in detail the heart of Liam the First.

  “Of course,” I said to the bodiless head. “He’s attempting to reproduce the heart of the engine, but what he doesn’t realise is that it won’t work if it’s not possessed by a psychotic ghost.”

  What else had he jotted down in this journal? Was it only descriptions of his work or were there personal narratives that might reveal more about the true intentions of Mrs. Cricket?

  I glanced about but the only thing watching me had two glass eyes and no vocal chords. I skimmed the pages before and after the entry, but Mrs. Cricket’s death was notable by its absence from the journal. He had instead recorded:

  The weather;

  His digestive reaction to every meal (Dr. Cricket apparently suffered from some delicacy in that regards);

  A poem about the pink and white blossoms of the Bombax tree outside his house (horrible poetry and it didn’t even rhyme);

  And a recipe for cream puffs (I shuddered, for having tasted the product of the recipe, I can confidently inform you his recipe was worse than his poetry).

  The day after his wife’s death (I knew the date from a previous conversation with him), he’d scrawled in large, excited lettering “Success!!!!!!!”. There was an over-abundance of exclamation marks and a hasty description of the miraculous heart that was now functioning.

  There was not one hint of his wife’s illness or her untimely demise.

  I’m well acquainted with the grief induced by the passing of a spouse, yet nowhere was there any indication of such a momentous event.

  “Peculiar,” I murmured, although it could be the man had a different mechanism for expressing loss. Perhaps the falling Bombax petals in the poem were symbolic of that.

  I snorted. “If that poem was written in her memory,” I told the skinless head, “then no wonder she’s unhappy.”

  Absentmindedly I flipped the book closed before remembering that it had been open before I arrived. I turned back the cover and observed the frayed edge of a newspaper clipping that must have been loosened by the pages’ movement. I glanced about me automatically, even as the logical part of my brain informed me that I was still very much alone.

  Turning to the page, I puzzled over the article for several minutes. I couldn’t for the life of me comprehend why Dr. Cricket would’ve thought to keep a copy of such unwholesome and unrelated news.

&
nbsp; The title of the clipping was dramatic, as news article titles tend to be: Carnation Murderer Tracked to Sussex, then Vanishes.

  It was regarding a serial killer nicknamed the Carnation Murderer, due to his habit of leaving behind one red carnation in the victim’s hand. While I assumed the gorier details had been withheld, as per police procedure, there were sufficient details alluded to for me to come to the disquieting conclusion that the murders were in some way ceremonial.

  Images had been painted on the victims’ skin, although the report failed to describe the nature of the images. It struck me as more than odd, more like fantastical and impossible, that all the murders had occurred within the victims’ homes, sometimes in the near vicinity of other family members.

  “Devil worship?” I asked the head. “Human sacrifice to a deity?”

  I shuddered, for I knew of one or two who’d be more than pleased to accept fresh human flesh in exchange for a favour. But that sort of business was not common practice in modern times in the British Isles.

  And why would Dr. Cricket care for all this? He didn’t strike me as the sort to indulge in demonology on the side. To begin with, he didn’t have that sort of imagination. Unless it involved iron and steam, it wouldn’t register on his barometer of items of importance.

  I turned the journal to the original page and let the cover thump to the table. A puff of red clay dust shifted through a sunbeam.

  In the proceeding stillness, I fond myself gazing into the glass eyes of the metal head before me. How would Dr. Cricket respond when he finally acknowledged his inability to duplicate his first success? I doubt he would think up any reason for the failure that would come close to the truth. And how mesmerising the automaton’s eyes were, I mused, sparkling with reflected life.

  A motion pinged under the glassy surface.

  I stiffened and paused my breathing. Surely… But no, it wasn’t the motion of life’s energy shimmering in there. The glass eyes, while hardly perfect mirrors, were reflecting something else from the room, something moving behind me, something bigger than Dr. Cricket.