None of them moved a muscle.
“There may be some key word to release them from trance; or perhaps he has trained them to respond only to his voice.”
That seemed horribly likely to me, as surely no man mad enough to establish such a household would risk relinquishing control of it to anyone else.
Yet Alcinda had not responded to the summons of “Mrs. Smurl.” So I tried again:
“Alcinda. Please stand up.”
I held my breath. She stood up.
Jesperson and I looked at each other, and I knew we were thinking the same thing, that there was nothing to stop us walking out with Alcinda. Once away from Smurl, no longer drugged, she might return to normal; if not, there must be doctors, or specialists in hypnosis …
But we could not make the others follow us, and, knowing that Smurl was likely to return very soon, how could we leave them? It was an impossible dilemma.
“Take her to Gower Street,” Jesperson said decisively.
“You’re not staying here alone.”
“Would that I could,” he said dryly, with a tilt of his head to our silent audience.
“I won’t let you.”
He stared at me, half-affronted, half-amused. “And how do you mean to stop me, Miss Lane? Would you drag me out by the ear?”
“Please.” I stared at him, wishing I could make him see it as I did. “It’s too dangerous—”
“You think I am no match for a middle-aged undertaker? Do me some credit. A danger to women he may be, but—”
Seeing that I had offended his pride, I tried to explain. “He’s nothing in himself, and of course you’re not afraid of a few weak women, but imagine if a word from him should transform them into Maenads. Someone without fear can do the most terrible things, and if he has made himself their god—!”
I knew, by the puzzled impatience of his expression, that he did not share my mental image of these silent, soberly dressed ladies turned to howling, blood-maddened creatures who would tear a man apart with their bare hands and feast on his bloody flesh.
“Dear Miss Lane,” he said gently. “Trust me. We cannot abandon—”
“If you mean to stay, I shall go from here straight to the police.”
The creaking of a chair, the silken rustle of a skirt, made me turn my head in time to see that one of the statues had come to life. It was a woman in a brown dress, bending over her neighbor in grey, speaking words too low for me to distinguish.
“Mrs. Smurl?” The woman straightened. No longer a colorless, lifeless statue, she had changed into an unfriendly-looking individual with snapping dark eyes, a strong jaw, and a belligerently thrust chin. Two brown corkscrew curls bobbed over her ears—a girlish touch that did nothing to make her look a day under eight-and-thirty.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What is the meaning of this intrusion? How dare you enter uninvited?” Despite a ring of righteous anger, she kept her voice low and well modulated as her eyes darted quickly between Mr. Jesperson and myself.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said insincerely. “However, after knocking for some time with no effect, I felt we had no choice—”
The ringlets quivered. “You broke in?”
“Not at all.” He flourished the key, and her eyes widened with shock.
“But—how—Where—”
“Where do you think? When Mr. Smurl heard we were concerned about Miss Travers, naturally—”
“Who is Miss Travers?”
Jesperson indicated the young lady in question. Alcinda gave no sign that she had heard, still staring blankly in my general direction.
Mrs. Smurl gave a small hiss of displeasure, and said coldly, “The young lady is no concern of yours.”
“But she is. Her family wish her home.”
“This is her home. We are her family.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I might be more inclined to believe that assertion if it came from the lady herself.”
“She cannot speak to you.”
“That I can see. But who is stopping her?”
“Mr. Smurl does not wish it.”
“Mr. Smurl, I feel certain, would not wish to be arrested and charged with false imprisonment and other crimes.”
“You dare to threaten …?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. Her lips had thinned almost to invisibility.
“I do,” said Jesperson, sounding jolly. “Bigamy is another charge he may face, although I suspect most of his marriages have been recognized nowhere beyond these four walls. Despite the saying that an Englishman’s home is his castle, there are still some things he may not do even there with impunity. Why should you try to defend him? You cannot be happy to share your husband with other women; women he has stolen from their families and forced into submission—”
Her pale face grew flushed. “How dare you! Mr. Smurl is a good man, a perfect gentleman. He would never use force against a woman—he has never made any of us do anything against our will.”
“You call this their will?” He gestured at the silent, motionless women.
“You know nothing of us. It’s for their own good. It makes the day go by more pleasantly.”
“Drugged and dreaming? Yes, I daresay the denizens of an opium den reason so. But why should life as the wife of your ‘perfect gentleman’ require such an escape?”
As he went on speaking, my nervousness increased. How long had we been here? What if Smurl was made suspicious when he heard someone had been asking about his wife and was even now on his way home?
Looking at the agitated little woman—I am small, but she was smaller still—I said, “You may justify that man and your life as you like, but we’ve come for Miss Travers and mean to take her home.”
“There is no Miss—”
“Alcinda,” I said sharply, and managed to draw her closer. Getting her to move on her own would be a slow business; I again addressed the angry woman:
“Can you wake her?”
“Why should I?”
“If she wants to stay, let her tell us so, and we will leave.”
She stared at me. “You would go away without her?”
“Of course. We would not take her against her will.” I wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth.
Mr. Jesperson said, “I assure you, if the young lady says she prefers to stay, we will let her remain. Otherwise we shall escort her to wherever she wishes.”
“And let her spread her lies about our husband? No. She would make too much trouble for us.” Turning away, she began to mutter, rousing the mesmerized figures one by one. By the last, my ears sufficiently habituated to her voice, I managed to understand that she was repeating a simple Latin phrase attached to each woman’s Christian name, and heard her command, “Carpe diem, Violet.”
So that was Smurl’s “Open Sesame” that unlocked their imprisonment. Their slow responses, confused reactions, and sleepy demeanor made me think we were in no immediate danger, although I did not rule out the possibility that a few more words from the first woman might turn them into an army of Furies. As jailers may have a “trusty” amongst their prisoners, so it seemed that Smurl had given this first wife power over the others. It could be only with her collusion that he had managed to gather his collection of “dead” women; had she spoken out, he might now be in prison and most of these women still safely in the bosom of their real families. This was her fault as surely as his, I thought, a furious contempt against her growing in my breast. Maybe I wasn’t being fair to her, maybe he had spent years breaking down her spirit, forcing her to become his abject slave, but she did not look enslaved to me, standing there with a smug little smirk on her face, aware that she’d increased her odds of winning against us …
“Carpe Diem, Alcinda,” said Mr. Jesperson.