the progress he’d made with Justine. He led her back to the hallway and smiled as she made her unsteady way upstairs.
His eye fell on the salver and he pocketed the calling cards, doubly pleased that his list of patients was growing. Some gossipy lady must have put the word out. At this rate he would have the most successful practice in all of London. Not that any of that mattered to him; it was the money the practice brought in that was important. By the end of the month he should have enough to buy a crucial piece of equipment for the rooftop laboratory. Then he could bury himself in his real work. His life’s work.
Chapter Three
A Curious Visitor
‘Sir? There’s a gentleman here to see you.’
Frankenstein looked up from his desk, frowning. He didn’t like being disturbed when he was working and Justine would never have dreamt of it if the man hadn’t been so persuasive. She opened her mouth to explain but the visitor brushed past her and strode breezily into the room. To her surprise, her master’s face broke into a broad smile.
‘Pretorius,’ he exclaimed. ‘How delightful! I never thought to see you again, old friend!’
The visitor had introduced himself to Justine at the door as Doctor Pretorius, so she assumed he worked at the hospital. He was a handsome man with a soft, mellifluous voice and a pleasant demeanour and he wore a coat of extravagant purple velvet. Indeed, he had quite charmed his way into the house, despite Justine’s insistence that her master did not like to be disturbed.
‘My dear girl,’ he’d said, ‘I can assure you he’ll want to see me.’
And so she’d smiled sheepishly and let him in, hoping he was right and that Frankenstein wouldn’t tell her off for interrupting him. It was the only time he was ever cross with her. He spent hours up in his rooftop laboratory working with strange contraptions that she assumed he must intend for use in his practice and he got so consumed by his work that sometimes he even forgot to eat. She’d made the mistake of disturbing him one time when he was up there and he’d smashed a glass bottle on the floor and shouted at her to get out. Afterwards, he had brought her a little cake to make amends but she’d never dared to enter the laboratory again. Tonight, however, he was in his downstairs study. If Pretorius had wanted her to bother her master in the laboratory she’d have certainly stood her ground.
Pretorius set his case down on the floor and the two men shook hands warmly. There was clearly nothing more for her to do here, so she bobbed an awkward curtsey which neither man noticed and slipped quietly out of the room, closing the door behind her.
She listened at the keyhole for a few moments but they were drinking brandy and reminiscing about old times, nothing of interest to her. Apparently they had known one another at medical school and she gathered from the conversation that Pretorius was an expert on something called ‘nymphomania’. He said that his practice had been successful enough to allow him to retire early and devote himself entirely to research. Then there was a lot of technical talk that Justine couldn’t follow. She soon grew bored with eavesdropping and wandered off to the kitchen, where it was warm.
Her legs still ached from her exertions the other day, when her master had shown her the Alleviator. And shaved her. She blushed to recall it, although the memory excited her too. She wasn’t sure whether it was wrong to feel that way, but surely something that made one feel so good couldn’t be bad. After all, the procedure was meant to be a sort of therapy, wasn’t it? And ladies of good standing flocked here to the house and paid handsomely to receive it. In any case, he’d reassured her that there was no impropriety and she trusted him completely.
Justine was well aware how lucky she was. She knew of maids who toiled day and night for far less than she earned. Her duties were very light by comparison with stories she heard of other houses.
Indeed, Ralph had told her just the other night of one house he knew of where the maids were all got from the workhouse. He said that the master of that house was a high court judge who was on a crusade to reform ‘fallen women’ by his own unorthodox methods, which included tying them down and birching them when they displeased him. But that wasn’t even the worst of it, according to Ralph.
The judge had a special room in his house where the miscreant had to wait until he came to see her, to reprimand her for whatever she’d done wrong, and then she had to ask him very nicely to punish her. Ralph seemed to know the names of all these unfortunate maids and all the details of the elaborate disciplinary rituals they were subjected to, as though he’d somehow managed to insinuate himself into the house and watch. He had seemed especially fascinated by the plight of a girl called Sally, who had stolen some sherry from the butler’s pantry one evening and been made an example of before the entire household.
‘The judge made her wear a special uniform after that,’ he’d said, ‘with her skirts pinned up and her drawers removed entirely. So the other girls could see the stripes he’d painted on her arse and know that they’d suffer the same fate if they got out of line.’
Justine had blanched at the thought of being whipped for such trifling offences as spilling tea or dropping a fork while laying the table, to say nothing of the added humiliation for a crime like stealing. Which of course Justine would never commit. But Ralph had seemed peculiarly intrigued by the whole business. He had asked Justine if Dr Frankenstein was ever so strict with her and what happened to her when she displeased him. He didn’t seem to want to believe her when she assured him that her master was nothing like that terrible judge, that he was kind and gentle and very forgiving of her faults. He had never raised a hand to her and she held him in very high esteem. He was a perfect gentleman.
Something in Ralph’s expression had disquieted her. He almost seemed disappointed, as though he’d wanted to hear tales of harsh discipline at her master’s hands. Later he’d tried to get her to lift her skirts and show him her quim and her eyes had widened with fear, which only seemed to confirm what he suspected about Frankenstein’s cruelty.
‘Come on, Sally, let me see the marks,’ he pleaded, his voice low and hoarse.
‘Sally?’
‘Sorry, I meant Justine of course. It’s only that I was just telling you about Sally and … Oh, let me see. Just a peek.’
Justine didn’t dare let him see what her master had done to her, however pleasant it had been. The embarrassment would have killed her. So instead she put him off with chaste indignation and he became annoyed and called her a tease.
But she didn’t want to be a bad girl like the kind who ended up in the workhouse to be spirited away by cruel judges. She would be happy to show him everything on their wedding night. Justine was a good girl and she was determined to remain so. Ralph had stewed for a while and then cooled off. And if he was a little less enthusiastic when he said he would call on her again in a few days, well, that was fair enough. Once married, she would never deny him. She knew he would understand.
Justine wasn’t worldly wise but she did know that men had needs of a kind that women couldn’t understand. Her friend Daisy had told her all about it. Once, she had even shown Justine some drawings in a book, when her father had left her in charge of the bookshop for the day. Now there was a girl who was overworked! And she wasn’t even a maid – just a shop girl. Justine felt sorry for her, shut up in that dusty, gloomy shop all day, never allowed out for a walk in the park. Justine’s life was one of leisure by comparison.
Her thoughts turned from Daisy back to Ralph. Perhaps by the time she saw him
