A horse-drawn carriage led the procession of mourners through the streets and into Highgate Cemetery. I had borrowed a suit that was a size too big from Enfield for the occasion. My cousin joined me in my grief—Lanyon had been a friend to us both.
I walked behind Lanyon’s mother, who was eerily silent. His father wept openly, as did his sisters who, upon seeing me, had rushed forward and buried their tearstained faces in the folds of my jacket. I didn’t know what to say to them, and so I let my tears mingle with theirs.
Tucked among the moldering tombstones and shadowy mausoleums was the Lanyon family crypt. There, people spoke kindly of Lanyon and lamented his tragic loss—a loss that I was still struggling to understand.
When they pushed the black box containing Lanyon’s mortal remains into the wall of the crypt and sealed the space with a heavy concrete block bearing his name, his mother fainted and had to be carried away.
The mourners trickled out as a light rain spattered the stone pathway, turning it from dull gray to shiny black. I stayed when everyone else had gone. Enfield offered to stay, too, but I insisted that he leave. I needed a moment alone.
I laid my hands on the tomb and pressed my face against the broad marble facade. I stared up into the gray sky as the smell of damp earth mingled with the faint stench of decay.
I shut my eyes. My chest ached and my heart was weary. None of this made any sense, and the grief was almost too much to bear. Curiouser still was the dreadful manner of Lanyon’s passing.
Lanyon’s father had told me that his son had been recently diagnosed with a condition of the heart, and had been ordered by his physician to stay in bed and not exert himself in any way. One evening in the weeks before his death, Lanyon had told his mother he had grown bored and went for a walk. He returned hours later in such a state of ill health that they fully expected him to die that same evening.
But he held fast and asked for pen, paper, and a courier.
His last act was to send for me.
In my room at Miss Laurie’s, I sat in a daze when there was a small knock at the door. Miss Laurie stood on the other side with a letter in hand.
“This arrived for you just now,” she said. She put the envelope in my hand and reached up to set her palm on the side of my face for a moment, then shuffled away.
I sat down and read the return address on the letter.
It was from Cavendish Square.
Lanyon.
My hands began to tremble so violently I had to set the letter down for a moment to gather myself. I’d racked my brain in the previous days trying to understand Lanyon’s last words to me. He said he’d written to me and asked me to follow the instructions. This must have been what he meant.
I slipped my finger under the seal and took out the contents. The first item was a single sheet of folded paper. The second was another letter sealed with a wax stamp.
Lanyon’s scrawl ran across the folded page, something he must have written in the last days of his life.
Gabriel,
I must ask you to trust me. If you can do that, please proceed. But if you cannot, throw the contents of this letter and the other into the fire unopened. It is not too late to turn back. I fear that if you do not, you will be irrevocably altered by what I will share with you.
If you have read this far, then I will assume you have considered the risk and are willing to proceed. My instructions are these: Open and read the enclosed letter ONLY upon the disappearance or death of our dear Henry Jekyll.
This is all I can say. I am not long for this world, my dear Gabriel.
I remain most truly yours,
Lanyon
I snatched the other letter up and began to break the seal, but stopped as Lanyon’s face pushed its way to the front of my mind. His pleading eyes in those last moments would live forever in my memory. In that moment I had sworn to him that I would do as he asked. I had given him my word, but his note seemed to imply that Henry was in some kind of danger. Death or disappearance? No matter how far we had grown apart, I couldn’t imagine having to bury him as I had Lanyon.
I pushed the thought out of my head, secreted Lanyon’s sealed letter under my mattress, and went to call on Enfield.