My Sherlock Holmes

by Michael Kurland

  Growing up, Neige had spent little time with her mother, an actress, who once sang at La Scala but developed nodes on her vocal cords. Her mother took up acting and toured constantly. The Urals, Baden-Baden, Leipzig, but never Piccadilly or Broadway, where her schoolmates’ parents attended the theater. At least that’s what she’d told Neige. Neige, raised in a convent boarding school, had spent holidays with Léonie, her mother’s housekeeper, or school friends.

  Yet her mother’s last telegram promised to answer questions about her family. The ones she’d so often asked. Finally. But now she’d never know.

  Sad and disappointed, Neige pinned a stray hair into her chignon and fanned the stifling humidity. Below the window, the awninged trolley bus trundled over the cobbled street fronting the clinic.

  “Sister,” she said, “perhaps we should discuss funeral arrangements.”

  “Your mother left this for you.” The sister handed her a tapestry covered bag. “She gave this to me last week in case … .”

  Inside lay a leather tooled journal, a sagging album of photographs and frayed theater programs. As Neige opened the journal, folded paper writ ten in dark blue ink with her mother’s concise clipped script fell out. She picked it up, smoothed the thick sheets; and began to read. Her eyes widened in surprise:

  My dearest daughter, if you are reading this, I am unable to tell you this in person. So must do so in a journal. Not my first choice, but coward that I’ve been, perhaps it’s for the better. My darling, I know you disapprove of my lifestyle and I’m sure you’ll disapprove even more as you read but then life isn’t what we deserve. And thank God for that. I will get to your father but I must explain in my own way, convoluted as it appears.

  Before you were born dearest, I worked as an agent for the ministry in Paris. For quite a few years later as well. And now, after all this time, the government wants to present me with a medal for my part in L’Affaire Dreyfus. A man truly the victim of infamy. So, dear Neige, please accept the small honor from the Conseil d’État on my behalf. Who knows … they may give you a position.

  But why, you ask, a medal for an itinerant actress?

  Suffice it to say, you weren’t even a gleam in your father’s eye when all this began. I’d fallen on my luck after the nodes developed on my vocal cords, ending my opera career. But, as my wont, I landed on my buttonhook boots in the frigid, wet Parisian winter of ’96. I was a widow in dire financial straits and certain ministry officials knew I’d once outwitted Sherlock Holmes. I was the woman, as Holmes referred to me, after our encounter in the scandal in Bohemia.

  Dr. Watson’s later accounts never mentioned my involvement in the Dreyfus Affair with Holmes. But Watson didn’t like me—such a jealous and crafty man in a simian way! And he left out much of my story. If the truth be known, he made himself look good most times. I never cared to find out much of Watson’s odd relationship with Holmes. But only a fool would trust their luck twice to outwit Holmes.

  Thoughts of the man, as I often thought of Holmes, had crossed my mind … the only man, besides my dear, departed husband, Norton, whose mental acuity matched mine.

  But I digress.

  The Dreyfus case was a cause célèbre for years. Captain Alfred Dreyfus, as you probably know, was the only Jewish officer on the French General Staff in 1894, and he was accused of offering French military secrets to the Germans. He was court-martialed behind closed doors, convicted by a unanimous verdict, and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.

  But I’ve jumped ahead in my saga. In that grueling winter in Paris, after auditioning at the Théâtre Anglais, I’d landed the role of Mrs. Daventry in Oscar Wilde’s play … then the talk of London. But it barely helped ends meet.

  Holmes was in the audience. Thank God I didn’t realize it until after the curtain call.

  After the performance, a distinguished gray-haired man in a black opera cape appeared at my dressing room door bearing a huge bouquet of rare Canaan lilies.

  “Madame Norton, please accept a modest bouquet and my compliments, past and present,” he said. “Your performance ranks with the lilies in the field; pure and unsullied.” The unmistakable deep voice alerted me. However, the man stood very tall, taller than I remembered Holmes. And more rounder figured. His face, wider—that of a different man.

  “Why come in, Monsieur … . ,” I said, puzzled.

  “Duc de Langans,” he interrupted. Swiftly he moved inside the door, belying his bulk, with a finger raised to his lips. His black eyes glittered and my heart hammered.

  Sherlock Holmes!

  “Pray enlighten me … Duc.” I grinned. “My role merits not such lilies, so rare in winter. I find little comparison with myself and hothouse flowers. A hardy desert scrub, tenacious and wild, battling the wind and blossoming with the rain seems more apt.”

  “So would a wise man agree.” Holmes smiled back. His eyes lingered. “Yet when could those of my sex be accused of wisdom?”

  I glowed; I could not help myself. Such a man with wit and charm stimulated me, all outward appearance forgotten. Such a long time had passed since I’d felt this intensity of attraction. What possessed me I know not, yet when the stagehand poked his head in announcing “Encore curtain call, Madame Norton, quickly please!” I pulled Holmes or Duc de Langans close, in full backstage view, and kissed him. Hard and quickly. And more to my surprise he responded. “You’re not an easy woman to forget, Irene,” he said, breathing in my ear. “And you’re making it more difficult.” An odd look passed in his eye, whether of regret, longing, or a mingling of both I couldn’t decipher.

  The backstage boy tugged my sleeve, pulling me out to the wall of applause. I felt a thrill such as I had not felt since my opera triumphs at La Scala. I cared not why Holmes wore such disguise or whether his machinations involved me, which they clearly would portend to, but only for the blaze of passion and intrigue which had entered my work-sore and dull life.

  Visions of a late brasserie supper with champagne and oysters danced in my mind. But when I returned from the several curtain calls, Holmes had disappeared. Curious and more disappointed than I cared to admit, I picked up the bouquet from the dressing table, littered with pots of powder.

  Outside the backstage entrance, no hansom cab lay in sight. Only the yellow glow from the gaslight and wet, slick cobblestones greeted me. Depressed, I pulled the cloak around me for the trudge to my room in hilly Montmartre. Especially long and arduous in the chill drizzle. Why had Holmes appeared in disguise? Using me in a ruse, perhaps, to exit the rear of the theater. Rumors had abounded of his narcotics use but I knew he abstained when on a case. I clutched the flowers, heavy and ostentatious, ready to throw them in the trash heap … . I didn’t relish struggling with them on my upward trek through the steep streets to Montmartre.

  And then I felt the thin glass tube, capsule-like, among the lily stems. Under the rue du Louvre gaslight, I bent to relace the top of my boots. I shook out the white paper rolled inside. On it was written in small, black spidery writing;

  Wait for me in place Goudeau, s’il te plaît.

  How unlike Holmes to say please.

  I knew this square, where the tree-filled place fronted the old washing house now an atelier by artists. And it lay a block from my apartment. Stuffing the paper in my boot, I stood up and hurried towards Montmartre.

  Place Goudeau’s dark green fountain, topped with spiked domes held by four maidens, trickled in the night. Veins of water iced the cobbles, caught in the flickering gaslight. Anxious, I found a dark doorway, and huddled in my cloak against the cold. The circular place lay deserted under the one skeletal tree, barren of leaves.

  From an open skylight in a sloping rooftop drifted muffled sounds of laughter and dancing yellow light. A tall figure stole along the building. The he stood before me, silhouetted against the fretwork of black branches canopying the starless sky.

  “Why the secrecy and disguise, Holmes?” I asked, catching my breath and
trying to keep my excitement in check.

  “Bear with my pretense, Irene, for I have only a moment.” His eyes bore into me. He took in my wet bedraggled appearance so different from the costumed performer in makeup accepting accolades just shortly before.

  “I had not the time to tell you before,” he said. “Marie-Charles-Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy.”

  “You say this name as if it means something to me, Holmes,” I said, perplexed in my tiredness. My breath became staccato bursts of frost.

  “Perhaps you know him as Comte Esterhazy, the paramour of Bijou the contortionist?”

  “Bijou? We perform in the same revue, Holmes,” I said, taken off guard, “but apart from that …”

  “Comte Esterhazy has gambling debts,” he interrupted. “Serious ones.” Gambling debts … is that what this was all about? My excitement on seeing Holmes crumbled.

  “Keep an eye on him, Irene; find out his work habits at the Military ministry. Get invited to the gambling den on boulevard de Clichy. The den above the printmaking shop. Irene, do this. You outsmarted me once but help me now.”

  “But, Holmes, why …”

  “Only you can be my eyes and ears there. No questions. Please. Do this for me. I won’t ask another favor.”

  He palmed a wad of sous in my coat pocket. For a brief moment he found my frigid hand, clutched it with his own warm one and kissed it.

  “I’ll find you again,” he said. And with a swirl of his cape he was gone.

  His aura of intrigue and immediacy were hard to dispel. And truth to tell, Holmes’s magnetism clutched me, perturbed as I felt. It always had.

  This involved more than gambling, I was sure as I paused at the cafe below my building and purchased a few lumps of coal. The night and the long walk had chilled me to the bone. In my small garret, I stuck the Canaan lilies in a chipped decanter on the table, lit a small fire, and banked the coals. From my window the metal railing of the stairs mounting my hilly street crusted with ice. My Montmartre garret, with the slate-gray Paris rooftop view, nestled against the bricked fire flute and kept toasty. A bonus since charcoal prices soared in the frigid 1896 winter. And even in my fatigue, I felt the garret emanate a welcoming warmth. After putting my apprehensions aside until the next day, I slept.

  I awoke to dead coals and tinny music coming from the street.

  The barrel organ grinder, with his grinning half-wit son turning the crank, stood below on the cobbles. Many nights they slept in the nearby viaduct. I tossed them a few sous and shivered washing my face in icy water from a pitcher.

  The only employment I knew was the stage. Drinking my weak morning coffee, I fingered my parents’ obituary. They’d perished in a Trenton bliz zard some years before. My only tie to America was gone. Back on the boards again, my old washhouse Ma would have said, your grandmother, had she lived. But it was a long way from the New Jersey shore to the Right bank of Paris. Sometimes, it felt too far. Other days, not far enough.

  But that was a lifetime ago. No one’s left in America for you, Neige. France, my adopted country, is your country.

  I lodged in Montmartre, the bohemian center of painters, socialists, and writers. Not only did art and anarchy appeal to me. The cobbled and packed earth streets made it cheap. Dirt cheap. At that time, Montmartre was still a village ridging Paris.

  But that morning I discovered an envelope under my door which I’d overlooked. Inside was written, “Finally a job for you … expect me in the morning. Meslay.”

  Startled, I rubbed a cloth over the table, put my few belongings to rights and pinched my cheeks for color. Why was this happening now … did it somehow connect to Holmes? These thoughts crossed my mind but I found no answers.

  What Holmes didn’t know, and how would he, was my connection to the French Ministry. Tenuous at best.

  My first husband Norton’s tragic death under the wheels of runaway carriage in Trieste had reversed my fortune. Norton’s brother-in-law, Meslay, an French Army officer, had recruited him for occasional missions. Only after Norton’s death did I learn, rest his soul, he’d assumed the part of unofficial liaison in Paris for an emissary to King George. But, widows without means were not included on the King’s payroll.

  I still had my looks; the waters in Baden-Baden were to thank for that. But I was approaching what the French politely refer to as a woman d’un certain âge. A bleak outlook of genteel penury in coastal St-Mâlo teaching drama to vacationing English children or amateur theatricals loomed.

  Faced with such mundane prospects and reasoning it would be my last chance at theater before such a quiet retirement would alas, be enforced upon me, I’d renewed my connections in the demimonde.

  This twilight world of courtesans, artists, dance halls, and café-cabarets offered sporadic employment. Yet it gave me time to audition for the “proper” theater. If only the role of Mrs. Daventry could have supported me I would have given the rest up.

  But it was my brother in-law, Meslay, the young military attaché who’d approached me some months before. We’d met once in the Tuilleries gardens and he’d mentioned he might be able to help me. But no word since then.

  A loud knock sounded on the warped wooden door.

  I opened it to see Meslay, my brother-in-law. His tall bearing in my cramped quarters; a blue cape masking his regimental uniform but not his glistening black boots seemed out of place. “Petit, eh, just a little work, but steady,” he said, joining me in Montmartre that February day.

  “I appreciate your help, Meslay. Our connection hasn’t been close, since Norton’s death.” Meslay, in fact, owed me little, so I was grateful for any consideration.

  “My patron needs an American expatriate’s services in Paris,” he said, smoothing his tapered mustache.

  Meslay, who usually sparred with conversational counterpoints and endless discussion in the Gallic tradition, seemed unusually direct.

  “Not to mention such an accomplished and beautiful one as you, Irene.”

  After his brief brush of charm, I hoped he’d continue his direct approach and get down to business.

  “Only you can do this.”

  Surprised, I looked up from the stiff black taffeta bodice I was attempting to tame with a high handled metal iron. The smoky looking glass showed my striped morning dress with bustle, the only decent one I kept, and my rag-rolled long hair looped around my head.

  I felt hopeful. At least I could earn something besides the little I pocketed at the theater and from the café-cabarets. The heat dissipated from the dying embers in the iron, frustrating me. Once someone had ironed for me, all morning long; now how I appreciated such effort!

  “And the work?” I asked.

  “We’ll make it worth your while,” Meslay said.

  As I hung the semi-wrinkled taffeta costume over the three-quarter dressing screen and gave him my attention, I wondered why he’d not answered my question.

  Curious but feeling the need to play hostess even in a limited fashion, I set two thick-bottomed glasses on the rough wood table and poured from a carafe of vin rouge. Meslay accepted and raised his glass.

  “Salut!” I said.

  He raised his glass, clinked mine and downed the rotgut I got cheap from the bistro below. “Certain underpinnings in the Third Republic warrant scrutiny,” said Meslay, his gaze on my wall with theater posters. “Ongoing surveillance, if you know what I mean.”

  Sounded oblique to me.

  “Dear Meslay, my espionage roles have only been played on the stage.” I grinned. “Norton performed those in real life, which only recently came to my knowledge, but I’m an excellent translator … .”

  “Your acquaintances in the demimondaine are what I refer to,” he interrupted. “You float among gypsy girls, pert ingenues in knickers, reclining odalisques and diaphanous veiled models riding circus horses.”

  Meslay made it sound exotic and lush, but little did he know that to survive the underside of this rock-hard unglamordus life, a woman needed a tenac
ious will, supple intelligence, and to appear submissive and alluring at the same time. Women jumped on tightropes. That way one avoided the streets. Perhaps, one could even triumph.

  “Oui, Meslay, I’m acquainted with the milieu,” I said. “Mais not with much else.”

  “But you have an entree behind the scenes where few can go,” he said. “Backstage, in the casinos and bordellos, in dens among languid addicts smoking opium, a discreet visit, of course, in a way that a man would be suspected.”

  His eyebrows tented in supplication.

  Holmes had said much the same thing. What did Meslay want me to do?

  The five-hundred-sou note in his gloved hand tempted me. My costumes were pawned, our last hotel bill from rue de la Paix still unpaid and my maid, Léonie Guerard, had gone to the workhouse when I’d been unable to afford her. My conscience nagged seeing her child begging on the street.

  Now I could at last pay Léonie’s overdue wages and get her child off the curbside begging.

  “What specifically do you mean, Meslay?” I asked.

  He set down the half-drunk glass and smoothed his mustache. “Irene, we propose for you to weave a web—you might say”—he smiled—“of informants in music halls, theaters, and the bordellos in Montmartre. Make acquaintances with concierges, cleaning women, café habitues, and restaurant maître d’s.”

  I waited for the guillotine to drop—when he would tell me the goal of what he sought. But his rapt gaze followed the crinkled silver mist creeping over the butte hill on the right. Below us, the wood cart selling charcoal thumped over the cobbles as the seller cried “charbon.” He’d paused and I prodded him further.

  “Meslay, to do that I must know why or I can’t find the right …” Here I hesitated almost saying mouchard, but stool pigeon wasn’t a nice connotation in French or any language.