European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

by Theodora Goss

  Mary smiled and nodded, although she had no idea what the old woman was saying. She had her waist bag, Justine had her carriage bag. They had Diana. Unfortunately!

  Justine said something to Madame Corbeau that sounded polite, then made a small bow. As they followed her along the corridor and down to the platform, Diana said, “What did she say? She said something about me.”

  “She said you looked like a great deal of trouble, and she was right!” said Mary. “Come on. I have to figure out the ticket situation.”

  The Gare du Nord was considerably larger than the Gare Maritime. It seemed as though there were rail passengers everywhere, going in every which direction and speaking a babble of languages. And there were just as many pigeons as people. They strutted over the pavement, perched on lampposts, and flew up into the arch of the station as though it were the sky.

  It took a while for Mr. Justin Frank to retrieve their trunk. When he had, he turned to Mary and said, “I think we had better hire a porter to bring it over to the Gare de l’Est. I could carry it easily, but it will be a long walk along the—it says on this map, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. I do not want people to see me being so strong. This is not like Charing Cross, where I only had to take the trunk into the train station. I would be carrying it along a busy avenue in the middle of Paris. I believe it would be noticed. But I will need to pay the porter.”

  Mary nodded and gave him five francs—more than enough, but Mr. Justin Frank would need some money for miscellaneous expenses.

  It was not really such a long walk—the two train stations were relatively close together. The Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis reminded Mary of Baker Street, with its residences above shop windows, its carriages and costermongers, even an omnibus. Perhaps all cities were alike, really, at their heart? As they walked along the street, Mary next to Justine, and Diana scampering either ahead of or behind them as her fancy dictated, peering into shop windows, she asked, “What did that woman actually say to me on the train?”

  “She said you have a handsome son, and mentioned Diana’s red hair—her cheveux roux.” Justine responded absentmindedly, no doubt pondering the intellectual history of Paris, with its philosophes and encyclopédistes. Because that is exactly what Justine would be doing.

  JUSTINE: I was, actually. It is in Paris that the Enlightenment was born. I was thinking of men such as Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire, and how they attempted to sweep away the darkness of superstition and ignorance that had clouded men’s minds for centuries, like cobwebs.

  DIANA: I was thinking that I was hungry.

  “Son!” said Mary, outraged. “How could she possibly think that Diana was my son! Do I look old enough to be the mother of a fourteen-year-old? Do I? Anyway, Diana and I look nothing alike.”

  “Well,” said Justine, reasonable as always, “you look so composed and responsible, one might easily mistake your age. And Diana looks younger than her years. Perhaps you do not realize that you were stroking Diana’s hair while she slept. So I can understand her mistaken assumption. . . .”

  MARY: I was doing no such thing. Maybe brushing it out of her eyes . . .

  DIANA: Rationalize all you want, ma soeur. See, I spoke French! Did everyone notice that I spoke French?

  “When are we going to eat?” asked Diana, who had been trailing behind them. “I saw a bakery—at least, it looked like a bakery although the sign above didn’t look anything like bakery or even bread. But it had loaves of bread in the window, and rolls shaped like crescents. Can we go back and buy some? Seriously, I’m starving to death.”

  “After I figure out what to do about your ticket, and not a moment before,” said Mary, still feeling cross. “So you may as well resign yourself to waiting. If you do die of starvation, it would be most convenient for you to do so before I purchase a ticket, so we don’t waste any money.”

  “If I die, you’ll have to carry my corpse!” said Diana. But she did not fall behind again.

  The Gare de l’Est was a smaller station than the Gare du Nord, but just as crowded. It seemed to be filled with mountains of trunks—clearly, these travelers were going on longer journeys, and farther away. From here, trains departed for all points east: cities such as Berlin, Warsaw, Munich, Vienna, and Budapest. The Orient Express itself would go as far as Constantinople. Suddenly, Mary felt elated—she was going to be on one of those trains! Well, anxious and elated. Still, she felt like one of those lady travelers, like the Mrs. Miles-Mowbrays of the world. At that moment, if someone had suggested a camel-caravan, she would have mounted her camel without hesitation.

  She walked up to the ticket window after a mercifully short wait in line. Two of the university students from the Dover-Calais ferry had been ahead of her, but suddenly one made the familiar gesture of searching for, and not being able to find, his wallet. They both stepped to the side, and one of them waved her forward. She remembered that on the ferry, they had been discussing the latest biological discoveries with the absolute certainty that only medical students possess, and had gotten into some sort of argument over vivisection. They had been annoyingly loud.

  “Mary Frank, picking up two tickets for the Orient Express to Vienna,” she said.

  “Un moment,” said the woman behind the grille. She was young and very pretty—trés jolie, Mary remembered from Mrs. Corbeau’s description of her granddaughter—but wore an expression of disapproval that implied traveling anywhere was somehow fundamentally wrong, a symptom of our inconstant age, which must be always in motion, always going elsewhere. “Non, mademoiselle,” she said. “J’ai trois billets pour vous. M. Justin Frank in one cabine, Mlle. Mary Frank et Mlle. Diana Frank in autre cabine, pour l’Express d’Orient, départ aujourd’hui. Et votre passeport, s’il vous plaît? You must identify yourself for the tickets please.”

  Three tickets? This must be Mr. Holmes’s doing. Mary felt some surprise, but more annoyance. She could have taken care of this problem herself. She was resourceful, wasn’t she? He knew she was resourceful. Whenever they returned from this adventure, she would pay him back—somehow. She showed her passport, which had been tucked safely into her waist bag. The woman slid her tickets under the grille. Mr. Justin Frank, Miss Mary Frank, Miss Diana Frank, Paris to Vienna, departing 7:30 p.m.

  “Eh bien?” Clearly the woman wanted her to move along, and indeed the line behind her had gotten longer.

  “Merci beaucoup, mademoiselle.” Which was just about the extent of her French.

  “Pas mademoiselle—madame,” said the woman behind the grille, giving her a withering look. Beatrice could not have been more poisonous.

  “Look,” Mary said to Justine, who was standing by the station wall with their trunk. The porter must have delivered it while she was waiting in line. “There was a ticket waiting for Diana as well.” Wait, where had Diana gone? Ah yes, there she was, chasing a pigeon, which flapped away into the station, under the great arch. Like the Gare du Nord, this station was filled with pigeons, gray or brown or mottled. Train stations seemed to be their natural habitat.

  “Mr. Holmes must have telegraphed for it,” said Justine. “It’s really most generous of him. I would like to take the trunk over to the Orient Express office. I can register it there, and they will load it onto the train when it arrives. Diana!”

  At the sound of Justine’s voice, Diana immediately turned and came over. Why couldn’t she be that obedient when Mary called her, or Mrs. Poole?

  “What? Are we going to eat yet?”

  “Not quite yet. I need to deliver this trunk to the Orient Express baggage office. Can you hold that handle so it does not look like I am carrying it alone? It is not far.”

  “Sure, whatever. Just in case anyone forgets, I’m still hungry.” Diana held the trunk by one handle while Justine lifted it by two others. Together they carried it across the concourse, to where a wooden sign on the wall said COMPAGNIE INTERNATIONALE DES WAGONS-LITS. Mary followed them. She should be grateful. She should be . . . but she was not. Her boots
click-clacked precisely on the stone floor.

  “Mary’s mad about something,” said Diana, after Justine had deposited the trunk with a uniformed porter and gotten a receipt for it. “I can always tell.”

  “Mary?” said Justine. “Quel est le problème? I mean, what is it?”

  “Well, among other things . . .” Mary took a deep breath. He meant well. She knew he meant well. But perhaps sometimes, just sometimes, meaning well was not enough. “Among other things, this ticket is for a Miss Diana Frank, and you”—she turned to Diana—“look nothing like a Miss Frank.” Not in that getup. She looked, more than anything, like one of the Baker Street boys. And sometimes kindness could be intrusive, a burden. Sometimes it could turn into obligation. Did he not realize that? No, of course not. She had meant to send him a telegram before they left Paris, but now . . . was it really necessary? What could she tell him, other than that she was grateful? She was tired of being grateful.

  Anyway, there were more important things to do just now. “Diana, we need to find you women’s clothes.”

  “What? Why! I don’t want to dress like a woman.”

  “Well, you have to, because your ticket says Miss Diana Frank, and I don’t think the conductor is going to believe that you’re a Miss anything dressed like that.”

  Diana snorted.

  “You can make whatever unattractive sounds you please, but we need to find you a dress.”

  Justine asked two porters without luck, but the woman who sold cigarettes and bunches of violets in brown paper by the entrance to the station told them they could find a shop selling les vêtements pour femmes off the Rue d’Alsace. She had a face like a dried apple and looked at them suspiciously, as though they were planning to disguise themselves in order to rob the Banque de France. But the shop was just where she had described. It was a charity shop run by the Soeurs de Sainte-Catherine, although the woman who ran it, pleasingly embonpoint and probably ten years older than Mary, with eyes that seemed to be smiling even when she was not, did not appear to be a nun. She was dressed rather fashionably, à la mode as they say in France.

  DIANA: I thought that meant with ice cream?

  “You want a girl dress for the little boy?” she said, surprised.

  “Oui, madame,” said Mary.

  “Mademoiselle. But you may name me Nicollette!” Mademoiselle Nicolette insisted that she did not parle très bien anglais, but her English was certainly better than Mary’s French! Really she ought to learn. If only she could have studied longer under Miss Murray. They had just started on French when Miss Murray left to teach at that private girl’s school, and Mary had hired Nurse Adams to care for her mother, whose symptoms were getting steadily worse. Suddenly, although she was standing in a charity clothing shop in the middle of Paris, she saw again the dirt falling on her mother’s coffin, the rain coming down and turning it to mud. Had it really only been three months?

  “Yes, she is not really a little boy,” said Justine, or rather Justin Frank. “You see, she is only dressed up for a jest—un jeu. But we have lost her proper clothing, so we must buy new ones. At least two dresses, I think, and the usual accoutrements. You know, what les femmes wear.”

  Goodness, couldn’t Justine have made up something more convincing than that? But Mademoiselle Nicollette laughed and nodded. “Vien, petite,” she said to Diana, gesturing for her to come. They disappeared behind a curtained doorway that led, Mary presumed, to the back of the shop. She walked around, looking at the clothes, which were obviously second-hand, but of good quality. If they were not in such a hurry, she would have liked to look for herself. After all, there was a certain cachet to having clothes from Paris!

  Ten minutes later, Mademoiselle Nicolette appeared again, smiling. “Quelle jolie fille!” she said. “I do not have believe it, when I see first.”

  “Well?” said Mary. Where was Diana?

  “I hate it,” came Diana’s voice from behind the curtain. “And I hate you. And Mr. Great Detective can go to hell.”

  “For goodness’ sake, just come out! We have a train to catch, remember? We have an hour and a half before it departs, so hurry up or none of us will get anything to eat beforehand.”

  Diana came out. She looked jolie indeed, dressed in more ruffles and frills than Mary had ever seen on her. She looked like a perfect French demoiselle. Her hair curled charmingly under a feathered hat perched at a fashionable angle.

  “I’m probably going to kill you all in your sleep,” she said.

  “Lovely, please do. Combien, mademoiselle?”

  “I have made up package, une autre robe très jolie, une jupe, une chemise, the stocking and others the gentleman must not hear, n’est pas? Complète. Only five francs, you see we are a charité and all the clothing it is donated.”

  Mary signed with relief. “I think you are the nicest person in France, Mademoiselle Nicolette.”

  “Oh, seulement à Paris!” said the woman, smiling. “Bon voyage, and the Bon Dieu go with you!”

  Mary very much hoped He would.

  On the way back to the Gare de l’Est, they passed a small restaurant called La Grenouille Enchantée, with a signboard on which sat a green frog, wearing a gold crown and licking its mouth with a long pink tongue.

  “Seriously, I can’t go any farther without something to eat,” said Diana. “Especially if you want me to walk around in this getup. Why do women’s clothes have to be so heavy?”

  “All right,” said Mary. “Let’s eat here. But don’t linger over your meal—we have a train to catch!” She had checked the prices posted in the window, and the place looked reasonable—at least by London standards.

  “As though I ever do!” said Diana.

  In they went. The waiter seated them at a small table close to the window and brought three hand-written menus.

  “You shouldn’t complain,” said Mary. “Our brother Justin is the one carrying the bag with all your new clothes.”

  “Like he even notices. Escargot. What’s that?” asked Diana.

  “Those are snails, served with butter in their own shells,” said Justine.

  “I want some of those! Do they have frogs, too? Like that frog on the sign? I heard Frenchies eat frogs like they were chips. Snails and chips! Get it, like fish and chips? That would be a dish.”

  But the waiter informed them that frogs were out of season.

  Mary ordered an omelet and a tomato salad, while Justine wanted a soupe à l’oignon and Diana insisted on her snails with, yes, pommes frites. She slurped the snails out of their shells and pronounced them very good. “What about dessert?” she asked, when all the shells were lying on her plate, like empty houses.

  “Your stomach is a bottomless pit, you know that?” Mary wiped her mouth and put her napkin beside her plate. “Come on, the train is leaving in half an hour, and we want to be on it!”

  When they reached the station, she had just enough time to exchange another pound for francs. On the train, all their meals would be included in the price of the ticket—they would have Mr. Holmes to thank for those meals, which Mary was not particularly happy about. But they would need money for tips and incidentals.

  “Track Seven,” said Justine. “There, you can see it from here. I have been told we can board at any time.”

  They made their way to Track Seven, and yes, there it was: the Orient Express, with COMPAGNIE INTERNATIONALE DES WAGONS-LITS written on each of the cars, and the gold crest of the company on the sides. They showed their tickets to the conductor before boarding. “Ah yes,” he said. “Les Franks—an English famille, n’est past? First you will come to the cabin for the two desmoiselles, and directly after you will see the cabin for M. Frank. It is shared with a university student, M. Waldman. Your trunk has already been delivered to your cabin, as you directed. If you would like to abstract what you will need for the voyage and have the trunk put with les bagages, you have only to tell your porter, Michel. Et bon voyage, mademoiselles, monsieur! We will be departing s
hortly for Vienna, Budapest, and Constantinople on the Orient Express!”

  CHAPTER V

  On the Orient Express

  First they crowded into Mary’s and Diana’s cabin. It was arranged for daytime, with the seat facing forward, toward the engine. Justine dropped the bag with Diana’s new clothes in it on the seat.

  “Where are we supposed to sleep?” asked Diana.

  “See that panel, up there?” said Mary. “This seat is one bunk, and it folds down to make another.”

  “Well then, I call the top bunk!” Diana sat on the seat and bounced up and down. “Not bad. And what’s that little room?” She opened the door to the bathing facilities. “Hey, it’s a WC! On a train! I wonder where the piss goes. . . .”

  Suddenly, the whistle blew. Mary almost jumped, startled by the sound. Then there was a shuddering rumble, and the Orient Express pulled out of the Gare de l’Est. Their journey to Vienna had begun.

  “Can I have the you-know-what?” said Mary to Justine.

  “Have what?” asked Diana. “What are you talking about?”

  Justine rummaged around in the carriage bag she had been wearing over her shoulder. She took out Mary’s pistol.

  “Hey!” said Diana. “Is that thing loaded?”

  “Of course it’s not loaded,” said Mary. “I’m not an idiot. But it will be once we get to Vienna. I thought it best to be prepared for anything.”

  Justine handed the pistol to Mary. “Do you want the bullets now?”

  “Yes, although I don’t think we’re in any danger on the Orient Express. After all, no one even knows we’re going to Vienna, or why. It’s not as though Dr. Seward is having us watched—more the other way around. He barely knows we exist, except as the man with one green and one blue eye who escaped from the Purfleet Asylum, and an obscure Miss Jenks. I wonder how Cat is doing, by the way? If she’s found out anything else?”

  “If she has, she will probably telegram to Vienna,” said Justine.

  MARY: How in the world are our readers going to know who Miss Jenks is? She was only in the first book.