“What do you think this man-milliner of Paris will put on Irene, if peacock feathers are not grand enough?” he inquired in his way of teasing her by consulting me.
“Something daring beyond belief, no doubt,” I answered in the same spirit. Godfrey always bestirred me to mild rebellion. “Perhaps sackcloth,” I went on despite her gasp— “trimmed with diamante.”
“A Cinderella in diamonds.” He laughed at my word picture. “How I wish I had seen and heard Irene sing that role while wearing Tiffany’s diamond corsage.”
Irene threw herself into an easy chair, her theatrics over for the moment. “You have seen the newspaper sketch of me in that role and wearing those jewels.”
“A sketch is not sufficient,” Godfrey said. “You are always far more affecting in person. In the flesh,” he added rather wickedly.
“So are diamonds. In the flash,” she retorted. “Ah, me. I wonder where that magnificent Tiffany corsage is now?” she speculated wistfully. “You never saw it either, did you, Nell?”
“Of course not. You sang at La Scala alone. It must have been heavy, that showy swag of diamonds cascading from shoulder to hip.”
“Not in the least. Like wearing meringue or angel hair. How cleverly it was designed, like a lacy sash of rank, to enhance any gown. They told me it shimmered like a comet on stage.”
“Nonsense!” Godfrey lit a long cigar and stretched his slipper-clad feet to the fire, for the nights had grown chill. “You shimmered like a comet; the diamonds merely reflected your glory.”
“There, you see,” Irene urged me, laughing. “My most devoted audience. He is won over by the very thought of my performance.”
Godfrey did not answer, nor did I. We were suddenly both too aware that Irene’s future musical performances would be haphazard and private. She had retired from the stage only because the King of Bohemia had high-handedly cut her career short in Prague and then her risky encounter with Sherlock Holmes had forced her into premature anonymity.
I thought about Irene’s great talent so suddenly and circumstantially silenced as I lay awake that night. She never spoke of it, and I dared not mention the subject. Yet it must secretly chafe her spirit, though she would never let that show. So I was not surprised to hear the piano’s faint tinkle in the sleepless wee hours, knowing as I did that the day’s events must bring Irene’s thoughts back to Bohemia, back to a past in which she had envisioned a glorious future that included neither Godfrey—then unmet—nor myself, save in a now-and-then way.
But Irene did not reign as queen of stage and palace in Prague; she was an English barrister’s wife in Paris. Another woman no doubt treasured the Tiffany corsage that Irene had introduced to the fashionable world in Milan. Another woman wore the crown jewels of Bohemia that King Willie had himself arranged upon her for the incriminating photograph. Godfrey had never seen that, either. Irene told him that the sight of the King and herself together was history that would only pain him. Now I began to wonder if she feared that the sight of the jewels she had forsaken would pain him more.
Still the distant Dvořák melody unwound like a music box. I sat up, thrust my feet into slippers before they touched the cold wooden floor, then rose and donned a shawl.
Moments later I was feeling my way downstairs in the dark, too timid to light a candle and risk awakening Godfrey. Halfway down the steps my own shadow began to softly accompany me: Irene’s parlor light seeped into the passage to bathe me in a vague glow.
A few steps more, and my darker self hunched in huge and twisted relief on the whitewashed passage wall. I pattered over the hall’s slate tiles onto the softness of faded French rugs.
The leashed moon of a paraffin lamp glowed above the grand piano and reflected in its burnished rosewood, so two soft eyes beamed at me in the semidark.
Matching green embers burned near the fireplace. Apparently Lucifer had an ear for music as well as an ever-open eye for mischief.
At the piano, I saw only the rich gleam of Irene’s hair meandering down her back before vanishing into the satin folds of her peignoir. Her hands, white in the artificial moonlight, glided over the ivory keys, as if invoking a spell or weaving on a loom.
Notes came forth, sometimes a separate trickle that gathered into watery falls, sometimes hunched together in throat-tightening chords. She played quietly: some notes were imagined moments strained for. She had meant not to wake us, but the effect was to haunt our dreams with an undercurrent of melody. Dvořák’s music could be melancholy, and so this playing struck me.
I sat on a leather hassock, unsurprised when something black arched into my lap. Lucifer balanced on his claw-points, neatly puncturing my knees, before settling down to pummel my abused flesh.
“I’m sorry I woke you.” Irene spoke without turning or stopping, her words overlaying the music like a recitative.
I refused to be unnerved by her recognition of my presence. “You didn’t wake me. I never slept.”
She played a while longer, then her fingers pressed a pair of chords into the keys, holding them down until the last almost inaudible vibration stilled.
There was a calm fatality in the way she throttled the instrument silent. I caught my breath as she turned to me at last, her face cameo-creamy in the lamplight.
“You mustn’t worry, Nell. The queen’s confession is a mystery in a minor chord. I am puzzled, I admit, but hardly intrigued enough to act on it.”
“You would like to,” I accused.
“True. I am perishing of curiosity, but I am hardly in any position to lift so much as my little finger on the Queen’s behalf. My hands are tied. I cannot go to Prague—”
“Of course you cannot! If you think Godfrey was perturbed when you ventured back to London and the vicinity of Sherlock Holmes last summer, can you imagine what he would say to your dallying near the King and Prague?”
“I was speaking for myself,” she said. “And Godfrey did endorse my London trip once I’d convinced him that I’d be unrecognizable. I could visit Prague incognito as well.”
“What you can do is not the question, only what you should do.”
“Agreed, and what is it that I should do, Nell?”
“Nothing! Nothing that rekindles the old wounds you received—and inflicted—in Prague.”
“You mix metaphors with great dash, my dear girl. One usually rekindles memories or passion, not hatred and wounds.”
“You know what I mean to say! You yourself admitted that the King is not one to forget a slight. By fleeing his offer—his assumption—that you would be his mistress, by evading his agents across half of Europe, by outwitting his chosen delegate in London, Sherlock Holmes, you have earned his eternal enmity. This distressed young Queen may merely be a tool he uses to lure you back to Bohemia and into his clutches—”
“A pathetic tool! And how could Willie believe that I would go running off to Bohemia at the first whisper that he has not consummated his marriage?”
“Curiosity,” I answered. “Your fatal flaw.”
“I am curious, but I am not mad. I will not be going to Bohemia. I will not be delving into the intriguing intimate confessions of the Queen of Bohemia, poor creature. But I can remain safe at home and speculate to my heart’s content, and that right I claim.”
“You are married.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“You should not think of other men under any circumstances.”
“Ah!” Her hands lifted as if to strike thundering chords on the piano, then dropped with a sharp slap to her lap. “I am not to think, then, because I am married. I fear not even Godfrey would agree with you on this.”
“Yet you don’t want him to know of the Queen’s proposal.”
“Nor do I want him to know of the women’s gossip. Both are... rumors, idle speculation. They can only do harm.”
“So can your dwelling upon any conundrums that involve the King of Bohemia.”
Irene smiled slightly. “I do not dwell. I
muse. And I amuse myself.” She turned away to lower the key cover without a sound. “But fear not. Wild West horses could not drag me back to Bohemia. And now, back to bed.”
Irene rose, collected the lamp, and laced a companionable arm through mine as she led me to the stairs. She even shook my elbow admonishingly as we parted in the upper hall.
“Don’t worry, Nell! Today’s events were tiny, unimportant incidents in the vast, daily flow of present into future. What I really dwell upon is what Monsieur Worth has in mind for my new gown.”
“Now there,” I agreed, “is a matter worth worrying about!”
Wednesday came all too soon for my taste. Also for André’s. Our coachman glowered from the moment he drew up before our country cottage until he deposited us before Maison Worth in the heart of the city.
Already idle drivers and their carriages lined the streets, their equipages far smarter than ours. Perhaps that is why André stewed; the French do not like to appear less fashionable than anyone, not even a fellow servant.
The page boy and mistress of the salon greeted us like old friends. Irene swept boldly into the antechamber, only to find it empty. Her chastened critics of Monday were disappointingly absent, from her point of view.
I began to breathe again, but found that pleasant condition interrupted when we were once again shown into an ornate dressing room. Against the far wall’s pale paneling gleamed a sinister dark cloud of taffeta and tulle.
Even Irene was taken aback by this sober apparition, and turned toward our vendeuse in silent surprise. This young lady, a slender child in light lilac surrah, rustled toward the diabolic-looking gown.
"This will take some care in donning, Madame. If I may assist—?”
Irene’s theatrical background had made her the mistress of her own image. She scorned personal maids and hairdressers, preferring her own expert attentions. No matter how rich she became, I suspected, she would never sit easily while another arranged her. But now the intimidatingly mysterious gown that hung like condemned goods on the wall forced her to acquiesce.
I aided her undressing, relieved to see that today Irene wore the full complement of necessary underthings: pale yellow chemise, silk combinations, frilled drawers, rose-colored shot-silk petticoats and crimson brocade corset, silk vest and white bodice, all covered by a lace-edged camisole.
Soon all this sensible attire vanished under a rustling ebony cataract of fabric. I felt that a murder of crows had descended en masse upon my unfortunate friend and was quite relieved to see her auburn head finally rise above the smothering gown.
The vendeuse pulled and prodded while I watched from the sidelines, then fell back when Irene was at last installed within her new carapace.
Carapace, is the proper word for it; the gown was a dark, iridescent, glittering shell reminiscent of some mystic scarab.
“Well!” Irene eyed herself in the mirror. And well she might. The gown’s low-cut bodice was entirely fashioned of cock feathers—a glossy black tracery that shone with highlights in a borrowed share of the peacock's emerald, turquoise, and burgundy hues.
Airy masses of black tulle, tufted here and there with tiny jet feathers and dotted with exotic embers of black opal, formed the huge, puffed sleeves and swaggered across the iridescent black taffeta skirt.
The vendeuse produced a pair of long, emerald velvet gloves scattered with jet beading. I was reminded of the Divine Sarah’s twin green bracelets: living serpents.
“Sublime,” Irene pronounced, turning in a crackle of brunette glitter when she had donned the gloves.
“Monsieur Worth will wish to see.” The vendeuse bustled to the door, "but first he has ordered that you view the gown in its proper setting—gaslight.”
This time we veered left through the main salon, into a series of chambers draped, as in Mr. Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, in sumptuous fabrics of various colors. Cunning light bathed costly folds. My few days at Whiteley’s could only help me guess at the rareness of these tempting lengths.
The fifth and final chamber held the same drama as Mr. Poe’s penultimate room: an environment of eternal night lit by gas-lit sconces and an overhead gasolier. Under this artificial illumination, Irene’s gown glimmered like the discarded skin of a jeweled serpent, perhaps even of the one that had cost mankind paradise.
“Marvelous!” she exclaimed, turning before the wall of mirrors to watch the gown ring through its black rainbow changes. “Superior to common peacock feathers, more subtle.”
“Monsieur Worth has outdone himself,” the vendeuse said. “Now he must see the results.”
Once again we paraded to the upstairs salon, Irene’s train dragging like a funereal peacock’s half-folded tail.
Only the man-milliner himself was present on this occasion, wearing a puce dressing gown over his shirt and loose necktie. The spaniel deserted its well-dented sofa cushion to waddle over and sniff Irene’s hem.
“En promenade,” Monsieur Worth ordered in dictatorial French. The language lends itself to dispensing orders. No wonder the nation spawned a Napoleon.
Irene complied with the uncustomary meekness to which I was becoming used. Perhaps she felt as if she had inherited the earth. Certainly she looked it in the extravagant gown.
She paused to let her green-gloved hands fan expressively. “What accessories should I carry, Monsieur? And jewels? Perhaps a simple diamond necklace?”
“Nothing that is not by Worth,” he responded haughtily, nodding to the vendeuse. “Not so much as a stickpin.”
The young woman bent to a large flat box spouting tissue and soon came bearing an encrusted undulating fringe like a living thing across her hands. This she put around Irene’s neck. The upstanding collar of iridescent jet exploded into a dusky firework of design over Irene’s décolletage, ending in a swaying rainfall fringe of supple beads. Diamonds did indeed seem redundant in the face of such extravagant artifice.
Irene fingered the necklace through the cushioning gloves, a moment later reaching for an item the vendeuse also presented reverently on open hands, a similarly beaded reticule.
“Monsieur Worth, what can I say?” Irene asked in bemusement, going on nevertheless. “The gown, the entire ensemble, is magnificent beyond words.”
“Wear it and say nothing,” he advised. “A woman in such a gown should be seen and not heard.”
“In that I fear you ask too much of me,” Irene replied. “I must at the least sing your praises when I appear in public in such a toilette.”
He tilted his head, a moue of false modesty upon his world-weary face. Before he could answer, a door slammed in a distant area of the building.
The man-milliner frowned, obviously unused to domestic disharmony, and clapped a hand to his forehead.
“Please,” he murmured to no one in particular. “My migraine—”
A person rushed into the room, the only one on whom his wrath could not fall. His wife, Madame Marie.
“Charles!” she cried, giving the word its soft shhh French twist, instead of the forthright English chuh.
“What is it, my dear?” he responded in concerned French.
Luckily, I could follow short and sweet exchanges in this sour language, no matter how rapid, and there are no people like the French for chattering faster than a telegraph operator.
“A terrible thing.” Madame Worth groped for the sofa and sat heavily, only then spying Irene, and perhaps myself. “Magnifique, Madame Norton,” she paused to murmur. Then she addressed her husband again. “I am devastated to intrude but... one of the bead-girls has died.” She eyed Irene distractedly. “The very girl, in fact, who made Madame Norton’s rainfall neckpiece only yesterday. Such an agile hand.”
“Sad news, my dear,” he answered, “but hardly a matter of such import that it could not wait.”
“Perhaps not. Yet—” Madame Worth’s plump, capable hands sketched a helpless gesture. “Not merely dead, my dear husband, but... killed.”
“Killed?” he r
epeated dumbly.
“Murdered?” Irene intoned in a rising tone of interest. The Worths regarded her, père and mère, their eyes dawning with the same notion at the same moment.
Madame Marie clasped her hands in overwrought beseechment. “Oh, Madame Norton. You know about such matters. Could you not see to this one?”
Monsieur Worth nodded until his mustache ends fluttered. “We will have to call upon the gendarmes, of course, if this proves to be a case of deliberate death. If not, perhaps Madame Norton could put our minds at rest.”
“I should be delighted to assist you.” Irene managed to subdue the relish in her voice to a hushed tone of concern.
Yet even I, God help me, felt a welcoming thrill at this possibly macabre diversion. There would be no more talk of Bohemia and King Willie’s lack of marital effort if a murder victim were in the vicinity.
Monsieur Worth collapsed to the sofa, groping for either the spaniel or an abandoned compress. Madame Marie absently thrust a vial of smelling salts into his hand and stood.
“Follow me, Madame.” She nodded briskly at me as well. “Mademoiselle.”
Thus we found ourselves hastily winding down the rear, far less grand stairs of Maison Worth on the heels of the establishment’s dignified mistress.
Despite the fashion house’s grand but discreet exposure along the rue de la Paix, it contained much unsuspected space. We found ourselves weaving through workrooms crowded with French sparrows—those thin, doe-eyed, working-girl waifs one often sees rushing home in the Paris twilight from twelve hours of labor in the shops and factories.
Ordinarily these industrious creatures chatter with that peculiar French effervescence, but now their large eyes were serious as they watched us pass. Irene’s unearthly gown went uncommented upon, if not unnoted.
At last the endless rooms and worktables and rows of white-fingered girls opened into an empty room, one vacant only because of the ghost-faced mademoiselles clustered outside it.
One girl remained in the room, lying apparently asleep upon the empty table glittering with a comet’s tail residue of jet, beads, and diamante stones. A small, richly dressed figure stood on the table before her, like an idol worshiped by a mute supplicant.
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 6
