“It is possible to loathe men, and still use them; in fact, necessary. Yet if she is indeed a Russian spy of longstanding, any alliance she makes will only serve her first loyalty, to her country and perhaps to a man who introduced her to spy work.”
“Colonel Moran?” I suggested.
Irene whirled at my question. “I doubt that, although they may be associates of long standing.”
Another matter puzzled me. “If we have deciphered her role and presence, why should she not know us?”
“She may, but she would no more reveal that than I would drop my pose of Lady Sherlock and go about as ordinary Irene Adler Norton.”
“There is nothing ordinary about you, Mrs. Norton,” Allegra intoned in the voice of pure heroine worship.
“Thank you,” Irene said modestly, “but we dare not bask now that we have measured our opponent. Obviously, the King is the weakest link in this alliance, and there we should concentrate our attention. We know that rivals do not sit well with him. Perhaps we should try his soul. Perhaps Godfrey should pay some outward attention to the fair Tatyana.”
He jumped as if scalded. “I think not, Irene. She is no one to trifle with.”
“Oh, pooh! I am not suggesting any serious seduction, merely a few politenesses of which news may travel back to Prague Castle. You might send her flowers, for instance, in thanks for today’s interview. And you will always be chaperoned by Nell, of course.”
Irene glided to take hold of Godfrey’s lapels in the same insinuating manner as the detestable Tatyana, although with a far more silken, mocking touch, almost as if she had anticipated Tatyana’s wiles and their exact form. “I know I can trust you utterly, dear Godfrey, no matter what vixen you are forced to associate with.”
“I have no difficulty associating with the trustworthy vixen; indeed, I am accustomed to it. But what of the untrustworthy vixen?” he murmured.
“A vixen is only as untrustworthy as her victim,” Irene declared, “and I have implicit faith in you.” She turned to us. “As well as in Nell and Allegra.”
She regarded us two with a blinding smile, but I noticed a cast of deep unease on Allegra’s face that rivaled a similar expression on Godfrey’s.
After dinner, employing wiles that I would hitherto have attributed only to the despised Tatyana, I managed to separate Allegra from my friends by suggesting that I could use her advice. I refused to say upon what subject—which wildly intrigued Irene, but she could not harass me in public.
Thus Allegra came to my chamber for the alleged consultation, while Irene and Godfrey proceeded about their own business of the evening.
“How sweet and clever of you!” Allegra congratulated me as soon as my chamber door closed upon us.
“Whatever are you speaking about?”
“Why... how you arranged for Godfrey and Irene—I mean, the Nortons—to escape our tiresome presence so they could be alone. Obviously, they were dying for some privacy.”
“What is obvious to you is far from so to me,” I returned, affronted. “And my... request relates only to you and me.”
“Surely you noticed that this rooming arrangement is most trying for a married couple?”
“It is? I am afraid that has not occurred to me, and other than the Incident of the Wandering Chambermate, I have noticed no dissatisfaction with the present arrangement.”
“You have been sleeping alone,” Allegra noted.
“I should hope so. I am a spinster, after all, and I do not see what is not my business.”
“I am a spinster as well,” Allegra pointed out with a disavowing pout, “but I am not blind!”
“Nor am I,” I retorted, getting to the matter at hand. “There is something of which I must know more, which has nothing to do with the rooming arrangements of my friends, wed or unwed.”
I sat on the upholstered chair, as I was the elder. Allegra, instead of taking the straight chair, as, say, Godfrey would do, plumped herself down upon my bed, wrinkling the coverlet.
“What, Miss Huxleigh, is your hidden purpose for this meeting?^’ she demanded mischievously. “And do you have nothing to eat? I am hungry already.”
Since I had seen her consume great quantities of mediocre Bohemian food at dinner, I was surprised, to say the least.
“There is some fruit in a basket on the desk.”
“Fruit! Oh, well.”
She flounced to the desk to capture some grapes and returned to my bed, which she proceeded to bounce upon. Indeed, I had forgotten the exuberance of the young, and blessed fate that my governess days were over.
“What are you worried about?” she asked, silting up to peel a grape in a disgusting manner. “Cat’s eyes!” she announced, swallowing the product of her depredation.
I tried to remember that even the young can be valuable witnesses if properly led during an examination.
“Allegra, dear; I am most fearful that I have not heard the full report of your and Irene’s day about Prague. Certainly I have heard nothing of the Queen’s role in all of this.”
“Oh, the Queen. What a darling! So shy. So... well, shockingly unqueenly. Irene says that she has had a cruel trick of fate played upon her, and that whenever the World attempts to turn a Queen into a Pawn, it is up to We Women to Right the Balance.”
“We women?’ I stared at Allegra, who was lying prone upon my lofty feather comforter, popping peeled grapes into her mobile mouth.
Allegra sat up by pounding her fists into the over-ambitious feathers. “Yes! I think it quite remarkable of Irene to forgive her former rival and take her part. The King is unworthy of both of them put together, even though, between us, Irene would be six times the Queen poor Clotilde will ever be!”
“Irene... told you of her former... expectations of the King? I didn’t know—”
“What do you think we talked of during four interminable days of rail travel across Europe? The King... men in general and particular. Fashion. Men in general and particular. My possible future. Irene’s past. Men in general and particular.”
I had not expected to experience the spasm of jealousy that I did. Allegra now knew such things a decade before I even had considered them.
“What men... in particular... did you speak of?”
“The King, of course. He is our main target on this mission. And... Godfrey, a bit. Irene was most understanding of my admiration for him, but she says that it will pass. And... Quentin,” she added, biting her lip.
Tears suddenly polished her already bright eyes. “I remember him from the pinnacle of my youth, dear Miss Huxleigh—and you as well. He is the first person whom I have cared for who is supposed to be dead. I admit that I cherished a... fondness for him, although we were related, but Irene says that this, too, is quite natural. She said that I was fortunate to have such a worthy object of admiration in my youth.”
I had been young in those days, as well, as young as I ever was. I clasped my hands, then donned my pince-nez, and took up a blank notebook.
“Allegra. I am most interested in your and Irene’s visit to this fortune teller. Did the Queen go as well?”
“Oh, yes. She went everywhere with us. She wore one of her maid’s gowns and... she loved being nobody. Really and truly! She is so much more pleasant away from the castle. Almost like an ordinary person. I cannot tell you what good our outing did her. She almost wept to return.”
“What did the fortune teller really say? I could see that you reported only part of it.”
“Could you?” Allegra pounded the feather quilt like a child in a tantrum. “I did think I had been so... subtle.”
“Allegra. I once was your governess. It is true that I was young myself then, but I was not blind,” I said, paraphrasing the minx.
“Oh, Miss Huxleigh, you are not half so blind as you would have us all think! And I must tell you. My fortune spoke so glowingly of Uncle Quentin. I shall see him again, I know I shall! Only—” Her face sobered.
In an instant her high spiri
ts fell. A childish look of fear touched her features.
“Oh, Miss Huxleigh, the woman said such... odd things. It was not the small thing here and there that struck me—that I shall marry many times and have many children. One expects to hear such nonsense from a gypsy fortune teller. Or that Irene will have a tattoo and go to Tibet. How I wish that you had been there! Perhaps you could have made some sense of it She spoke... direly also... to all three of us. I confess that it haunts me.”
I decided to begin with the fortunes that least touched me. “What did she say to the Queen?”
“Oh, that was odd! She said that Clotilde would rise higher in the world than she appeared to be at this moment.”
“Indeed, Clotilde has already done that. Could the fortune teller have recognized her?”
“In the Old Town? I doubt it, but it is possible. Then she said that she saw a chess board—”
“Irene’s metaphor!”
“Exactly. With three Queens and two Kings upon the squares.”
“A chess set has two Queens and two Kings.”
“I know. It is like a secret message from one of Uncle Quentin’s anonymous spies! Clotilde was quite bewildered, but Irene leaned forward and listened as if she took this all quite seriously.”
What could I say? That I had sat in the same rug-draped room with Irene eighteen months before, and learned that the letter “G” named the man whose fate entwined Irene’s? The King of Bohemia’s middle name was “Gottsreich,” which Irene thought of at the time, not “Godfrey,” whom I knew then as a kind employer who was hostile to her, not as my friend’s spouse-to-be. So far as I knew from my one experience, the gypsy fortune teller had an unnervingly accurate record, which Allegra could not know, and would not know until I had wormed every detail from her.
“What did this woman—she was old?”
“Aren’t they always?”
“I fear so. What more did she say of Clotilde?”
“That true love had not found her, but would.”
“A sop.”
“Perhaps, but it cheered the Queen.”
“Was a date given for this miracle?”
“No.” Allegra blinked and bit her lip again. “Dear Miss Huxleigh—may I call you ‘Nell’? I feel the fortune-teller has drawn us all together in common hope... and common disaster.”
Who was I to insist on proper formalities when so much that was improper was unfolding around us?
“Call me what you will,” I urged her, “but tell me what you know.”
“Dear Nell... I must say that although the woman promised me a reunion with Uncle Quentin she also promised much danger—soon. And for Irene—”
“What did she say about Irene?”
“She said that three queens reigned in Prague at present. One would triumph; one would escape; and one would... face mortal danger.”
“Irene triumphs. Always.”
“In... Prague? Always?”
“In Prague as well. True, we fled this city once, but that was triumph. It is all in how one looks at it, Allegra.”
“Yet the old woman said that Irene was in mortal danger.”
“She said so—specifically?”
“Yes. And... myself.”
“You! Why should anyone wish to harm you?”
“I cannot imagine. Irene was most disturbed, I could see, although she made light of all our predictions after we had left the place. I sensed that she regretted taking us there.”
“So she should. She has a fearful weakness for the lurid. Remember that most fortune tellers should be on stage, and often have been.”
“Yes, Nell.” Said quite meekly, despite the personal presumption I had permitted in a weak moment. I had my own frailties.
“Did the old woman say anything more of... your Uncle Quentin?”
“Oh, how careless of me! I have forgotten that you, too, knew him from years back, and that your reacquaintance is what returned him to our family, however briefly.”
‘Acquaintance,’ it seemed to me, would no longer quite describe Quentin’s and my relationship, though I could not explain this to Allegra, no matter what she called me.
She grasped my hands, as if wishing to warm her own, which were icy.
“The woman was most odd about Quentin. She spoke of one dead and not-dead. I wondered if she confused Quentin with the Golem! She spoke of one cast away and imprisoned, who would—pardon me, Nell, I know you take such talk seriously—‘rise again.’ She murmured of evil plots and ‘plots’ that sounded like grave sites. She was most cryptic.”
“ ‘Crypt’ indeed is the word. All nonsense, as you would see had you not been infected with ‘Prague fever.’ This ancient town, with its medieval quarters and its Cabbalistic history and its current affairs that shroud reality in plot and counterplot is not a wholesome influence. Now, I have seen sights that truly chill the blood, and I have not had to leave the environs of the Belgrade Hotel to accomplish it.”
“How so?"
“You are young, and could not understand.”
“Miss Huxleigh. Nell. I have told you all. You can but reciprocate.”
“I am not sure that even I understand myself what transpired.”
“Then you must share the experience.” Allegra patted the feather quilt, which sank six inches at her attentions.
I eyed it askance. Sitting upon goose-down always made one sink like a stone, and look like a drowning goose.
“Do get comfortable,” Allegra urged, “and we do not wish anyone to overhear us.”
“Here? In my room?”
She leaned near. “The walls have ears.”
“I doubt it.” Yet I studied the wallpaper, which was excessively busy in the Austrian style. Could not such design mania conceal the subtle peephole?
“Hop up,” Allegra urged.
I eyed the quilt. “I do not ‘hop’.”
“Then leap like a gazelle, dear Nell, and tell me your deepest worries. Believe me, not a word of it shall pass beyond these ears.”
I obliged, and found myself the proud possessor of a peeled grape that I did not wish to touch, given her grisly appellation for same.
‘Tell me,” the dear girl urged, and I confess that the temptation was intense.
“Well,” I began, “it seems that the archvillainess Tatyana has conceived an ill-advised interest in Godfrey.”
“Oh, there is nothing ill-advised in such an interest at all,” Allegra assured me. “I am surprised that you haven’t realized that.”
“I was his type-writer girl at the Temple,” I said. “Such an interest would have been quite inappropriate.”
“But it would have been such fun, Nell. Have you never suffered from an ill-advised interest in your entire life?”
“Once,” said I, accepting another rather slimy grape and ingesting it.
“In whom?” she demanded rapturously.
I knew what she expected, the untrustworthy minx, and was prepared for her.
“A country curate,” I replied, “by the name of Jasper.” Then I recited chapter and verse in all particulars about the unfortunate Curate Higgenbottom.
I soon had Allegra drowsy and begging to repair to her room—whether Irene was there yet or not—while I was free to speculate on the significant pieces of information I had cajoled out of her in two hours, with the aid of two given names and six grapes. Casanova would have been proud.
Chapter Twenty-four
MINUET IN G
My next interview was with Irene herself. I encouraged Allegra to send her to my room by allowing my reminiscences of the lamented Jasper Higgenbottom to put me into an apparently distraught state.
By the time Irene arrived, I had recovered, but had decided to let her think my concern was due to Allegra’s account of the gypsy’s report on Quentin Stanhope. Irene’s dramatic nature always responded best to extremes—be it romantic subplots or murderous main plots.
“Nell! What is it?” Irene demanded the moment she arrived. “
Allegra said that you were most disturbed.”
“I am. And I am... appalled that you would bring such innocents as Allegra and the Queen to that miserable gypsy fortune teller we visited our last time in Prague.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I took you there, didn’t I?”
“That’s no excuse. And now I hear that this awful creature has predicted great danger for those I hold dear. How irresponsible of you to attempt such a thing without me present.”
Irene smiled, gathered her lilac taffeta combing gown around her like the crackling tissue that wraps a Worth creation, and sat on my single upholstered chair.
If she extracted a cigarette, I expected to scream, but she fortunately had left her smoking apparatus in the suite.
“You want a complete report on the fortune concerning Quentin, I suppose,” she offered.
“That would be nice.” I sat on the straight chair.
“That would be more than nice. It would be most intriguing.”
“Irene, you don’t for a moment believe that woman with her crinkled hands and shriveled roots and lethal powders and jangling skull lamp speaks anything but drivel?”
“Well... she hit the mark last time regarding my romantic disposition. ‘G.’ Who would have thought that meant Godfrey then? Not even you.”
“That is true, but many men have names beginning with the letter ‘G’.”
“Name three.”
“Ah... Geoffrey. Godwin.”
“Godwin could be a surname as well.”
“Geoffrey. Gregory... Gabriel!”
“The last is honestly angelic, but not common.”
“Still—”
“Even fewer names begin with ‘Q.’ ”
“Agreed,” I said, my throat suddenly dry.
Whenever I tried to anticipate Irene, she usually jumped me from an oblique angle, as a knight outmaneuvers a rook. “Can you think of three?” she asked roguishly.
“Only one,” I admitted brazenly. “Quentin.”
“There is Quinn.”
“A surname,” I snapped.
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 27
