Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes)

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  “Of course they are. We are a notable pair.”

  She released me reluctantly and settled into a genteel stroll more befitting our ladylike attire.

  Irene had exaggerated when she declaimed our worthiness of interest. I wore an Empire green twilled wool, princesse-style redingote with dusky maroon trim on reveres, cuffs, and skirt, and a green felt bonnet to match. No one would—or should—give me a second glance.

  Irene wore a princesse-style polonaise, too, but her effect was far more queenly. Her gown was of silver faille in an all-over scallop design, with an upstanding collar and bodice of black lace. Swags of glittering jet overhung her bosom and hemmed the gown, so she faintly clicked when she walked.

  She carried an ebony walking stick. Her black velvet bonnet was frosted with silver and dull red ostrich plumes, with a crimson velvet cluster of roses nestling near her left temple.

  “I am so relieved, Nell. Since I left Paris, I have had Allegra to look after. Now, Allegra is consorting with the Queen at the palace, and Godfrey is doing something dull with the bankers. I know all my chicks to be safe and am now free to track the Golem to his lair.”

  ‘Today?” I asked with some dismay. “With me?”

  “Of course with you! Isn’t wonderful to be tramping the Prague streets together again?”

  “Perhaps,” I said dubiously, “but you forget that you and I seldom went out unaccompanied by the King. Our small tramping expeditions were only to the royal doctors’ infirmary and the gypsy woman you revisited yesterday.”

  “That may be true,” Irene admitted, “but now we are free to tramp where we will, unimpeded by royal escorts and castle carriages. I have just the route.”

  She drew me to a stop beside a green grocer’s shop to rummage in her reticule for a much-crinkled piece of paper.

  “What is that?”

  “My scribbled notes, and a crude map I made. Yesterday’s venture had more purpose than an en masse palm-reading. I gathered testimony of the Golem’s progress on the two other occasions on which he was seen.”

  “There are more?”

  “Only the two, except for your and Godfrey’s encounter.”

  “Three times. It does rather sound like something large and brutish is running loose in Prague.”

  Irene leaned near and dropped her voice to a stage whisper, which is to say that she attracted the attention of everyone within fifty feet. “Perhaps it is the Frankenstein monster. That would be a find, Nell, would it not?”

  “Not,” I begged to differ. “I hope this Golem proves to be as much fiction as the Frankenstein creature.”

  “I don’t!” Irene avowed. “Such a turn of events would ruin my investigation. See this map: I have marked the sites of his appearances with an ‘X’.”

  “Most original.”

  “Here is U Fleků,” she went on. “You notice the appearances cluster around the Old Town and the Josef Quarter.”

  “The likely area for a Josef Quarter creation to haunt.”

  Please don’t use such a negative word, Nell.”

  “Which one?”

  “Haunt. I am convinced that the Golem is as solid as you and I.”

  “Then I am glad that we make your pilgrimage to find him in daylight. I wonder that you did not drag me out by the dark of the moon.”

  She eyed me askance, her amber earrings shaking indignantly. “Once we have verified the Golem’s lair, such an expedition may be necessary. Now, we need to see.”

  “How fortunate for me, although I really do not want to see any more of the Golem than I did.”

  “I’m afraid that we must. He is the key to this entire business.”

  “He is a medieval legend, Irene, as Faust is. Sometimes, I fear, you take the unreal reality of the stage too seriously.”

  “What do you think you saw?”

  I pondered. “A large person, moving quickly yet clumsily. Were it not for the... unearthly... quality of the face, I would feel confident in saying that Godfrey and I encountered an exceptionally bulky drunkard.”

  “What was unearthly about the face?”

  I was loath to revisit my memories of that night, but Irene was a skilled interlocutor. I found the scene taking shape again in my mind.

  “The face was... unformed, rudimentary. I sensed where eyes, nose, mouth were, but did not see them fully formed. I saw a... melted... face, Irene.”

  She bit her lip and lifted her eyebrows, an expression that would have not flattered anyone else, but was enchantingly provocative in her.

  “I am afraid that you describe with admirable exactitude the unfinished face a giant clay figure come to life would wear. Most disturbing, Nell, I don’t mind telling you, for I trust your observations implicitly: I could not have described the Golem’s face better myself, had I seen it.”

  “Then we do truly track the Golem?”

  “It would seem so.” She drew her reticule cords taut, then waved the crude map under my nose. “The Rothschilds will not be encouraged to hear that the rumors are true. Whatever the outcome, we will follow the trail to its logical conclusion.”

  So we walked on.

  As charming as the streets of Prague’s Old Town were, I could not help glancing worrisomely down every passing byway. Many of the streets could not tolerate more than six persons across. In such shaded, narrow and winding passages, marked by archways linking wall to wall, one could well envision an unearthly being on the prowl.

  The citizens of Prague came and went in broad daylight. A baker’s vendor brushed by, his tray half-full of pastries dusted with poppy seed. The local population much treasured the black poppy seed, but I could not see a seed-strewn roll without being reminded of mice droppings.

  Buxom lace-capped Bohemian countrywomen passed us, their ample shawl-covered figures bursting from checked gowns and embroidered aprons.

  We walked further into the heart of Old Bohemia, until we crossed into the Josef Quarter. The area was named after the Emperor of Austria, Franz Josef, who had given the Jews in the ghetto their full civil rights some decades before.

  Such largesse was unusual in Europe, and, perhaps for that reason, several Jewish synagogues thrived in this small area, the most significant of which was the New-Old Synagogue near the bend in the river Vltava.

  In the crowded, narrow way, Irene pulled me into a nearby butcher’s shop so she could further study her rough map by the light of the window.

  I gazed at the foreign meat goods, at strings of fat sausages, some dark as blood, others pale and pink. Unknown spices seasoned the shop’s warm air. Garlic rose from among them like a thread of French incense.

  The entire scene was rather repulsive, but Irene was frowning at her map and would not be distracted.

  “If there is a location around which all the manifestations center,” she muttered, pointing a gloved forefinger at the much-abused paper, “it is here. I can find no other terminus.”

  “How far is ‘here’?” I wondered.

  “Only a couple of streets over.”

  “Then why don’t we go and see what sits on that site?”

  Irene turned unusually baffled eyes upon me. “Because I know what sits upon that site; lies, rather. That is the old Jewish cemetery.”

  A thrill crawled my corset strings. “We saw such a place on a previous ramble in Prague. Graves, thousands of graves, all piled one atop of the other.”

  She nodded. “The Golem was said to have been both created and uncreated in the attic of the old synagogue, but when one thinks of him rising to walk again, the vicinity of a such an ancient graveyard for his kind seems perfectly appropriate.”

  “Then we do speak of a ghost!”

  Irene tucked her paper back in her reticule. “A most substantial one, I fear.”

  We walked on, with purpose now, with a single goal in sight.

  The Jewish cemetery in Prague was renowned even years before I first glimpsed it. I might say that it was perversely renowned, for to see it is to kn
ow that we do indeed pass as the grass which springs up and is cut down. Apparently, little land was allowed the ghetto for burying its dead. The result over decades and centuries was that grave was set upon grave, up to twelve denizens deep, and the headstones came to thrust each other up like ingrown teeth. The effect given was of the dead bursting forth from their allotted six- by-two-foot spaces, of headstones pushed up and askew, of a whole City of the Dead elbowing one another for, er, breathing room, of man’s inhumanity to man, alive or dead, reaching bizarre proportions.

  Yet amongst such chaos, amongst such pathetic yet oddly dignified and touching memorials, one monument stood solid, level and unaffected by the raw jousting for space around it. That was the tomb of Rabbi ben Loew, the purported father of the Golem.

  Irene had pointed out this impressive stone structure on our previous sortie into old Prague. Now we stood before it again, more awed than ever by the power of the Golem legend. At least, I was more awed. I can never say for certain what Irene is thinking, because she is an actress and hides it well when she wants to.

  “When we were last here, Nell, I mentioned that to this day people place notes upon Rabbi Loew’s tomb, seeking some boon or the other. Is that not suggestive to you?”

  “Yes. Hope springs eternal.”

  “Beyond the need of humanity to see past its own mortality.”

  I thought. “The rabbi’s tomb is a sort of post-office box between living and dead.”

  “Exactly! And why must we restrict the correspondence to between the living and dead? Why not between the living... and the living?”

  I turned to stare at my friend’s triumphant face. “A message center, you mean?”

  She nodded slowly. “I suggest that we examine some of the slips of paper that have been left recently.”

  “Irene... that may be blasphemous, to trifle so with the dead, and the living’s hopes. Certainly it is an invasion of privacy.”

  Her mouth settled into a grim line. “Sometimes one must invade privacy and even trifle with blasphemy to find the truth.”

  We advanced together on the tomb, a solid stone affair somewhat higher than our heads.

  As we neared, the truth of the custom showed itself. Small white flakes of paper had been affixed to it by weighted stones.

  “These petitioners believe that the rabbi himself will look upon their offerings,” I objected. “We must not violate their expectations.”

  “And if a wrong is being committed in the dead rabbi’s name?” she answered instantly. “Have we not an obligation to reveal it?”

  “Yes! But you cannot know for sure until you violate the crypt.”

  “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Yes, but what word did you use—?”

  “Violate—?”

  “Most dramatic, Nell, and most in character, but, no, that other telling word, so wonderfully melodramatic.”

  I considered. “Crypt?”

  “The very word! Crypt. Oh, it smacks of pyramids and mummified pharaohs, of speaking ravens, forgotten mists and the divinely decadent dreams of Mr. Edgar Allen Poe. Crypt. Yet this is not a crypt, Nell; it is a tombstone. Why did you call it so?”

  “I don’t know! It looked... like a crypt.”

  “How does a crypt differ from a tombstone?”

  “I don’t know! I suppose... one can walk into a crypt, and one cannot enter a tombstone.”

  “Ah!” cried Irene, in rapture. “So simple. So obvious.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “Oh, you need not beg anyone’s pardon, least of all Rabbi Loew’s, whose grave site you have just saved from a dastardly desecration.”

  “I have?”

  “Indeed. I was ready to rip every message from its surface, and read it. Now I think such a course is uncalled for.”

  “I should hope so!”

  “Now, it is much simpler. We must return by the dark of the moon you mentioned earlier, Nell, and dig it up!”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  FIT FOR A QUEEN

  We returned to the Europa to find that Irene’s scheme to desecrate the rabbi’s tomb would have to wait: catastrophe had run rampant among our associates.

  First, the majordomo intercepted us in the lobby with an urgent message: we were to repair immediately to Godfrey’s room. Such news did not leave time for our usual sedate route of stairs.

  “I cannot say that I am surprised by such a summons,” Irene admitted as we were whisked upward in the new and rather terrifying lift like trapped mice in a cage. “I am surprised that you are included in the invitation.”

  Before she could explain that cryptic uttering, the car came to an unsettling stop and the attendant drew open the gilded grill. We hastened down the long carpeted passage to the room in question.

  Our knock was answered instantly. We were relieved to see Godfrey standing there, as hale, handsome, and hearty as ever. He politely stepped back from the door, but did not invite us to enter. As we gazed into the chamber beyond we could see why.

  The room thronged with massive floral offerings on stands and in urns and vases, enough to soothe the self-regard of a Sarah Bernhardt. Huge stands held great showy blooms of coral gladioli, blue hydrangeas, purple iris, copper-and saffron-colored asters... all displayed against blades of background greenery as aggressive as swords.

  The heady scent of a hundred jousting blossoms suffused the air. Irene regarded Godfrey with a look that asked all.

  He answered it. “I did as you suggested, much against my better judgment. I sent the estimable Tatyana a small bouquet in thanks for her hospitality of yesterday.”

  “A small bouquet,” Irene repeated, “but apparently potent.”

  He shook his head and spread his hands in bewilderment. “A nosegay of no particular worth or significance.”

  “What was it?” I asked, for I am especially fond of flowers.

  Godfrey turned his harried expression on me. “Only what I should send any lady whom I wished to thank: tea roses, Sweet William, and Parma violets.”

  “Parma violets?” Irene was beginning to sound unsympathetic. “Those are my favorite flowers.”

  “That is why I thought of them,” he said. “I am not accustomed to sending flowers.”

  “Apparently, she is.” Irene ventured into the room, sniffing arrangements as she went, rather like a suspicious cat.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Godfrey added.

  “There’s more?” Irene turned against a background of lavish blooms.

  He gestured the to desk, which was barely visible between two enormous fanned arrangements of iris.

  Beside a tattered pile of ornamental wrapping paper stood an exquisite box formed from inlaid woods of such exotic color and pattern that they seemed be painted on.

  Godfrey went over and lifted the top of this treasure— to reveal a rarer prize within, something that gleamed pale silvery gray and sparkled with stars of inset diamonds.

  Irene recognized it instantly. “A Fabergé egg. How profligate of her! I must interrogate Nell as to the specifics of your interview. What a peerless beauty! I mean the egg, of course, not the donor.”

  Irene elevated the bijou on its golden stand so that we could all appreciate its gleaming enameled surface.

  “Certainly Tatyana is not hiding her Russian connection,” she said. “Speaking of hiding, where is—”

  Her fingers tested the egg’s golden encasement until I heard a click, then the liquid notes of a lovely melody. The upper part of the egg snapped open to reveal a pair of animated bejeweled doves, made from baroque pearls, billing and cooing with mechanical industriousness.

  Irene looked less than enchanted. “Tatyana’s influence in St. Petersburg is sinisterly significant; this toy has arrived in less than twenty-four hours. Unless... she meant it for another and changed her mind.” She throttled the mechanism to a stop by shutting the curved enamel doors. “Did either of you recognize the melody?”
>
  Godfrey and I exchanged a blank glance. Music was not a strong point with either of us.

  “The principal aria from La Cenerentola. You do remember, Nell, that I sang the role of Cinderella in my La Scala at my debut.”

  “Yes, but I never heard the music.”

  “I would let you hear the entire selection now, but I am not quite in the mood.”

  Irene delicately replaced the jeweled egg on Godfrey’s desk, as if it were something that might bite.

  “I cannot explain—” he began.

  “Oh, I can explain it,” she answered swiftly. “I simply do not care to. Did any message accompany this unparalleled generosity?”

  “Only a card suggesting that she looked forward to seeing me at the castle reception on the morrow.”

  “And so she shall,” Irene decided.

  “You recommend that I attend? After this?” Godfrey sounded dubious.

  “Of course. We’ve all been invited by the Queen, not the King. Now the King’s mistress underlines the invitation. You have proven successful beyond dreams in your assignment. Why would I suggest that you abandon the playing field now?”

  Again Godfrey’s and my glances crossed in silence. Irene was being far too magnanimous for one of her temperament.

  Godfrey cleared his throat. “Perhaps because the... extravagant Tatyana seems to have contracted a... an interest in me.”

  “Why should she not? You are eminently interesting. Of course you will go to the castle tomorrow, and see her. But I do think—”

  We waited—how else can I put it?—with bated breath. I am most displeased by my lack of original expression, but then this scene was very out of character for all of us.

  “I do think,” Irene repeated airily, snapping a lush purple iris from its stem and thrusting the blossom into her hair, “that you should escort Lady Sherlock to this affair.”

  “But—” Godfrey began, dumbfounded. The entire charade had been constructed on the notion that Godfrey and I were total strangers to Irene and Allegra. “How shall I explain the connection?”

  “You will not have to explain anything.” Irene’s voice was growing taut. “I will instruct Madame Tatyana on how things stand. With my usual subtlety, of course; or, rather, with Lady Sherlock’s.”