Now her impatience was turning to frustration. “Thank you, Sherlock. But I speak a little French myself.”
“Do you think it a suitable name for a used bookshop?”
“As suitable as any other, I suppose,” she answered.
I concurred. “Now, look at the illustration.”
She did as I asked. “Yes, a nightingale perched on a key.”
“Exactly,” I said. “And there you have it.”
She hesitated, as if I were going to say more. When I didn’t, she shrugged. “What do I have?” she asked. “I don’t understand.” However, before I could offer the ingenious answer, she continued. “Frankly, Sherlock, I don’t know how John put up with these kinds of cryptic maneuvers for all those years. What kind of partner are you anyway? I mean no offense, but . . . you ask me one question after another, when you might just tell me why we’re here and what this place is.”
I was prepared to concede the point.
However, Mrs. Watson wasn’t finished. “I used to wonder how John kept from punching you in the nose back in the Baker Street days. Oh, I was merely the landlady, serving tea from time to time. Still, I observed how you used your intellect with John.”
“And how was that?”
“You used it in a . . . well, a superior manner.”
“I’m afraid I used it that way with everyone.”
“Yes, but John wasn’t ‘everyone.’”
“That’s true.”
“I always knew he admired you,” Mrs. Watson continued, her tone softening. “Everyone did, does . . . But for him to have been so patient with you. For so long. Admiration alone is not enough. Nor was the privilege of accompanying you on your adventures. Nor the chronicling of them. Nor even the profit from the publications, which he never expected you to insist he keep entirely for himself. Money didn’t matter to him. So what does that leave? Only this. He must have truly liked you, Sherlock.”
“Of course he did,” I answered without hesitation. This was not how I had envisioned our arrival here at Le Rossignol, the next important step in our investigation. I had looked forward to revealing to her marvelous secrets about this place. Nonetheless, here on this dark, deserted street, the topic of conversation had changed, seemingly of its own accord. Of course, I knew it was actually Mrs. Watson’s doing, facilitated by the natural capacity of her sex to maneuver conversation. So I attempted to acknowledge her premise in a straightforward manner, hoping we could then return to the critical matters at hand, to our raison d’etre. “John liked me just as I liked him.”
But she was not finished.
Instead, she looked at me as if searching for something specific. Then her expression warmed. “I know you liked him, Sherlock. Truly, I do. But, perhaps, the way you liked him was not quite the same as he liked you.”
I wasn’t sure how she meant this. “Look, are we working on a case here or aren’t we, Mrs. Watson?”
She smiled, ignoring my provocation. “I like you, Sherlock. I always have. Otherwise, I’d never have put up with you as a tenant. Surely, you gave me grounds to evict. And I’m not saying John wasn’t right to like you as well. Why, I’d go so far as to say he was right even to have loved you, despite your . . .” She stopped, searching for a word.
I waited.
“Despite your . . .” she repeated, still searching for the word.
“My arrogance?” I suggested.
She shook her head.
“Egotism?”
She considered longer this time, but again shook her head.
“Pride?”
“Oh, that’s one of the Seven Deadly Sins,” she observed. “Let’s not get carried away, Sherlock. You’re not that bad, whatever you may think. I’m just talking about your capacity for . . . oh, what you’re doing to me here tonight with all these blasted questions.” Her eyes brightened when she discovered the word she wanted, “Fastidiousness. Yes, your fastidiousness!”
I nodded in acknowledgement.
“Is ‘fastidiousness’ a word?” she asked.
“It is,” I said.
She turned back toward the window. “So, please explain to me in as straightforward a manner as possible how this shop’s window, featuring nothing of value, figures in the case, how this shop can be at once both never open and never closed, and, finally, what the name of this strange business and the supposedly apt image of this nightingale means, if you please.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The book shop’s name, Le Rossignol, and accompanying image of a nightingale perched on a key, alluded not only to a bird but, more significantly, to a slang term popular among burglars in the last century for a key that would open any door, what we commonly refer to as a “skeleton key.” In this unusual instance, “the nightingale” that unlocked the door to this shop was no specific key, but any key, insuring that the establishment could be entered at any time by anyone with knowledge of what lay inside. Of course, few possessed such knowledge.
Indeed, it may be that I alone was ever so informed.
“Go ahead, Mrs. Watson, try your key,” I instructed.
The shop neither sold books nor entertained customers but, instead, served as a repository of some of the most sensitive secrets and historical artifacts of the French state, specifically, the numerous unpublished cases of my great predecessor in the art of detection, C. Auguste Dupin. Eight decades earlier, he had investigated a case involving Edgar Allan Poe. I had read many of Dupin’s cases, but not this one, as it had held no specific relevance.
“What key?” Mrs. Watson asked.
“Your hotel room key.”
She gave me a quizzical look.
“Just try it,” I instructed.
A moment later she turned to me with wonder. She’d unlocked the locked door. “But how did you come to know about this, Sherlock?”
“Let’s go inside,” I said.
In the early 1890s, after I’d gained international fame, I received a caller at Baker Street who was then about the age I am now; he requested from me no professional consultation but, instead, had come to share the existence of the used bookshop on Rue des Saints-Péres, as well as its secret purpose and means of access. As you may have surmised, the visitor was C. Auguste Dupin. Naturally, I was pleased to receive so celebrated a figure. Dr. Watson was away that day, which was surely no accident, as Dupin was deliberate in all his undertakings. His handshake was firm, but his health was clearly quite poor. I was forty years his junior; however, he spoke to me as an equal, though, being French, he could not resist asserting that if the word “detective” had existed in common usage in the middle years of the last century, the years that coincided with his most famous investigations, he’d have gained international fame at least equal to mine. Of course, I knew it was more than mere vocabulary that explained our discrepancy in the public’s imagination, and I humbly asserted as much. There was, for example, his anonymous chronicler, who, unlike my dear Dr. Watson, had permitted only three of Dupin’s cases ever to come to print, entrusting the rest of Dupin’s fine work to colorless newspaper reporters. Dupin waved away my assertion, revealing with considerable pride that his young friend and chronicler had been the temperamental and brilliant poet Charles Baudelaire. I was impressed. Further, I found enticing Dupin’s revelation that Baudelaire actually had written more than a hundred heretofore unknown accounts of his friend’s investigations, none of which held up to the poet’s own obsessive standards for publication, but all of which were secretly archived at Le Rossignol. Dupin then crossed into discourtesy by asserting that even the worst of Baudelaire’s accounts was far better written than any penned by my “little military friend, Watson.” I attempted to defend Watson’s writing but was quickly reminded of the uselessness in opposing the egotism of any genuinely brilliant Frenchman. Still, don’t misunderstand. I was honored by his presence. He was both as brilliant and as decadent as depicted, and our conversation that day in my rooms could be the stuff of a fine West End production. What mat
ters here, however, is that Dupin offered me access to the secret, unpublished accounts of all his cases, even those that had resulted in failure. He had established a trust, for perpetuity, to attend to taxes and general upkeep of the shop, which was never open for business. Further, he explained that, in the more than two decades since the early death of Baudelaire, he had met no one deserving of his spiritual legacy, which, despite his reservations about what he described as my perverse combination of “overblown public fame and absurd personal monasticism,” he bestowed upon me.
He was dead of a malignant tumor a few months later.
In the years since, I had accessed Le Rossignol on a few occasions; none, however, since the end of the Great War.
“This shop could use a good dusting and a bit of airing out,” Mrs. Watson observed as we entered, closing the door behind us.
The air was stale but not fetid.
Whoever served as caretaker of the shop, doubtless unaware of the secrets it contained, took admirable precaution against vermin penetrating the premises. The place was as effectively sealed as an Egyptian tomb.
“What, exactly, are we looking for?” Mrs. Watson asked.
About then, I experienced a strange moment of disquiet, as I had never before felt in this place. Nor anywhere else. It was not danger but was ill-defined and disturbing nonetheless. A chill. Not of death. Worse. Of passing. Of obscurity. Worse yet, of negation.
I looked around. Nothing had changed here since my last visit.
So I let the sensation go.
“If this shop contains so many secrets,” Mrs. Watson asked as we moved through the freshly stirred motes toward a large set of bookshelves labeled True Crime, “then why did Dupin make access so simple that literally any key would open the door? Is there a secret passageway or secret panel, or some other impediment in here?”
I shook my head.
“A safe?” she continued.
“No safe.” I removed a small electric torch from my jacket pocket and shined the light on a bookshelf. “You can see that all the books are alphabetized by author. Quite conventional.” When I got to the Bs I heard her gasp.
Baudelaire, The Mystery of M. Paget.
Baudelaire, The Murders in the Musée d l’Orangerie.
Baudelaire, The Sacrificial Lynx.
And so on . . . Two entire shelves of bound, handwritten manuscripts, each an edition of one.
Mrs. Watson continued, incredulously, “So, there’s no guard, no real lock on the front door, no safe inside, and no attempt to hide these treasures whatsoever, even to the point of categorizing and alphabetizing them to make access easier?”
I moved my light across the shelves, looking for a particular title.
“What kind of madness is this?” she inquired.
I turned to her. “Have you read ‘The Purloined Letter’, one of the three authorized accounts of Dupin’s cases?”
“Yes, it’s quite famous.”
I said nothing, allowing her to come to the conclusion herself.
After a moment, her face brightened. “Of course!” she said. She summarized aloud the pertinent elements of the story, perhaps to better jog her memory, “The police know with certainty that a stolen letter of incalculable value is hidden in a particular room, but for all their efforts they can’t find it. Not in the vents or the plumbing, inside the furniture or behind framed pictures. Is that the one, Sherlock?”
I nodded.
She continued. “But when Dupin is called in to consult, he finds the letter almost immediately. How? By looking for it right out in the open. The least likely place of concealment . . . that is, hidden in plain sight.”
“Yes, and that is the self-referential premise for Dupin’s own hidden depository.”
“Ingenious,” she muttered.
I came at last to the title I’d been seeking: Baudelaire, The Death of E. A. Poe.
With the manuscript in hand, I led her from the book shop, “locking” the door after us. I doubt it has been opened since, except by its anonymous caretaker. Mrs. Watson will likely never have reason to return. So, one day very soon, I will be obliged to choose a suitable keeper of Dupin’s secret archive. Or perhaps I should leave it to fate, entrusting the knowledge to whoever finds this manuscript.
Mrs. Watson and I exited the shadowy Rue des Saints-Péres and returned to the bustling, brightly lit Boulevard Saint-Germain, starting back in the direction of our hotel; however, we got only a few steps before she stopped me on the pavement, and asked, “Can’t we just dip into one of these cafés, find a quiet corner, and have a look at The Death of E. A. Poe now? It’s all so . . . exciting!”
Actually, I had planned on reading the material alone when we got back to the hotel. Whatever I discovered of pertinence in the text I’d relate to her later. But, now, I saw this would disappoint her.
Once, I wouldn’t have allowed her hankering to dissuade me from my plan. But having so recently been accused of fastidiousness . . .
“Good idea, Mrs. Watson,” I said at the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
She smiled delightedly.
So we turned into the nearest café, Le Deux Magots. Though noisy and more crowded with money-slinging American expatriates than I’d have preferred, we found an open table in a darkened corner where I thought it unlikely we’d be disturbed; there, we settled beside one another, like a retired British couple on holiday, and ordered drinks, she a Dubonnet cocktail and I a brandy.
I opened the bound, handwritten manuscript.
Her aged, red-rimmed eyes brightened. My heart beat a little faster too.
Mrs. Watson read Baudelaire’s pinched but elegant handwriting on the title page aloud.
I turned to page one.
Mrs. Watson’s French was not as good as mine, so I translated aloud the account of the investigation of the death of E. A. Poe:
One morning at Paris, upon awakening from a languorous slumber, I took my ablutions, breakfasted lightly, and was enjoying what had become my regular twofold luxury of silent rumination and a meerschaum, with my companion C. Auguste Dupin, in the disheveled library at our residence at No. 33 Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain. Curling eddies of smoke oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber when I glanced up from my book to my friend. I could see from his posture that a deep reverie was upon him. Possessed of analytical faculties far beyond those of any man I have ever met, Dupin was fond, almost to the point of obsession, with enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics. Much as a muscled man exults in physical ability, delighting in exercises that call his strength into action, so glories the analytical mind in whatever moral activity disentangles uncertainties. My friend’s solutions to enigmas often exhibited a degree of ingenuity that appeared to ordinary understanding to be supernatural. His results, which seemed to be the result of this uncanny intuition, were actually brought about by the very soul and essence of method.
I stopped reading, turning to Mrs. Watson. “Dupin’s chronicler Baudelaire went on to do fine things as a poet, but, in these nonfiction accounts, he lacked the facility of our John when it came to composing compelling, popular prose.”
She grinned. “Yes, John had a gift.”
“Indeed.”
“Nonetheless, read on,” she requested.
I scanned through the next half dozen paragraphs, which elaborated upon the moody reveries that overcame Dupin during periods of investigative quiet. According to Baudelaire, Dupin responded to such periods not with the anxiety from which I suffered but with what seemed an altogether more Gallic response, “giving the Future to the winds, slumbering tranquilly in the Present, and weaving the dull world around him into dreams.” However, having met Dupin myself, I suspect he and I were not so different in our natural responses to the absence of formidable mental exercise, despite Baudelaire’s depiction. Rather, I believe our contrary responses to such lulls resulted from our respective choices of cure for what would otherwise be the same attendant melancholy. Quite famously, a solution of cocaine
served as my remedy, whereas I suspect Dupin’s choice tended more toward some variant of opiate. Regardless, Baudelaire’s description of the dreamy silence that he and Dupin shared in the house at 33 Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain carried on far longer than Dr. Watson would ever condone, which illustrates the indulgence one may expect when having a genius poet as one’s chronicler, so I skipped silently ahead in my perusal, turning pages until I came at last upon something of relevance to the narrative.
Just as we’d begun our luncheon, we were interrupted by two callers, one of whom occupied a position of such importance that we could not keep the pair waiting in the foyer until after we finished our fare, as we’d have preferred. We set our napkins on the table and made our way to meet them. The first of the two awaiting us in the parlor, which was comfortably provisioned with decades’ old furniture and was dimly lit by candles, as we habitually shuttered our windows during the day to repel the garish sun, was our acquaintance, Monsieur G——, the Prefect of the Parisian Police. Had he called alone, we’d have made him wait until we finished our fare. However, the second caller was of true interest, being a gentleman of whom we had heard but had not previously met. He introduced himself, Monsieur R——, ambassador to France from the United States of America. He complimented Dupin on the unusual green shade of his eyeglasses, though this may have been a politician’s mere crafty concealment of what was more likely a conservative disapproval and depreciation of the unusual. Whichever, we gave the ambassador a hearty welcome, offering an afternoon aperitif, which he declined in the disappointingly American fashion of claiming never to drink before this or that hour of the day.
The barmaid interrupted us to ask if Mrs. Watson and I required second drinks. Considering the sentence we had just read in the manuscript about declining drinks, we both opted not to disappoint, so we acceded to more liquor. Small sacrifice indeed.
Holmes Entangled Page 11
