The Adventuress (v5)

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “From a number of correspondents, then,” Godfrey said.

  “Or a single one who traveled widely,” she amended.

  “When did your father die?” Godfrey asked Louise.

  “Fifteen years ago. It was a horrid scandal. That is why I must... erase myself somehow. I cannot face Uncle’s disappointment and rage. Once I reached a certain age, he had his man accompany me upon the most innocent of errands, as if he suspected me of wrongdoing. Now that I am quite literally marked, I am worth no dowry. No man will wed me. I am as utterly ruined as if I had in truth followed in my father’s profligate footsteps!”

  Louise broke into soft sobs.

  “Nonsense, my girl.” I was surprised to hear myself speak. “You must not despair. I myself was orphaned before I was twenty, and my father, although a righteous country parson, had not a relative to whom to commend me, nor a pence in his pocket—save what he had collected from the parish poor box. You must convince your aunt and uncle of your innocence; if they spurn you, you can find work. Independence does wonders for a woman.”

  Louise gazed at me in horror through a shining glaze of tears. “Employment?”

  I was about to sing the praises of self-support when Irene interrupted. “Miss Huxleigh is certainly right; you must convince your guardians of your innocence.”

  “But how?” the silly child wailed.

  Godfrey was ready with a concrete suggestion. “Continue your narrative. Who were these men who abducted you? How many? Where did the kidnapping occur? How was your uncle’s man eluded?”

  “Pierre? True, Pierre did not intervene.” Louise frowned, then rubbed her temples. “My head aches so. I remember little from the time I was walking in the Bois de Boulogne until I awakened in that horrible room, discovered my injury, and staggered to the street to find the river awaiting me. It shone like a broad gold-and- silver braid in the late-afternoon sunlight. I—I could not live in this condition. I ran into the water. Its cold numbed me, like the sheets of a December bed. I was sinking into icy, sweet oblivion when Monsieur Norton appeared beside me and kept tugging me back to shore, back to shame, kept pulling me away from the cool, silent river!”

  Irene rose and perched on the arm of Louise’s chair, pressing a hand on the girl’s quaking shoulders. “Shhh, my dear.” She eyed us, saying softly, “I questioned her delicately while I arranged her toilette. I am convinced that the tattoo was the extent of the men’s mischief, and further that they used chloroform to drug her, then dragged her into a waiting carriage.”

  “What of this Pierre?” Godfrey wondered.

  “Duped. Or...”

  “An accomplice,” I breathed.

  “It grows late, little one,” Irene whispered into the girl’s ear. “You must compose yourself and return home.”

  “Home? Never!”

  “Soon,” Irene insisted, “else our excuses for your unheralded absence will not ring true. We will say that you took ill upon the street. My husband and I drove you away in our carriage—for did we not do just that this very evening?—to our quite respectable residence in Neuilly, where you did not recover until now, when we promptly brought you home. The maid has dried and freshened your clothing. You can return home as if nothing has happened.”

  “But, but—” As more than one had done before her, Louise fell speechless in the face of Irene’s relentless will. “I am utterly altered, Madame!”

  “Tut, tut!” Irene brushed a tendril from her charge’s cheek. “I have a marvelous tinted cream that will obscure your . . . um, interesting adornment. Some women willingly submit to the tattoo artist’s needle, did you know that? Perhaps not very respectable women, but some who are quite famous.”

  “You, Madame?”

  Irene’s forefinger closed Louise’s gaping mouth. “Not... as yet.”

  “Irene!” I managed to choke out.

  “But I have heard—” At this, Irene leaned close to Louise’s ear and whispered something. The girl’s eyes grew as round as her mouth had been.

  “You are certain, Madame? She?”

  “Indeed. So there may come a day when you will flaunt your most interesting souvenir of an adventure. But for now, you can easily hide it from even your maid, if you take care.”

  “Why should I perform such a charade when a letter may come any day to my uncle announcing my alteration?”

  “Why? Because we are going to get to the bottom of this puzzle. Ah, that is an English turn of phrase, don’t look so bewildered; we are going to—”

  “Find the villains,” Godfrey said acerbically, with the look of a Sidney Carton who has just seen his guillotine looming.

  Irene adapted his phraseology without hesitation. “Find the villains and—”

  “—decipher the arcane meaning of the tattoo,” I put in.

  “Yes, of course, as Miss Huxleigh says. We must find out why a proper young Frenchwoman was seized from the Bois de Boulogne and forcibly tattooed. And then we will—” Irene paused, out of inspiration, as were we.

  “Cut the cackle,” a low voice suggested from the front parlor.

  Irene took the cue and stood. “And now we must cease talking and act! Sophie will attend you.”

  She nodded to the maid hovering in the passage. Our lost lamb moved to the doorway like a sleepwalker ordered to do so by the sandman himself, so persuasive were Irene’s voice and manner when she cared to make them so.

  “One last thing,” Irene instructed the girl. “You must tell us your uncle’s family name, else we cannot take you home.”

  Louise paused, cobalt shadows etched beneath those dark, doelike eyes. “Montpensier, Madame.” Then she turned at Sophie’s curtsy and followed the maid upstairs.

  Godfrey stretched his legs as if uncramping them from a long and uncomfortable journey. “We must take her home tomorrow. Montpensier. Good God, Irene! Montpensier was one of Napoleon’s marshals of France. The uncle must be a grandson.”

  “Excellent.” Irene collapsed into the vacated armchair, fatigued but aglow with satisfaction. “A first family of France. This puzzle is beginning to intrigue me.”

  Chapter Nine

  THE FRENCH CONNECTIONS

  Casanova, released from his cage for a few moments of freedom, gnawed the purple grape clutched in one leprous foot.

  (Although I am no longer of the opinion that piano “legs” require sheathing from the view of the innocent, I am utterly convinced that all parrots should wear spats. My motivation is not the public morality, but aesthetics.)

  The large bird was perched, like Mr. Poe’s raven, upon a bust—one of Madame de Maintenon, the royal governess who became a royal mistress and then a queen, two commendable occupations out of three—atop the bookshelves. From his aerie he observed that plaster lady’s imposing bosom, while far below, Irene perused “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,” most of them obtained on expensive expeditions to Left Bank bookstalls.

  Since we’d returned Louise to her home, we’d searched our most exotic volumes for the possible meaning of the tattooed letter. Irene’s operatic education had given her a taste for collecting the obscure and dramatic, so we pored through books of ancient lettering forms, volumes on the arts of cipher and code, guides to the mysteries of Rosicrucians and Masons, compendiums of ancient maps and fabulous lost treasures, of arcane oriental tattooing practices, of sailors and the sea, and—I don’t doubt—of cabbages and kings.

  Irene sneezed. The parrot immediately produced a respectable imitation of the sound. Dust swirled in the lamplight, motes lifting like desert dervishes at each turn of a heavy parchment page. “Goodness!” she said. “I had no idea that ‘toade spittal’ was such a frequent ingredient of love potions. No wonder these elixirs work only in grand opera!”

  I looked up from the eighteenth-century bible I studied. I held that the odd, tattooed letters were taken from an illuminated religious manuscript and when identified, should point to a particular passage that, if it did not solve the mystery,
would at least enlighten us spiritually.

  “What manner of book are you reading?” I asked Irene.

  “A magician’s grimoire—oh, the French have a way with a word: grim-wahr!” she enunciated breathily. “Think what dread formulas may lurk within.”

  “ ‘Gibberish’,” I said. “That is the literal translation of the word ‘grimoire’.” Of course I pronounced it “grim-oh-ire” despite my best efforts. “You will not decipher these tattoos in a book of magic.”

  “Nor you in a holy book,” Godfrey added as he strolled in, his forefinger in a volume as thick as mine. “I remain convinced that the letters are taken from the motto on a coat of arms.”

  “O, S, E,” Irene mused. “You think each letter begins a word in some Latin phrase? ‘Omni Summa’—whatever. But it is impossible!” She banged her book shut and looked more closely at Godfrey’s reference. “Coats of arms thrive in every country.”

  Godfrey turned his volume to reveal its title: European Coats-of-Arms, Their Origin, Evolution and Significance, with Illustrations of All Major Family Modifications.

  “Oh!” Irene moaned, burying her face in her hands at the extant of the search. At that moment Sophie entered, curtsied and announced a visitor.

  “At eight in the evening?” Godfrey asked.

  Sophie, prepared for this objection, produced a visiting card that caused Godfrey’s eyebrows to leap for his hairline when he read it. He told Sophie to admit the caller.

  “Well.” He thumped his book atop an unsteady pile of volumes. “This should prove interesting. My dear le Villard.” He stepped to the threshold to greet a dapper man of olive complexion.

  Monsieur le Villard’s palms brushed the sides of his pomaded hair—so black and shiny it resembled patent leather—before he bowed to Irene and myself in turn.

  “You have found us mired in our homely evening pursuits, Monsieur,” Irene said demurely. “Perhaps we could remove to the front parlor and send for refreshments.”

  “No, no!” The man began to pace, then realized that he was not in his own domain. He leaned forward to inspect Godfrey’s face. “But, my friend, you have taken an injury!”

  Godfrey laughed deprecatingly. “An encounter with a... rose bush while I was looking for the, ah, cat.”

  At that moment a raven-black shadow lofted down from an upper bookshelf: the elusive Lucifer seeking quieter sleeping quarters. We all jumped as if startled by a jack-in-the-box, then laughed in shared embarrassment.

  “Yes,” the Frenchman said, “even a cat may look at a queen, but more frequently it will lead its owner astray. May I recommend keeping a bird instead? Wonderful pets! Fascinating.”

  We paused. What was the best method of pointing out Casanova’s eminent presence to a detective who had failed to notice it? Monsieur le Villard was blind to our quandary as well. He took an elegant step, then whirled to confront us. One small hand made a fist that smacked the palm of his other hand. The French words rolled off his tongue so briskly that I had to listen closely to catch all he said.

  “I have come, Monsieur, Madame—?”

  “Mademoiselle.” Irene nodded toward me.

  Monsieur le Villard stroked the thin strands of his jet-black mustache much like a cat grooming its whiskers after a bowl of cream. His next bow was profound. “Mademoiselle.”

  I was not impressed. He hastened on: “I have come—” he repeated, then lifted a graceful hand. “But I am being impolite. I have not thanked you, Monsieur Norton, for your aid in the matter of the will.”

  “You have made progress!” Irene divined. “Please draw up a chair, Monsieur, and share our table at least, if you will not eat or drink.”

  “Progress, yes!” He beamed at each of us in turn after he sat down. “The English consulting detective is what we Parisians call a man of many parts, a genius with an eye to the minutiae, a precision that would well endow a mathematician. I am translating his dissertations on various subjects so that the French detective service may once again come to the forefront of international crime- solving; our reputation has sagged a bit since the days of Vidoq. For this opportunity alone, I am most grateful, Monsieur Norton.”

  Another bow, this made while in a seated position. I was growing quite dizzy from so much bobbing and scraping.

  “However”—one more furtive brush at the lip adornments, which rivaled a mandarin’s for length—“I call not merely to express my gratitude. I fear—how can I say it but with brutal plainness? The matter that brings me to you at this inconvenient hour is the Montpensier tragedy.”

  We each sat upright as if inflicted by an outbreak of starch. Had Louise defied all sense of self-preservation when she’d returned home and revealed the forced imposition of a tattoo upon her person?

  “Montpensier?” Godfrey repeated dully.

  “Tragedy?” Irene echoed.

  Casanova and I exercised enough restraint to remain silent.

  “Most tragic.” le Villard answered Irene’s query first, perhaps deferring to the woman, which Frenchmen have made into a national pastime; perhaps merely addressing the issue that most concerned him. “The young lady, I fear, is gone.”

  “Louise? Vanished?” Irene looked indignant.

  Godfrey sank back into his chair, his voice flat as if he were not surprised. “Dead, then?”

  Monsieur le Villard nodded soberly.

  “Well, which is it?” I could not refrain from asking testily. Three such long faces at least owed me some clarity.

  “Mademoiselle?”

  I fixed the French detective with my governess’s most gimlet eye. “Is the young lady dead, or merely vanished?”

  “Both, I fear.”

  “How can that be?”

  “An apt question, Mademoiselle—?”

  “Huxleigh,” I snapped, relieved to use a good English word that made no bones about its pronunciation—to me, at least, although some Americans insist on pronouncing it “Hux-lay” instead of “Hux-lee.”

  Monsieur le Villard straightened at my intonation, adding paltry centimeters to his height. “Mademoiselle Montpensier is both dead... and gone. You will understand when you hear my account. You must pardon me, I cannot reveal many details. It is a shocking case, a girl so young and so pretty.”

  “But what has happened, for God’s sake?” Godfrey demanded.

  Irene stretched a hand to his over a pile of books. Godfrey was obviously shocked at hearing that the girl he had rescued less than two days earlier was now truly lost. Irene’s gesture, however, signified more than comfort; it called for caution. I saw that at once, if Godfrey was too overcome to notice.

  Our position was delicate, to say the least. Louise’s aunt and uncle, like the French police, knew nothing of the recent attack upon her or of her suicide attempt. Mentioning these sad facts now was not only futile, but possibly dangerous. We three could be held responsible for withholding the information, for not notifying her relations. Monsieur le Villard’s “tragedy” might indeed become one for all of us. I saw regret suffuse Irene’s face as well as Godfrey’s, and felt its sour bile in my own throat.

  “How... did she die?” Godfrey asked.

  The detective shook his gleaming head. “By water.”

  Godfrey nodded heavily. “That is why you recovered no corpse.”

  “Indeed.” le Villard bit his lip, which set his mustaches to quivering. “A sad scandal for an old and reputable family. I had the dreary duty of questioning the aunt—”

  “Questioning the aunt?” Irene had risen and was leaning over the detective as if she interrogated him. “Honoria Montpensier is suspect? Of what?”

  “Why, of murder, Madame. I am not insignificant in the Paris detective service. I do not attend mere accidental drownings.”

  “It was not an accident?” Godfrey’s look of relief would have confused even the most optimistic bearer of bad news.

  “No, my dear sir. I tell you, the circumstances are such—were cleverly arranged as such—that th
ey might be taken as accidental, but there is the aunt’s presence, of which the woman will not speak, and her utter silence to all questions. Most suspicious. Grief, of course, has driven the uncle to a terrible state; he is barely coherent. I tell you, the family is ruined!”

  “But the reason, Monsieur,” Irene said. “What is the aunt’s reason for murdering her niece?”

  Le Villard shrugged, a fatal gesture, for Irene could tolerate indifference no more than she could swallow stupidity. “I will find the reason, and when I do, it will be revealed as tawdry and feeble, as all such motives are.”

  “In the meantime,” Irene said a trifle icily, “I hope you have no objection to our visiting the family and offering condolences. We have only just met, yet we feel—”

  “Of course. And I also must ask you and your husband about your chance encounter with the young Louise only days ago. Did she strike you as fearing for her life?”

  Considering the circumstances, we three remained blankly silent.

  “No,” Irene finally answered. “Nothing she did or said even vaguely suggested... foul play.”

  “No doubt it is some kind of domestic cancer that eats at the inner soul of a family,” le Villard diagnosed. “Such maladies seldom manifest themselves outwardly. So you have no information that might aid in the course of my investigation?”

  “Nothing that would aid your murder investigation, no, Monsieur,” Irene answered for all of us, rising as a queen does when an audience is over.

  The French detective was admirably suggestible. He stood promptly to take her hand and kiss it lingeringly. Le Villard had not noticed that Irene’s denial addressed only the assumption on which his investigation was based. No one could shred the truth finer than Irene and still avoid an outright lie. Such occasions always promised swift action on her part, and I found myself anticipating what it would be.

  Once the maid had shown out the detective, Irene began to pace the chamber. “Such blind arrogance! He obviously considered our interrogation a mere formality. Monsieur le Villard may be translating the works of Sherlock Holmes, but he has learned nothing of deduction, or of human nature. Madame Montpensier no more did away with young Louise than I did!”