I swallowed and was silent. I could not fault Godfrey’s logic.
Chapter Twenty
ACCOSTED IN SUITE
Irene and Godfrey did not come down for breakfast the following morning. I occupied myself by taking an unescorted stroll along the promenade. At least I was safe from discovery, as Mr. Sherlock Holmes had last seen me in the guise of Irene’s elderly housekeeper in the St. John’s Wood villa in London.
I did not take a parasol. The morning was fine, with wild parakeets bursting like rainbows from the trees and bushes. Their flagrant colors—bright green and blue—made me momentarily homesick for Casanova’s feathered coat of many colors, although his raucous comments were not missed.
An elderly woman in violet half-mourning, whom I’d noticed before on my strolls, was feeding the gulls and pigeons. I paused to discourse with her on the attractions and depredations of birds and their suitability to a wild state. She was most interested to learn of Casanova’s offensive habits and language, and sympathized heartily on my trials with the creature.
I did not return to the hotel until almost noon, pleased with having entertained myself and with my delicacy in recognizing my friends’ need for sober withdrawal at news that Mr. Sherlock Holmes lurked in the neighborhood.
Their third-floor rooms were still quiet. When I knocked, the door edged open slightly. French maids are famous for disrespecting closed doors, either by blithely opening them or by leaving them unlatched for the next innocent party to blunder through.
I entered to find the parlor deserted and stood perplexed. Had Irene and Godfrey gone out for an early luncheon? Or had they risen at all?
A burrowing sound issued from the bedchamber, a hasty rummaging rustle that reminded me of an animal or a child getting into mischief. I approached the door, which was also ajar, my footfalls muffled by the heavy Turkey carpet.
I heard a sharp intake of breath, a moment’s silence, and then again the fevered rustling. At that moment I appreciated the figure of speech about being on the threshold of a decision. Should I enter, and risk an embarrassing intrusion? Should I retreat, perhaps permitting a sneak thief to steal at his leisure? Should I remain as I was, poised like a statue on the threshold?
A renewed burrowing noise decided me. I swung the door wider and stepped through. The bedchamber was shrouded in that lazy, secret semi-darkness that exists only when one knows that bright sunlight is pressing against the closed curtains.
The bed had not been made and, much as I disapproved of this state, I was relieved to see that it stood unoccupied as well as disheveled. Unfortunately, the room itself was not unoccupied. I stared at the swarthy man who, half bent over an open bureau drawer, stared back at me.
“You trespass, sir!”
He gazed at me uncomprehendingly, frozen in a posture I can only describe as being “caught in the act.” As a governess, I had often apprehended children so. My recourse then had been stern reprimand. I saw no reason not to apply the back of my tongue to this intruder while I hastily contemplated how to make my escape.
“You are in the wrong room, sir.” I edged toward the open door.
“Not likely,” said he in rough-spoken French, stepping toward me.
Even in the dim light I could see matted black hair escaping a filthy wool cap and the crooked line of a scar along his equally crooked nose. An aroma of the sea— or rather, of fish—assaulted my nostrils and mixed uneasily with the perfume of Irene’s favorite Parma violets.
In backing away, I caught my heel in the rug. I fell against the door, which in turn fell shut, immuring me in the darkness with the thief.
He was on me in a thrice, his fingers loosely circling my wrist, his face bowed to snarl into mine. “I’ll thank you to keep quiet.”
“Oh, I will be quiet,” I whispered with some irritation. “But I must know what you are about on the premises.”
“Lifting a watch,” the fellow said with a grin, elevating Godfrey’s pocket timepiece by its long golden chain. The man’s breath reeked of onions, and I averted my face.
“Aren’t we nice? You’ll not say anything to anyone about me?”
I shook my head vigorously while shrinking against the door to avoid any contact with this disreputable person’s clothing. At first I might have suspected Irene in disguise, but there was no way that her magical touch with theatrical paint could extend her height by several inches or enlarge her hands. This man had the aspect of a powerful street bully.
“Promise?” A yellowed eye rolled in that shadowed, brutal, unshaven face with its white-streaked mustache.
“On my honor. But please go! You don’t want to be caught by my friends, do you?”
“Caught? A slim chance that anyone catches Black Otto at his work,” he cackled. “A good thing that the room is dark and you haven’t had a good look at my face, or—”
He released my wrist as if he found me as unappetizing as I did him, and slouched to the window.
A billow of French brocade puffed toward him. Then the drapery was snatched back, revealing a figure limned against the violent daylight.
“Irene!” I shrieked in warning and, I admit, relief, for I had grown to expect her mastery of any situation.
The thief never hesitated. As Irene moved into the room, he entwined her in a grotesque mazurka against the bright windows, lifting her as if she weighed no more than a fashion doll and swinging her around. I shrieked as Irene whirled in the man’s grasp, her feet flying above the floor.
Another screamed with me: Irene. “No!” she shouted. “No, you idiot, put me down!”
“Never, Madame!” he boldly shouted back. “I am an unrepentant ruffian who will never free you for as long as I live.”
Such a threat was too much for me. I seized a parasol leaning by the door and fell upon Irene’s captor, raining blows of split bamboo and ruffled silk upon his shoulders and head.
The uproar, if anything, increased. Irene called “No, no, no!”
The man cried “Stop!”
And I—admonishing him to be “Away!”—continued my assault.
Somehow, in the melee we three became tangled with the draperies. An awful crack resounded, followed by a deluge of brocade and dust. I found myself foundering in the fallen fabric, coughing. Near me, Irene was gasping, “Stop, I beg you!” And laughing.
So was the thief. Laughing. And coughing.
In the blazing light of the denuded French windows, Irene surfaced from the billowing brocade with tears furrowing her cheeks and her face convulsed with merriment.
The blackguard in our midst was neatly swaddled by the curtains, but when I raised the broken handle of Irene’s parasol for a final blow, she stopped me. She did not stop laughing, however.
“I fail to see what amuses you, Irene. We have captured a desperate villain rifling your rooms!”
“My parasol!” She pointed. “Poor thing!”
I felt it unbecoming of her to display toward an inanimate object the concern she ought to have felt for me.
Irene, immune to my feelings, was burrowing in the hummocks of fabric, pushing them aside to reveal our catch. The same swarthy, sly, unappealing face I had glimpsed in the shadows emerged into broad daylight, along with a grin as wide as a window.
“Nell,” Irene said, proceeding to brush matted hair from the brute’s grimy forehead, “you have given Godfrey quite a fright.”
“Godfrey!?” The man’s evil grin only widened. Despite the use of lampblack on a pair of teeth, I saw that indeed some semblance of himself lurked under the surface. I was tempted to employ the parasol once more to eliminate a grin obviously at my expense.
“I surrender,” Godfrey offered meekly in his normal tone. “Had I known what a tigress you were with a sunshade, I would have revealed myself sooner.”
I levered myself upright with the shattered parasol, refusing all aid with the conviction that only the indignant can muster.
“Really! You are a pair of schoolchildren, two of a s
ort. Scamps of the first water.” I slapped dust off my hands and sneezed, ardently. “What has this charade accomplished, save that the draperies have had a good dusting?”
“At least,” said Irene, rising, “we know that Godfrey’s disguise was sufficient to deceive a friend.”
“You take liberties with that description of our relationship after this incident,” I said sternly. “What is the point of making Godfrey resemble a pirate?”
He stood in turn, gingerly, having borne the brunt of the curtain rod. “So I can go to the harbor and investigate among the sailors, and also elude Sherlock Holmes,” he said as if by rote. Obviously, the guise was Irene’s idea.
“That ensemble would not gull an albatross. And we do not even know that Mr. Holmes has the slightest interest in our activities. The rumor of his presence may be just that. And why do you want to make inquiries in the harbor?”
Godfrey jerked his head in Irene’s direction. '"She says it is necessary.”
“Irene says much is necessary when it is merely intriguing to her.”
“Well.” Ignoring our revenge upon her, Irene began dusting off Godfrey’s worn pea jacket. “I must say Godfrey makes a dashing old tar. Appearances before the bar are superb preparation for thespian endeavors. I’m satisfied he can prowl the waterfront bistros tonight with a rolling gait and a squint and be perfectly safe among the rough sort to be found there. And my survey of the balcony shows Black Otto can come and go discreetly. At least—” Irene eyed me with rebuke “—I am not attempting to assume this role myself.”
“Thank God.” I turned to survey the damage. “Will the hotel be able to reinstate these curtains by nightfall?”
“That matters little,” Irene answered irrepressibly. “Godfrey will be out ’til all hours of the morning with his fellow old salts. We shall not need the privacy of curtains until tomorrow.”
“A most unfortunate accident with the parasol,” Irene told the hotel manager that afternoon. “It snapped as I was walking by. I caught hold of the curtain to keep from falling, and you see the rest.”
The manager, a slight man in a morning coat, blinked primly behind his spectacles. It was difficult to imagine the delicate hand that Irene waved so airily bringing down the massive curtain rod and yards of brocade. As Delilah, she was believable; as Samson, not.
He shrugged, his position requiring not belief, but discretion. “Madame is correct. The curtains cannot be replaced until tomorrow. I will move you and your husband.”
“Oh, no, Monsieur. We will stay here.”
“Without draperies?”
“For one night, why not?”
The pomaded head so like a sleek black seal’s shook dolefully. Soulful seal’s eyes grew resigned, and he agreed. Visitors to Monte Carlo were known to indulge in high jinks of a volatile nature. It was not a hotel manager’s place to question his guests.
When he had gone, Irene breathed a sigh of relief. “Godfrey will be coming back early in the morning to these very French windows. I do not want him returning to an empty suite, or finding a zealous hotel employee tidying up.”
I went to the windows and pushed one open. A mock balcony rose waist-high. “Irene, our room is on the third story.”
“Godfrey cannot enter the Hotel de Paris at an ungodly hour in his sailor guise; he would never be admitted. He will have to climb.”
“But four floors! And the ground floor alone must be twenty feet high.”
“That’s why men wear trousers: so they can climb when necessary. I have already surveyed the route. He will manage it; more, he will consider it an adventure.”
“And where will we be while Godfrey is slinking through the seamy bistros in the harbor?”
“We will have a picnic in the parlor.”
“A picnic in the parlor?”
“Don’t echo me; you sound like Casanova. It will be like old times in Saffron Hill. A loaf of French bread, a jug of country Burgundy, and thou.”
She took my elbow to steer me into the parlor, where indeed a large wicker basket ordered from the hotel kitchen waited upon the Aubusson rug. Irene lifted the lid with the prideful expression of a stage magician revealing a lady, or a tiger, within.
“How can we consume such a great quantity of food?” I studied the array of breads, meats, mustards, fruits, cheeses and the mentioned bottle of wine—two bottles, in fact.
“We will have a long evening waiting for Godfrey,” Irene explained simply. “And he will be hungry when he returns, as we will be ravenous for news of his expedition.”
Chapter Twenty-one
LADIES LUNCH, GENTLEMEN CAROUSE
“What is this?” I asked Irene sometime after midnight.
“What is what?”
“This brown mess in a tin.”
“A famous French delicacy.”
“Then it must consist of something disgusting; I have learned that much about French cuisine.”
“Pass it to me, then. Pȃté de foie gras is too precious to waste on the stomachs of the idiotic English, whose cuisine features disgusting things like pig-brain puddings, and is boring to boot.”
The hour was too late and the level in the first wine bottle too low for me to argue. Irene and I reclined against the tapestry bergères, the remnants of our feast spread on a gros-point ottoman. Our feet were slippered and our hair lay loose over our shoulders. I had returned to my suite to don a combing gown before joining Irene for our informal indoor picnic. A lavender satin robe billowed around her like a frothy wave.
I felt a schoolgirl again and suspected that we both looked it. We had not enjoyed so casual yet pleasant an evening for years, not since we had shared quarters in London before Irene’s opera career drew her to the Continent and her unfortunate adventures there. Certainly we had not had an opportunity for such a satisfying conference since her marriage to Godfrey. What Godfrey would think of us when he returned, I could not guess.
The Meissen clock on the mantel tinged once for the half hour. Irene lay her head against the gilt chair arm and stared dreamily into a half-full goblet of Burgundy.
“One could write a monograph on the national characteristics of clock chimes. English clocks are no-nonsense and spout grand basso booms, like Big Ben—dong, dong, dong. French clocks are coquettes, their tones light, amusing, almost teasing. Ting. There. And ting again.”
“What of German clocks?”
“Oh, they are strict, like the English clocks, but they break a simple ‘dong’ into smithereens. Clicks and nudges, preparatory rurrrring gears. Much marching of the hands into position and then, harumph—bang bang bang.”
“What of Swiss cuckoo clocks?”
“The same, only gone quite mad.”
“And Italian clocks?”
She closed her eyes. “Sonorous. Dignified. Long, sustained notes. Mellifluous.” She practically sang the last word and I laughed, for her description of each country’s clockworks had summarized the national character. The stage of any land had lost a premiere performer with Irene in retirement. The notion saddened me, or perhaps it was the uncustomary wine.
“What of American clocks?” I asked.
She considered. “I have not heard one in a decade. All business, bustle, and as bright as new brass. Full of self-important alarm and as ready to broadcast danger as to intone such mundane practicalities as the time. Fire! Flood! Foreigners! Indians!”
“Indians? Really? In New Jersey?”
She laughed. “Yes, but not since the French and Indian wars. Only cigar-store Indians nowadays, Nell, not the genuine untamed variety. Oh, sometimes I wish I had gone West instead of East.”
“There are no opera houses in the American West.”
“Not so! Culture is creeping its way out West. European performers are in demand, even on the frontier.”
“You are not a European performer,” I pointed out.
“No, I am not even a performer at all anymore.”
“You will always be a performer, as I will
always be a parson’s daughter.”
“You think so?” Irene smeared a clot of the vile brown stuff on a cracker and crunched, oblivious to the crumbs that studded her dressing gown.
“Your life is a performance.”
“One could say that of anyone. We each are handed our prime roles at birth. Penelope Huxleigh: Parson’s Daughter, modest and conventional, with few expectations but many surprises waiting.”
This nettled me, although I could not say why. Perhaps because it was true. “What of Godfrey?”
“Godfrey Norton: Wronged Woman’s Son, hardworking and honorable, law-abiding, conventional and extraordinary.”
“And yourself, Irene?”
Her eyes shone with mischief and more, a kind of melancholy. “Irene Adler: Itinerant Adventuress, actress and stage manager of other lives, independent and unconventional.”
“You define Godfrey and myself by our parents, yet you stand alone. What of your antecedents? Have they had no influence?”
“I do stand alone,” she said firmly. “I am my own creation and no one’s creature, as the King of Bohemia discovered to his discomfiture, if not to his sorrow.”
“Oh, he was sorry, Irene. If you had seen him at the last, when he and Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson came to St. John’s Wood to find you gone. He cast himself about like a bewildered, lost and angry child. I do not think he had ever before failed to have anything he truly wanted.”
“You did not tell me that Willie was so humbled!”
“You did not ask me,” I said drily. “You had ears only for what Mr. Holmes said and did.”
She was silent for a moment. “And if I had not been gone, Nell? What would the repentant Willie have done? He would have gloated at recovering my one poor weapon against his royal force; he would have relished my besting. He might even have repeated his dishonorable offer, as a sop to a desperate and broken woman. If I had lost, rather than won, His Highness would have dispensed a fatal generosity, the kind such men always offer when they wish to kill a woman with kindness. Or for it.”
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