After a light dinner of ris d’agneau Provençal avec this and that for Barnett and an omelet avec smelly cheese for Tolliver in the Café Figaro around the corner from the hotel, which reminded Barnett once again that the English, for all their other virtues, can’t cook, the mummer took off to renew his acquaintance with les méchants d’antan. Barnett, lingering over his cassis, decided that now was as good a time as any to begin his own quest. The journey had been tiring, but the air of Paris was invigorating, and the memories that came flooding back to him at his outdoor table, the very one where he had spent countless hours in those bygone days, were almost overwhelming. Old friends: journalists, artists, novelists, poets, playwrights, perpetual students; earnest intellectuals to a man and, yes, to a woman, solving the world’s problems and trying to figure out how to get next month’s rent. Was it really eight years ago? He had half expected them to be waiting, frozen in time, to appear ambling down the street or popping from a doorway, to join him at his table.
Benjamin, mon ami, it is good to see you. It has been too long.
It must be—no!—eight years? It can’t be. You haven’t changed not a bit.
Benjamin, Benjamin—I heard you had gone to Constantinople. For so long? It must have all the delights of the other world to have kept you away from Paris! Oh, London, I see. But—London is so cold. And the British—they are so cold.
Since no one from his past appeared, from doorways or otherwise, he was left to sip his cassis and ponder. What was wanted was information, and he knew just the sort he would be looking for, but he had only the vaguest idea of where to find it. Professor Moriarty’s thesis was that the madman, whoever he was, came from France, and thus the plot had originated in France. There were other places in the world where they spoke French, but only in France was the enmity against Britain strong enough to have spawned a plot of this complexity and expense. Ergo it was in France that traces of it might be found, and if it originated in France, then it probably came from Paris.
Barnett took out his pocket notebook and reexamined the notes he had made during the journey. Presumptions: The killer was recruited for this job because he looked sufficiently like the prince to fool at least anyone who didn’t know the prince personally, and because he was a killer—that is, he had previously shown some interest in and prowess at the murder and gruesome dissection of his victims. So somewhere in France—assuming Moriarty was right—there should be some record of a tall, thin, aristocratic-looking homicidal maniac.
Where to look?
“It is usually futile to speculate,” the professor had said, “when you don’t have all the facts, but if there’s no way to assemble the needed facts, a bit of speculation might at least point you in a favorable direction.” The professor had ventured, admitting that it was a step into the dark, that the trace of the killer might be found in the demimonde—the world where the faux prince would have found his first victims. If he had aimed higher, among respectable women, the outcry would have been huge. The city—or whatever area of France in which he perpetrated his horrors—would have crept about in fear, and the headlines in les journaux would have spoken of nothing else for weeks. If he had merely attacked random women in the streets, whether streetwalkers or the bourgeoisie, the resulting panic would have been the same, as witness the impact of Jack the Ripper on the streets of London a few years before.
So his victims, Moriarty surmised, would have been women—or men—who took men home for fun and profit and who had a flat to take them to, since whatever happened didn’t happen on the streets. It was estimated, by the authorities that estimate such things, that there were well over ten thousand such women in Paris, and if on occasion one got sliced up the flics would not be eager to call attention to the event.
There were several possible sources of information about these women: the doctors who treated the various ailments common to such women, the police who kept an eye on such women, the reformers who went among the ladies of the evening to entreat them to turn their footsteps from the paths of sin and vice and spend their days knitting and starving to death in a genteel and ladylike manner, and the women themselves, if they could be enticed to talk. Les filles de joie told their customers what they thought the men wanted to hear, and it would be difficult to elicit from them the secrets that they whispered and shuddered at among themselves.
Barnett pulled the gold pocket watch from his vest pocket, and his eyes went to the motto engraved on the face before he clicked it open. Tempus fugit non autem memoria: Time is fleeting but memories remain. The watch had been given to him by the widow of a British officer who had died in the massacre at Khartoum some five years before. She said that he’d be doing her a favor by taking it, as the watch, with that motto, was not what she chose to remember her husband by.
It was a bit past ten o’clock. Barnett rose, threw some coins on the table, and headed in the general direction of Pigalle, where the night’s activities were just beginning and a man could find a friend at a reasonable price. Or, often, merely a kind word, a meal, and a place to sleep.
Three hours later he returned to the hotel, having resisted temptation in its manifold forms and learned nothing of any use. Perhaps in the morning something would suggest itself. He lay in bed tossing and turning fretfully for perhaps a full thirty seconds before sleep overtook him.
* * *
At nine the next morning, feeling very virtuous for having managed to shower, shave, and dress before noon, he headed downstairs to find some quiet nook where he could have a spot of breakfast and a café au lait or two and read a morning paper.
As he rounded the final bend in the staircase he came upon a man, or at least the tall, thin, angular back of a man, dressed in good Scottish tweeds and an air of ineffable correctitude, accosting the concierge at the front desk, and heard the unexpected words, “My name is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes.”
Barnett paused.
“Send a boy up to Monsieur Benjamin Barnett’s room, s’il vous plaît, and tell him I await him in the lobby.”
“I shall have Monsieur Barneet informed of your presence,” the concierge agreed.
“Fine. I shall sit over there.” The tall man pointed to one of a pair of overstuffed chairs in the corner and proceeded to cross the lobby and sit.
For a moment Barnett wasn’t sure what he should do. Holmes and Moriarty were, to put it politely, not the best of friends. What was Holmes doing in Paris? Was Barnett once again to be accosted and charged with being a minion of the professor in some undefined nefarious scheme? Had Holmes suddenly appeared to put some barrier in the way of Barnett’s efforts, not understanding what was actually happening?
There was nothing to it, Barnett realized, but to confront Holmes and see what he had to say. Barnett couldn’t go skulking around Paris for the next few days avoiding the man and at the same time trying to do his job. He put on his best nonchalant expression and strode across the lobby. “Well, Mr. Holmes, what an unexpected pleasure.”
Holmes rose. “Ah, there you are,” he said. “Good morning.” He extended his hand.
Well, at least it wasn’t to be open warfare. Barnett exchanged a firm but brief handshake. “What on earth brought you here,” he asked, “and how did you know where to find me?”
“Easily explained,” Holmes said, waving Barnett to the seat next to his and sitting back down. Barnett noted that the detective was thinner than he remembered, and his face was drawn, as though he had not been eating well.
“I returned from the little task that has occupied me for the last few months,” Holmes told him, “and determined that I would relax in Paris for a fortnight before getting back to the chores of London. I sent a cable to Dr. Watson to inform him of my reemergence and enquire as to the state of things at home. An hour later—an hour later, mind you—I received a response from my brother, Mycroft.
“The speed of the response was enough to tell me something extraordinary was afoot. My brother is noted for his quickness of mind, but
not for his fleetness of foot, and somebody had to do a bit of rushing about to get the reply out that rapidly. Not to mention quite a bit of prodding of the telegraph company.”
“I would think so,” Barnett agreed, having had some experience with the overseas cable office.
“As for the cable itself—” Holmes took the form from his pocket and thrust it at Barnett. “Extraordinary.”
Barnett read:
SEE BENJAMIN BARNETT STAYING AT HOTEL PEPIN LE BREF HE WILL EXPLAIN DO WHAT IS REQUIRED WELCOME BACK MYCROFT
“Extraordinary,” Barnett agreed.
“At first I thought it might be some scheme of Moriarty’s, so I cabled Mycroft, ‘What was the name of our dog?’ He replied—within the hour, mind you: ‘What dog don’t be asinine.’ So I knew it was truly from Mycroft.”
“Someone might have guessed that you didn’t have a dog,” Barnett suggested, just to be troublesome.
“True,” Holmes admitted. “It was the ‘don’t be asinine’ that convinced me.”
“Ah!” Barnett said.
“So I eagerly await your explanation,” Holmes said. “Have you, perchance, left the service of Professor Moriarty, who I assume is still safely in durance vile?”
Barnett opened his mouth and then closed it again. Holmes had been told to ask him something—but Barnett didn’t know just how much of the story he could, or should, tell the eager consulting detective. “I think—” he began.
“Monsieur Barneet—Monsieur Barneet—” The chubby concierge came plumping across the lobby waving a sheet of paper like a signal flag in front of him.
“Yes?”
“This gentleman wishes to see you,” the concierge said, coming to a stop and pointing a finger at Holmes.
“Really?”
“Indeed. And”—he offered the sheet of paper—“this cable has come for you.”
“Ah!” Barnett said. “I thank you.”
“It is of nothing.” The man nodded and returned to his station behind the front desk.
The telegram was brief:
MY BROTHER SHERLOCK IN PARIS WILL CALL ON YOU TELL HIM ALL MYCROFT
Well. That simplified things.
Holmes jumped to his feet and pulled at Barnett’s sleeve. “It seems that you must have quite a tale to unfold,” he said. “Come, let us go in search of breakfast, and you can tell me everything over a couple of croissants and some potted confiture de fraises. And a coffee or two, of course. Or do you prefer tea? No—surely coffee.”
Barnett laughed and followed Holmes out of the hotel lobby. “Is that one of your famous deductions?” he asked.
“Famous deductions? Really?” Holmes looked bemused for a moment and then responded, “No. Merely that you are a Yankee. I, myself, have a preference for coffee, as it happens. I find it stimulates the mind.”
They found seats outside a café that called itself Les Deux Puces and had tables stretching for yards along the street on both sides of a small black door. The croissants were warm and fresh, and the crocks of sweet butter and assorted jams were naive and unprepossessing but held hidden pleasures.
The story of the murders and Moriarty’s involvement took a while to tell, and Barnett was on his third cup of café au lait by the time he was done. Holmes let him run through the narrative once without comment and then went slowly back over the details to clarify what could be clarified and to get the whole story fixed in his mind.
“Hmmm,” Holmes said. “‘Feet, feet,’ eh? Small porridge on which to base a meal, I would say.”
“You disagree?” Barnett asked sharply, loyally unprepared to have anyone challenge the professor’s conclusions.
“No, no. I quite agree. French they are and therefore France it is. And a tremor anywhere in France is felt somewhere in Paris.”
“Exactly what the professor thought,” Barnett said.
Holmes frowned at that, but then looked up and tapped on the table with his forefinger. “So your little friend Tolliver is off scouting the underworld? He has, so I am given to understand, quite an extensive knowledge of the underworld.”
“So he claims,” Barnett agreed. “It is certainly true in London.”
“Ah!” Holmes commented. “Not surprising. After all, he is in the employ of Professor Moriarty.”
Barnett stared at him steadily for a moment and then said, “You also, I believe, have an extensive knowledge of the London underworld.”
Holmes leaned back and smiled. “A touch, Mr. Barnett,” he said. “A distinct touch.”
They were both silent for perhaps a minute, and then Barnett said, “Well, Mr. Holmes, what do you propose we do?”
“What were you planning to do before I arrived?” Holmes asked.
“I had some nebulous notion of approaching the, ah, ladies of the demimonde hereabouts and asking whether they or any of their friends—”
“Had been murdered and artfully dissected by a homicidal killer?” Holmes finished. “It won’t do, you know.”
“When you put it that way,” Barnett said, “I’m forced to agree. So, I repeat, what do you propose we do?”
Holmes laced his fingers together under his chin and twaddled them restlessly, staring off into space. “I know,” he said finally, “of one person who may be able to help us. If she’ll talk to us on this subject at all.”
“Who might that be?” Barnett inquired.
“She is known as l’abbesse grise,” Holmes told him. “Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”
“The gray abbess?” Barnett shook his head. “Never. Surely I would have remembered even a mention of anyone with such a title.”
“Ah, well,” Holmes said. “She is someone whom the streetwalkers of Paris turn to when they’re in trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“With the flics, with their clients, or money, or losing their domicile, or”—he waved a hand in the air—“whatever. She prefers to work in the shadows, but an occasional mention of her does surface in the mundane world. Which is how I happened to hear of her. I met her about two years ago, in relation to a case involving a rather highly placed Englishman who found himself in a spot of trouble. Curiously it transpired that I had met the lady before she took holy orders and I’ve had occasion to see her several times since.”
“So she is really an abbess?” Barnett asked.
“Indeed so. She is Sister Superior of the Paris chapter of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mary Magdala, an order of the Moldavian branch of the Catholic Church. One that the Church proper does not recognize, as far as I can tell. Although things occasionally get a bit murky when it comes to what the Catholic Church does or does not recognize.”
“Sister Superior?”
“For some reason she dislikes the title ‘Mother Superior’ and refuses to use it. She works from a small building on rue Montrose that I believe used to be what we would call a ‘gin mill.’ I’m not sure of the French equivalent.”
“I’m sure they have a word for it,” Barnett said.
“They have a word for everything,” Holmes agreed.
“From this former gin mill,” Barnett speculated, “she guides young ladies of the street away from their paths of sin? Teaches them knitting and good works?”
“Quite the contrary,” said Holmes. “She makes no attempt to turn the young ladies away from their chosen vocation. Although if any of them wish to take up some other form of gainful employment, she is ready to help. She dispenses helpful advice when asked and material and financial assistance when needed, although where she gets the money from is a question, since she doesn’t solicit funds for her good works in any way that I have been able to discern. Most of the nuns of her order are former women of the streets.”
“You’ve investigated her?” Barnett asked.
“I was curious. As I say, I had known her before.”
“Well. Shall we go visit her?”
“Finish your coffee and I’ll get us a fiacre.”
The vehicle that responde
d to Holmes’s hail was an aging one-horse, two-passenger fiacre with a collapsible top. They settled into the lumpy seat cushions, and Holmes gave the cocher directions.
As they rounded the corner at the rue la Fayette, the top of the great tower of M. Eiffel came suddenly into view in the distance, poking through the morning mist. “My God!” said Barnett. “So that’s what it looks like.”
Holmes squinted up. “It’s what the upper third of it looks like, anyway.”
“Quite a sight,” Barnett said.
“You haven’t been here since they put that thing up?” Holmes asked. “What do you think?”
“Damn! So that’s the tallest man-made structure in the world.”
Holmes nodded. “So I believe.”
“It’s awfully bare—skeletal.”
“That, I believe, was the idea.”
“Progress!” Barnett snorted. “Now, I believe, someone somewhere will find it necessary to construct something even taller.”
“Probably,” Holmes agreed.
The fiacre took another turn, and the top of the tallest man-made structure disappeared behind a hotel. Ten minutes later the cocher pulled his horse to a stop. “We’re two blocks away,” Holmes said. “I don’t think she’d like to have carriages pulling right up to the door.” He handed the coachman a few coins, sprang from the vehicle, and headed down the sidewalk, with Barnett a few steps behind.
The building was a grimy three-story affair that fit in well with its neighbors. Its only distinguishing feature was a sort of turret that began at the second floor and ascended past the roof, ending in a conical top with a pronounced tilt like a dunce’s cap. Holmes rapped at the door, which was opened by a short, stout middle-aged woman in a severe gray dress who glared up at him.
“Oui?”
Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) Page 18
