Castle Rouge

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  She shook her head, disappointed. “Number five.”

  Quentin consulted map, cablegram, then map again.

  “Dorset Street. Mary Jane Kelly. Almost directly northeast of the Eddowes site, although a shuttlecock of confusing streets lay between them. Kelly? Wasn’t she the one that was cut limb from limb?”

  Irene nodded. “In the privacy of her room. The Ripper had all the time in the world and disassembled her like a Les Halles piglet.”

  “Now we have five points on the map,” I said, “and they still make no sense.”

  “Points on a map never make sense until they are linked,” Irene mused. “Quentin? You have puzzled over a map or two in your time.”

  He nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Four of the key sites are clustered to what I would call the left of center, three of them being locations of victims. They are Annie Chapman, the second…Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth…Catharine Eddowes, the fourth…and finally the Goulston Street graffito. Eddowes is the farthest point east of the four. But look how far west the first site, Nichols, is. All off by itself, as is the Stride site, yet Stride and Eddowes were attacked in the same night.”

  “And no straight, easy path between them,” Irene noted.

  “That and the graffito that night almost argue for more than one man,” I noted.

  “More than a James Kelly, certainly,” Irene said grimly.

  “Six sites,” I said, “if you count the Juwes graffito as a separate one. Four of the six to the left of center. There is no reasonable pattern. Just as Paris is laid out in neat geometry, thanks to l’Enfant’s elegant redesign, London remains a postmedieval jumble. Make sense of it if you dare.”

  My comment seemed to spur Irene to prove me wrong. She seized a pen from the letterbox, dipped it in a crystal inkwell, and used the edge of the cablegram as a somewhat insubstantial ruler.

  In a moment she had drawn a bold black diagonal line from the first murder site to the fourth. Spinning the cablegram edge, she drew a second diagonal line from the fifth to the third site. It was Nichols to Eddowes, Kelly to Stride.

  I could not deny it. Her lines created an giant “X,” just as they had in Paris.

  “Points on a map can be manipulated as ‘X’s into eternity,” Quentin objected. He had never seen the map we had drawn of the Paris murders, an “X” intersecting a giant “P.” This Chi-Rho symbolized the Christ figure, the very same marking we had found scratched in some of the Paris cellars and catacombs where the secret cult associated with Kelly had met.

  Irene nodded, grim-lipped, noncommital. She set the edge of the cablegram at the top of the map, on the second Whitechapel murder site, Annie Chapman’s final resting place on Hanbury Street.

  Next she spun the edge of the paper left, then right.

  “Where shall we draw this last, vertical line? There is no southern point to fix its axis. If I draw it straight down, it crosses the diagonal lines off center, creating an empty triangle between them.” She frowned, unhappy with the figure her calculations would draw.

  “If, however, I…cant the vertical line to the right, along the strong angled street lines of Brick Lane and Osborne Place…if I permit the vertical to curve slightly as in a cursive letter, the downward stroke intersects the two diagonals at their jointure and…and I have isolated above Whitechapel High Street a section of byways that makes the top of a ‘P’: Hanbury Street east curving into Great Garden Street and bounded on the bottom by Old Montague Street thence meeting Brick Lane to make a closed circle.”

  We stared at her construction of ink and lines, Quentin Stanhope and I. We consulted each other silently. He had not seen the same pattern laid on the map of Paris, as I had, but the resemblance was uncanny.

  Irene reached into the folder and withdrew another map, another city. Paris, with the Chi-Rho laid over it by Nell’s hand.

  “Good God!” Quentin leaned in with the sort of fascinated distaste that implied a literal body lying on the table. “The patterns are close enough to send chills up my spine. What kind of debased being would kill so savagely by the rigorous rules of geometry?”

  “The geometry is incidental,” Irene said, her voice muted, “as it is to most of life. The question is who would kill by a symbol of God?”

  I could think of only one answer, but did not say it for fear of sounding foolish, though Nell would never have hesitated to name names for a minute.

  The Devil.

  29.

  Game for Dinner

  At the present moment you thrill with the glamour of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt.

  —SHERLOCK HOLMES TO INSPECTOR MACDONALD, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE, THE VALLEY OF FEAR

  What a tantalizing dilemma!

  Would I rather have the hand of James Kelly with a clasp knife at my throat, or would I rather be the prisoner of the mysterious spy-mistress who called herself Tatyana? Perhaps I was facing both.

  I did not ask Godfrey to resolve my quandary.

  He had become quite grim after realizing that Tatyana was our captor. Though I breathed many prayers of thanks that it was not that madman Kelly who had darkened our door, I must admit that I found Tatyana intimidating. Godfrey clearly considered the Russian woman to be the greater foe, but he had never walked the path Irene and I had in Paris.

  While we were still engaged in debating the dangers of our situation, there came a knock on my door.

  Our discussion stopped while we gazed startled at each other. Tatyana surely wouldn’t have returned, knocking, where before she had ambled in unheralded like the Queen of the May (although it was now early June).

  Godfrey, of course, took matters into his hands and rose to answer the knock. I was momentarily disturbed that someone should witness Godfrey’s and my closeting and make unpleasant assumptions about his presence in my room. On reflection I concluded that it was quite natural for prisoners to conspire and only a demented mind would misconstrue our close association.

  Then again, Tatyana was clearly demented.

  While I debated with myself, Godfrey returned, leading a petite, brunette woman wearing the plain dark dress and servile white collars and cuffs of a personal servant.

  She curtsied to me, this dark-favored sprite, and spoke English with a French accent.

  “Madame Tatyana say that you will take care to dress for the dinner, and Monsieur as well. This are for you. Dinner at eight.”

  What I had taken for a pile of bed linens apparently was a gown. Of sorts. There was no point my spurning the things in the presence of the messenger, so I nodded to the long bench at the foot of the bed.

  “Thank you—”

  “Mignon.” Offered with another curtsy.

  She turned to leave.

  “And how long,” Godfrey asked, stopping her as if he held a pistol on her, “have you been with Madame?”

  “Been with?”

  “How long have you served her?”

  “Deux ans. Two year.” She held up a pair of fingers lest we still be uncertain.

  “In London, too, then?” said I.

  “Oui. Since Buda-pesth.”

  With that she curtsied again—apparently Madame Tatyana required frequent obeisance—and departed.

  “Well done, Nell!” Godfrey smiled for the first time since Tatyana had announced herself. “So our hostess was in London previously, and the French maid betokens a sojourn in Paris as well.”

  “What is a French maid doing in this forsaken castle?”

  “Apparently what she did in London and Paris. What has she brought you?”

  “Oh, I’m not even going to look at it. I am not going through any mummery for Tatyana’s benefit.”

  Godfrey had gone over to prod at the clothing. “It might be to our benefit, though, to appear as docile captives. I say, these look more like draperies than clothing.”

  “Revolting pattern. It reminds me of the Girl Who Trod on a Loaf in the fairy tale and sank down into Hell twined round with spiders and snakes an
d other crawling things.”

  “Ah, I see. The pattern is dragonflies and reeds, all in peacock blue and emerald green and gold threads. A costly fabric, to be sure.”

  “It looks like something barbaric she would wear herself, all the more reason I should shun it as if it were sackcloth and ashes.”

  “Perhaps not, Nell. Tatyana likes to pretend to elegance, even here. We may learn more by humoring her manias than defying them.”

  “You will wear formal dress, as she demanded?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? All my baggage was captured with me. Methinks a woman who imports a French maid to a half-crumbled castle in the wilderness has pretensions that may be turned against her.”

  “She certainly has too much time and money on her hands,” I grumbled, lifting the heavy gown. I might as well have been handling the carapace of some huge, exotic bug, I shivered so at the cold metallic touch of the glittering weave.

  “I don’t know how to dress my hair without my comb and brush,” I explained, “but I will try to do it up so as not to embarrass you.”

  “The entire point is not to enrage Tatyana. The more we play into her charade that we are her guests, the more we may learn how many henchmen she has brought with her.”

  “Perhaps they’re all as harmless as French maids.”

  “I fear not.” Godfrey glanced at my dimming window and consulted his pocket watch. “We have an hour. I suggest you do what you can before the daylight fades and you are dependent only on candlelight.” He paused on the way to the door. “Your injuries…you are able to dress yourself? I have assisted Irene. I can always do laces through a crack in the door.”

  “A most sensitive offer, Godfrey, but I believe I can manage by myself.”

  I did not mention that I had observed Tatyana before, by her account a former dancer with the Russian ballet. It had appeared to me that she habitually dispensed with corsets, as Irene did herself from time to time. I doubted that this heap of clothing would include anything so restrictive of movement. But of course I could not tell Godfrey that. It was best that gentlemen not be encouraged to speculate on the exact elements of a lady’s underlayments, no matter how dire the situation, even if they knew all about them, as apparently Godfrey, and Quentin, did.

  I found my face hot with shame as I untangled the garments.

  A camisole and drawers, but no corset. I glanced down at my peasant blouse, skirt, and wide, laced felt belt. Perhaps the belt would serve as a corselet beneath the gown. I would very much like to present Tatyana’s gown back to her with a much smaller waist than her own!

  Although I felt like a rabbit assuming a discarded snakeskin, I must admit that the fine silk and lawn of the borrowed linens were far kinder to my abused skin than the rough peasant weaves I had been wearing.

  If I ever got back to Paris…when we got back to Paris…I believe I would shock Irene by visiting Worth on the Rue de la Paix for some outrageously expensive fripperies.

  The gown was as I had expected: one of those Sarah Bernhardt, tartar-style robes banded in costly gold braid and held shut by a heavy brass and copper belt that would look magnificent in an Alphonse Mucha poster. I only thought what a fine weapon it would make unclasped.

  I had to light the candles from the flames we kept going in the fireplace. I stood before the mirror and reluctantly unbraided my coiled hair, a necessity that I had found deliciously unencumbering and practical.

  I gasped my dismay at the result of loosening them after several days. Every hair was crinkled like strands of hemp. I wore a snuff-brown haystack. How could I tame such a clutter without a comb?

  A discreet knock at the connecting door to Godfrey’s suite undid me.

  “Go away!” I burst out in panic.

  “What is wrong, Nell?” he called back, alarmed. “You are still alone?”

  “Yes. No!”

  That “no” brought him bursting into the room, looking for villains to engage.

  “It’s only me,” I said meekly from my corner by the mirror. “I am not a vain woman, but I do not know what I shall do with this dreadful hair!”

  He approached me gingerly, like a man well used to a woman at war with her own annoying image, as I suppose most women are. Except, one would think, Irene.

  He stood behind me in the mirror and leaned left and right to seek out my face amid this explosion of unbridled hair.

  “Why do anything at all with it?” he said at last. “You look like one of Burne-Jones’s medieval maidens, which seems oddly appropriate for the gown.”

  “That shows you what you know of women’s dress, Godfrey. We are not all actresses. I have not worn my hair down since I was sixteen. Only loose women and children do so, and I have no desire to masquerade as either one.”

  “Only loose women and children wear their hair down?” Godfrey mulled that. “An odd juxtaposition of innocence and sin for the same act. Irene—”

  “It does not matter what Irene does. I do not approve of half of it, and you do not approve of one-quarter of it, and don’t deny it.”

  He chuckled. “That’s quite true, but that is what makes life with Irene so interesting. If she were here, she would suggest you forget your hair and concentrate on what we wish to learn at our dinner tonight. It may be that your…ungoverned hair is the very thing to distract Tatyana from the danger we pose to her. She enjoys putting people on strange ground and then watching them stumble to overcome it. You will offer her amusement. I suspect she is most dangerous when she is bored.”

  “You think that my disgraceful hair could function as a ruse, then?”

  I frowned at myself in the mirror. I looked like a hedgerow with a face peeping out of it. An elfin face. A faery face. They were both treacherous races, fey and unpredictable. Could I be fey and unpredictable? It would be a first, but it might be useful.

  Godfrey rested his hands on my shoulders, like a comrade in arms. “I am sure of it.”

  “You certainly look quite dashing and not at all disheveled,” I said, taking in for the first time the diplomatic grandeur of his white tie and tails and the subtle glint of gold studs and cufflinks.

  “I was supposed to conclude the Rothschild transaction in Transylvania at a formal dinner party. I believe that tonight is that occasion. Shall we find our way downstairs to whatever room has been designated as the dining chamber?”

  He offered me his arm, which I took.

  The weighted hem of the brocade gown brushed the toes of my bright leather Gypsy boots, which I found quite comfortable and light to wear. So I was Romany at head and toe, Russian in between, and utterly English underneath.

  Perhaps Tatyana had never yet encountered such a formidable foe as I after all.

  After we had descended a huge curving stone staircase unnoticed, Godfrey, who had managed that clandestine foray through the castle in the dead of night, steered me in directions that might lead us to another part of the castle.

  Each time he was foiled. A Gypsy with a greasy leg of roasted fowl in each hand blocked our way to the kitchens, from whence floated exotic odors and came the clang of many pots.

  A return to the staircase and a charge straight ahead found the front hall…which was occupied by more Gypsies sitting on empty wooden food crates, tuning their battered violins.

  Again we swept left of the staircase, through a series of rooms fitted with rotting tapestries and broken furniture. A bay of shattered glass windows promised a way to the outside…save that two grizzled men in tattered uniforms were playing a game of dice on the stone floor, a pottery bottle of spirits making a third between them.

  We circled back to the stair and the mammoth hall that surrounded it like a chapel, all lofty stone arches lost in the dark above. I was struck by how much castles and cathedrals resembled each other: vast, forbidding, formal, cold buildings built to elevate God and man above the common throng in a medieval society where one was either peasant or aristocrat.

  From the smaller front hall came the screec
h of slaughtered violins. From the kitchens the clang of the brass cymbals. I could not hear the percussion of rattled and thrown dice from the solarium, but from another room not yet seen I heard the murmur of human voices speaking a language other than English.

  Godfrey heard that, too. He looked at me, shrugged, and turned us in that direction. It was now time to face the music and join Tatyana’s bizarre dinner party.

  The room was the library Godfrey had told me about, a long, narrow space with three stories of books reached by a series of spiral stairs.

  Lighted candelabras made the old gold bindings glisten like rich veins of ore along the dark shelves. It felt like being in a dwarves’ undermountain mine or on the stage set of a Wagnerian opera. I admit to being charmed, and charmed also to see the sturdy library table laid with a tsar’s ransom in table linen, porcelain, and silver.

  A massive stone fireplace at one end of the room was high enough to hold a complement of guards at attention with pike staffs.

  The fire that blazed in it was strong but seemed a puny thing in comparison, and the room remained chilly. Despite the spring season, these high mountains hoarded their winter cold like old people did memories. No wonder Tatyana wore such heavy gowns. She was used to such chill climates.

  A huge brass samovar, or urn, sat beside the fireplace and beside the samovar stood…a tiny man, handing out chalices of some heated cider. He was dressed in a starched white ruff and red velvet knee breeches and coat, rather like a Spanish court dwarf.

  He beckoned us over like a conspirator, and spoke English when we got there. Cockney English.

  “Oid ’ave a bit o’ this, Miss. Warm the cockles and the knuckles at the same toime.”