“The rolls, Mr. Shakespeare. Please pass them,” came Daisy’s voice, which certainly carried across a table. It rang with the aggrieved tones of having had to repeat itself.
“Pardon me, Miss Daisy,” I said, complying. “You were born in Sussex, I perceive. I admit that I was wondering how a lovely lady such as yourself who was born of English shopkeeper parents who were themselves musically inclined should find herself on the musical stage in New York City.”
“Well, I’ll be!” She almost dropped the basket of rolls. “I’ve lost my accent these thirty . . . I mean, fifteen years. How’d you guess?”
“Guessing has nothing to do with it, dear girl.” I had immediately perceived that calling her a “dear lady” would more annoy than please her. “Your Sussex accent has vanished, except to the expert ear, save for a trace that remains on your ‘r’s. The ‘r’ is the element of speech that varies most often in regional as well as foreign language pronunciations, perhaps because, along with the ‘l,’ it involves the most demanding placement of the tongue. Children, obviously, have much difficulty with these two consonants when learning to speak. I have made a study of such things. For my performing career.”
“I’ll say!” said Miss Daisy, putting two rolls upon her plate. “But how do you come by the rest?”
“The mature development of the calluses on your otherwise elegant fingertips shows that you have played a musical instrument from a very young age, hence I infer home instruction and likely home musicales with a musically inclined family. I believe you were trained on the flute, but now use a piccolo. My assumption is not based on physical evidence but rather the unlikelihood of the flute as a popular instrument on the variety stage in America, whereas the piccolo or other such frivolous pipes fit in admirably. I have not had an opportunity to view your feet—my loss, no doubt—but I suspect that you also dance and are exceeding light upon your feet.”
I did not add that her current bulk made this phenomenon all the more amusing to audiences. (Watson, you wound me when you say I am not sensitive to the female sex!)
“You were the oldest of eight children and a second mother to most of them,” I went on, “so you left England before you were twenty to seek your fortune here, and have done very well.”
“Eight children, how did you—?”
“I noticed, of course, that very lovely bracelet as you reached for the rolls. It features seven charms, each studded with a gemstone assigned to various months as birth stones. You are far too young to have had seven children of your own (Oh, Watson, I can be a diplomat among men!), so I read the presence of siblings very dear to you, more so than most. Ergo, you were also a mother to them, and as much as you wished to escape a responsibility-laden childhood, you miss them very much.”
By now tears were dewing those plump, rouged cheeks and the others at table were murmuring, both in sympathy for Miss Daisy, who seldom indulged in maudlin emotions, I imagine, and in amazement at my “powers,” which were simply the observations any acute witness would make. A pity there are so few acute witnesses, even among the police, as is all too evident when criminal cases come to trial.
I had done my night’s work.
After dinner the Professor sought me out and we conversed for some time about the “old days” he had seen and that I desired to see better in my mind’s eye. I, of course, learned more from him than he from me, but I was forced to drop a few more hints about his protégé’s European successes. Tears in an old man’s eyes are more effective than acid in extracting information. I left feeling strangely moved and rather sorry that “Shylock Shakespeare” should desert the company with no explanation.
At the door Miss Daisy had recovered from her surprise sufficiently to “buttonhole” me and suggest that she looked forward to future dinners and revelations.
I told her that I might be recalled to England at any moment due to an impending death in the family, but most appreciated meeting her.
She clasped the wrist that was adorned by the bracelet I had noticed and confessed that she was contemplating a voyage “back home” after my diagnosis of her history.
Tears in an aging woman’s eyes may not extract information, but they do respect. I took her hand, the one bearing the bracelet, bowed, and kissed it.
“Oh, you Europeans are so elegant,” she sighed in farewell.
It was a small sacrifice to make for Shylock Shakespeare’s first and last American performance.
32.
Unjust Desserts
The “Alaska” is a baked ice. . . . The nucleus of or core of the
entremet is an ice cream. This is surrounded by an envelope of
carefully whipped cream, which, just before the dainty dish is
served, is popped in the oven, or is brought under the scorched
influence of a red hot salamander.
—ENGLISHMAN GEORGE SALA ON DELMONICO’S BAKED ALASKA
IN THE 1880S
Before our terrifying adventures in Paris last spring, I would have never thought to compare my friend Irene Adler Norton to a Red Indian.
Now that I had made the acquaintance, and witnessed the tenacious trail-following abilities of Red Tomahawk—a performer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show that was still thrilling Frenchmen and other visitors to the current World’s Fair in Paris—I concluded that there was sometimes little difference between a detective and an Indian brave on the warpath.
After stewing for some time in our hotel room in a combination of high dudgeon and cigar smoke, Irene hauled me directly from the comforts of the Astor House to 35th Street.
When I used the expression “hauled,” I mean it quite literally. As soon as we left the hotel, she took hold of my arm, or sleeve—either would do; indeed, I think at the moment that a pinch of skin would have sufficed . . . thank heavens I wore my lightweight wool coatdress—and dragged me after her like a recalcitrant child until the accouterments on my trusty chatelaine jingled like the keys to a madhouse.
Irene need not have bothered hastening me along, but I suppose it gave her some sense of command that was sadly lacking in other areas at the moment. I could have told her that I would have gladly raced like the most ungoverned hoyden in her footsteps to watch her track down and discipline Miss Elizabeth Jane Cochrane for the sins of deceiving us and importing to America the one man on earth whom Irene would most resent for poking into her private life.
Perhaps that was because Mr. Sherlock Holmes seemed to have very little private life to poke into in turn. Or because she regarded him as a rival. Or because she was beginning to regard him as something else: an insistent admirer.
While she rushed me from pillar to post—or rather hansom cab to boarding house, for that is what all of New York City seems sometimes: street traffic and endless rows of boarding houses, respectable or quite otherwise—I had time to bask in Pink’s new plunge in disfavor with my friend, who had been far too tolerant to her sister American’s upstart ways in Paris, in my opinion.
The same woman who had tsked at Pink’s inviting her own mother along on an investigative visit to a medium that proved fatal—to the medium rather than the mother, thank goodness—now was rapping like an unpaid landlord at the dear old woman’s door, demanding entry.
“Mrs. Norton! Miss Huxleigh!” The dim-sighted old creature blinked at us in benign surprise when she answered Irene’s intemperate knock with her own mild countenance. “If you seek my daughter, I’m afraid that she is out.”
“Out where?”
“Dining.”
“Where?”
Mrs. Cochrane’s scanty eyebrows raised as much as they were capable of. “Delmonico’s,” she answered, pride in her daughter’s achievements in her voice.
Even I understood by now that Delmonico’s was the city’s finest restaurant, not only for the prestigious people and clubs that patronized it, but for catering the city’s most lavish social affairs. Irene remembered from her youth that when Delmonico’s had catered the wedding of �
��Boss” Tweed’s daughter, she had received forty sets of sterling silver. She had explained that Tweed was a powerful politician who had ruled New York then. I could only recall the Jack the Ripper letter that had begun with the “Americanism” of “Dear Boss,” and shudder at the implications as well as the excess.
“She dines alone,” Irene stated to Pink’s mother, sounding as vulgarly curious as a policeman.
“Indeed no. My daughter need never dine alone, but she seldom occupies herself with the gentlemen who so persistently seek her company. She is too busy at her job. But this is a foreign gentleman, I believe, and will not stay long in this country.”
“Foreign,” Irene repeated. “You mean from . . . oh, say, Montenegro?”
“Oh, gracious no, from nowhere so obscure as that. She mentioned, complained really before she left, for she has a most unreasoning dislike of the nationality, I am sorry to say, Miss Huxleigh.” Here she shrugged apology at me, which was a pleasant gesture few ever bothered to show me. “He is English.”
“Aha!” Irene barked the word like a soprano who has found a letter proving some basso’s infidelity in a grand opera. “I mean,” she added in the face of Mrs. Cochrane’s gentle confusion, “that we had surmised that an acquaintance of ours was in the city and would be most pleased to speak with him again.”
“If you hurry to Delmonico’s, you may,” Mrs. Cochrane advised our by-then-departing backs.
“Irene,” I objected when we had attained the street again. “You needn’t keep me in constant custody like an errant schoolboy. I expect your grip to shift from my wrist to my ear at any second.”
“Oh. My apologies, Nell. I am much concerned to catch the minx consorting with the enemy, that is all.”
“Much as I dislike Mr. Holmes, and have never been shy of saying so, I doubt he is ‘the enemy.’ ”
She whistled as shrilly for a cab as any masher, and, when an operatic diva whistles, the result is ear-piercing. I cringed and scanned the area for witnesses, but it was that time when everyone was hurrying home as twilight gives way to electric street lights and no one notices anything.
Three hansoms, however, had noticed Irene and her upraised hand, after that whistle.
She eyed the drivers swiftly and chose the one who wore his hat most rakishly tilted on his head. “Delmonico’s and I’ll pay you a dollar for every omnibus you outrun.”
I gasped as I was forced to bound into the hansom after Irene, for the omnibus drivers of New York City were madmen who jousted dray wagons and even the track-running trams for precedence on the jammed streets.
The ride was a rough clattering over tram tracks thankfully absent of cars and a constant nudging of gurneys and carriages and omnibuses that we overtook like a careening barrel.
Even while I was seated, my poor chatelaine chimed like a demented clock that mistook each second for an hour or half hour worth tolling, and my teeth chattered to match the rhythm.
“Must we race so?” I asked.
“I don’t want the quarry to escape. I wish to catch them red-forked.”
“Why must we do so?”
She sat back so hard that the leather upholstery squeaked protest in a great cushiony sigh.
“How would you like it, Nell, if Nellie Bly and Sherlock Holmes were dining at a cosy country inn after secretly inquiring into your hidden ancestry in Shropshire?”
“I have no hidden ancestry.”
“Oh, no?” Irene leaned as close as a melodrama villain and produced a stage whisper in which she emphasized every consonant like a bullet. “And what about the pig thief hanged at Tyburn.”
I kept silence for a few moments. “Baron de Rothschild assured me that this unhappy forebear was left out of my family tree in the ancient Bible he gave me as gift. How do you know of it? Did he tell you?”
“Yes.” She sat back smugly and flaunted the cigarette case and lucifer that she knew I detested, especially in the close quarters of a hired cab.
“He didn’t! He is a man of his word.”
“Well.” She exhaled a bit of smugness with her cigarette smoke. “He did in one respect. I can read lips, did you know? A most handy facility for an actress or singer who must not miss an entrance cue. Sometimes orchestras will try to drown out the superior instrument, the singers.”
“You understood what he whispered to me! And never said anything from that day to this?”
“I never had reason to correct your assertions before. Usually you cut truth as fine as a mouse hair.”
“I’d forgotten about the pig thief,” I said, “even if you had not. Irene, what will you do, anyway, if you find Pink and Mr. Holmes dining together? There is no law against such a thing.”
“There is an unwritten law, Nell, that someone who masquerades as a friend, or at least an ally, should refrain from conducting secret business behind one’s back.”
“Granted,” I said, “but I have never mistaken Elizabeth Cochrane, or Nellie Bly, or Pink, for a friend, or even an ally.”
“Is it because of Quentin?” she asked quietly. Carefully. Her mad dashing urgency of the past hour was suddenly becalmed.
I didn’t bother to deny her underlying assumption. “No. I mistrusted her almost as soon as we met her in Paris. Everything about her was so convenient. I found that implausible.”
“Brava, Nell. Your instincts exceeded mine on that score. I can see, from her newshound viewpoint, that our matters and necessities cheated her of the prize she seeks as others covet gold: the glister of exposure and renown. She has not considered that finding my origins might distress me beyond words. She sees me as impervious and my personal history is like a treasure quest to her. And I suppose there is some revenge in it, revenge for my allowing her to trail along on our Ripper hunt, then preventing her from revealing the unthinkable answer to the world.”
“Sherlock Holmes was as adamant about that as you, perhaps even more so.”
“Yet she enlists him to delve into my past like a miner digging for gold in the West. Why would he bother? Why would he even come to America at the beck and call of a sensation-seeking reporter like herself? Unless he is . . . enamored of her!” Irene shook her head into a veil of her own created smoke. “Impossible! I have never known a man more immune to women.”
I remained silent, bearing the heavy knowledge that her assessment was true . . . except possibly in her own case. I had seen the written evidence of it, and could not forget it. “To Sherlock Holmes, she was always ‘the’ woman.”
Sometimes my ever-so-astute friend was infuriatingly blind.
With a lurch that nearly tossed us over the half-doors that enclosed us in the hansom, our driver stopped and thrust a grimy face through the trapdoor above us. “Two dollars, ma’am, and my greetings to Boss Tweed if you get to hell before me, as I’m sure you will at the rate you travel.”
She passed him three coins, I saw, and smiled tersely.
We stepped out into an electric-lit fairyland on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 26th Street. The four-story restaurant occupied the corner location and featured an excessive number of striped awnings on the first three-stories of frontage.
Irene’s sudden and relentless rush had ended. “We are just opposite the lower end of Union Square, Nell, where I performed so often as a child. This I recall. Why not other things?”
“Performing was like doing lessons for you. This was . . . a holiday.”
“I remember standing here—I must have been . . . what, twenty?—when Edison lit up Broadway with arc lights on twenty-foot-high cast-iron posts from here to Madison Square to demonstrate the power and future of his electric lights. These very posts remain, but the lights have expanded like the stars. That spectacular event I remember as clearly as yesterday. It was astounding.”
The brilliantly lit corner was astounding even today. In my natural state (that is, alone). I should never dare approach so intimidating an establishment as Delmonico’s, much less pass the handsome decorative iron railings tha
t created a barricade around the building within which summer dinners ate al fresco.
Yet Irene’s bracing presence was always an “open sesame.” Her stage experience allowed her to seem at home in any environment, no matter how new or strange or even supercilious.
She approached this exclusive place like an actress entering on a cue, in a persona that brooked no obstacles. Now, once again she called upon years of theatrical bluster to broach the most blueblooded restaurant in New York without a reservation, and without reservation.
A large man in formal dress awaited our bold-faced approach at the doors. (Irene was bold-faced, I was hoping to be invisible and remain so.)
“Madam?” he inquired. “May I help you?”
Irene gazed past him, going on tiptoe, craning her neck in the most refined, delicate manner I have ever seen so unladylike a gesture essayed.
“I fear you may not help me,” she said at last, turning a liquid eye and voice upon her unsuspecting prey. “For we are late, dreadfully late.”
Of course telling him from the first that he could do nothing immediately gave him a prideful stake in proving her wrong.
“It was a dreadful omnibus wreck on Broadway,” she went on. “Why will they drive in that breakneck fashion?”
“I can’t say, madam, but do you mean that you are late for a reservation?”
“Even worse,” Irene said, looking distraught enough to have lost a dear friend in the fictional omnibus collision. “We are late in meeting our friends, and the gentleman came all the way from England. I am desolée.”
Her resorting to the French word made her into the tragedienne Rachel for a moment. Really, had I been the girl’s governess I would have nipped these thespian tendencies firmly in the bud.
FEMME FATALE Page 26
