Chapel Noir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  With that she rustled to the door and left us.

  7.

  Woman of Mystery

  For whole hours at night she lay in bed unable to sleep

  because of the tirelessness of her imagination, weaving tales

  and creating heroes and heroines . . .

  It was her wont to get the girls of the town together and

  tell them these stories . . .

  —ANONYMOUS

  FROM A JOURNAL

  I have met the most remarkable woman! She is American, of course. And very beautiful. And was dressed as a man! And smoked the most adorable petite cigars.

  The sudden appearance on the scene of this most intriguing apparition has banished my unusual state of suspended animation. Here I had imagined that I wished to see and experience every side of life, no matter how squalid or sordid. Yet discovering the dead women my first night at the maison de rendezvous was enough to give me serious pause, despite the poverty, misery, and filth I have experienced elsewhere.

  The luxury of the death scene added a sort of operatic decadence to the violence of the slaughter.

  It was as if the ghost of violent death still hovered in that reeking and fashionable room. As if its unseen, hollow, pitiless eyes watched me. And me done up like a French crumpet in a whalebone corset and frou-frou, as ready for crunching as a marzipan cake.

  I shiver as I write this. The murderer could still linger in the house. I find myself most puzzled, though the trail has led here and I but followed it.

  From the gutters of Whitechapel in London to the boudoirs of brothels in Paris: it hardly seems possible that Jack the Ripper could manage such a leap in place and time and stage setting.

  And besides, the wretch is dead.

  Or so the London police would have us all believe.

  I have not properly “sketched” my new acquaintance and fellow countryman, though. She has the rare sort of face whose beauty is undeniable yet so indefinable that neither men nor women can keep their eyes off of her. I am not considered unappealing, yet would pale beside her, and I cannot precisely say why. I can only imagine how men would react. She seems indifferent to her physical force although I suspect she sometimes hides behind it.

  Her companion is another sort. After my recent visit to London, where I soon became fed up with the English whore’s attitude of superiority to all other living beings, I am in no mind to suffer this American beauty’s typically British familiar. Even the most innocuous of that breed marches to the tune of “Rule, Britannia” and radiates the snobbish certainty that she was put on this earth to set other people straight. This particular domestic martinet is a mousy soul named, of all things, Nell, like the spineless put-upon heroine of a melodrama. Those blessed with great beauty seem to crave the company of the plain. Or perhaps it’s the other way around. I wonder what her husband is like. Not the companion’s; she is a spinster. “Irene Adler Norton” the cigar-smoking beauty called herself. That implies a husband, though why he would let his wife go off on such gruesome investigations alone is beyond me.

  I had heard of these European practices among certain privileged women—tattoos, cigars, naughty lingerie—but never expected to meet such a creature. And she has the ear of the police, has worked for the Pinkertons. Not one to underestimate.

  I wonder if she follows the same trail that I do? The companion admitted that they had been in London, but that was many months ago, and is irrelevant.

  Or is it?

  I cannot believe my luck, dreadful as the state of affairs is. I could not wish to be in more fortuitous circumstances. Not least among these lucky aspects is the fact that police have ended all custom at this maison de rendezvous for the time being. For the time being, Thanatos and not Eros is in residence here. Death and not Love.

  I admit that, for my purposes, Death is the much more desirable resident.

  8.

  Call Her Madam

  No doubt it gives one a comfortable feeling of wear smart

  underclothing, pass the kind of laws that suit one and preach

  endless sermons about virtuous behavior . . . But no sooner have

  the streetlights been turned low than off they go

  to pay us a visit.

  —AMÉLIE HÉLIE, KNOWN AS CASQUE D’OR

  “What a willful and errant girl!” I said after Pink had left.

  “Don’t distress yourself, Nell. We at least offered her a chance to leave. And with the police coming and going, the usual activities of the house will be suspended for some time.”

  Irene cast a wistful glance at the brandy decanter. “I am afraid I shall have to interview the madam.”

  “Madame who?”

  “A woman who supervises a house of convenience is a called a madam, Nell.”

  “Supervises? You seem to imply some sort of order.”

  “A place like this is also called a disorderly house,” she said with a rueful smile.

  I was too confused to ask for further enlightenment.

  We went into the passage, where a gendarme in his handsome uniform of navy blue stood on guard.

  “Monsieur l’inspecteur?” Irene asked.

  The man led us to the front stairs and then down to the first floor and to a grand salon larger and even more lavishly appointed than the chambers upstairs.

  As we entered the opening double doors, we passed a white-veiled bride leaving in the company of a black-robed nun.

  Naturally, I stared at their departing backs, a most incongruous pair, but Irene paid them no attention. Or rather, I should say, they did not receive her prolonged attention. Irene’s eyes darted over every detail of the room and its occupants, even the departing ones, like emissaries from a crossbow.

  I was reminded again of her admonition to “look close” and see small.

  That seemed an impossible task in this vast, gilt-hung salon, with elaborate furniture floating like gigantic lily pads on its blue-marble floor.

  And this exceedingly large pond had its resident frog: a most unpleasant person sat like the spider in the center of this web of golden threads, stuffed into a gown of obvious green satin.

  Her red hair was frizzled into a fright wig. Her decolletage overflowed a wasp-waisted bodice like two loaves of unbaked French bread. She had a sharp nose above a cheese-soft chin that faded into the high collar of fat cushioning her throat like a necklace of fleshy aspic.

  Inspector le Villard hastened to this woman’s monstrous side and apparently explained who, or what, we were.

  Her bead-bright eyes moved like roaches in the suet pudding of her face to study us.

  “Entrez,” she urged at last. Pudgy, dingy fingers festooned with rings gestured us over the threshold.

  I noticed a motley assemblage of persons seated and standing elsewhere in the chamber, including a grown woman in a child’s high-waisted cotton frock, her hair in a pigtail and her hands bearing a pail and spade fit for a nursery outing to the seashore.

  There was also a wizened elderly man with a terrible squint and some large burly women in house servant’s clothes.

  Irene crossed the threshold as bid, but waited for the inspector to join her, as he finally did, most reluctantly.

  “These are employees of the establishment?” Irene asked in low tones, in English.

  “Yes. We have assembled everyone and are almost through with our questioning.”

  “What of the clients present at the time of the murders?”

  Even Inspector le Villard’s mustache seemed to blanche at the question. “Clients? There were few. The hour was between dinner and going out for entertainment.”

  “Where are these few?” Irene asked, implacable.

  “Another room. Madame Portiere is willing to answer your inquiries.”

  “Is she?” Irene advanced on this woman sitting like a sultan in his seraglio, and I suppose she was not much different from one, save that she did not indulge in the favors of the harem.

  I followed, feeling m
ore in the presence of evil than I had in the death chamber.

  Madame’s piggy little eyes beamed at Irene, admiring her form of dress as if it were a particularly sly joke.

  “Brava, Madame. Monsieur. You would do well in Montmartre in your habit so suave.” The glittering swollen hand patted the sky-blue-silk sofa seat beside her.

  I cannot describe how badly that bilious green gown and pale blue sofa failed to complement each other.

  “It is convenient for the city,” Irene agreed, pulling one trouser knee slightly upward as she crossed her legs after sitting. “I imagine the doings upstairs have put quite a crimp in your custom.”

  The woman’s tiny eyes rolled expressively toward the ceiling, as if enlisting heavenly witness to the truth of her next words. I could not imagine that Heaven would wish to witness anything that transpired in this corrupt place.

  “The prefect has been quite plain. We are to close until further notice. Meanwhile, our staff is under the question.” She nodded to knots of humble persons around the room, each tied around the central figure of an interrogating gendarme.

  “Most intolerably inconvenient for a maison de tolérance,” Irene said, sounding sympathetic. “Although the preferred name is maison de rendezvous these days. Let us hope that the culprit is soon caught and your suspension of service ends.”

  “Huh!” the woman huffed. “He was not caught in London.”

  “Then you think that the Ripper has relocated to Paris?”

  “Who else would commit such atrocity?”

  Irene glanced casually around the huge room. “And will they find a suspect among your retainers?”

  “I hope not!” the woman snorted.

  “Among your clientele then?”

  “Certainly not! That is a sure thing. I cater to only the best, the noblest, richest, and discriminating men in Europe.”

  I could have taken issue that the best, most noble, and discriminating men in Europe would ever patronize such an establishment, but I knew better than to insert my opinion.

  I had been left standing, like a servant. I was simply Nobody, hardly important enough consciously to ignore. It often happened thus. It often happened that being ignored was a great advantage in observing and learning . . . things. And Irene knew that as well as I.

  She kept her glance carefully away from me as she questioned the woman in her usual erratic way, leaping from one topic to the other so adroitly that Madame leaked information like a punctured balloon.

  Finally, Irene’s eyes ceased their constant surveillance of the clots of people in the room and focused on me.

  “Nell, I do not see Inspector le Villard in the chamber any longer. Do you suppose you could find him? I have a question or two for him.”

  Of course, I bustled obediently away. Irene continued to chat with the dreadful woman as if she were a long-lost aunt.

  Once in the passage I was at a loss, a state I do not enjoy.

  I had no idea where the miserable inspector had gone, and imagined that he was only too glad to be rid of us. A series of eggshell cream-painted doors lined the long hallway like ghostly soldiers at attention, the cursive woodwork’s gilt details evoking military braid.

  All were closed. I was not about to blunder into each one in search of the vanishing policeman.

  Perhaps I would overhear some betraying conversation if I merely eavesdropped at each keyhole.

  So I moved down the row, crossing from one side of the wide passage to the other, listening for signs of occupancy.

  I was singularly unsuccessful.

  Why was it that when Irene sent herself upon such a mission, she merely touched the lever of the first closed door and it would spring open like a Fabergé egg, full of lavish surprises?

  I seemed fated to plod through life meeting nothing untoward and making no earthshaking discoveries.

  It was in this mood that I paused before a door like any other in the endless line. I was startled to hear the frame crack as it opened.

  I could not see into the room beyond, for the entire opening was taken up by the massive figure of a man in evening dress, a man of sturdy build whose head must have reached past six feet.

  For a moment I thought the King of Bohemia loomed before me. But no, the King was flaxen-haired, and this man would have been called Redbeard had he been a Viking.

  I gasped. Not because I had thought it was the King. Not because he was so large and I was so small. Not because his sudden appearance had startled me, and it had.

  No, I gasped because I recognized him at last.

  “Why,” I said before I should embarrass myself and gasp again. “Why, Mr. Stoker. What on earth are you doing here?”

  9.

  Horrible Imaginings

  He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.

  —MACBETH

  Inspector le Villard popped out from behind Bram Stoker’s substantial figure like a puppet in a Punch and Judy show from behind a curtain. I almost expected him to begin hitting Mr. Stoker with a loaf of French bread.

  “You recognize this man?” the inspector demanded of me.

  I glanced to the person caught between us. Mr. Stoker’s face had gone white and was now in the process of suffusing with red. Heretofore, I had not noted such reactions in the visages of grown men, although I was familiar with them on the faces of ten-year-old boys who had been caught with an illegal spoon in the jam jar.

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I do not know you, Madam,” Mr. Stoker said swiftly. “No doubt it is considered amusing to the clientele to deal with a woman got up as an English governess, down to her correction devices, but I assure you and anyone else who might inquire that is not my form of diversion.”

  “I am English, but I am a Miss,” I corrected him sternly, “and were I indeed your governess, I would be forced to discipline you for both rudeness and memory loss.”

  My words made the man only blush further. They seemed to have robbed him of all speech.

  “And we have indeed met,” I persisted in the name of accuracy. “On more than one occasion.”

  “Are you employed here?” he began in confusion. “For I honestly do not know you—”

  The inspector had no patience for a guessing game. “What matters, sir, is that the lady knows you.”

  “Not intimately, I am afraid,” I put in, watching Mr. Stoker’s face turn an alarming shade of scarlet, “though all London knows Bram Stoker. A most renowned gentleman of the theater,” I informed Inspector le Villard, happy to impress him with British excellence in this area that the Divine Sarah Bernhardt claimed solely for France. “He manages the acclaimed English actor, Sir Henry Irving. Surely you have heard of Mr. Irving.”

  As I spoke, the towering figure of Bram Stoker seemed to shrink like a freshly blooming crocus in a spring windstorm. I imagine the poor man was embarrassed because he did not recognize me, despite the fact that we had met on several occasions during my eight years in London.

  I was, for once, blithely unembarrassed. I did not expect to be recalled by persons of fame, fortune, or noble birth, some of whom I had met who combined all three attributes.

  In fact, I considered it my duty to educate the French police inspector on Mr. Stoker’s importance, for obviously the man was too modest to brandish his achievements like a pedigreed cudgel. We English are entirely too retiring about our virtues, and I was determined that no honor pertaining to Mr. Stoker go unburnished by my praise.

  “In addition, I have it from confidential sources that Mr. Stoker is something of an aspiring author—not that many are not aspiring authors these days”—I added, thinking of a doctor of my (thankfully) very slight acquaintance—“but he has far more hope of attaining publication, given his deep knowledge of theatrical plays.”

  His own mother could not have waxed more proud and pleased. I had no doubt the man would thank me profusely when he finally remembered who I was.

  Le Villard, at least, was all bows and g
ratitude. “Many thanks, Mademoiselle Huxleigh. I was completely ignorant of our friend’s accomplishments and history. You see, I had the odd notion that he is one of the few men large enough to have committed the atrocities you and the admirable Madame Norton have had the recent misfortune to view.”

  “Mr. Stoker!? Why ever would you think so?”

  “Perhaps,” Inspector le Villard noted with another unnecessary bow to me, “because he has been using quite another name at Chez Homicide. A Mr. Adam Eden, according to the information he gave Madame Portiere.”

  I gazed at Bram Stoker. His high color had faded during the length of my helpful introduction until his skin was paper white again, which made his red hair and beard resemble flames eating away at the edges of his face.

  I realized what I had done, and could feel myself pale in turn.

  Inspector le Villard turned to smile pleasantly at Mr. Stoker. “And you say you do not know the lady? She appears to know a great deal about you, monsieur.”

  “Indeed,” I said hastily. “A man of such wide renown would of course wish to travel in anonymity. It is not at all remarkable that Mr. Stoker would use another name on the Continent.”

  “Or in a maison de rendezvous,” the inspector murmured. “Believe me, Mademoiselle Huxleigh, we Paris police are quite accustomed to that particular habit of the English, who are noted for peculiar habits to begin with.”

  His words brought the blushes to my cheeks now, for there was only one answer to my heartfelt surprise and the question I had burst out with on first encountering Mr. Bram Stoker. Why on earth was he here? Why, to patronize the facilities.

  I could no longer gaze up at him with innocent eyes, so kept them down, facing the floor.

  It was then that I noticed that, despite his height and girth, Mr. Stoker had feet of a refined size. His shoe toes were polished into obsidian mirrors, and they narrowed elegantly toward the ends, as I am sure the heels also did.