Chapel Noir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  But he didn’t, and we sallied out together, as we usually did, moving down the hall until we were out of sight, then taking a deep, mutual breath.

  “What an astounding meeting, Nell. At least we learned more from him than he did from us.”

  “We did?”

  “Indeed. Well.”

  “We certainly have been sent on our way. It would have been more gracious if the Prince had tended his gratitude and farewell in person.”

  “Oh, it is not the Prince who has brushed us off.”

  I was pleased to note a rising note of fury in her tone. “Not the Prince?”

  “And not the Rothschilds.”

  “The Baron was decidedly absent.”

  “As we will be. Apparently.”

  “Apparently? We are going home to Neuilly?”

  “Of course. And then we are moving to a Paris hotel.”

  “Moving to Paris?” I was dismayed. “Why?”

  “If Jack the Ripper is in Paris, so must we be.”

  “But Sherlock Holmes said there was no Jack the Ripper.”

  “Sherlock Holmes is about to learn a lesson. From Jack the Ripper. And from me.”

  19.

  A Movable Feast

  Paris is the most volatile of cities. It is also—in ways that

  reveal themselves slowly—one of the most reclusive.

  —ROSAMOND BERNIER

  Like Sarah Bernhardt, Irene was a woman who was used to seeing stage productions involving huge casts and massive amounts of wardrobe and scenery mounted and transported within days. In fact, I believe that an operatic prima donna, as Irene had been for a few, brief, glittering years, was even more accustomed than an actress to making Herculean efforts. After all, she not only had to enact a role while dragging around, like a Volga boatman in thrall to a barge, forty to sixty pounds of costume, she also had to trill like a nightingale while doing it.

  In other words, actress or opera singer, these were women who were used to moving mountains, and whatever puny humans happened to inhabit them.

  A simple project such as relocating two women from a rural village to the nearby heart of Paris in one day was but a trifle to Irene. She was in one of those moods that would brook no opposition. I could have more easily turned a twenty-two-stone Brunhilde away from an imminent stage entrance as persuade Irene to another course of action.

  Godfrey, perhaps, would have had some influence, but there was no time to wire him, and he likely had not even reached Prague as yet.

  On first observing Irene’s wholesale thirst for swift action, one might think it was directed by a certain autocratic self-absorption.

  But I had come to see, through my years with Irene and my accompanying observance of the demands of stage productions, that the case was quite the opposite. The leading actor, or the prima donna, is the engine upon which the entire great enterprise of imagination and art made concrete depends. The weight of the entire cast’s employment, as well as the responsibility for doing due honor to the maestros whose words and music are presented, falls on the performer. Only a confident, courageous, and deeply committed person would dare set foot on the boards with so much at stake. Uncertainty and hesitation are death onstage. Once the curtain has opened, there is nowhere to hide.

  And so it was with Irene in life as well. Her enforced retirement from the opera, in which Mr. Sherlock Holmes had played an incidental role by making the false rumor of her death necessary for some years, had made the world at large her stage and had given her a panoply of roles to play on a daily basis: playwright, conductor, leading lady, costumer, prompter, stagehand, and, on occasion, cleaning lady. Only now she applied these arts and this effort to stage-managing the solution of dramas written in the newspapers and the courts. She had become a leading lady of crime and punishment.

  Like all leading ladies, she had her eccentricities. Thank God she did not sleep in her own traveling coffin, as La Bernhardt did. But Irene did travel like a one-woman Shakespearean company, with an enormous quantity of costumes. Andre was to make many return trips with our baggage once we were settled in our hotel. (Sophie was indulging in a grand pout at being left behind, but was secretly glad to sleep at her own cottage for a few days.)

  I must admit that the sense of embarking on a great and possibly dangerous journey entranced even as settled a soul as I. It was like taking a carriage to the opening of a new and mysterious play, without quite knowing whether it would be tragedy or comedy of manners. Or perhaps a bit of both.

  As much as my upbringing and inclinations might encourage dragging my feet to resist being swept away by the grand illusions before us, my wayward heart would beat a bit faster as I went stumbling after Irene en route to one of her great enterprises.

  The village of Neuilly was only a few miles from the Champs-Elysées, that avenue along which all Paris—the tout Paris of legend—drives to see and be seen. In the carriage en route Irene was forced to sit still long enough to explain herself.

  “I much appreciate your readiness to do what must be repugnant to you, Nell,” she said. “There is no time to be lost. Sherlock Holmes may be clever, but he is most unsuited to find the killer he has been charged with stopping. No wonder the Ripper escaped London unscathed and uncaught.”

  “You were sufficiently astute to outwit this so-called consulting detective in London, and elsewhere later. I am sure the man’s reputation is exaggerated. And I have never found him suited for much.”

  She regarded me quizzically. “I know you are loyal to me to a fault, Nell, but I have never held his assignment for the King of Bohemia against Mr. Holmes. It was always clear that he saw through Willie from the first. In that regard, he was a good deal cleverer than I.”

  “You were a woman misled by your heart.”

  “By my hubris, I fear, but you are kind to call it heart.” She shook her bonneted head, for she had dressed in the height of convention, no doubt to soothe my misgivings about our unconventional decamping to Paris. “I admit I was dazzled by Willie’s obvious enamourment. I did learn that one’s heart may most yearn after what is worst for it, and that a most unlikely man may be far more worthy of regard than the more obvious candidates.”

  “Godfrey was never unlikely, Irene. You just did not like him at first.”

  “I did not trust him at first, solely because of his late father’s connection to that bit of skullduggery involving Marie Antoinette. In this I was unfairly judgmental. Would that Mr. Holmes had learned such a lesson of the heart as I have. Unfortunately, he is supremely untutored in that regard, and it makes him a most unreliable investigator of these particular crimes. If I do not take a hand in it, more women will die in this unthinkable manner.”

  “I agree that Mr. Holmes is not likely to solve these fiendish crimes, but why do you think so?”

  She eyed me cautiously. “I am bothered, Nell, at having to involve you, though it is at your own insistence. These are the ugliest, most inhuman murders one could imagine occurring on our planet. Unless one recognizes, and admits, that this inhumanity is a part of human nature, one will never see the murderer were he to cross the square ahead of one. This is not Mr. Poe’s ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ alas. No great ape can take the blame or absolve the hand of man in these slaughters, both here in Paris and in London earlier. These murders bear the mark of the beast, and he is all too human.”

  “I do admit that I would do a great deal that is against my nature to see you show up that Baker Street detective once more, but why is he so handicapped, in your opinion?”

  “He is not a woman.”

  “And a woman—?”

  “Would understand immediately that these crimes strike to the heart of womanhood.”

  “Oh.” Since I was a woman, I was not about to admit that I didn’t understand her point. “Of course.”

  “And you saw today . . . he makes the same arrogant error he made when first we encountered one another. He dismisses my observations, and yours, as insignifica
nt. He has no wish to know what we may have seen and what we think.”

  “He also dismisses the observations of the Paris police.”

  “He dismisses. No doubt his experience of the police, and his inexperience with women, have given him some cause for finding them both unreliable. Yet his experiences with me should have prevented him from making the same mistake of underestimating me twice.”

  “Now who is sounding like a prima donna?”

  She shrugged, then laughed. She has the most musical, unfettered laugh of anyone I have ever heard. It is like a Pied Piper’s fluting, and so effective with men, women, and children that I imagine even rats would follow Irene’s laughter into the mouth of the King of Cats. Which is probably Lucifer in disguise.

  For a moment I fretted about our menagerie left to Sophie’s untender mercies. The worst thing about having servants is that they invariably end up feeling superior to those they serve. Perhaps that is because they see far too much of them.

  “There is at least one purpose for our removal to Paris that you are bound to approve, Nell,” Irene said at last, breaking a companionable silence.

  “And what is that?”

  “To get Pink out of that bordello.”

  “Wonderful! I shall endeavor with all my heart to help her see the error of her ways.”

  “That is not exactly what I had in mind for her, but your approach will be equally interesting, I am sure, Nell.”

  Irene insisted on going alone to retrieve Pink, or Elizabeth, I should say. My first step toward reform would be the elimination of that infantile nickname.

  I objected strenuously to Irene’s going there unescorted, but she argued that she would be accompanied home by Pink. Two women alone was also improper, unless in the most public and expected of places, but propriety was always the last thing Irene troubled herself about.

  I remained puzzled and deeply hurt that she would care to burden us with a stranger during a time when we were confronting crime on a level unprecedented in touching the both highest and lowest levels of society.

  Pink, I concluded, fell somewhere in the middle of that social ladder. Perhaps I should have been worried about having a fallen woman in our midst, but the governess in me actually relished the idea of enlightening the girl. She had a bright mind, was very well mannered for an American, and seemed far more likely to respond to my advice than Irene ever was. A rather odd fallen woman actually, but I suppose the establishments that catered to aristocrats preferred to offer girls of the middling classes to their clients, odious as the thought was.

  Poor Pink. That terrible family life! What chance had the poor girl had? And then I recalled Irene’s comments that Pink was sharing only the tip of the truth about herself with us . . . Pink!

  I had been blind! Of course. Pink. From America. As Irene had been, years before. And, as Irene had been, also a Pinkerton private inquiry agent! Could a young woman be both a trollop and a detective? I suppose it would be a useful combination of . . . pursuits. Think of the state secrets such an agent could learn, the commercial dealings!

  Then how should I treat her? I must not betray her secret. All must seem as before. I remained hurt that Irene did not share this information about Pink with me. Perhaps she felt that I would give away Pink’s true assignment. I would show that such a concern was needless! I would treat Pink as purely the foreign fide de joie she appeared to be.

  Irene had chosen a hotel on the rue de Rivoli central to the various sections of Paris, which are called arrondissements. The Hotel du Louvre was nothing to sniff at, and we had a large suite with a receiving room and dining room separating two bedchambers as well as a sleeping alcove off the dining room. I was not sure where Pink would sleep.

  We had no maid, but Irene and I were used to playing maidservant to each other. She had always been far too American to accept the waiting-on that the profession of prima donna offered her. She rarely used dressers during performances, unless absolutely necessary. Since her marriage to Godfrey she had more played the maid to me than vice versa, as he apparently took over such tasks as corset-string tightening and loosening, which is so difficult to do on one’s own. I imagine that masculine strength was better suited to this troublesome task, and then ceased to imagine more lest I imagine too much.

  I shall never forget my reunion with Quentin Stanhope on the train from Prague to Paris, and how when I swooned at penetrating his disguise at last, he made short work of my confining corset strings in a manner I am still not fully sure of to this day, save that it was quite improper and strangely thrilling.

  Indeed, all of the events that I became involved in through Irene and her sideline of private inquiry agent were usually quite improper and strangely thrilling.

  I had never met such a pack of scoundrels and murderers and wicked women until after I was “rescued” from starving on the streets by Irene Adler! Now one of these fallen women was about to be imported into our very midst. This girl seemed fairly fresh and innocent, but I suppose that could be a pose. I cannot say I relished her close company, but could hardly object to a “rescue” attempt when I myself had benefited from one.

  While Irene was gone I occupied myself with copying my sketches of the footprints in the carpet from the miniature chatelaine notebook onto pieces of the sketching paper I use to lay out designs for my needlework projects. I must admit I took an intense pleasure in translating my measurements into a life-size representation of the impressions. Imagine! I might be looking at the sole of Jack the Ripper!

  In truth, I enjoyed my role as recording artist for Irene’s problems almost as much as I relish my role as diarist, though no one will ever read my homely narratives. I suppose there might be some interest in the more lurid aspects of our investigations, but I certainly would never countenance the publication of what is so private to me and of such little interest to the world in general.

  I can only hope that John H. Watson, M.D., is similarly sensible and discreet.

  The time fairly flew, and then Irene made her entrance in the open door of our apartments, the American girl beside her, along with a porter with yet more baggage. I was pleased to see, however, that Miss Pink traveled with only one trunk.

  Miss Pink (I must remember to call her Elizabeth even in my thoughts) wasted no time on renewed acquaintance, but came rushing to the desk at which I worked.

  “Well, here I am, persuaded by this silver-tongued diva to accept free room and board with no need of accepting other, more intimate offers, and given an opportunity to develop my skills for other marketplaces than maisons de tolerance. I see Miss Huxleigh has been as busy as a bookmaker! I am told that I am to apprentice you in the useful arts. What wonderful work! Imagine: those faint impressions we saw on the nap of a carpet are now laid out as clearly as a footstep in hot tar. You could do illustrations for the daily newspapers.”

  “Oh, no. My poor drawings are for private viewing only. And what journal would care to print representations of something so ugly as boot prints?”

  “Why, the Police Gazette,” said she, drawing up a chair and sitting down beside me without being invited, an American habit, I take it. “If only you and Missus Norton had been crawling around White-chapel, they would have paid you royally for all these footprints . . . this one looks like my best satin slipper with the Louis XIII heel.”

  With that the girl ran to unbuckle and unlock her steamer trunk and began tossing out articles of clothing until she emerged triumphant, rather like Prince Charming, with a single slipper except that hers was fashioned of silk and not glass.

  She galloped back to the desk and set the filthy sole down on my drawing. It fit the outline to a T-strap.

  “Call me Cinderella!” she crowed (and indeed, her voice lilted into the raucous range of Casanova in full cry). “That is very good work, Miss Huxleigh! It shows that your other drawings are liable to be tiptop, too.”

  “Tip-top?”

  “Perfect. Splendid, as they say in Blighty. That was my la
st stop, you know, and I learned a thing or two about that nasty Ripper. I’m sure I can help you pursue the fiend now that he’s moved on to Paris.”

  “My dear girl, we are here to help you.”

  “Then we are all of one mind. We will work together. I hear that you have met with Sherlock Holmes. I would give anything to meet him. He is all the talk of New York. And I hear that you take notes. So do I!”

  “Indeed. I rather thought your line of work was less . . . practical.”

  “Oh, anything a girl may do to stay alive and independent is practical, Miss Huxleigh. I admit I don’t let much stop me. If I am overbearing, you must let me know.”

  Where would I begin?

  “Dinner,” Irene said from the door to her bedroom, “would be a good idea.” She had shed her coat and bonnet. “I think we three may patronize the hotel dining room without causing scandal. We can also be served in this chamber, but perhaps should celebrate our alliance with a public outing.”

  Alliance? Is that how one would describe good works?

  I was beginning to wish that we had got on better with Sherlock Holmes.

  20.

  Wild Oats

  Some would see only the surface: an ungoverned, filthy boy,

  sexually crude and personally licentious, precocious only in

  sinning, sneering, and thumbing his “snot-nose” at a wiser

  world.

  —NOTE TO MYSELF

  FROM A YELLOW BOOK

  He is resisting my efforts to accompany him on his nightly outings.

  I have given him his lead for long enough, first in London, now here. It is time that I am initiated into his secret ways.

  I was forced to point out that he depends upon me for everything: food, drink, clothes. Especially drink.

  His capacity is the stuff of legend. I must remind myself that he is still so young, though his rough features and unkempt hair, his amazing lust for everything sensual—and “sensual” is too elegant a word, perhaps “the sensational” is better—his every instinct is the opposite of culture, of civilization.