Chapel Noir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “And yet she was the most savagely attacked thus far, the next-to-last victim before Mary Jane Kelly. And didn’t Catharine Eddowes use the name Mary Ann Kelly when she was arrested?”

  “Yes. She lived with a man named Kelly.”

  “And an earlier victim was named Mary Ann?”

  “The first. Mary Ann Nichols. You think that the killer was confused by the victim’s name? That he was searching for a particular woman, and when he found her, his rampage ended?”

  “I don’t know. Hearing the details of the Ripper’s crimes and victims is like listening to a satanic symphony. There are movements and themes, motifs and reprises, but still the Devil is conducting the orchestra, and we must dance to his demented tune.”

  She pushed herself away from the wall, forcing her backbone to support her on its own. “I have a devil’s dictionary back at our hotel that I will share with you. You will learn what I have: that such crimes, such atrocities, are not uncommon, though not commonly made public. Not even the vile Ripper letter talking about eating the victim’s kidney. ‘It was very good,’ I believe he said. Even that has precedent.”

  She moved down the passage, but I caught her coat sleeve in my hand.

  “Mrs. Norton. Irene. You have not asked why or how I know so much of the London crimes.”

  Her eyes regarded me with almost childlike clarity. “You were banished to your room to study Nell’s and the Rothschild newspapers and the police reports, while she and I interviewed Bram Stoker. I assume you are a quick study.”

  It was a most generous and even disingenuous view of my role. I could not let it stand.

  “I went to London. To see the world. And to work in a West End establishment. It was quite nice, actually. I thought that we were a world away from the ‘abyss,’ which is how Jack London, the American author, described London’s East End not long ago. Yet we girls were all . . . riveted by the Whitechapel murders. We were so far away from, so far above those sad East End prostitutes, safe and well clothed, warm and even paid decently, but—”

  “You were just as susceptible.” She brushed off my hand, not with distaste but with true disinterest in my role as a professional fallen woman, in even the details of that life that I confessed. “I don’t think that Jack the Ripper is so much ‘down on whores’ as that he knows the rest of the world is, and that therefore they are helpless targets for his inhuman appetites. Jack l’Eventreur, the French call him, and now they have him in their midst.”

  “You believe it is the same man?”

  “I believe it is the same mania.” She consulted a pocket watch on a chain. “It is late. We must hurry back to the hotel. Soon hansoms will not stop for even respectably clad clients.”

  With that she wound the scarf over her lower face, donned her top hat, and offered me her arm.

  How very odd. I have always considered myself an independent and typically American woman, needing no man’s gentlemanly escort. Yet I was very glad to have this particular woman in man’s guise accompanying me back to the life and lights of our hotel, especially after what we had seen.

  The guard nodded brusquely at us as we departed the morgue.

  Outside of the building, we could hear the river Seine lapping at the stone embankments like a huge invisible cat consuming cream.

  The towers of Notre Dame snagged fast-flying clouds.

  We walked along the Seine, alone with the fog that the river exhaled like fine veiling. Streetlights spangled the distance like stars. Such beauty, such peace ahead of us, and behind us, ruin.

  I would have to revisit the maison to discover the names, ages, habits, and heights of the dead women. Irene’s musical mind was struggling to discern a design in the madness, and I saw now that even the most aberrant acts of human nature must hide some unseen pattern.

  Our footsteps pattered like slow-tempo sleet on the stones along the river. Andante, andante.

  We spoke not a word. Every four steps, Irene’s walking stick would strike the stones. Rather like the triangle in an orchestra, a tiny sound lost in the vastness of the night, yet as regular as rain or a ringing mantel clock.

  The shuffle of other shoes came in our train as we neared the pierced, clifflike ramparts of Notre Dame.

  “I feel a sudden need for religious observance,” Irene whispered suddenly. “Quick! Into Holy Mother Church.”

  She steered me through a side entrance into the grande dame of Gothic cathedrals.

  I was not so sure we were seeking shelter. Oh, it was dark inside, save for a tiny red gleam of a vigil light in the distant sanctuary, like a rat’s eye in the dark, and the mass of lit candles before the statues of the saints.

  Scents of liquid beeswax and charred wicks filled my nostrils, along with the slightly stale yet peppery miasma of incense that had lofted into this soaring nave for more than seven hundred years.

  Irene was pulling me down the side aisle.

  Our footsteps sounded like tocsins, and behind them came other steps.

  She guided me toward the great front entrance, where we slipped through a small door in the massive facade. Ancient but squat outbuildings clustered, an architectural mob, in the open area before the cathedral’s front doors.

  Irene took my wrist and pulled me toward the shadowy mass.

  At that moment a squeal like a pig erupted from the very buildings we ran toward. A sleet of stone fragments blasted my right cheek.

  “A bullet,” she said in a deep hush, thrusting her cane into my free hand. “It’s a sword-stick. Pull the cane top free if you need to use it. Hurry. In here.”

  She pushed forward on the first bit of wall that collapsed and proved itself a door. We moved into absolute interior darkness.

  My gloved hand lifted the decorated cane top and I heard the metallic slither of a blade pulling free of a sheath, a harsh, sharp sound that challenged the darkness and silence all around us.

  “Where are we?” I whispered.

  “Inside, away from whoever’s shooting at us. That’s all I know.” She prodded me forward into unknown territory.

  Our feet and hands and bodies collided with unknown shapes and borders in the dark, but none of them was animate. The smell was dank and musty. Despite our slow, painful progress, we made no racket, although we heard muffled banging at the fringes of the compound.

  Still Irene pulled and pushed me forward. A piece of wall gave way again, and I found my boots stuttering down some narrow, swaybacked stone stairs.

  Immediately I was struck by two conflicting sensations: the chill breath of an underground draft, and the scent of warm wax. That heavenly odor mixes with the incense that perfumes the wooden pulpits and altarpieces of the great cathedrals of Europe and England and for me embodies the notion of the Old World.

  “Hurry,” Irene whispered. “This time we may not be too late.”

  I rushed after her as instructed, not sure that I wished to be in time for what lay ahead.

  Then my sense of enterprise banished all dread. This is what I had come to the Old World for: utter immersion in its secrets.

  Our boots ground on sand and cinders tracked in from the streets. Others had been here before us. Spirits had not lit those candles.

  Not that my sensible American skepticism had ever for a moment believed in spirits. . . .

  We were feeling our way through the dark. When an exhalation of even colder air opened before us like a kind of well, we both stopped as if teetering on the edge of an abyss.

  I heard the rustle of Irene’s clothing, then a scratch as a tiny lucifer flame burst forth like a firework for Lilliputians.

  “There! Fetch that candle stub.”

  I spotted the pale fat cylinder on the damp ground, running to claim it before her match should burn out.

  I spun to return to her just as the small light winked out.

  The wax in my hand was chillingly . . . warm.

  A scratch and flare later I was able to make my way to her; although half-lit, she resembled a
melodrama Mephistopheles, the tall top hat adding horned inches to her height.

  She held the sputtering match to the curled wick atop the candle stub. It caught fire begrudgingly, as if exhausted from its previous night’s work. The result was a feeble fog of light that clung more to us than illuminated anything else.

  “Look.” Irene began a tour of the roughly circular space into which worn stones tumbled. She bent to hold the light over the uneven earthen floor. “More wax droppings. A great many candles were used here, but they were taken away again.”

  She moved away, then lifted the candle close to a wall half dirt and half stone bricks, frowning at what she saw.

  I came to peer over her shoulder. “Red candle wax? As if someone moved a candle so quickly the liquid wax drops hit the stone.”

  “Blood,” she declared, “but almost lashed toward the wall, as you describe.”

  “Was someone killed here then?”

  “I don’t know. I do not smell the great quantity of blood we detected at the bordello. The candle wax and something else outweigh it.

  “Wine?”

  “No, something more acrid, harsher.”

  Irene had continued her inspection of the space’s perimeter, stepping into the next unknown swath of dark as fearlessly as a soldier marching toward an enemy.

  I was glad to let her lead, which was hardly typical of me, but it shows in what thrall her daring spirit held me. This was a woman who could act as well as masquerade as a man.

  As she swept the candle lower against the wall, I thrilled to see that her left hand held a pistol. The sight almost made me wish that I had become a Pinkerton, rather than choosing the profession I had fallen back upon.

  But circumstances circumscribe all our fates. I was here because of the choices I had made, and I would not now be anywhere else for a mogul’s ransom, flying bullets among the flying buttresses or not!

  “Broken glass again,” she noted, scraping her boot sole over the ground. “But no scent or stain of wine. Oddly disturbing.”

  “This is not a wine cellar,” I pointed out.

  Her expression sharpened in the candlelight. “Very good, Pink! The wine only reflects the setting of the first murder, nothing else. It was at hand. And the Eiffel Tower excavation site could have attracted sots who left empty wine bottles. Here . . .”

  She moved suddenly close to the wall. I gasped as her candle seemed to illuminate a standing, skeletal figure.

  “A tunnel?” I asked.

  “A niche.” Her voice was hushed with wonder.

  I edged nearer. If skeletal guardians did not alarm her, they should not deter me.

  Then I saw that the skull, the long leg and arm bones, were jumbled into impossible physiognomies. Were these dry old bones in proper conjunction, we would indeed be facing a monster. But this was a polymorph, a monster formed of many individual’s bones.

  “This is a catacomb, Pink,” Irene said in some wonder. “We may even be gazing upon the jumbled schemata of ancient Romans perhaps, or even more likely, of early Christians. We must be under the cathedral. This must be an ancient crypt upon which it was built.”

  “Do the authorities not know about this place?”

  “Probably not, but someone else does, and has appropriated it for some very strange purpose.” Irene suddenly shook the hand holding the candle, sending a sinuous lash of melted wax against the niche wall. The pattern was exactly like the red spray she had identified as blood.

  “The candle stub grows too hot to hold,” she said. “We must find the exit tunnel and venture into the streets again.”

  “What of our pursuer?”

  “Perhaps he has tired of the chase.” She smiled grimly at me over the fading flicker of the candle flame. “Perhaps we shall meet him coming as we are going. We will worry about that when we face it. For now I thank our mysterious pursuer for introducing us to the mysteries of below ground.”

  She had taken my elbow and steered me unerringly toward the dark mouth of the passage that had led us here.

  The candle died just as we reached that uncertain exit.

  I heard the stub hit the ground with a hollow sound, as if something living had just had the breath knocked out of it.

  “I will go first,” Irene whispered in the utter dark. “I have the pistol, after all.”

  28.

  A Werewolf in London

  I go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work

  of the police.

  —SHERLOCK HOLMES

  I glanced at my companions over breakfast in our common room the next morning.

  Both Irene and Elizabeth were bleary-eyed and, what is I worse, were uneager to meet my gaze. There is nothing more annoying than aroused suspicions with no evidence to use as a pry bar.

  I drummed my fingers on the tablecloth and accepted only muffins although Irene had ordered every hearty English breakfast item, including eggs, bacon, sausage, button mushrooms, baked beans, and something that passed for black pudding, especially in my honor.

  “We must advance events,” Irene declared while she shared a pot of vile coffee with Elizabeth.

  I sipped my tea deliberately.

  “Nell, you are just the person to do it.”

  I sputtered into my Earl Grey. “And how am I to ‘advance events’? I am absolutely in the dark regarding these repulsive crimes.”

  Irene beamed at me over her coffee cup. “Exactly why you will go to Sherlock Holmes and throw yourself upon his superior intellectual skills.”

  “I will not! They are not!”

  She clapped her hands together, in the thrall of a new idea.

  “This is inspired. You will bring all your annotated evidence to the Sage of Baker Street. Except he is residing . . . where? Probably at the Bristol so as to be near the Prince. It is imperative that you distract him while I follow my own line of investigation.”

  “With Elizabeth?” I asked pointedly.

  “Possibly. But the more important assignment will be yours. Only a keen and subtle mind will distract the great detective. Yes, it must be you! Remember, every moment you mislead him, you will be aiding me and these poor dead women. The case darkens. You saw the state of the last victim, laid out at the morgue under her concealing sheet. Imagine what the linens hid?”

  Irene managed an artistic shudder which echoed an internal horror that was not feigned. Much as my dear friend loved to dramatize situations, the impulse beneath her surface mastery was always serious. And sincere.

  I looked into her eyes. Their expression was both quizzical and hopeful.

  I folded my napkin and tossed it upon a French croissant of exceptionally flaky crust, redolent of fresh butter. So I must sacrifice my better nature to consort with the consulting detective.

  Yet better that I spend time in his presence than my poor ignorant friend, usually so perceptive, but now so utterly unaware in what inappropriate regard that man held her.

  “I must share my observations with him?” I asked, hoping she would say no.

  “But of course. That is the lure. He is quite lost in certain, very key respects, you know.”

  “I know.” I rose from the table. “I hope you realize what an imposition this is. And I hope that you will follow only such paths as Godfrey would approve in your own investigations.”

  “Of course, Nell. Only what Godfrey would approve.” She lifted a hand to heart, then covered it with her other hand.

  The specter of a dimple beside of her not-quite-smiling mouth made me suspect that Godfrey would approve of a great deal that I would not.

  I have always loved Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, so perhaps it is no surprise that I found myself in the self-sacrificial role of Sydney Carton, deposited by a horse omnibus at the door of the Hotel Bristol, prepared to surrender myself to Sherlock Holmes.

  I mean that solely in the military sense, of course.

  And indeed, I chose to imagine myself as Quentin Stanhope, Cobra by code name, engag
ed on a mission of espionage.

  I hesitated, but gave my true name at the reception desk, and was summarily informed that no Sherlock Holmes was a guest there.

  Well.

  I turned to face the bustling lobby, crowned by glittering chandeliers above and thronged by the cream of society below.

  My palms grew clammy and dampened my dark cotton gloves.

  What was I to do? Stymied from the outset. What would I tell Irene?

  That the man was invisible? That I could not find him?

  Never.

  I marched away from the desk with the gilt pigeonholed temple of numbered guest-room niches looming behind it.

  Not wishing to appear at a loss, I swept up the marble stairs to the first floor. There I could gather myself. What an expression, as if I were a length of fabric that would come unraveled if not neatly stitched together. I resolved not to fray no matter the circumstances.

  I moved toward the place where the odious elevated car could be caught on the ground floor.

  A drawn grating announced that I could submit to its incarceration here as well.

  So. I would take it to the floor and to the room where Irene and I had been entertained by the Invisible Mr. Sherlock Holmes not two days ago.

  Naturally such a course was most improper.

  But. Who was here to see it?

  I squared my shoulders and pressed my gloved forefinger on the mother-of-pearl button that summoned the elevator car.

  At least it had a uniformed operator who did not look askance at me. Apparently hotels patronized by the Prince of Wales were used to unaccompanied females.

  Imagine! I was taken for a fallen woman. What a relief. There is some consolation in not having to live up to oneself.

  At the fifth floor I dismounted, if that is the proper expression, and proceeded to the room I remembered.

  I was startled to hear unearthly wails and screams coming faintly from beyond the heavy wooden door. When they continued beyond what even the most sorely tried human lungs could sustain, I realized that the sounds were vaguely predictable, and even abominably musical. A bagpipe? No. A violin belabored by one possessed. Although the violin may in the upper registers, under the fingers of a maestro, produce a high, keening beauty that is impossible to deny, it is more often a hoarse, rasping instrument that teeters closely to the screech of a wood saw.