Chapel Noir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “Unless, Miss Huxleigh? Come. You are a moderately acute observer. Such treasures must be shared.”

  Moderately acute! Schoolroom sketches, indeed! “Unless, Mr. Holmes, the piece of furniture upon which the two women died had only that day been imported to the chamber, specifically for the er, occasion that was to follow. At least one workman would be needed to install it.”

  His trespassing fingers crawled under the folder of my case to withdraw my sketch of the exotic two-tier sofa in question.

  “A workman or two.” He gazed at the article I had so painstakingly sketched. “I confess that I do miss Watson. He would have more personal knowledge of such matters.”

  I recalled reading the secret text in Dr. Watson’s London office months ago, in which this more worldly friend assessed Sherlock Holmes as an inhuman thinking machine, immune to any emotion, even the love between man and woman. Did this also exempt him from the lust that rules so many men? If a man without love for women could still lust, might he not also be able to kill?

  “That is to your credit,” I found myself saying, to my horror, referring to his admitted ignorance of the bordello world compared to his physician friend. “Not his.” How galling to have to approve of anything about Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who already approved of himself so very much.

  The look he gave this speech was icy and imperious enough to stop an Attila in mid-gallop. Luckily, I am an English parson’s daughter, and less impressionable than a Hun.

  “I have been much disappointed in the Prince of Wales, as a result of these events,” I said stoutly. “It matters not the high position one occupies, but rather the high ideals with which one pursues life.”

  “And death,” he added, referring to the crimes that had brought us together. “Knowledge, Miss Huxleigh,” he went on sternly, “is always superior to ignorance, however obtained. I agree with you, though, that the less one is subject to the intemperate passions, the more completely one may serve such higher ends as science, intellect, and the battle against those evil souls among us who ruin lives and disrupt society and murder if they must.”

  “Really? You agree with me? And who are these evil souls whom you suspect of being the Ripper?”

  “Only on the issue that there are men among us so intent on wreaking evil that they must be stopped, whatever the cost to ourselves.” He lifted my sketch of the odious chair. “Even if it means knowing the purpose of this.”

  “Quite,” I said hastily. Although I did not quite know the purpose of the demonic barber’s chair, I was sure it was nasty.

  He gazed at my sketch without seeing it, then stood. “I believe you have actually been of some small use. You may tell Madam Irene that I thank you for bringing your sketches.”

  I stood as well, sweeping my meager offerings back into their container. “I may tell her, and I may not. I am not a flunky. For her, or for you, sir.”

  “I am sorry. There is no time for amenities.” He stood. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have much work to do.”

  I prepared to leave that suite, despite gathering up my sketches like an art student welcomed with one hand and dismissed with the other by a self-centered maestro, and with the uncomfortable feeling that I may have innocently given him the secret to the Unfinished Symphony.

  Then I stopped.

  “You have not mentioned suspects, sir. Surely the world’s foremost consulting detective must have some suspicions along that line.”

  “You want suspects, Miss Huxleigh?” He began ushering me toward the door, all the while spewing a macabre patter that would have done credit to a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, were they working in a ghoulish vein.

  “There are more suspects for the murders attributed to this unimaginative butcher who calls himself Jack the Ripper than there are notes in a symphony.

  “There are laborers and lunatics. Leather Apron, as one man was described, has been a favorite. He does indeed seem a figure made to inspire the fear of children and readers of sensational newspapers. Then there are the usual suspicious ‘foreigners,’ in this case Jews and Poles and Russians. Immigrant peasants from eastern Europe flood the East End, irritating the native citizens and bringing with them alien customs that are subject to the worst interpretations. So we have shoemakers and ritual slaughterers among the possibilities. Some suspects have links to America, and Russia. And France.

  “Then there are the usual suspects beloved of the police whenever anything explicable transpires of the violently criminal sort: religious zealots against sin in the streets, and recently released lunatics.

  “In this case, there is the thrilling possibility that we are dealing with a rogue physician or an otherwise medically linked individual, in other words, with a person of some education and skill, who would not usually be suspected of such crude murders.

  “Taking this thrilling supposition further, whispers abound against persons far more elevated than mere doctors, those not only of the aristocracy, but of royal blood.”

  I tsked, for I liked to think that royal blood deserved its obeisance. Then I thought of Bertie and his table, sofa—what had Irene called it?—siège clamour, and remembered the rumors about his son.

  “The royals are not always as admirable as they could be,” I admitted with some distaste.

  “No doubt you learned that during your association with the King of Bohemia,” he put in. “I have had the honor to be called upon by the members of many royal families, Miss Huxleigh, in the course of my cases. Some are admirable, and some are not. In this they are not very much different from the usual run of humanity.

  “But back to the identity of the gentleman called the Ripper. I admit that I cannot conceive of why he should dismember so many harmless, hapless creatures of the Whitechapel night. It is as if his acts were made to order for the sensational newspapers. There is no reason but unreason in them, and when I find him I am sure to have in my hands a hopeless lunatic who is as pathetic as his victims.

  “But as to which hopeless lunatic . . . the witness’s testimony is annoyingly inconsistent. According to their breathless statements, he is a man of forty, just over five feet tall, dark-complected, looking and sounding like a foreigner, and of shabby genteel appearance. Leather Apron himself was a Jewish slipper maker, some four inches over five feet, with dark hair and mustache. After undergoing fierce questioning he proved to have an unbreakable alibi and was released and dismissed as a ‘crazy Jew.’

  “Then the police called for witnesses to the Whitechapel presence of a man of thirty-seven, who was seven inches above five feet, with a dark beard, mustache, jacket, vest, trousers, scarf, and hat. And a foreign accent.

  “Elizabeth Stride was seen before her death in the company of man of five-foot-five, smartly dressed in a black hat and morning coat, mind you. Less than an hour later, a witness saw her with a man of five-foot-six, dressed as a clerk in a cutaway coat and trousers, middle-aged, stout, and clean-shaven!

  “And within half an hour or so, she was seen elsewhere with a man police constables described as eight-and-twenty and five-foot-six with a dark complexion and small mustache. He wore a black diagonal cutaway coat, white collar and tie, a hard felt hat, and carried a newspaper-wrapped parcel.”

  “Oh, Mr. Holmes! It is so like a scene from Alice in Wonderland,” I couldn’t help remarking. “So sinisterly strange, like the Walrus and Carpenter leading the poor oysters off to being eaten. And the men’s descriptions are oddly different, yet so much the same all along.”

  “It gets curiouser and curiouser yet.” His keen gray eyes were actually twinkling. I saw that, like Irene, he appreciated—no, needed—a rapt audience, even of one, to rise to his best level. “Bear with me, Miss Huxleigh.”

  While he was enjoying confounding me, I was enjoying even more receiving this flood of information to tell Irene. I only hoped I could tally these details with the reports in the papers to provide a better picture.

  “The key witness in this case is a man named Israel S
chwartz,” he went on. “He is lucky not to have been suspected, but his testimony was so intriguing that he escaped the suspicion usually attached to those of his race in Whitechapel. Fifteen minutes after the previous witness, he saw a woman he identified from the corpse as Elizabeth Stride talking to a man in Berner Street. A man five-foot-five, thirty years old, with a fair complexion—”

  “Fair!” I cried out.

  “Exactly, the first such description. Dark hair, small brown mustache—”

  “Brown!”

  “Indeed. Full face and broad shoulders. He wore the ubiquitous dark jacket and trousers, and a cap with a peak. He tried to pull the woman down in the street but she escaped, though he threw her to the ground. She screamed several times, but not loudly.”

  My heart was beating. I was down on the cold, damp ground, the breath knocked out of me so I could only whimper protest.

  “While this was happening Schwartz noticed a man standing on the opposite side of the street. This man was five-foot-eleven—”

  “A veritable giant,” I couldn’t help remarking.

  Sherlock Holmes frowned at me for interrupting his narrative. He seemed to be forced to relay the incident, as if his own mind had replayed it over and over, like a scene from a play. “The man who had thrown Elizabeth Stride to the ground called out “Lipski” to the taller man across the street. Schwartz thought he was alerting an accomplice to his presence and ran away. But he said no one followed him.”

  “Oh. It sounds like a melodrama.”

  “So the papers thought,” Holmes said sardonically. “Take into account that about at the same time a dock laborer names James Brown saw a man and woman at Fairclough Street, near Berner. The woman was backed against the wall, the man bent over her, arm raised. This man was five-foot-seven, stout, and wearing a long dark overcoat.

  “Fifteen minutes later, Brown reached home to hear cries of ‘Police!’ and ‘Murder!’ This was the same time that Louis Diemshutz, a Russian Jew and jewelry salesman, found his faithful pony shying as he directed it into the Berner Street yard. He saw a bundle on the ground, then saw enough to know what he saw. He raced away to alert others. When the police came, she was still warm.”

  I shuddered. “I remember reading about that gruesome discovery. The pony must have sensed death, and his master was convinced that the murderer was still on the scene as he discovered it. This madman must have a gift for invisibility, or for changing his appearance.”

  “And witnesses are like clouds that obscure the moon. Their perceptions shift and so does the image of the murderer. This case has suffered from having many times more suspected killers than victims. The police have never been at a loss for likely suspects.”

  His face momentarily reflected their level of torment and frustration. Then his expression shifted as he regarded me with some amusement.

  “That is enough to keep you writing in your diary for some time. Good day, Miss Huxleigh. Thank you for your most interesting visit. It has been bracing to acquaint you with the whole pilgrim’s chorus full of suspects. And then, of course, if you are still hunting the most likely unlikely suspect, I beg you to remember that there is always your very humble servant, me.”

  He drew the door shut upon me as I stood gaping in the passage.

  29.

  Lost Soul

  Another mania is his need for movement, motion, the

  Romany love of traveling. He claims epic journeys by foot in

  his yet-young life. Even in Pairs he may suddenly rise and

  go, heedless of anything but wandering for hours or days.

  One feels he could wander for months or years.

  —NOTE TO MYSELF

  FROM A YELLOW BOOKS

  He has left the hotel.

  I discovered this on waking.

  He never liked sleeping under plasterwork.

  Frantic, I struck out alone into the Paris morning.

  Where would a wolf in human clothing go?

  Odd, that this creature so sublimely gifted to protect himself in the most primitive of conditions should be so vulnerable in this most civilized of cities.

  Yet I felt this was true, with my very marrow.

  I surprised myself. I resembled like an unlikely mother bear whose cub had strayed from the den.

  I paced, I searched, I cried to Heaven with gritted fangs. My wandering cub, so strong, so weak. Nothing must hurt him.

  I have nothing parental in my soul, which makes this furious panic all the more unlikely.

  The business of Paris bustled all around me: concierges were sweeping off stoops and caroling greetings to beggars and breadsellers alike. Horse omnibuses were thronging the streets, pausing to deposit passengers and offal.

  Where? Where?

  Then I knew. I altered course, walked briskly toward the river. Only one site in Paris spoke to his divided soul. Only one site married the sacred and the profane so necessary to his continued existence.

  As I walked, I realized that I had finally put my thoughts in tune with the beast. I could never lose him, because at last I was coming to understand him, at last I was beginning to think—no, to feel—like him.

  The sense of boundless power was as intoxicating as absinthe, as opium. As insanity.

  At last I was as worthy to unleash this beast as to hold him at bay.

  30.

  Jack L’Eventreur

  However, the cerebral anomalies claim the principal interest,

  since they very frequently lead to the commission of perverse

  and even criminal acts.

  —RICHARD VON KRAFFT-EBING, PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS.

  FROM A JOURNAL

  “Here, Pink.”

  Irene Adler Norton had emerged from her bedchamber with a heavy step and matching expression. Our breakfast table, already cleared by the hotel staff, was bare except for a Belgian lace cloth.

  On that elegant surface she laid a volume so slim compared to most that I took it for a book of poetry.

  I reached for it, but her hand claimed its closed cover in warning. “This is a dangerous book.”

  I could only imagine the most lurid possibility. “It contains witchcraft?”

  My answer softened her stern expression into a faint smile. “Don’t we all wish that life was so simple? That we could encounter Macbeth’s three witches and hear our futures foretold? No, this book contains great evil, but nothing that is the least bit supernatural. I almost wish that it was.”

  At that she drew out a side chair to sit at the table. I examined her face closely.

  “Did you send Miss Huxleigh . . . Nell, on an errand so you could show me this book confidentially?”

  She hesitated in answering. Her mood held the same sober air of concentration I had noticed last night when, having viewed the anonymous body found near the Eiffel Tower, we stood outside the examining room at the Paris Morgue. This was a woman of unsurpassed vitality and finesse, but in this moment and that one, she was so subdued that I sensed a much deeper vein to her character.

  This confused me. I had never before met a woman I so admired, or so wished to be like. Yet at this moment, I realized that I did not know her at all. I wondered if anybody truly did.

  And, of course, I was positively itchy with envy. Why wasn’t I worth diverting to such an enthralling errand as meeting with the renowned and most superior Sherlock Holmes, of attempting to outfox Sherlock Holmes himself? Surely I would be more up to the job than dear but sadly sheltered Miss Penelope Huxleigh! In a strange way I resented Irene’s instinct to protect her English friend. On the other hand, I would never have been admitted as easily to the Paris Morgue without Irene’s connections, though I would have managed it somehow on my own eventually. I have never failed to cross any barrier, however forbidden.

  “Miss Pink,” Irene said at last with a sigh, employing the name as a good rider uses a crop on a horse: barely touching the twitchy hide and yet getting a finer performance with that delicate goad than from all th
e harsh blows such beasts of burden have suffered through human history.

  Oh, she is formidable, in ways I can barely yet imagine!

  “You recognize the extravagantly vile wounds that were inflicted on that poor woman,” she went on, her voice as slow and soft as a lullaby. Again, her unnatural containment warned me that we were in deep waters. “We have been privileged to know the worst, which is denied to most women—for their own good, we are told. Now you must know more, and know worse. We cannot continue without your reading that book. Do you wish to, after what we have seen?”

  I am used to rushing into situations and seeking answers, then calculating the consequences afterward. Irene’s somber tone and expression made such behavior seem hopelessly shallow.

  I reflected. My headlong race toward knowing life in all its beauty and ugliness had brought me to this place and this moment. No doubt it came from being on my own at an early age. Although my wits were quick, there was so little that girls or women were expected or allowed to do once they had lost the protection of a father or a husband. This had forced me to plunge down avenues most women would cringe from. There I discovered an unexpected freedom and the means to support myself without eternal servitude in the factories or shops.

  Now I was poised to learn even more of what most women never suspected and far more than many men knew. Did I want to?

  Yes. I glanced at the battered and mottled posterboard surface guarded by Irene’s graceful fingers. They never fell into a position that did not look as if she was about to execute a Chopin polonaise on a Biedermeier piano.

  Pure evil, she said, lay beneath her lightly balanced fingertips. Evil ready to rush through the portal of my eyes and suffuse my mind. I had seen so much, why should I not know more? Not for me the glaring innocence that shrouded Nell’s perceptions like a floor-length bridal veil! I reached for the book, and Irene’s fingers melted away at my gesture.

  A sense of heady power gripped me. Opening the pages as I pulled the book toward me, I found myself shocked sooner than I had expected to be. This devil’s tome was written in German! Like most Americans, I only speak one language. Plain English and lots of it. I glanced up in confusion.