Irene Adler 08 - Spider Dance

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “So Irene did what she had intended to.”

  “Perhaps, yes.”

  “Could she have left before the men arrived?”

  “Then why not return to me?”

  “Perhaps she was able to slip away just before they came, but had to hide until they left.”

  “Then why not come back to me?”

  “She could have feared leading them to you. She could have”—Godfrey’s eyes narrowed with an unhappy thought—”seen an opportunity to turn the tables on them and follow them.”

  “Leaving me waiting there in the dark, alone?”

  “It’s not likely, but this sounds like a desperate case—not the matter of Lola Montez but the Vanderbilt investigation Sherlock Holmes pursues. Irene would not hesitate to walk into danger if she thought it was a matter of someone else’s life or death. Already a harmless old priest has been slaughtered. His body’s appearance on a billiard table at the Vanderbilt mansion forges a clear link between Sherlock Holmes’s quest and Irene’s, whether we or they like it or not. We can best serve matters by exchanging all the information we each have. That way we’ll be informed and ready when Sherlock Holmes returns . . . with Irene or, God forbid, without her.”

  “Exchange information, Godfrey? What information could you possibly have to offer?”

  “You forget where I have been the past several weeks.”

  I had, in fact, done just mat Not so much as forgot it but dismissed it in the fever of my anxiety about Irene.

  “Bavaria,” I said slowly, like a child repeating a lesson not quite learned.

  “Bavaria. Precisely. The scene of Lola Montez’s greatest triumphs and failures.”

  “How did you know we had turned to investigating this woman?”

  “Irene mentioned in a cable that she could use any tidbits about Lola Montez I might run across. Naturally, I read between the lines, gathered as much information I could before I had to take the train to Ostend, and immediately sailed for New York.”

  “You never got the massive packet that Irene sent, then?”

  He shook his head. “She’ll have to tell me about that herself.”

  “And you came all the way here, so quickly, merely because Irene had casually mentioned a name?”

  “Irene never casually mentions anything. And what I learned of Lola Montez on my first sweep through the newspapers, histories, and memories of the older foreign office attaches convinced me that coming to New York was not deserting my post but serving the Rothschild interests in the best possible way, as well as my own, of course.”

  “Lola Montez was a poor dancer, a poorer actress, and an ill-tempered, high-handed woman of no moral standards. What could she possibly have to do with global political affairs today, almost thirty years after her death?”

  Godfrey smiled patiently. “Her enemies did a thorough job of discrediting her, with her own able assistance, I admit. But in the late ’40s in Bavaria, she was a fiery Republican liberalist who had convinced a monarch to grant unparalleled freedoms of speech to his subjects and the newspapers. She was overturning the tightfisted rule of his religious cadre of advisors. She was encouraging the students to protest and revolt. Remember, France underwent a spasm of reform and revolution again at that same time.”

  “Yes! That’s when Marie Antoinette’s Zone of Diamonds, which we found, had been smuggled out of the country to England.”

  “Exactly. And Irene found the Zone all by herself, by the way. The ’40s were a period of great foment in Europe. Lola Montez was at the center of it in Bavaria. Of course she fought fire with fire when her secret foes lashed out at her, and they drove her from the city of Munich and forced the king to abdicate. Ludwig is now, thirty years later and dead, regarded as a benign ruler who meant well for his people, but his ultimate legacy is the madness of his son and grandson, and the notoriety of Lola Montez.”

  I sat back in the sofa, astounded. “Lola was a serious political force? For good? I thought she had invented that notion, as she had invented herself as a Spanish dancer, from half-truths and sheer audacity.”

  Godfrey smiled. “The same may be said of her political career, but she was effective enough to be dangerous, and this rouses even more dangerous foes. The Ultramontanes, for instance.”

  “Ultramontanes! We’ve heard of these . . . this faction. What on earth are they? Who are they? Are they still . . . practicing?”

  Godfrey rose, brought the brandy decanter to the side table, and poured himself a glass. He also lit a cigar, and the scent of it brought Irene back into the room. I cursed every time I had complained of her smoking.

  “Steady, Nell. All we can do at the moment is think and compare notes. Otherwise we’ll go mad with waiting, and that will help no one, least of all Irene. I can tell you that Sherlock Holmes is considered the best man in Europe when it comes to the practice of private inquiries, which is quite different from espionage in its purest form.”

  “Should we contact Quentin, though?”

  He glanced to the telephone sitting on its lacy doily like a Black Widow spider in the center of its web. “We’ll call his hotel first thing in the morning.”

  “That might be well.” I felt my color, and indignation rising. “I called at his hotel last night, as soon as I left the boardinghouse, but he was out.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Perhaps one in the morning. Or so.”

  “Ah. And then you went to Holmes, as a last resort.”

  “I don’t like the man.”

  “You don’t have to like him, Nell. You only have to rely upon his reputation for unraveling vexing mysteries with amazing results.”

  Godfrey made a fist, and by the whiteness of his knuckles I saw how much our enforced inaction chafed his instincts, if not his better sense. He loosened his fingers and lifted the brandy glass to his lips, barely wetting them.

  “We must strip these events of what you and Irene embarked upon them to determine: whether Lola Montez is her mother. All that is moot now. The question is, what has the late Lola Montez to do with the fresh murders now?”

  “The Episcopal Church is in it up to its Romanish collars,” I said. Stiffly.

  He nodded. “So it seems. I sense we’re missing some link, perhaps the one that drew Holmes into the issue. His interest is not political but criminal.”

  “There is plenty of crime here for him to investigate. First Father Hawks dead, now Irene missing. Wouldn’t she be back here by now, Godfrey, if she could?”

  “Remember, Nell, how she explored Monaco in men’s dress by night? Perhaps you’d better look through her things, see if you can find her pistol. If it’s missing that might lighten your mind.”

  “I don’t know where she keeps such a thing, Godfrey! She insists on ‘sparing’ me knowledge she deems upsetting. Had I not been so easy to upset, I might have known more.”

  “You know the intricacies of a woman’s wardrobe, Nell, far better than I. ‘Search and ye shall find.’”

  I stood, a bit unsteadily. Apparently six sips of brandy are equal to a few hours on the surging Atlantic.

  “I’ll look, but I can’t be sure I’ll look in the right places.”

  “And you might wish to don your ordinary clothes,” he added, “so we’ll be ready to go out in the morning if we need to.”

  I had my assignment, I realized. One, I was to reassemble my ordinary self. Two, I was to discover if Irene had been armed when she disappeared.

  An hour later I stepped back again into the parlor. I had been busy. I hated to think what thoughts had occupied Godfrey while I had left him alone.

  He still sat on the sofa, his dark head bowed beneath the bright gaslights. The Astor House had no doubt been ultramodern when it had converted to gas, but now electricity was creeping through the city, nudging the gentle flickers of gaslight away.

  Godfrey was reading the newspaper, the one Irene had “borrowed” from the Herald vault. The one containing the obituary of Lola Montez
. Was Irene destined for an American obituary as well? Were Godfrey and I mourners unaware?

  I took a deep breath, and reported my findings. “I can’t find a pistol anywhere,” I told him.

  He jumped up as if summoned at the Judgment Day. “No pistol?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve been through everything I can think of.”

  “Then if she was armed and didn’t use the pistol . . . she wasn’t personally threatened at the boardinghouse. Excellent news, Nell. It argues for Irene being alerted. It argues for her being the hunter rather than the hunted.”

  “But wouldn’t she have gotten word to us somehow?”

  “There is no ‘us,’ as far as Irene knows. There is only you. I’m almost sure that she expected you to do what you did: rush to find an ally.”

  “Sherlock Holmes protects the Vanderbilt interests, not Irene’s. They are his clients.”

  “Sherlock Holmes may be considering at this moment, as we are, that he and his graveyard suggestion was the catalyst in drawing Irene and yourself into this farango. He may have meant the opposite, but ‘may have’ doesn’t matter in life-and-death situations. I would rather have a guilty man in my corner than any number of wonder-workers.”

  “You’re saying that Sherlock Holmes is both, in this instance.”

  Godfrey nodded, then pulled out his pocket watch. “Almost seven A.M., Nell. Morning. I suggest breakfast in the room. We must have the strength to do whatever we’re called upon to do today.”

  “I can’t eat with Irene gone!”

  Godfrey shrugged, not with indifference but with acceptance, and picked up the telephone.

  I’d had no idea that he knew how to use one.

  But, then, I’d had no idea about a lot of things before this expedition to America, including a person who’d named herself Lola Montez.

  MEMOIRS OR A DANGEROUS WOMAN:

  The Ultramontanes . . .

  Mlle. Lola Montez . . . has left a card at the Shooting gallery of

  Lepage . . . entirely perforated with pistol balls, in firing rapid

  doubt coups. The most famous Parisian shots avow themselves

  vanquished by the prowess of the fair Andalusian.

  —PARIS NEWSPAPER, JULY 1844

  The Jesuit party . . . are angry with Lollita, who is Catholic but a sworn enemy of the Jesuit; that’s obviously an unforgivable crime. Who knows, if she were doing the opposite and introducing the Jesuits into Bavaria, along witfi tfie holy Ignatius Loyola we might get a half-holy Lola. . . .”

  —KING LUDWIG I, 1846

  Ten years have elapsed since the events with which Lola Montez

  was connected in Bavaria, and yet the malice of the diffuse and

  ever vigilant Jesuits is as fresh and as active as it was the

  first hour it assailed her . . . I was compelled at last to

  fly before the infuriated bands of the Jesuits of Austria.

  —AUTOBIOGRAPHY, LOLA MONTEZ

  It took ten years and retreat to another continent before I could publicly and frankly address the machinations of the Jesuits and the Ultramontanes in Bavaria.

  Those who haven’t lived under the thumb of the papacy laugh at the alarms I’ve sounded. They think my accusations of the Jesuits spreading lies and scandal about me as far as America belong in one of my plays, not real life.

  Before I ever went to Bavaria, or knew that I would, I had heard tales of the Jesuits’ thirst for power in the governments and royal houses of Europe.

  After having been expelled from the cities of Berlin and Warsaw, and the backwaters of Spa, Baden-Baden, and Ebersdorf—once for the mere act of demonstrating my dancing prowess to a gentleman by throwing a leg over his shoulder—I returned to Paris, scene of my doomed romance with Dujarier.

  And there is where I first heard of the Society of Jesus and its political machinations that had caused it to be banned in more than one European country. France would have been a Catholic country save that their bloody revolution fifty years before had made them a wholly secular society.

  But Catholics and Protestants halved most European countries, and the Reformation was still being fought. In Paris we heard constantly how that battle was being waged. For if the loyalties of Catholic citizens everywhere were first to the pope “beyond the mountains,” then no government was secure.

  The Jesuits were exposed and excoriated in lectures at the College de France. Newspapers across Europe detailed the Jesuits’ plans to undermine nations, undo kings and governmental officials, and destroy any brave enough to oppose their secret agenda.

  In France, in Spain, in the many German states, the Jesuits were a hidden political force working against the great movements of nationalism and liberalism.

  So now, when I’d retreated to the Paris of my lost love, I was secretly approached by members of this very despised society, who wished me to help them convert a Russian nobleman of my close acquaintance to their cause. Spanish noble blood may run in my veins, and I might be expected to sympathize with all Catholic causes, but I refused to be used in this manner. I informed the French foreign mimster of their plot to influence Franco-Russian affairs, and for once Jesuits were banned from a place, not Lola.

  But, oh, I paid the price for my patriotism to my current country. The Jesuits swore eternal vengeance, and God knows that the Church of Rome claims to be eternal. . . .

  My second stay in Paris wouldn’t allow me to forget the tragic ending to my first visit: Dujarier’s death.

  At the end of March in 1846, I was called to testify in the trial of Beauvallon for the murder of Dujarier.

  My dear one’s mother and brother-in-law brought the action. Mobs thronged the entrance to the Palais de Justice as Dumas père et fils and myself arrived. Since the bloody revolution, Paris has always been a city of mobs.

  The case was simple: Dujarier, an innocent in the matters of duels of honor, had been goaded by a superior opponent into a fatal meeting. Dujarier had been too innocent to even choose a weapon that would have given him a chance at life: a sword, rather than a pistol. I testified how I pled with him not to go; I knew that I was the better shot and offered to take his place. He would hear nothing of it. And that awful morning he discharged his pistol, which fired far wide of Beauvallon. And then he stood there as a man of honor while the sharpshooter Beauvallon slowly took his shot, aiming for death, not a shot gone wide, or even a minor wound.

  I came forward when called to testify, clad in a black silk dress, a black veil, and a black cashmere shawl. The Woman in Black, as I was ever after.

  In the witness box, they handed me Dujarier’s bloody clothing and pistols from the duel. Had I worn them, shot them, Beauvallon would be dead, I knew it!

  I held the small lead ball that had pierced Dujarier’s face.

  The arguments made clear that Beauvallon had goaded Dujarier into the duel, that he was by far the more adept. He had not hesitated to shoot the unarmed man full in the face.

  Ranks of gendarmes and soldiers held back thousands of people swarming the Palace of Justice. The jury retired, and in ten minutes had a verdict. Not guilty.

  Sick of France, I gathered my trunks of clothing and jewels, my maid and my lapdog, and, some say, a young English lover, and left for the seaside resorts of Belgium, and then traveled into Germany. Heidelberg. Homburg. Stuttgart.

  The summer faded, and so did my grief. Fall was coming. The theaters would be reopening. I aimed for Vienna, but my route took me across Bavaria, through Munich.

  It would be the most significant detour of my life.

  43

  HOLMES AGAIN

  The Countess of Landsfeld would not be welcome anywhere in

  Prussian territory because her presence might incite public

  demonstrations by liberals, socialists, and communists.

  —BRUCE SEYMOUR, LOLA MONTEZ: A LIFE

  Waiting is such a helpless state. I have come to detest it more than anything. While Godfrey and I waited to hear f
rom Mr. Holmes, I found myself jumping up at every muffled sound in the hall.

  I hadn’t realized I’d become so accustomed to going out and doing things on my own. When I reviewed my actions after Irene had disappeared, I grew quite astounded by my own nerve.

  Godfrey had been able to take a room adjoining our suite, so we’d ordered breakfast served in Irene’s and my larger parlor. I’d simply rearranged my shirred eggs rather than eating them. Godfrey was, as far as I could see, subsisting on brandy by night and coffee by daylight.

  The sight of his fine-featured face taut with unrelenting worry made my heart twist. Surely Irene would have sent us word, were she in any state that would permit it!

  A knock on the door sent my eyes to my reinstalled lapel watch—8:45 A.M.—and then to Godfrey.

  He leaped up, paused to gather himself, then went to open the door.

  Sherlock Holmes shouldered in like a weary pugilist, head lowered, shoulders leading. Seeing Godfrey drew him up short.

  “Mr. Norton. This is a timely surprise indeed!”

  “Mr. Holmes. What word have you?”

  They were both of a height, and both at the end of their tethers. No time for pleasantries.

  Holmes answered. “I bring no news, either of hope or despair. The four people I tracked from the boardinghouse retreated in the same direction, but whether together or not, I can’t yet say.”

  “And that direction was?” Godfrey wanted to know.

  “The dock and warehouse area near the harbor.”

  “Will you take coffee, Mr. Holmes?” I asked, merely to break the intolerable tension within, and between, the two men.

  “Not ordinarily,” he said, “but yes.”

  He came to stand before me while I poured . . . and while I cogitated as to how to turn the energies and aims of these two motivated but wary men into an asset rather than a competition.