So I ended by strolling in the Temple gardens with Godfrey Norton. Irene, I thought, would be... what? Even I could not imagine how she would greet this news.
“You must realize, Mr. Norton, that the idea of a typewriter girl in the Temple is rather radical. No one besides yourself has answered my advertisement.”
“Why do you think that I did?”
“You are perverse?”
He laughed easily. “No. I simply realize that no one like yourself solicits such work except out of economic necessity.”
“That is true. I was a governess first.”
“And before that?”
“A parson’s daughter.”
“Ah. He died, of course.”
“Yes.” A sudden vision of my kindly father passed before my eyes. Though I seldom thought of him, I missed him. Godfrey Norton had never known that bittersweet emotion in relation to his own sire, I feared, no matter how he defended his family.
“Died, leaving you penniless,” he added a trifle bitterly.
“It was not Father’s fault! The Church is not meant to be a profitable undertaking. The flock cared for me until I came to London and left their purview. That is my own error.”
“Or good fortune,” said he, taking my hand in a kindly way that I could not find the heart to object to, despite his handsome face. “You will be the first type-writer girl in the Inner Temple; think of the honor! And you will save me from being buried alive by the scribblings of the law’s delay.”
His charm was as lethal as Irene’s. Even if I had not known that the chance of just this employment with Godfrey Norton had inspired her to direct me to the Temple, I would have succumbed to his obvious need of an organizing hand. I had often come to my father’s rescue just so with his sermons and correspondence.
“It is settled then,” Mr. Norton prodded, shaking my hand on the bargain.
“When do I begin?”
“Tomorrow. With the deeds. When they are done we shall have a table cleared. I will demolish the pile on the chair myself tonight.”
I laughed at the ludicrousness of it—that tiny room, the proximity of Irene’s nemesis and possible rival for the Zone of Diamonds, my sudden installation in the heart of the female-free Temple.
Mr. Godfrey Norton took my laughter for the joy of employment.
Irene laughed even harder and longer that evening when I reported to her.
“Splendid! Only one fish bit, and that the one we sought. What will he pay you?”
“I... neglected to ask,” I said, mortified. The shock of discovering that Godfrey was not the Norton I had assumed him to be had combined with the man’s native charm to drive normal practicalities from my head, though I could hardly tell Irene that. Mr. Godfrey Norton had apparently had no effect on her whatsoever, else why had she omitted mention of his youth and good looks?
“Be certain to demand your best rate, Nell—above it, if you can.”
“Mr. Norton expects to be freed of a financial obligation. I have the impression that his capacity for work is enormous. And I still do not understand why you did not warn me that I would be meeting the son, not the father.”
Irene shrugged. “A Norton is a Norton as far as our quest is concerned; the son is cut from the same arrogant sailcloth as the sire. Besides, you make a better investigator if you form your own opinions.”
“Indeed I have, and I do not feel that this Mr. Norton can have much in common with his father. For one thing, he is self-supporting and has evidently been so for some time, which means he has not benefited from the possession of the Zone of Diamonds. He is young to be a barrister—”
“Not so young,” Irene corrected me. “Close to my age, no doubt, and I am becoming established in my work.”
“Still, he must have begun his studies at a remarkably early age, with no or little monetary aid from his father, certainly.”
“How admirable,” Irene said icily. “We all face our obstacles. One of mine is being underestimated. See that you don’t underestimate your new employer. He is a barrister and a Norton, untrustworthy breeds both.”
With that she went off to the Lyceum Theatre and I prepared myself for my new position at the Temple.
Within days it was clear that Godfrey Norton refused to play the villainous character Irene had assigned him. His solicitude toward myself verged on chivalry—a pillow for my back, an eyeshade for my head, help in deciphering the clerk’s abominable penmanship ... His actions reminded me of the kindness the curate, Mr. Higgenbottom, dispensed to his flock; no doubt he would have lavished even more solicitude upon the woman he chose to wed— if only fate had permitted our paths to join as well as simply cross!
I would never confess it to Irene, but I found the position ideal. The Temple grounds, both Middle and Inner, formed an isle of tranquility amid London’s fiercest urban uproars. Like a tide the stream of city life rushed past, only Fleet Street’s faintest murmurs foaming through the narrow gates to both Temple yards. Across that thoroughfare bristled the Gothic towers of the Royal Courts of Justice, opened by Queen Victoria this very year of 1882.
Yet a stone’s throw from such turmoil I could amble through courtyards reminiscent of my notion of Oxford and Cambridge, trod cobblestones unaltered since Queen Elizabeth’s time, idle in the gardens along the tranquil river, even visit the lovely Temple Church with its twelfth-century round nave holding the stone effigies of knights naming the first families in the land. The first earls of Pembroke and Essex lay there with other noble knights, uncaring of the traffic upon Fleet Street.
To save me transporting it, Mr. Norton had bought a typewriter. Like Rapunzel I speedily spun the straw of longhand into the glitter of type—neat, efficient type that occupied so much less paper. Mr. Norton was often out, joining his fellow barristers—gowns flying and wigs askew—in racing between chambers and the Royal Courts across Fleet Street, daily breaching the flow of commerce with suicidal abandon.
The pay, it transpired, was generous and Twining’s tea shop was just down Fleet Street, so Irene’s illicit larder was soon stocked with exotic Orient brews.
To my surprise, employment with Mr. Norton led to invitations into other chambers at the same good pay. I came to learn the law’s peculiar syntax and easily mastered the long, Latin phrases. Father had insisted I study the dead language, not because of any fondness for the Roman Church, but because Latin underlay English. Never had his foresight proved so useful. I flourished in the Temple, but I learned not a syllable of the Zone of Diamonds.
“What a wasted effort,” Irene complained of my unrequited investigations after some weeks. “This Godfrey Norton is proving to be as dull as ditchwater. No irregular habits, no vices, not even a suspicious client or two, though the steady sums paid to that Hammersmith establishment called ‘The Sycamores’ are of mild interest. Perhaps you would deign to look into them. What a good thing that you are not a blackmailer, Nell; you would have slim success at it. To spend two months almost daily closeted with a man and know nothing more of him than the cut of his clothes strikes me as unlikely beyond belief.” She yawned.
“I know a good deal about him! He is unfailingly courteous—”
“Ah, how incriminating!”
“Most conscientious in his work—”
“A saint among us!”
“Neat about his person if not his office, and not even vain about his appearance.”
“A paragon, ‘tis plain.”
“You could benefit from his example,” I added, “as far as the vanity is concerned.”
“Vanity is an accessory of my profession.”
“Which one?”
“You begin to interrogate me as if I were a witness; too many hours spent among the barristers, I fear. Vanity is of use to both the performer and the investigator. In both roles I wish to win applause; only in investigations, the audience is naturally smaller.”
“I wonder which role is the more vital to you?”
“Why, my singing, of c
ourse! Playing detective is merely a necessity that underwrites the greater occupation. Once my singing future is secure, I shall let all these petty little puzzles go to their natural solvers—Scotland Yard, or Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective.”
“Would you really, Irene? Somehow I think the cart has come to pull the horse. You’ve shown no loss of interest in the Zone of Diamonds despite all this time and a cold trail.”
“The Zone.” Irene lifted an eyebrow. “No, I shall always want to solve that conundrum—but that is a major work of detective art, involving revolution and royalty and missing crown jewels. As for the rest, let it go. I shall be as indifferent to mysterious matters as a dog to milk once I am fully established as an opera singer.”
Though this was said grandiosely, with Irene’s offhand tone of conviction, I sniffed audibly before she swept out the door, which unspoken comment she pretended not to have heard.
“You seem distracted today, Miss Huxleigh.”
I tore my eyes from the window, where they had been staring at the treetops. “So sorry, Mr. Norton. I don’t think I have fallen much behind.” I began to admonish the keys sharply.
“I did not mean for you to attack the poor machine,” he said, laughing. “Let me rephrase my comment. ‘You seem pensive today, Miss Huxleigh.’ Is there a difficulty?”
“No, of course not... I was merely thinking.”
“Is thinking such a sad occupation?”
“No, only... I was thinking of my late father.”
“Ah.” His tone became abruptly noncommittal.
“And... guilt. I was meditating on the strange state of guilt”
“Perhaps natural in a parson’s daughter,” he said with a slight smile.
“Have you ever felt... guilty, Mr. Norton?”
His laugh was sharp and brief, like a bark. “What person who has passed through childhood has not? Have you not instilled guilt in your day, Miss Huxleigh, as a governess?”
“Yes. Guilt is quite a useful emotion. Now that I have experienced it more closely, I feel... wretched... for ever having induced it in another, even in the name of discipline.”
“What have you to feel guilty about, for heaven’s sake?”
I took my hands from the keys and folded them in my lap, staring steadily at Q-W-E-R-T. “I have not been fully frank about my situation with you, Mr. Norton.”
“I sense a confession coming on. I should warn you that a barrister is not a man of the cloth.”
“Perhaps you will have to do. I should tell you that, that I... share lodgings with another.”
“You... share lodgings with another.” A long silence, in which Mr. Norton cleared his throat. “Surely, you are not implying an unsanctioned alliance...?”
I looked up, mortified. “Oh, no! I reside with another woman, of course.”
“Of course.” He sounded much relieved. “But that is becoming common as more countrywomen descend on London for work. There is nothing irregular in it—”
“My chamber-mate is... an actress.”
“I see. No doubt an... unusual companion for a parson’s daughter, but there are a good many actresses in London, and some of them even respectable, I am sure.”
“She also... takes on clients—”
“Clients! I see.”
“No! Clients of a quite respectable kind, although unusual.”
“Respectable but unusual.” His voice remained carefully neutral as his confusion grew.
By now he had no inkling of where I was headed and half-feared the direction. Yet he remained calm and not at all judgmental. I did not quite know how to conclude my awkwardly begun admission.
“What kind of clients?” Mr. Norton prodded gently. “For what services?”
“For... finding things.”
“Finding things? Like those that are lost?”
“Or stolen.”
“What you describe, Miss Huxleigh, is an inquiry agent. Many barristers employ such from time to time. Such men are of some use...” He paused to dissect his erroneous assumption. “But that is the point, is it not? Your chamber-mate is a woman, a female inquiry agent... and an actress as well—”
When the truth struck him, Mr. Norton drew himself up as if in court. “She is this Adler woman who has meddled into the history of my family, who is trying to locate my father!”
“I fear so.”
“And you have been sent to spy upon me!”
I dared not even glance up to read his expression. Now the blind impression of “old Norton” I had received through the draperies and the man I knew merged as his indignation thundered above me.
“This is pernicious, Miss Huxleigh! I would not expect it of you.”
“Nor would I. Truly, I have not ‘spied’; there was naught to spy, and so I have told Irene. She was most annoyed with me.”
“This is infernal!” He began pacing. “Intolerable. To corrupt a parson’s daughter, to harry a man in the privacy of his own office—”
I wrung my hands. “Yes, it is dreadful. Irene has absolutely no compunction in the pursuit of a mystery. She is relentless.”
“Mystery! What mystery is there about the Nortons but the usual measure of human misery in double dose?”
“Why, the Zone.”
“Zone?”
“Of Diamonds.” I swallowed. Godfrey Norton stared at me as if I were mad. “Queen Marie Antoinette’s diamond belt, that your father reputedly bought in the fifties and that Mr. Tiffany wants to buy.”
“Diamonds? Marie Antoinette? Tiffany?” Mr. Norton flipped up his frockcoat skirt and sat on the documents that cushioned the only other chair in the office. “You had better tell me more, Miss Huxleigh. Half-confessions are liable to lead to half-baked conclusions.”
“That is what Mr. Tiffany had heard, that a fellow named Norton had purchased the Zone cheaply after it escaped Paris in the Revolution of 1848.”
“I wasn’t even born then.”
“Nor was I. Or Irene. But that’s why she was investigating the Norton family. It was her only line of inquiry. She was looking for your father; instead she apparently unearthed you.”
“Diamonds”—he shook his head—”what... fairy tales! Oh, I don’t doubt that some story is circulating. At least this tale is more glamorous than the sordid truth of my family’s past. Perhaps I should be grateful to this fabulous ‘Zone’ for obscuring what is merely tawdry with its dazzle.” He regarded me sharply. “You know, of course, then, of my call upon your chamber-mate.”
I nodded, afraid that an unconsidered word would force me to confess to the miserably petty crime of eavesdropping as well.
Mr. Norton sighed, smoothing his dark mustache with a forefinger. He laughed suddenly. “Your Miss Adler must think me a greedy rival for the Zone, angered to have other hounds on the trail. Or does she think I have it?”
“She thinks no one has it, for no one shows signs of that kind of wealth, though, of course, we—she has not located your father.”
“My father.” An odd expression came over Mr. Norton’s face. He tore a piece of paper from the corner of a deed and scrawled across it. “Here is my father’s, address. Perhaps she should speak directly to the supposed owner of this fabulous treasure. Take it! That is where he resides, at that address. You have my blessings, Miss Huxleigh. Let your indefatigable friend go directly to the source, and good luck to her!”
“Surely you are not serious!”
“You mean that I am not sincere. But I am!” He smiled again, bitterly. “I wish to forget my family, and particularly my father. I wish all others to forget him. Let Miss Adler find the cursed Zone and convey it to Mr. Tiffany and let them all forget the memory of Black Jack Norton. My mother is dead, at least. She can be hurt no longer.”
“Please, Mr. Norton. It was quite unforgivable of Irene to go hunting over the ground of your family’s history. She gets quite carried away in the pursuit of the unattainable—”
“So do we all. Do you want to know wh
at is really unattainable about my sorry family, Miss Huxleigh? A happy memory. My mother had left my father when I was quite young. As I grew older, I began to see what a scandal it was that she and my brothers and I lived apart from him. I even began to see the price she had paid, despite the success of her novels. When my father sued her for the proceeds of her writing—and won—I certainly saw our lodgings, our food, our clothing decline in the face of his legal success. It quite broke my mother’s heart to have the very law of England uphold such a scoundrel.”
“I cannot say how sorry I am; really, you need not tell me more.”
“I must tell someone the truth, since lies about my family are all that I have heard since my youth. Now your friend perpetuates more lies with this glittering tale of lost diamonds. Speak of lost honor, lost love, lost hope, lost livelihoods, rather than of diamonds. But such losses are too dull, too sordid in their everyday way to enchant the curious.”
“Yet they are losses I can sympathize with more readily, Mr. Norton,” I said quietly.
His thin-lipped smile grew rueful. “You find yourself quite in the middle, don’t you, Miss Huxleigh? A parson’s daughter must be used to firmer moral ground. Perhaps you think ill of my late mother, as so many did—”
“It sounds as if she were sorely wronged.”
“Indeed she was, by the law of England that declares all of a wife’s property is her husband’s, even when she earns it and lives apart from him because he is the worst sort of brute. That’s why I became a barrister, though my father before me had tainted the profession in my eyes, I wanted to right that law, and defend other women who are defenseless against the rapacity of their own husbands.”
“Most admirable,” I muttered, ashamed. “I quite understand why you cannot bear to have strangers probing into your family background. I shall tell Irene at once and insist that she abandon her inquiry.”
“No!” He caught my wrist as I rose, releasing me as soon as he realized the strength of his gesture. “That, too, invades my privacy. This talk of ours is between us alone. As you sought discretion, so do I.”
Good Night, Mr. Holmes (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 12
