Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 11

"If there are links to the London killings, I am at a disadvantage. I know little of the events, since we were traveling on the far-flung edges of the Continent."

The Baron shook his head with an amused smile. "I will have the London branch of the family supply all newspaper and police reports by messenger. They should be in your hands within two days."

"Through official channels?"

"Through whatever channels best suffice. If information is all you require, ask and you shall have it."

"What of the police reports here in Paris?"

The Baron paused to stroke a forefinger through his silky side whiskers. "Those may require more finesse."

"You do not trust the Paris police."

"It is rather the opposite. The Paris police do not trust me, or any Rothschild. They have kept ma.s.sive dossiers on me and my family for decades. And the climate has grown even more intemperate of late: the gossip, the lies, the hatred. The city throngs with newspapers of all stripes, with the anti-Semitic journals everywhere. We thought the Russian situation was severe, but I fear that Paris is burning for its own kind of pogrom. We Jews are too successful."

This was the first tang of bitterness I had ever heard in the Baron's voice.

"As I was at La Scala in Milan," Irene noted wryly, putting her hands into her jacket pockets as if feeling for the presence of her revolver, "when the sopranos put ground gla.s.s in my rouge pot."

"No!" He looked up, both appalled and surprised by the petty acts among opera singers.

"Success is always a cause for suspicion and resentment in the untalented."

We were silent-I was certainly not going to speak out of turn.

"It is not just Jews who are successful," the Baron said quietly. "Or suspect."

"Indeed." Irene turned toward the fireplace and the high-backed chairs I had so coveted. "I think perhaps His Royal Highness could join our conversation now, instead of merely eavesdropping."

Family Resemblance

Many times subsequently I had the pleasure of meeting him,

and I found less of the airs of office about him than I have

many times seen displayed by third-rate officials, even in our

own dearly beloved ana highly-spoken of democratic republic.

-WILLIAM F. CODY, A.K.A. BUFFALO BILL

A bemused chuckle issued from beyond the right wing chair facing the fire, sounding uncannily like an apologetic throat-clearing as well.

Then a figure rose from the shelter of the chair like a ghost in a Sheridan Le Fanu story.

No ghost he, but a man to whom the word "portly" would be a compliment. I had seldom seen such a fat man, except in the newspapers.

While I stared, the familiar features took undeniable shape: the heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes, both amiable and arrogant; the neatly trimmed mustache and the beard whitening at the corners of his obscured mouth.

One feature was decidedly not familiar. The Prince of Wales was balding quite markedly. I realized with shock that I was seeing him in intimate circ.u.mstances common only to family and friends, not to the public. It also occurred to me that all the photos published of him had been made out of doors, when His Royal Highness wore a dignified top hat or a jaunty yachting cap or sportsman's cloth cap. Hence I deduced that the Prince was vain as well as in line for the throne, although perhaps the latter fact accounted for the first.

He was staring dumbly at Irene and squinting those already half-shut eyes. "You look like what the photographers call a negative of Sarah Bernhardt in her pale-trousered sculpting ensemble. So you are the formidable Madam Norton. I have met you before, have I not? I never forget a pretty face, even when it is later presented to me above a gentleman's frock coat."

She approached him, hand extended.

The Prince of Wales was one man she did not force an American-style handshake upon. Instead, he took her limp offered hand while she executed as pretty a curtsy as I have ever seen done, though performed by a woman in trousers.

"It was many years ago," Irene said. "How kind of Your Royal Highness to remember."

"Ah. I do not remember where or when, though."

"Luckily, Your Highness, I could never forget."

His sleepy eyes fluttered at this flattery. "I trust so." He leaned as close as his great bulk would permit, and she honored him with the details.

"It was dinner at William Gilbert's house, Sir, when I was singing in Iolanthe: The Peer and the Peri. Mr. Gilbert enjoyed inviting the ladies of the chorus for a brush with greatness."

I hoped only I had noticed that Irene had not specified if the greatness to be so brushed with was that of William Gilbert, the renowned librettist, or of the Prince of Wales. "Bertie," of course, would leap to the conclusion Irene wished him to swallow like the Queen's pet Pomeranian diving through a hoop for a bit of the dinner roast. Perhaps royalty did not eat roast, on second thought, but I was certain that the Queen's Pomeranian, and her eldest son and heir, both leaped on her command.

For a moment I envied Americans their wild, ungoverned state.

Irene was showing no sign of being a republican rather than a royalist now though, as she smiled at the Prince.

"I do remember you." His pudgy forefinger tapped possessively on the soft silk ascot at Irene's throat. Only I saw her stiffen. "Quite a forward miss, as I recall. Insisted on a private audience."

"Which your Royal Highness so kindly granted."

His walrus eyes began to twinkle. "I remember every moment of it. And now you are married?"

"Indeed," Irene said. "And now I am permitted to meet your Royal Highness again, and to hope to do you some small service in repayment for the favor of a royal audience so long ago."

"Tut, my dear. It is I who owe you a royal favor for sharing your beauty with the world. Do you still perform? I mean, er, sing, was it?"

"Alas no, Sir. I am now kept busy with private inquiries. As you may imagine, the great have need of protection."

"Imagine nothing! I am plagued by the Paris police, who follow me everywhere, or everywhere they can. But you were a clever girl, I recall. Was there not some unpleasantness involving a peer of the realm and a chorus girl?"

"An unpleasant murder, Your Royal Highness, as there is here."

The reminder pushed him away from her as from a bad omen. "Yes. Again. That was a trifling affair, that operetta instance. We were able to hush it up. This-"

"This is too gruesome to hush up," Irene agreed.

"And how did you know that I was here?"

"At the Baron's residence? In the chair? In Paris?"

"Any or all of it?"

"I knew you were in Paris to inaugurate the Eiffel Tower at the opening ceremony; the papers were full of it. From there it was but a skip and jump to guessing the extreme concern you would feel over the terrible murders that occurred so near to Your Royal Highness's . . . neighborhood. How may I be of service, other than interviewing the American girl who discovered the atrocity?"

"You have heard what the Baron fears," the Prince said, sounding like a prince concerned with issues larger than his own interests for the first time.

"Yes, but I was not in London during last autumn's Whitechapel events. Does Your Royal Highness also fear that fresh murders will raise fresh fury against the Jews?"

"I do." He spun away from us to pace to the fireplace, then turned and addressed us as a group. I was amazed to see those lazy eyes pa.s.s over me as well as the Baron and Irene. It was as if he addressed an audience.

"I am sure you know that I am not held in the public's highest regard-oh, they are fond of me," he hastened to say, as if any one of us had argued with him, "but I am merely tolerated. They love my mother and admire my wife. I am tolerated. 'Good old Bertie.' " His ma.s.sive shoulders shrugged. "I enjoy good food, good company, good gaming, good sailing, good hunting, good friends, good cigars, good women."

Irene waited politely, as must all who wait upon a prince, but I was possessed of an unexpressed restlessness I could only quench by pus.h.i.+ng a hand into my pocket and squeezing my fingers shut on the many sharp angles of my chatelaine.

No wonder the Prince of Wales was merely "tolerated" by his subjects, as he put it! He was a careless pleasure-seeker, and that was all.

"I am criticized for my love of foreign climes," he went on, "Paris, Vienna, Baden-Baden, Marienbad. I am as liable to a.s.sociate with jockeys as with Jews, commoners as with n.o.bility. These are modern times, Madam, and I move with them."

You move with the money, I heard a wicked voice I did not know I possessed answering him. And who had more money than the Rothschilds? Of course, Irene and G.o.dfrey and I had benefited from their patronage ourselves, but we worked for it.

And, of course, the Jews whom the public turned on from time to time included both the wealthy and the powerless. I had to admire Baron Alphonse for responding to attacks on the most humble and helpless of his kind.

Apparently, he had also won the sympathy of the Prince of Wales, not an insignificant achievement.

"Sir," the Baron said now, "do not doubt that my family is most grateful for your support."

"And I for yours," the Prince said, chuckling again. "You rascally bankers know you have rescued the crowned heads of Europe from fiscal and political ruin time and again. Not to mention that you offer such splendid hunting and cigars at Ferrieres."

The Baron shrugged modestly. I realized that I was hearing of affairs the public and even the journalists never dream of eavesdropping upon.

Irene, however, grew visibly impatient with this mutual self-congratulation, though it involved a baron and a prince. I recalled that she never had been very intimidated by princes, not even when they resided in Bohemia.

"Sirs," she said, "if you wish to avoid an eruption of anti-Jewish sentiment, this killer must be stopped before the public suspects Jack the Ripper is at work again. He must be caught and identified."

"Well said, and not easily done," the Baron noted.

Irene fixed Bertie with a stern eye equal to any maternal glare. Having been an opera diva did have its uses. "Your Royal Highness." In just such a tone would I as governess have addressed a naughty baronet of eight. "Is it not true that you were present in the maison de rendezvous at the time of the murders, that you were the caller the two now-dead ladies were expecting, instead of Jack the Ripper?"

"Oh dear G.o.d, yes." Bertie whispered the words, then stumbled toward the fire, sitting heavily in the wing chair.

Irene followed him like a Queen's prosecutor at the bench.

"But you were entertained elsewhere in the house at the time."

"Yes." He looked up at her with the meekness of the found-out. "Who told you-?"

"No one told me. It was obvious from the moment I entered the house that the first business had been to remove and conceal the presence of a person of high rank. I merely imagined the highest rank I could and arrived at you."

He blinked. "P-p-poor girls. So y-y-young and pretty. Vivacious, both of them. Charming."

I thought I saw him s.h.i.+ver, despite the roaring fire.

Irene glanced at Baron Alphonse, who, along with me, had followed her pursuit of the Prince's testimony.

"Baron, you were the first informed."

"His Royal Highness had dined with me before departing for the house. My driver was still at the back stables when the Prince fled."

"I did not flee, my dear Alphonse," Bertie said, his gaze still fixed on the flames. "I retreated in good order."

"You did the right thing."

"And you," Irene asked the Baron, "then sent for me to question of the young woman, Pink, who discovered the dead women instead of the Prince?" She eyed the distraught heir apparent. "Or after the Prince?"

"I saw nothing, thank G.o.d. From what I have heard, I salute you, Madam, if you have witnessed what I have heard described. I could not have . . . tolerated it. So charming, so fresh. Ah!"

"There is something else," Irene said, her expression sharpening. As usual when she wanted incisive answers, she looked to the Baron de Rothschild.

He nodded slowly. "In London. Lately. There have been rumors."