Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 22

"No, I did not," Irene said. "No wonder you and Florence visit the City of Light so often."

"And Amsterdam and Nuremberg, too. Florence is an urban b.u.t.terfly, though, and not fond of my walking tours. Those I must take on my own."

"Yes, that is right. You are quite an inveterate walker."

I recognized that Irene wished me to note down this fact, and so I did. People were used to seeing me taking notes, and used to ignoring me in Irene's presence. I recognized from long experience that Irene's most idle observations were quite the opposite.

She continued her most subtle interrogation of our mutual friend, Mr. Bram Stoker.

"You must have been marooned in London last year, dear Bram, with that monumental production of Macbeth to stage. I hear that Irving was astounding in the role, that he portrayed the Thane of Cawdor not as an ambitious warrior, but as a craven killer. Quite a bold reinterpretation, but what else does one expect from the inventive Irving? So there you all were, cast and company, shackled to the dread Scottish play in London while Jack the Ripper, another craven killer, stalked Whitechapel."

"We hardly had time to be aware of that Whitechapel business. The play opened December 29, on the very cusp of the New Year. It cost sixty-six thousand pounds and almost a year of unremitting effort."

The sum was staggering, but Irene instantly fixed on another figure. "The twenty-ninth," she murmured, eyeing me.

Thanks to our morning of study, I recalled that the final murder attributed to Jack the Ripper occurred November 12. Bram Stoker would have been in London throughout the entire run of the Ripper's starring role on the dark stage of Whitechapel's narrow, disreputable streets. I jotted down a note to reexamine the times of the murders with the letting out of the Lyceum Theatre in mind, suppressing a small shudder of distaste. I hated suspecting someone we knew.

Irene eyed Mr. Stoker over the rim of her Meissen teacup.

She had sent down for a tea table while we awaited Mr. Stoker, and now we all desultorily nibbled at tiny French appetizers and pastries. I thought guiltily of Elizabeth, sconeless in Irene's bedchamber, but it did not prevent me from trying another delicate sugared cake.

"And did the Scottish play bring any noteworthy disasters?" Irene asked.

Even such a theatrical dunce as I knew that uncanny woes so plagued various productions of Macbeth through the centuries that superst.i.tious actors refused to even p.r.o.nounce the name of the play backstage or in public during a run.

"Not the slightest," he said quickly, ever the proud theatrical manager, "other than a dismissive review from George Bernard Shaw, but then what would one expect from that professional curmudgeon?

"And even Shaw had to praise the scenery of our new painter, Joseph Harker. We had traveled to Scotland to research the play, and I intend to return there on a walking tour."

"Yes," said Irene with a smile. "That is your preferred method of solitary travel."

"The theatrical life puts me in the midst of what is essentially controlled pandemonium. I relish occasional solitude and exercise amid those lonely heaths and rugged headlands. Harker's gloomy set paintings of blackened Scottish castles and battlements and labyrinthine pa.s.sages superbly evoked the realities of the scene. I helped him lease studio s.p.a.ce at Her Majesty's Theatre, and Irving is set upon using him again. No, the play was an enormous, spectacular success, a fine choice to follow Faust. The research has even inspired me to move from writing my short tales to something a bit longer. I am finis.h.i.+ng my first novel."

"A novel! Shall we see anything of Jack the Ripper in it?"

"Oh, my dear lady, no. I confess myself more inspired by Irving's masterful enactment of Macbeth than any real-life bloodshed. But there will be treasure and true love, villainy and much of the ancient superst.i.tions of my native Ireland, and perhaps a bit of bloodshed. The public much relishes that. You may know of my latest weird tale, The Squaw, which features a crude American, an iron maiden, and a vengeful mother cat."

"I would not want to cross any of those," Irene said with a mock shudder, "a quintessentially crude American, a death-dealing medieval torture device, or a vengeful mother of any species. The Squaw. Such an American t.i.tle. It sounds like something Buffalo Bill might write."

"Quite a splendid fellow. I met him on a transatlantic voyage. I entertained the pa.s.sengers with a reading or two, and he read their minds."

"Buffalo Bill did a mind-reading act?" Irene was astounded into a fusillade of laughter. "It is not my impression of his expertise."

"Oh, his Wild West Show has made him an international showman. There is nothing he would do that would surprise me. Even sophisticated Paris has become enchanted with the sharpshooters and the trick riders and your Red Indians, but that is just so much showmans.h.i.+p, and idealizes a past fast fading. Your America is not the wilderness we Europeans and British like to think."

"No. Wilderness is fast becoming hard to find. Even those wilds of Scotland in Macbeth. Perhaps the last wilderness is in our own hearts and minds."

"Truly said."

A silence followed, during which I could hear the clockwork mechanism of Irene's mind changing gears.

"I hope that we did not embarra.s.s you with the Paris police the other night," she said, leaning forward confidentially.

"You certainly testified to my worthiness as a citizen." He glanced differentially at me, the first time in my life anyone had done so. "Especially Miss Huxleigh. I am so dreadfully sorry to have failed to recognize you. The setting was so, so-"

"Foreign," Irene finished for him.

Mr. Stoker pushed away the delicate plate that had held the enormous quant.i.ty of sweetmeats he had consumed during our conversation. Lunch was long delayed, but he did not dare in courtesy leave until Irene released him, and she would not release him until she had wrung him of every morsel of information he had to give.

He was wise enough to sense he owed us an explanation for his presence at the house of accommodation, and wise enough to wish to avoid giving one unless forced.

"And seeing you there-" he mentioned, managing to sound as if he did not intentionally point the finger he was pointing. At us.

"I still have highly placed clients of my private inquiry work," Irene said with a frank smile. "Such clients might be concerned to have one of their own on such a scene by happenstance, as you yourself were."

He nodded soberly. "Happenstance makes cowards of us all," he paraphrased the Bard. "I, too, have eminent a.s.sociates, and at times it is necessary to accompany them to . . . unsavory settings."

I breathed a sigh of relief. He implied his presence was an unpleasant accompaniment to his work. Perhaps he had even been with the Prince of Wales's party, but I dared not ask.

Nor did Irene.

Instead, she smiled with wry amus.e.m.e.nt. "Oh, yes. I recall the story being told that when you accompany Henry Irving to Paris, your first call is upon the Paris Morgue. Apparently he is much taken with the quaint French custom of dressing up the dead and putting them on display as an identifying technique."

"True. He finds the morgue the most entertaining attraction in Paris. The vast majority of the dead are not shown clothed. On the contrary. But when a child is found, or someone who might be more recognizable dressed, they are attired and propped up in chairs like living persons. Irving does not care about the costuming, or the lack of it. He is fascinated by the expressions frozen on the faces of the dead, and says that one can read an entire character from them. Afterward we go to the courts to study the expressions of the accused. He claims he can tell the guilty from the innocent." Mr. Stoker seemed pleased that the subject had moved, quite literally, from the maison de rendezvous to the morgue. I cannot say which I thought the more unwholesome place.

Mr. Stoker did not share my reservations. "The Paris Morgue is endlessly fascinating, like the best theatrical play, although its actors have stopped moving. Irving says it is better than a wax museum."

"And it speaks to the bloodthirstiness of the population at large," Irene mused, "nothing new to Paris or the Mob. Only a century ago Parisians were busy beheading their aristocracy. I believe that is how Madame Tussaud of Baker Street got her start as a girl, taking wax impressions of detached royal heads. The French seem far too civil to have been so savage, but then I suppose we all do."

"Seem civil? Or be savage?"

"Both, my dear Bram. Speaking of which, could you accompany Nell and me to the Paris Morgue for a viewing?"

"You wish to join the corpse parade?"

"No, we wish to see the bodies of the other night's victims."

"They will not be on display. The police know their names and are not eager to make news of these deaths public. I can introduce you to a bureaucrat or two . . . but Irene, our conversation today has ranged from creating a musical evening with the six long-dead wives of Henry VIII to visiting the dead bodies of Parisian courtesans. You seem in as bloodthirsty a mood as any Paris mob."

"Not I, but someone else. I believe that Jack the Ripper has crossed the Channel, just as we have."

His face did not so much as pale, as set like plaster. "You think so?"

"And Sherlock Holmes thinks so as well."

She knew nothing of the sort, of course, but was merely brandis.h.i.+ng the man's name for shock value.

And it was worth much in that marketplace. This time Mr. Stoker paled visibly. "Sherlock Holmes, the consulting detective, is here? In Paris?"

Irene nodded, watching carefully and not minding if he noticed her vigilance.

"I never believed that the police might be serious in detaining me. I took it for some terribly awkward mistake."

"Perhaps it is, but the Paris police are far less likely than the London police to make 'terribly awkward' mistakes."

His eyes had widened at that "perhaps" and stayed agape.

Suddenly he ran his hands over his face. "This is dreadful. Much as it distresses me that you two ladies know of my presence in that place, if anyone else-"

"Florence," Irene was only too happy to prompt him.

"Oh, G.o.d. Florence. I beseech you-!"

"Of course, Bram." Irene leaned across the table, tapped one of his clenched fists. "I promise that I will bend all of my efforts to absolve you of any suspicion and therefore of any public embarra.s.sment. Luckily. I am known to Inspector le Villard, who is in charge of the case. And also to Sherlock Holmes."

"Thank G.o.d!"

"Now, you must help me to help you."

"How?"

"As you are doing. Telling me things. Things you might not wish to tell me or any other."

His fist withdrew, but she clenched her own hand over it with a strength and purpose not often encountered in women.

"Sherlock Holmes is not going to solve the riddle of the Ripper," she p.r.o.nounced like a doctor making a considered diagnosis. "He is a born bachelor dedicated to cerebral pursuits. What is a supreme advantage in the dismantling of a tangle of illogical events that leads to crimes of greed and vengeance is useless in deciphering a crime like these repeated Ripper slaughters. Sherlock Holmes would never be found in a house of pleasure; therefore, he will never untangle the frightening thread between pleasure and pain. And that is how these murders are sewn together.

"You are a man of the world, Bram. Further, you are a man of imagination and artistic sensibility. You know I speak the truth."

"I do not know you," he whispered, struck by her air of command and certainty.

"Men do not generally know women," she answered. "And vice versa. At least not under the strictures of our hypocritical society. But I must know what you know, and you must not be afraid to tell me."

Perhaps she had Mesmerized him, but I think only by her frankness. Certainly he was in her intellectual thrall.

Then those gentle gray eyes looked at mine as at a child's he was about to disappoint with the news that there was no Santa Claus.

"Miss Huxleigh," he began, not addressing me, but reminding Irene of my presence.

"She is my right hand. You are correct that she does not deserve to know what you can reveal, but it is necessary. And you do know what I mean, don't you? You do know that these mutilated women are not the work of a monster, but of a man, and that such brutality is not unprecedented."

He withdrew a handkerchief to wipe his brow, s.h.i.+elding his eyes from both of us. I put pencil tip to paper, preparing to write for my life, hoping that what I heard would not paralyze my hand.

"There was discussion at the Beefsteak Room-"

Irene's glance engaged my gaze as swiftly as a sword. "The postplay dining room at the Lyceum Theatre, where Irving's admirers congregate for celebratory dinners. All men, of course, who probably exchange tales of exploits at maisons de rendezvous near and far."

"How did you know?" Mr. Stoker asked.

"I am a woman of imagination and artistic temperament," she said, smiling tightly. "Did anyone ever bring up the Whitechapel horrors and the Ripper?"

"Not directly, no. We are, ah . . . isolated from daily events there, that is the entire point. There was some discussion of a decadent writer, though. Shocked us all to the core. A German."

I scribbled as quickly as I could. I had spent so much time among the decadent French that a shocking German was a refres.h.i.+ng change of nationality.

"Piece of filthy philosophy. Richard von Krafft-Ebing wrote it. Psychopathia s.e.xualis. I really cannot go any farther. Read it if you must. But it discussed the need to inflict pain as pleasure. Surely the Ripper is merely mad. Demented. Imagining demons and slaying them. Excavating dead bodies as a mole might a pile of dirt."

"As gruesome as the murders and mutilations of women in Whitechapel were," Irene said slowly, "I believe that we will find that the atrocities now occurring in Paris are worse. And the only place that we will confirm my fear and conclusion is at the Paris Morgue.

"That is our next step." She stood. "Thank you for coming, Bram. Tomorrow should do for our outing. We will meet you at the morgue building behind Notre Dame cathedral at 11:00 A.M."

He nodded nervously, bowed, then collected his hat and stick from the table by the door and left without a farewell.

I had never before seen a man so anxious to leave Irene's presence.

As soon as he left, I tsked, for I was sorely disappointed in him. "These noteworthies meet at this Beefsteak Room to boast of encounters in foreign brothels."

"Think what Sir Richard Burton could contribute to such a topic," Irene said.

I found myself blus.h.i.+ng, for mention of this daring British adventurer in foreign lands reminded me of my acquaintances.h.i.+p with another Briton undercover expert, Quentin Stanhope, and I certainly did not wish to think of Quentin in terms of his acquaintance with exotic foreign brothels.

"I am shocked, nevertheless," I said. "These men whose names you and Mr. Stoker mention are the leading figures of our time, many knights of the realm, like Sir Richard Burton."

"I know better knights of the realm. And one of them is G.o.dfrey, a knight, a prince, a king where the true lists of honor among men are read."

"Hear, hear!" I seconded.

"And it is not just wealthy and well-known patrons of brothels who should be ashamed. Those men clients in Whitechapel in all humanity should be giving their few pence to these women in a spirit of charity instead of extracting such tawdry exchange. I tell you, Nell, that we ourselves have more in common with the Whitechapel women than the men of the Beefsteak Room. Whether in Whitechapel or in Whitehall, the contempt these men have for these women is bottomless. And in Whitehall, at least, it is returned by the women. How different is Lillie Langtry from Liz Stride, save that she is admired for her corruption and has made some real money for her efforts? Three outrageously wealthy admirers driven into bankruptcy indeed. But this topic drives me to giving long speeches, and that doesn't work well on the stage, so why should it play any better in real life." She frowned at me. "Did you write down that name, Nell?"

"Ah . . . Langtry?"

"No. The one Bram mentioned. Krafft-Ebing. If this book is as . . . unpleasant as he hints, it may be hard to obtain. At least I read German, thank the linguistic demands of opera for that. We must visit the booksellers' stalls on the Left Bank as soon as possible, which will be tomorrow, before we meet Bram."

From Lillie Langtry and English prost.i.tution to this German Krafft-Ebing and the Paris Morgue: I was in the mood for a good English air-clearing, head-clearing walk, but not in the decadent direction Irene so obviously intended.

Deadlier than the Male