Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 28

Then my sense of enterprise banished all dread. This is what I had come to the Old World for: utter immersion in its secrets.

Our boots ground on sand and cinders tracked in from the streets. Others had been here before us. Spirits had not lit those candles.

Not that my sensible American skepticism had ever for a moment believed in spirits. . . .

We were feeling our way through the dark. When an exhalation of even colder air opened before us like a kind of well, we both stopped as if teetering on the edge of an abyss.

I heard the rustle of Irene's clothing, then a scratch as a tiny lucifer flame burst forth like a firework for Lilliputians.

"There! Fetch that candle stub."

I spotted the pale fat cylinder on the damp ground, running to claim it before her match should burn out.

I spun to return to her just as the small light winked out.

The wax in my hand was chillingly . . . warm.

A scratch and flare later I was able to make my way to her; although half-lit, she resembled a melodrama Mephistopheles, the tall top hat adding horned inches to her height.

She held the sputtering match to the curled wick atop the candle stub. It caught fire begrudgingly, as if exhausted from its previous night's work. The result was a feeble fog of light that clung more to us than illuminated anything else.

"Look." Irene began a tour of the roughly circular s.p.a.ce into which worn stones tumbled. She bent to hold the light over the uneven earthen floor. "More wax droppings. A great many candles were used here, but they were taken away again."

She moved away, then lifted the candle close to a wall half dirt and half stone bricks, frowning at what she saw.

I came to peer over her shoulder. "Red candle wax? As if someone moved a candle so quickly the liquid wax drops. .h.i.t the stone."

"Blood," she declared, "but almost lashed toward the wall, as you describe."

"Was someone killed here then?"

"I don't know. I do not smell the great quant.i.ty of blood we detected at the bordello. The candle wax and something else outweigh it.

"Wine?"

"No, something more acrid, harsher."

Irene had continued her inspection of the s.p.a.ce's perimeter, stepping into the next unknown swath of dark as fearlessly as a soldier marching toward an enemy.

I was glad to let her lead, which was hardly typical of me, but it shows in what thrall her daring spirit held me. This was a woman who could act as well as masquerade as a man.

As she swept the candle lower against the wall, I thrilled to see that her left hand held a pistol. The sight almost made me wish that I had become a Pinkerton, rather than choosing the profession I had fallen back upon.

But circ.u.mstances circ.u.mscribe all our fates. I was here because of the choices I had made, and I would not now be anywhere else for a mogul's ransom, flying bullets among the flying b.u.t.tresses or not!

"Broken gla.s.s again," she noted, sc.r.a.ping her boot sole over the ground. "But no scent or stain of wine. Oddly disturbing."

"This is not a wine cellar," I pointed out.

Her expression sharpened in the candlelight. "Very good, Pink! The wine only reflects the setting of the first murder, nothing else. It was at hand. And the Eiffel Tower excavation site could have attracted sots who left empty wine bottles. Here . . ."

She moved suddenly close to the wall. I gasped as her candle seemed to illuminate a standing, skeletal figure.

"A tunnel?" I asked.

"A niche." Her voice was hushed with wonder.

I edged nearer. If skeletal guardians did not alarm her, they should not deter me.

Then I saw that the skull, the long leg and arm bones, were jumbled into impossible physiognomies. Were these dry old bones in proper conjunction, we would indeed be facing a monster. But this was a polymorph, a monster formed of many individual's bones.

"This is a catacomb, Pink," Irene said in some wonder. "We may even be gazing upon the jumbled schemata of ancient Romans perhaps, or even more likely, of early Christians. We must be under the cathedral. This must be an ancient crypt upon which it was built."

"Do the authorities not know about this place?"

"Probably not, but someone else does, and has appropriated it for some very strange purpose." Irene suddenly shook the hand holding the candle, sending a sinuous lash of melted wax against the niche wall. The pattern was exactly like the red spray she had identified as blood.

"The candle stub grows too hot to hold," she said. "We must find the exit tunnel and venture into the streets again."

"What of our pursuer?"

"Perhaps he has tired of the chase." She smiled grimly at me over the fading flicker of the candle flame. "Perhaps we shall meet him coming as we are going. We will worry about that when we face it. For now I thank our mysterious pursuer for introducing us to the mysteries of below ground."

She had taken my elbow and steered me unerringly toward the dark mouth of the pa.s.sage that had led us here.

The candle died just as we reached that uncertain exit.

I heard the stub hit the ground with a hollow sound, as if something living had just had the breath knocked out of it.

"I will go first," Irene whispered in the utter dark. "I have the pistol, after all."

A Werewolf in London

I go into a case to help the ends of justice and the work

of the police.

-SHERLOCK HOLMES

I glanced at my companions over breakfast in our common room the next morning.

Both Irene and Elizabeth were bleary-eyed and, what is I worse, were uneager to meet my gaze. There is nothing more annoying than aroused suspicions with no evidence to use as a pry bar.

I drummed my fingers on the tablecloth and accepted only m.u.f.fins although Irene had ordered every hearty English breakfast item, including eggs, bacon, sausage, b.u.t.ton mushrooms, baked beans, and something that pa.s.sed for black pudding, especially in my honor.

"We must advance events," Irene declared while she shared a pot of vile coffee with Elizabeth.

I sipped my tea deliberately.

"Nell, you are just the person to do it."

I sputtered into my Earl Grey. "And how am I to 'advance events'? I am absolutely in the dark regarding these repulsive crimes."

Irene beamed at me over her coffee cup. "Exactly why you will go to Sherlock Holmes and throw yourself upon his superior intellectual skills."

"I will not! They are not!"

She clapped her hands together, in the thrall of a new idea.

"This is inspired. You will bring all your annotated evidence to the Sage of Baker Street. Except he is residing . . . where? Probably at the Bristol so as to be near the Prince. It is imperative that you distract him while I follow my own line of investigation."

"With Elizabeth?" I asked pointedly.

"Possibly. But the more important a.s.signment will be yours. Only a keen and subtle mind will distract the great detective. Yes, it must be you! Remember, every moment you mislead him, you will be aiding me and these poor dead women. The case darkens. You saw the state of the last victim, laid out at the morgue under her concealing sheet. Imagine what the linens hid?"

Irene managed an artistic shudder which echoed an internal horror that was not feigned. Much as my dear friend loved to dramatize situations, the impulse beneath her surface mastery was always serious. And sincere.

I looked into her eyes. Their expression was both quizzical and hopeful.

I folded my napkin and tossed it upon a French croissant of exceptionally flaky crust, redolent of fresh b.u.t.ter. So I must sacrifice my better nature to consort with the consulting detective.

Yet better that I spend time in his presence than my poor ignorant friend, usually so perceptive, but now so utterly unaware in what inappropriate regard that man held her.

"I must share my observations with him?" I asked, hoping she would say no.

"But of course. That is the lure. He is quite lost in certain, very key respects, you know."

"I know." I rose from the table. "I hope you realize what an imposition this is. And I hope that you will follow only such paths as G.o.dfrey would approve in your own investigations."

"Of course, Nell. Only what G.o.dfrey would approve." She lifted a hand to heart, then covered it with her other hand.

The specter of a dimple beside of her not-quite-smiling mouth made me suspect that G.o.dfrey would approve of a great deal that I would not.

I have always loved d.i.c.kens's A Tale of Two Cities, so perhaps it is no surprise that I found myself in the self-sacrificial role of Sydney Carton, deposited by a horse omnibus at the door of the Hotel Bristol, prepared to surrender myself to Sherlock Holmes.

I mean that solely in the military sense, of course.

And indeed, I chose to imagine myself as Quentin Stanhope, Cobra by code name, engaged on a mission of espionage.

I hesitated, but gave my true name at the reception desk, and was summarily informed that no Sherlock Holmes was a guest there.

Well.

I turned to face the bustling lobby, crowned by glittering chandeliers above and thronged by the cream of society below.

My palms grew clammy and dampened my dark cotton gloves.

What was I to do? Stymied from the outset. What would I tell Irene?

That the man was invisible? That I could not find him?

Never.

I marched away from the desk with the gilt pigeonholed temple of numbered guest-room niches looming behind it.

Not wis.h.i.+ng to appear at a loss, I swept up the marble stairs to the first floor. There I could gather myself. What an expression, as if I were a length of fabric that would come unraveled if not neatly st.i.tched together. I resolved not to fray no matter the circ.u.mstances.

I moved toward the place where the odious elevated car could be caught on the ground floor.

A drawn grating announced that I could submit to its incarceration here as well.

So. I would take it to the floor and to the room where Irene and I had been entertained by the Invisible Mr. Sherlock Holmes not two days ago.

Naturally such a course was most improper.

But. Who was here to see it?

I squared my shoulders and pressed my gloved forefinger on the mother-of-pearl b.u.t.ton that summoned the elevator car.

At least it had a uniformed operator who did not look askance at me. Apparently hotels patronized by the Prince of Wales were used to unaccompanied females.

Imagine! I was taken for a fallen woman. What a relief. There is some consolation in not having to live up to oneself.

At the fifth floor I dismounted, if that is the proper expression, and proceeded to the room I remembered.