Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 7

"Both of us," I said. "It is not necessary to smoke little cigars to face death."

"But it is so much more dramatic," Irene put in, producing one of the objects in question and lighting it. "All of the gentlemen entertaining firing squads do it."

Her motion distracted Pink's attention from me. Really, she was a charming girl, and I could not believe she had been fully corrupted. I sensed of a sudden that Irene's cigar was masking any unkind odors that clung to us.

"You are a most dramatic individual, Madam." Pink regarded Irene almost as intently as Irene was regarding her. "I take it that you and Miss . . . Foxleigh-"

"Huxleigh," I hastened to correct.

"I take it that you both have encountered recently dead people before."

"Recently," Irene agreed, "and not-so-recently dead. Is that not right, Nell?"

"Only twice," I said. "I would have been content to leave it at that."

"Well," said Pink, "you two are certainly good scouts about it. I'm sure that I would have not been so upset if only I'd had a chance to go west instead of east, and had seen the frontier life for myself. I apologize, ladies, for acting like such a fading violet."

I felt like something of a fading violet myself, now that I had heard the young lady's Americanisms in full flower. And she still seemed such a placid and well-bred girl for a harlot.

"I should worry had you not been upset," Irene said. "But why did you go east instead of west, and how did you end up in the trade you follow?" She sounded as if she were interviewing a dressmaker and not a globe-trotting tart.

"I was the thirteenth of my father's fifteen children," she began.

"Good heavens," I cried, "fifteen!"

She went on as if I had not spoken. "My father died when I was just six, and my mother, who had outlived one husband before him, was eventually forced to take another to avoid utter poverty for herself and the six children she had borne my father. Although my father had been a respected judge, he died without a will, and any a.s.sets were scattered among the children. My mother left the marriage with some furniture, the horse and carriage, the cow, and one of the dogs, and you will quickly see that most of her 'inheritance' required even more feeding than her six children."

"So you plead poverty for your profession," I suggested in a tone more kindly than critical.

It was not taken thus. Pink's hazel eyes darkened with temper. "I plead nothing, and apologize for nothing." Her gaze returned, mild again, to Irene.

"Within three years of my father's death we had been forced to sell the horse and carriage and cow, and had acquired a stepfather, a Civil War veteran."

"Wonderful," I interjected, eager for a happy-and quick-end to this story. "A soldier is just the sort of upright model for fatherless children. One of my charge's uncles-I was a governess for a brief time-fought in Afghanistan. Quite the das.h.i.+ng hero when he returned."

Pink's utterly emotionless eyes turned on me. "Jack Ford was a mean, drunken lout we suffered for five years. He berated my mother for money, but never brought any home himself, called her names I suppose no Englishwoman wishes to admit exist, and one New Year's Eve when mother and us children went to church against his wishes, he threatened mother with a pistol and instant death."

"Military life does not agree with all men," I put in lamely.

"So," said Irene, "how soon after that did it end?"

"How did you know it would end soon?"

"Because it could not go on without b.l.o.o.d.y murder otherwise. And if your father had killed your mother or your brother, that is where your story would have begun."

Pink shrugged. "Nine months after that New Years' Eve he went berserk again, at dinner. He flung his coffee to the floor-"

(In that I could not condemn the man, but I refrained from saying so.) "-threw the meat bone at my mother, then drew a loaded pistol from his pocket. My brother Albert and I jumped between them to allow our mother to escape out the front door. The other children followed."

"And you were not even living in the Wild West," I murmured in distress.

Another flat look. "There is nothing wild about Pennsylvania except the turkeys, Miss Huxleigh."

I could not seem to speak without irritating this artlessly immoral young lady, so I subsided.

"It was obviously the end of the marriage," Irene said.

"Right." Pink's cheeks were flus.h.i.+ng to match her gown. "Jack Ford nailed the doors and windows shut and went in and out by way of a ladder. When Mother finally got in a week later to get the furniture, the house was a wreck. There was nothing to do but the unthinkable. She sued for divorce."

I gasped. Yes, I had resolved to comment no more, but divorce was a scandal of such proportions that I imagine it even shook this backwater town in Pennsylvania.

Pink looked straight ahead, as if my gasp echoed a legion of them years ago.

"I testified, and so did Alfred."

"How old were you?" Irene asked.

"Old enough. Fourteen. Mother's was one of only fifteen divorce actions in the county that year, and one of only five brought by the wife. The neighbors testified that Jack Ford was usually drunk, never provided for her, swore at and cursed her, threatened her with a loaded gun, had kicked and broken the household furniture, had 'done violence to her person,' as they put his beating her. They also testified that she had always washed and ironed his s.h.i.+rts (though I had seen him throw them on the floor when she was done and dirty and throw water on them so she'd have to do them all over again), bought and paid for his underwear out of her own money and was never cross or ugly to him, no matter how he treated her."

Her tone had become positively corrosive.

"She got the divorce, but the shame of it forced her to leave the town."

"And you, Pink?" Irene inquired softly.

"I determined to make my own way in the world, and that did not include marrying any man."

I opened my mouth to point out that she had "married" many men, thanks to her immoral profession, but Irene was giving me such a stern look urging silence that I converted my gesture into a yawn, which Young Pink's recent lurid testimony of married life in America, guns and all, hardly merited.

No one was paying me the slightest attention after that, anyway.

"A truly sad history," Irene said soothingly. "Now we know that you have been a fine and brave witness from an early age, tell us exactly what happened, remembering that you need not spare us any impression, any fact. We are all women of the world, after all," she added most speciously.

"Right. Women of the world." The phrase seemed to infuse the girl with backbone. "It was like this: I am new to the place, and was taking a . . . stroll to get my bearings."

"Then you were not expected in that particular chamber?"

"Oh, no. I wasn't expected to do anything except dress myself up, with the help of the French maid, and make myself available for inspection later. But . . . I am never one to wait well."

"Nor I," said Irene.

"Patience," I put in, "is a supreme virtue."

Pink eyed me. "Maybe in your line of work, if you have one. Not mine."

Our return had indeed made her bold.

She resumed her story, directing her words and glances to Irene.

"So I was looking things over, peeking into this room and that to get the lay of the land, when I tried to push open the door to that room."

"Tried?"

"Yes, ma'am! It didn't open at first. The handle was stiff. But I pushed, and I was in like Blackstone the magician."

"Did you determine what kept the door from opening at first?"

"No. I forgot that the moment I took my first breath over the threshold. I am from western Pennsylvania at least, and we have a few barnyards nearby, but I never smelled anything quite like that."

"Except in Les Halles," I murmured.

"Oh. I'll not go there again. Slipping on pig's intestines and all that."

"It is an honest marketplace," I said.

Her cheeks pinked scarlet at my meaning, and I suddenly understood the reason for her nickname.

"I won't be lectured," Miss Pink told me sharply. "I've been on my own for some time now, and do the best I can."

"Have you done it here?" Irene asked. "Yet?"

Pink's cheeks remained cherry red. "None of your business, Missus Adler Norton. I have just been introduced to the house and procedures before that is made formal. I was strolling about to get acquainted with the lay-out. I hadn't reckoned on finding what I found, though at first I couldn't quite make out what was what."

"Were all the lamps still on?"

"Bright as suns.h.i.+ne. If the odor had not warned me . . . but I soon saw the blood, then realized-"

"What did you realize?"

"That he'd done it again. The Ripper. The way those two women were cut up, carved up."

"How good a look did you get?"

"I tiptoed as close as I could without . . . well, getting sick. You can't really see much."

"Thankfully." Irene doused the second little cigar end in the graveyard of the first. "I should like you to come home with us."

"Home?"

Seeing an opportunity to save a soul, I leaped. "The most charming cottage in a village near here, Neuilly. Of course what is considered a cottage in France would be a country manse in England. We have a parrot there, and a cat, even a mongoose. And some . . . snakes." My list trailed off. Miss Pink's hazel eyes were not widening in youthful interest.

"I have seen snakes before, Miss Huxleigh. We had plenty around Crooked Creek."

"Crooked Creek?" I repeated faintly.

"Well, it's no worse than Pondham-on-Rye or dozens of other English hamlets that are named like something you eat rather than live in. Wild western Pennsylvania's the place I hail from, and I am proud of it."

"I am from New Jersey myself," Irene put in, thus sealing the alliance between the Americans. "Tame eastern New Jersey."

"New Jersey? Really? How did you come to live near Paris?"

"If you would join us in our palatial cottage"-here Irene glanced at me a bit sardonically-"I'd have time to tell you."

"Oh, no." Pink's curled head shook firmly. "I went to far too much trouble getting established at this place to leave now."

I made one last plea. "But surely the murders are enough to encourage removal! And you have not even, even-" I could not find a single phrase to decently describe what Pink had not yet committed.

She stood, picked up the brandy gla.s.s, and finished its contents in one swallow.

"I am sorry if my temporary shock misled you, Miss Huxleigh, but I am quite a determined sinner and not about to give up my chosen profession. Thanks for the invitation." She glanced to Irene and back to me with a bright, brave smile. "I have work to do here, and am not in the market for 'saving.' "

With that she rustled to the door and left us.

Woman of Mystery

For whole hours at night she lay in bed unable to sleep

because of the tirelessness of her imagination, weaving tales

and creating heroes and heroines . . .

It was her wont to get the girls of the town together and