Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 9

I had no idea where the miserable inspector had gone, and imagined that he was only too glad to be rid of us. A series of eggsh.e.l.l cream-painted doors lined the long hallway like ghostly soldiers at attention, the cursive woodwork's gilt details evoking military braid.

All were closed. I was not about to blunder into each one in search of the vanis.h.i.+ng policeman.

Perhaps I would overhear some betraying conversation if I merely eavesdropped at each keyhole.

So I moved down the row, crossing from one side of the wide pa.s.sage to the other, listening for signs of occupancy.

I was singularly unsuccessful.

Why was it that when Irene sent herself upon such a mission, she merely touched the lever of the first closed door and it would spring open like a Faberge egg, full of lavish surprises?

I seemed fated to plod through life meeting nothing untoward and making no earthshaking discoveries.

It was in this mood that I paused before a door like any other in the endless line. I was startled to hear the frame crack as it opened.

I could not see into the room beyond, for the entire opening was taken up by the ma.s.sive figure of a man in evening dress, a man of st.u.r.dy build whose head must have reached past six feet.

For a moment I thought the King of Bohemia loomed before me. But no, the King was flaxen-haired, and this man would have been called Redbeard had he been a Viking.

I gasped. Not because I had thought it was the King. Not because he was so large and I was so small. Not because his sudden appearance had startled me, and it had.

No, I gasped because I recognized him at last.

"Why," I said before I should embarra.s.s myself and gasp again. "Why, Mr. Stoker. What on earth are you doing here?"

Horrible Imaginings

He was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust.

-MACBETH

Inspector le Villard popped out from behind Bram Stoker's substantial figure like a puppet in a Punch and Judy show from behind a curtain. I almost expected him to begin hitting Mr. Stoker with a loaf of French bread.

"You recognize this man?" the inspector demanded of me.

I glanced to the person caught between us. Mr. Stoker's face had gone white and was now in the process of suffusing with red. Heretofore, I had not noted such reactions in the visages of grown men, although I was familiar with them on the faces of ten-year-old boys who had been caught with an illegal spoon in the jam jar.

"Of course," I said.

"I do not know you, Madam," Mr. Stoker said swiftly. "No doubt it is considered amusing to the clientele to deal with a woman got up as an English governess, down to her correction devices, but I a.s.sure you and anyone else who might inquire that is not my form of diversion."

"I am English, but I am a Miss," I corrected him sternly, "and were I indeed your governess, I would be forced to discipline you for both rudeness and memory loss."

My words made the man only blush further. They seemed to have robbed him of all speech.

"And we have indeed met," I persisted in the name of accuracy. "On more than one occasion."

"Are you employed here?" he began in confusion. "For I honestly do not know you-"

The inspector had no patience for a guessing game. "What matters, sir, is that the lady knows you."

"Not intimately, I am afraid," I put in, watching Mr. Stoker's face turn an alarming shade of scarlet, "though all London knows Bram Stoker. A most renowned gentleman of the theater," I informed Inspector le Villard, happy to impress him with British excellence in this area that the Divine Sarah Bernhardt claimed solely for France. "He manages the acclaimed English actor, Sir Henry Irving. Surely you have heard of Mr. Irving."

As I spoke, the towering figure of Bram Stoker seemed to shrink like a freshly blooming crocus in a spring windstorm. I imagine the poor man was embarra.s.sed because he did not recognize me, despite the fact that we had met on several occasions during my eight years in London.

I was, for once, blithely unembarra.s.sed. I did not expect to be recalled by persons of fame, fortune, or n.o.ble birth, some of whom I had met who combined all three attributes.

In fact, I considered it my duty to educate the French police inspector on Mr. Stoker's importance, for obviously the man was too modest to brandish his achievements like a pedigreed cudgel. We English are entirely too retiring about our virtues, and I was determined that no honor pertaining to Mr. Stoker go unburnished by my praise.

"In addition, I have it from confidential sources that Mr. Stoker is something of an aspiring author-not that many are not aspiring authors these days"-I added, thinking of a doctor of my (thankfully) very slight acquaintance-"but he has far more hope of attaining publication, given his deep knowledge of theatrical plays."

His own mother could not have waxed more proud and pleased. I had no doubt the man would thank me profusely when he finally remembered who I was.

Le Villard, at least, was all bows and grat.i.tude. "Many thanks, Mademoiselle Huxleigh. I was completely ignorant of our friend's accomplishments and history. You see, I had the odd notion that he is one of the few men large enough to have committed the atrocities you and the admirable Madame Norton have had the recent misfortune to view."

"Mr. Stoker!? Why ever would you think so?"

"Perhaps," Inspector le Villard noted with another unnecessary bow to me, "because he has been using quite another name at Chez Homicide. A Mr. Adam Eden, according to the information he gave Madame Portiere."

I gazed at Bram Stoker. His high color had faded during the length of my helpful introduction until his skin was paper white again, which made his red hair and beard resemble flames eating away at the edges of his face.

I realized what I had done, and could feel myself pale in turn.

Inspector le Villard turned to smile pleasantly at Mr. Stoker. "And you say you do not know the lady? She appears to know a great deal about you, monsieur."

"Indeed," I said hastily. "A man of such wide renown would of course wish to travel in anonymity. It is not at all remarkable that Mr. Stoker would use another name on the Continent."

"Or in a maison de rendezvous," the inspector murmured. "Believe me, Mademoiselle Huxleigh, we Paris police are quite accustomed to that particular habit of the English, who are noted for peculiar habits to begin with."

His words brought the blushes to my cheeks now, for there was only one answer to my heartfelt surprise and the question I had burst out with on first encountering Mr. Bram Stoker. Why on earth was he here? Why, to patronize the facilities.

I could no longer gaze up at him with innocent eyes, so kept them down, facing the floor.

It was then that I noticed that, despite his height and girth, Mr. Stoker had feet of a refined size. His shoe toes were polished into obsidian mirrors, and they narrowed elegantly toward the ends, as I am sure the heels also did.

This was, of course, the very impression that I had so carefully sketched in my notebook, along with a notation of length and width made most painstakingly with the tiny retractable tape measure on my chatelaine.

I was most curious what the tape measure would reveal if I cast myself at Mr. Stoker's feet in apology and managed a surrept.i.tious measuring.

Of course I could not do anything so undignified, more's the pity.

Oh dear.

Carried Away

Being in a touring company provided abundant opportunity

for dalliances, but Stoker must have been discreet-or

uninvolved-to have left no whiff of gossip.

-BARBARA BELFORD, BRAM STOKER

When Irene and I left the maison de rendezvous, we found not the serviceable carriage that had conveyed us here, but a gleaming black equipage drawn by four perfectly matched and caparisoned black horses.

I gasped and drew back. In my state of guilt and repentance, it seemed to me a funeral conveyance.

Irene's hand on my cloaked forearm bade me be calm. "Our night is not over, I'm afraid. We are to meet our sponsor."

"Our sponsor?"

"He who has called us into this brutal farrago."

"You still do not know who it is?"

"Quite the contrary. I have always known who it was. What I have not known was why he feels the need to have his own agents on the scene."

A footman in white wig and satin breeches required my hand in mounting the step into the carriage.

I was loath to give such a fop custody of my person, but there was no graceful way to refuse, so I was shortly boosted into the brocade-upholstered interior, and Irene soon after me.

"He must be used to aiding far more portly ladies than we, Nell," Irene muttered. "I was fairly catapulted in. Too many dowager d.u.c.h.esses, I wager."

"Oh, Irene, I am so mortified!"

"That Bram Stoker did not recognize you? It was merely a matter of context."

"Oh, I know that men do not remark upon me when you are around. That is quite all right with me. I am not mortified that he did not recognize me by myself, but because I utterly betrayed his anonymity and played directly into the hands of the French inspector. Mr. Stoker could not have killed those poor women."

"I fear that he could have, if you speak of possibility. He is of such superior size that he seems one of the few feasible suspects for such a double murder."

"Then so is the King of Bohemia!"

"The King of Bohemia is not here in Paris."

"Oh? Are you so sure? The King traveled under a pseudonym before, as when he pursued you all the way to England. He is a king and can do what he pleases. Why would he not be in Paris, visiting a maison de tolerance? I do detest that phrase. It make these establishments sound merely accommodating, rather than utterly immoral."

"The utterly immoral always is the most accommodating, Nell," Irene said with a smile. She pushed her fingers into her extravagant hair, stretching her neck like a cat contemplating licking its cravat. "I would have dressed differently had I known I was to visit a baron as well as a brothel tonight."

"A baron. Then this is the Rothschild coach?"

"The coat of arms on the doors is covered with bombazine, but that is like putting a cheesecloth over a Michelangelo sculpture. I ran my fingers over the carving as we entered. There is no doubt."

"Oh. I am not dressed to pay a call on a baron either."

"But you are conventionally dressed. I don't believe Baron Rothschild is acquainted with my many methods." She laughed. "Perhaps he should be. And don't fret yourself over Bram Stoker, Nell. Many an innocent man, so to speak, has used a false name in a place such as that. It does show that he is capable of shame, yes? And may be worth saving."

"That is true, and somewhat consoling. But I do not understand why so many people that I know, or that you know, fall into the category of 'worth saving.' "

"It is a wicked world, Nell, and we investigate the dark side of it. What else is worth the investigating? And . . . I fear you are a born bloodhound, with a nose for wrongdoing. Else you would not have such a familiarity with the Whitechapel horrors. I am not sure how that was possible."