Chapel Noir (46 page)

“We must take this drawing to a churchman,” Elizabeth said.

At that moment a knock sounded on our door, sharp enough to have been made by a walking stick. Or a policeman’s club.

44.
A Confederacy of Paper

I have seen too much not to know that the impression of a
women may be more valuable than the conclusion of an
analytical reasoner
.
—
SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP
”

After an exchange of startled stares amongst us three, Irene swept forward to swing the door wide.

There, his walking stick raised to rap again, stood Mr. Sherlock Holmes. Attired in frock coat and top hat, he would have almost resembled a boulevardier had his buttonhole sported a carnation, but it was thankfully empty of ornament.

The abrupt answer to his summons seemed to surprise him, or perhaps it was Irene in her dazzling Worth dressing gown (which really more resembled a ball gown, in my opinion).

“It is after noon.” Shocked into announcing the obvious, his expression showed instant regret.

“A brilliant deduction,” Irene agreed. “I cannot dispute it. None of us wears a timepiece and have been too busy to consult the mantel clock.”

“I meant that you are late to rise.”

“As we were late to bed, if you recall the events of last night.”

“Forgive my untimely visit. I have perhaps considered too much the imperatives of this case and not enough of the habits of ladies.”

“Our ‘habits,’ ” Irene said, spreading her mandarin sleeves like butterfly wings, “as you can plainly see, are domestic. We have, in fact, been reviewing the elements of the ‘case,’ as you call it.”

He retreated a pace. “I will step down to the lobby and return later.”

“There is no time.” Irene dropped her tone of ironic banter. “Come in and perhaps you will answer some of our questions, as we may be able to answer some of yours.”

“I have only one question, Madam,” he said. As usual, in his acerbic tone the English form of the courtesy address seemed more demanding and less respectful than the French. “What is the identity of the confederate who has been feeding you information on this matter?”

“Confederate?” Elizabeth burst out. “Only us.”

His cool gray glance swept over us two so swiftly that we might have been barely visible.

“I mean your hidden confederate,” he told Irene. “I at first suspected your husband, but from what hasty inquiries I was able to make yesterday, he does seem to be safely established in Prague, or he was, until days ago. Unfortunately he left the city so recently that he could not have returned to Paris without wings.”

Irene stepped quickly past him into the hall, glancing sharply both ways. “Such matters are not suitable conversations for a public passage. Come in, Mr. Holmes, and interrogate us as you will.”

He hesitated as if crossing our threshold was equivalent to plunging into Caesar’s Rubicon. He did not strike me as a man who hesitated often. But then again he must not confront three women in dressing gowns very often.

“You are not attired for company,” he began to object.

“And have you not spent many profitable hours at home in your dressing gown, Mr. Holmes? I doubt very seriously that the manner of clothing has much to do with the quality of thinking among those wearing it. As you said, we have no time. Come in. Elizabeth, fetch Mr. Holmes some coffee. I believe it is still hot enough if he is able to take it black. Nell, clear the table of our papers. We will all sit down together peacefully and discuss the arts of slaughter.”

I understood at once that she did not wish Mr. Holmes to see our maps and drawings, so I swept them into Elizabeth’s sleeping alcove, letting the curtain fall slowly enough that he would surely see what the space was. No gentleman could violate a woman’s sleeping chamber without permission, and in this situation, Sherlock Holmes was clearly ill served by his gentlemanly approach. I do not doubt that he would not stick at returning as a burglar later to see what he wanted, but for now he was cast in the role of caller, no matter how urgent.

He did indeed sip the dreadful black coffee that Elizabeth brought him, and sternly kept his eyes from dwelling on our conjoined state of deshabille.

His manner brought to mind the madman Kelly’s utter distress at our presence during his interrogation. I even remembered Bram Stoker’s rather anxious diffidence in our presence, and he was both a man of theater used to seeing women in semidressed states, and a married man to boot. When we had been dressed as women of the streets, Sherlock Holmes had uneasily maintained his air of masculine authority, yet here and now, in our mostly respectable selves (I exempt Elizabeth, who however was suspiciously refined for a tart) . . . we had him at a disadvantage merely by wearing dressing gowns and having our hair down. I was struck by the fact that the more scandalously a woman attired herself, the more power she had over men. Most strange.

“Now,” said Irene, her gown crackling like raven wings as she settled at the table, “I would be obliged if you would recount for me the latest intelligence on my husband’s movements, since I find the post a rather belated source of information.”

Sherlock Holmes cleared his throat. “I have, er, Foreign Office connections in Prague. I am told that your husband suddenly left the city three days ago by rail, bound for Vienna.”

“This I knew. Is that all that Foreign Office connections can contribute?”

“Usually no, but in this case—” He paused. “I do not wish to alarm you, but neither the Rothschilds’ Prague emissaries nor the palace knew why your husband left the city or where he was bound. I realize that the sort of paper pathway a barrister’s work entails may require following many unexpected turns.”

“Indeed.” Irene spun her demitasse spoon in her coffee cup until she had created a creamy whirlpool that I suspected mirrored her mental agitation. “Since Godfrey appears to have removed himself from your suspicion, not to mention our knowledge, who else did you suspect of being our confederate?”

Mr. Holmes brought the cooling brew to his lips and sipped with much the same expression of resigned distaste that I should have, were I ever so foolish as to take cold coffee.

He glanced at me suddenly, with both accusation and, oddly enough, apology.

“I did have reason to remember the interesting British agent that we shall refer to only as ‘Cobra.’ ”

“And—?” I asked, my heart in my throat, as it always was at mention of Quentin Stanhope, even when only I knew his real name. News of him, however scant, would be greatly welcome.

“Cobra appears to have disappeared under a rock. Oh, do not be alarmed, Miss Huxleigh. I only worry about a foreign agent when he is heard of.” His unexpectedly encouraging smile, brief as it was, both reassured and embarrassed me. Just how did Sherlock Holmes know that I would want to hear news of Cobra?

“If Godfrey and Cobra are in the clear,” Irene asked, “whom then do you suspect of aiding us? Surely not the King?”

“I believe that at this point the King of Bohemia would do whatever you asked of him, which also seems to be the condition to which you have reduced the Prince of Wales. These facts make me extremely grateful that my bloodlines are free of royal taint, Madam. I do not underestimate you, at least not now. You must have some additional aid for you to have dogged my footsteps in this investigation.”

“I am not sure who is dogging whose footsteps,” Irene answered, “but I see that you will take no denials we could make for an answer.”

“I am afraid that I can spare no one the most rigorous interrogation.” His features tightened, if that was possible for a face already drawn drumskin-taut across the bones. “I regret to inform you what I myself have just learned: James Kelly escaped from the Paris police while being transferred to a facility for the mad.”

“Escaped?” Elizabeth repeated.

“When?” Irene demanded.

“Yesterday. Afternoon.”

“Then he was free—”

“He was at large yesterday afternoon and evening, in good time for him to participate in the atrocities in the cellar we discovered, yes.”

“How could he escape?” I finally found breath to ask.

Mr. Holmes’s quick glance in my direction became uneasy. “Le Villard does not have the influence he deserves. Kelly’s mad behavior on arrest, despite his canny responses during questioning, lulled the custodians into thinking him too demented to escape. He did not elude the hangman’s rope for no reason. Too absurd. His hands were manacled, but not his feet. When there was an omnibus accident on the route he plunged from the carriage and disappeared into the crowd. Given his adeptness with tools, he certainly slipped the irons shortly after and was as free a man as ever before.”

He looked back at Irene. “Now that you see the urgency, Madam, you realize that I must know: who is your unseen confederate in this case?

He leaned back in the chair, sure of an answer.

Irene stood. “I will summon our ‘confederate’ from the other room.”

Satisfaction settled on his features. I daresay they were a trifle smug.

I watched Irene turn and enter her bedchamber, wondering what on earth she had in mind . . . unless Godfrey secretly had been bound here and had somehow overcome time and space to arrive in ungodly time.

When Irene returned Mr. Holmes’s eyes focused behind her, intent on identifying the presumed confederate. His conviction was so strong that he never really looked at her, which is always a mistake.

“You are trifling with me,” he said in disappointment when no one appeared in her wake. “I had thought you above such coquettish stratagems.”

She slapped a book to the tabletop in answer, the volume that had hidden in the folds of her heavy taffeta skirt.

“This is our ‘confederate,’ Mr. Holmes. You see that he is both discreet and portable, and need not rely on train schedules.”

I almost spied a faint flush along the detective’s gaunt cheekbones, a phenomenon perhaps unleashed both by Irene’s righteous tone and his own grasp of just what book this was.

“Richard von Krafft-Ebing,” he muttered. “I have heard of the baron’s . . . work, but never came across a copy.”

“A pity you do not visit the Beefsteak Club when in London,” Irene suggested. “This book was all the talk of the Irving set not long ago.”

“Much is the talk of the Irving set that the general run of men would do well to avoid,” he said in forbidding tones that I would be proud to produce. “And women,” he added, with a piercing look at all three of us. “I am sorry that my assumptions were more general than literal, but I thank you for . . . sharing this most interesting volume, which you feel may have some bearing upon recent events. I take it I may borrow it.”

“Why, Mr. Holmes,” Irene said in full ironic plumage, “you may keep it. Certainly it is not proper reading material for us.”

He eyed it eagerly, yet picked it up as if it were something he had found in the street and did not wish to examine in polite company.

“If this book had been—” he began.

“Take it,” she insisted. “It has done us all the ill that it can do, and may be of some good to you.”

As he hesitated, I could not help saying “It is, after all, not the first memento you have of . . . us.”

Again that faintest of flushes. He did not look at me, but did not dare ask me, or even himself, how I might know that he had kept the cabinet photograph of Irene that she had left for the King of Bohemia. I doubt even he knew that his doctor friend had committed the “case” to script with intentions of publishing it, or that I had found opportunity to peruse the secret manuscript.

“Thank you,” was all he said, sounding quite genuine, not sardonic at all. “I bid you good day.” He nodded to the room in general, avoiding looking any of us in the eye, or the dressing gown, swooped his hat and cane from the table, and was shortly out the door.

“How could you give it to him?” Elizabeth burst out in a fury as soon as the passage had swallowed him, book and all. “You have thrown away our sole advantage.”

Irene rounded on her, like the angry goddess who had confronted the thieving urchin on my behalf years ago.

“What are you saying, Pink? Mr. Holmes is the foremost investigator in Europe. He has been intimate with the inquiry into the murders of Jack the Ripper in London from the beginning, and he is here in Paris at the behest of the same individuals who came to me. First, I admit,” she added in less corrosive tones, but her eyes still were as dark as cold coffee with indignation. “What are you thinking of? This is not a race! We seek to stop these horrible deaths, as does he. And I sought the book. It is mine to keep or give.”