Spider Dance (52 page)

This time I narrated events in sequence, and then Godfrey cross-examined me in the methodical way of a barrister. Strain had sharpened his features into something resembling Sherlock Holmes’s hawkish visage.

“Stanhope knew about your genealogical quest?”

“No. Holmes did, of course. He steered us toward it that day in Green-Wood Cemetery.”

“Why did he, do you suppose?”

“I think he wanted Irene otherwise occupied. You know that their paths have intersected before, generally with them both at cross-purposes. And—”

“And what?”

“Perhaps he thought, in his way, he was doing her a service. He’d been drawn into her quest, thanks to the murders of her former theatrical family members, shall we call them? Apparently he’d come across information about Lola Montez that made her a more likely maternal candidate than Madam Restell. Oh, Godfrey, why are we sitting here, exploring old questions? Why aren’t we out looking for her?”

He sat back, shaking his head. “As you said, we can do no better than to have Sherlock Holmes on the trail. Rushing out would serve no purpose and would only mean Holmes couldn’t find us if . . . when he has news to report. For now, we’re best employed unraveling events from here. All we know is that when Holmes entered that boardinghouse two hours after Irene had, no one was there. Not Irene, and not the three men you saw follow her in.”

I nodded, ready to choke on sobs again, but dampening the urge.

“Did Holmes mention blood in the rooms?”

“No. Only that there were signs that Irene had done more than merely visit the premises. I didn’t tell him about the secret chamber in the hidden fireplace. But, I imagine, with his tricks of observation, he might have noticed that the wardrobe had been moved, or bricks and old crumbling mortar removed.”

“So Irene did what she had intended to.”

“Perhaps, yes.”

“Could she have left before the men arrived?”

“Then why not return to me?”

“Perhaps she was able to slip away just before they came, but had to hide until they left.”

“Then why not come back to me?”

“She could have feared leading them to you. She could have”—Godfrey’s eyes narrowed with an unhappy thought—”seen an opportunity to turn the tables on them and follow them.”

“Leaving me waiting there in the dark, alone?”

“It’s not likely, but this sounds like a desperate case—not the matter of Lola Montez but the Vanderbilt investigation Sherlock Holmes pursues. Irene would not hesitate to walk into danger if she thought it was a matter of someone else’s life or death. Already a harmless old priest has been slaughtered. His body’s appearance on a billiard table at the Vanderbilt mansion forges a clear link between Sherlock Holmes’s quest and Irene’s, whether we or they like it or not. We can best serve matters by exchanging all the information we each have. That way we’ll be informed and ready when Sherlock Holmes returns . . . with Irene or, God forbid, without her.”

“Exchange information, Godfrey? What information could you possibly have to offer?”

“You forget where I have been the past several weeks.”

I had, in fact, done just mat Not so much as forgot it but dismissed it in the fever of my anxiety about Irene.

“Bavaria,” I said slowly, like a child repeating a lesson not quite learned.

“Bavaria. Precisely. The scene of Lola Montez’s greatest triumphs and failures.”

“How did you know we had turned to investigating this woman?”

“Irene mentioned in a cable that she could use any tidbits about Lola Montez I might run across. Naturally, I read between
the lines, gathered as much information I could before I had to take the train to Ostend, and immediately sailed for New York.”

“You never got the massive packet that Irene sent, then?”

He shook his head. “She’ll have to tell me about that herself.”

“And you came all the way here, so quickly, merely because Irene had casually mentioned a name?”

“Irene never casually mentions anything. And what I learned of Lola Montez on my first sweep through the newspapers, histories, and memories of the older foreign office attaches convinced me that coming to New York was not deserting my post but serving the Rothschild interests in the best possible way, as well as my own, of course.”

“Lola Montez was a poor dancer, a poorer actress, and an ill-tempered, high-handed woman of no moral standards. What could she possibly have to do with global political affairs today, almost thirty years after her death?”

Godfrey smiled patiently. “Her enemies did a thorough job of discrediting her, with her own able assistance, I admit. But in the late ’40s in Bavaria, she was a fiery Republican liberalist who had convinced a monarch to grant unparalleled freedoms of speech to his subjects and the newspapers. She was overturning the tightfisted rule of his religious cadre of advisors. She was encouraging the students to protest and revolt. Remember, France underwent a spasm of reform and revolution again at that same time.”

“Yes! That’s when Marie Antoinette’s Zone of Diamonds, which we found, had been smuggled out of the country to England.”

“Exactly. And Irene found the Zone all by herself, by the way. The ’40s were a period of great foment in Europe. Lola Montez was at the center of it in Bavaria. Of course she fought fire with fire when her secret foes lashed out at her, and they drove her from the city of Munich and forced the king to abdicate. Ludwig is now, thirty years later and dead, regarded as a benign ruler who meant well for his people,
but his ultimate legacy is the madness of his son and grandson, and the notoriety of Lola Montez.”

I sat back in the sofa, astounded. “Lola was a serious political force? For good? I thought she had invented that notion, as she had invented herself as a Spanish dancer, from half-truths and sheer audacity.”

Godfrey smiled. “The same may be said of her political career, but she was effective enough to be dangerous, and this rouses even more dangerous foes. The Ultramontanes, for instance.”

“Ultramontanes! We’ve heard of these . . . this faction. What on earth are they? Who are they? Are they still . . . practicing?”

Godfrey rose, brought the brandy decanter to the side table, and poured himself a glass. He also lit a cigar, and the scent of it brought Irene back into the room. I cursed every time I had complained of her smoking.

“Steady, Nell. All we can do at the moment is think and compare notes. Otherwise we’ll go mad with waiting, and that will help no one, least of all Irene. I can tell you that Sherlock Holmes is considered the best man in Europe when it comes to the practice of private inquiries, which is quite different from espionage in its purest form.”

“Should we contact Quentin, though?”

He glanced to the telephone sitting on its lacy doily like a Black Widow spider in the center of its web. “We’ll call his hotel first thing in the morning.”

“That might be well.” I felt my color, and indignation rising. “I called at his hotel last night, as soon as I left the boardinghouse, but he was out.”

“What time was this?”

“Perhaps one in the morning. Or so.”

“Ah. And then you went to Holmes, as a last resort.”

“I don’t like the man.”

“You don’t have to like him, Nell. You only have to rely upon his reputation for unraveling vexing mysteries with amazing results.”

Godfrey made a fist, and by the whiteness of his knuckles I saw how much our enforced inaction chafed his instincts, if not his better sense. He loosened his fingers and lifted the brandy glass to his lips, barely wetting them.

“We must strip these events of what you and Irene embarked upon them to determine: whether Lola Montez is her mother. All that is moot now. The question is, what has the late Lola Montez to do with the fresh murders now?”

“The Episcopal Church is in it up to its Romanish collars,” I said. Stiffly.

He nodded. “So it seems. I sense we’re missing some link, perhaps the one that drew Holmes into the issue. His interest is not political but criminal.”

“There is plenty of crime here for him to investigate. First Father Hawks dead, now Irene missing. Wouldn’t she be back here by now, Godfrey, if she could?”

“Remember, Nell, how she explored Monaco in men’s dress by night? Perhaps you’d better look through her things, see if you can find her pistol. If it’s missing that might lighten your mind.”

“I don’t know where she keeps such a thing, Godfrey! She insists on ‘sparing’ me knowledge she deems upsetting. Had I not been so easy to upset, I might have known more.”

“You know the intricacies of a woman’s wardrobe, Nell, far better than I. ‘Search and ye shall find.’”

I stood, a bit unsteadily. Apparently six sips of brandy are equal to a few hours on the surging Atlantic.

“I’ll look, but I can’t be sure I’ll look in the right places.”

“And you might wish to don your ordinary clothes,” he added, “so we’ll be ready to go out in the morning if we need to.”

I had my assignment, I realized. One, I was to reassemble my ordinary self. Two, I was to discover if Irene had been armed when she disappeared.

An hour later I stepped back again into the parlor. I had been busy. I hated to think what thoughts had occupied Godfrey while I had left him alone.

He still sat on the sofa, his dark head bowed beneath the bright gaslights. The Astor House had no doubt been ultramodern when it had converted to gas, but now electricity was creeping through the city, nudging the gentle flickers of gaslight away.

Godfrey was reading the newspaper, the one Irene had “borrowed” from the
Herald
vault. The one containing the obituary of Lola Montez. Was Irene destined for an American obituary as well? Were Godfrey and I mourners unaware?

I took a deep breath, and reported my findings. “I can’t find a pistol anywhere,” I told him.

He jumped up as if summoned at the Judgment Day. “No pistol?”

I shook my head. “I’ve been through everything I can think of.”

“Then if she was armed and didn’t use the pistol . . . she wasn’t personally threatened at the boardinghouse. Excellent news, Nell. It argues for Irene being alerted. It argues for her being the hunter rather than the hunted.”

“But wouldn’t she have gotten word to us somehow?”

“There is no ‘us,’ as far as Irene knows. There is only you. I’m almost sure that she expected you to do what you did: rush to find an ally.”

“Sherlock Holmes protects the Vanderbilt interests, not Irene’s. They are his clients.”

“Sherlock Holmes may be considering at this moment, as we are, that he and his graveyard suggestion was the catalyst in drawing Irene and yourself into this farango. He may have meant the opposite, but ‘may have’ doesn’t matter in life-and-death situations. I would rather have a guilty man in my corner than any number of wonder-workers.”

“You’re saying that Sherlock Holmes is both, in this instance.”

Godfrey nodded, then pulled out his pocket watch. “Almost
seven
A.M.,
Nell. Morning. I suggest breakfast in the room. We must have the strength to do whatever we’re called upon to do today.”

“I can’t eat with Irene gone!”

Godfrey shrugged, not with indifference but with acceptance, and picked up the telephone.

I’d had no idea that he knew how to use one.

But, then, I’d had no idea about a lot of things before this expedition to America, including a person who’d named herself Lola Montez.

Mlle. Lola Montez . . . has left a card at the Shooting gallery of
Lepage . . . entirely perforated with pistol balls, in firing rapid
doubt coups. The most famous Parisian shots avow themselves
vanquished by the prowess of the fair Andalusian
.
—
PARIS NEWSPAPER, JULY 1844

The Jesuit party . . . are angry with Lollita, who is Catholic but a sworn enemy of the Jesuit; that’s obviously an unforgivable crime. Who knows, if she were doing the opposite and introducing the Jesuits into Bavaria, along witfi tfie holy Ignatius Loyola we might get a half-holy Lola. . . .”
—
KING LUDWIG I, 1846