Spider Dance (59 page)

The person ushered next into the Vanderbilt library was the ghost of my Christmas future.

That is to say that she was British, she was perhaps fifty years of age, and she was obviously an instructress of well-to-do young ladies. Such I would have been someday had I not encountered Irene on the streets of London in 1881.

“Miss Bristol was present,” the millionaire said, sitting after ushering her into the room, “when my daughter was abducted.”

He did not invite Miss Bristol to sit, and indeed I was familiar with such treatment. One always reports on one’s feet, as one’s charges always recite on theirs, while the pater familias listens and nods from the depths of a luxurious easy chair.

I must admit that Mr. Vanderbilt, though seated, was not at ease in his luxurious leather chair at all.

Mr. Holmes had already heard the governess’s tale; I could tell that by the way he lingered on the room’s fringes
to watch us all as if we were performers for his private entertainment.

“We’d had our morning ablutions and breakfast,” Miss Bristol said, “during which we’d conversed in French, as required.”

Quentin interrupted. “Miss Vanderbilt has a speaking command of French?”

“Indeed yes, sir. She has spoken three languages since the age of eight. Her mother has seen to her education here at home. She expects Miss Consuelo to be as perfectly at ease on the Continent as in England and the United States. I was, in fact, expecting Miss Consuelo’s dancing teacher when the most extraordinary woman appeared in the third-floor gymnasium. My little miss was as entranced as if the Sugar Plum Fairy had paid her a visit.”

Godfrey and Quentin and I exchanged glances, for this was not the preface for a violent abduction by the sort of men responsible for the death of Father Hawks and the abuse of Father Edmonds.

Holmes remained content and silent in the background, watching us observing the child’s governess.

“How extraordinary was this women?” I asked, speaking for the first time. My English accent put the governess at instant ease.

“Oh, miss, I have never seen the like! She was dressed like a young master, yet her long hair tumbled all around her face and shoulders. And such a face! Quite the most comely face I have ever seen.”

“How beautiful?” Godfrey asked, steeling himself visibly even as he spoke.

“Why, such beauty is hard to describe, sir. And it’s odd, I remember her well, but not very precisely, after all. As if some veil were put between her and the world. Her face was . . . sweet and dainty of feature. Her hair was chestnut, yet with gleaming strands of red and gold, her eyes a deep, warm bronze, like a statue made flesh. Her expression, benign in the extreme.

“Consuelo is a slim, delicate child, quite . . . sensitive. At
the age of six, she was terrified to leave the lights below and climb that immense white stone staircase to the upper chambers. She’s twelve now, but still quite timorous. Yet when this woman extended a gloved hand, my miss put her pale palm in hers.

“‘We will tread a quadrille, Miss Vanderbilt,’ the woman said, almost like someone from another century, ‘that will make you the envy of Paris and Paraballa Land. We will dance away on a moonbeam to Cinderella’s palace in Pichu Machu.’”

“‘Are you a new dancing teacher?’” I asked.

“‘Indeed I am,’ she said in that same paralyzing, Mesmerizing tone. ‘And now, my dear woman, if you will leave us to do our steps, we’ll astound you with our progress in an hour hence.’”

The governess shook her head as she reported this exchange. “I can’t say why, but I did as this extraordinary woman said. I suppose I expected a dancing instructor to be a bit strange. M’sieur Reynard was.”

Miss Bristol hung her head. “I deserve to be dismissed. When I came back in an hour, they were gone, pupil and instructor.”

A silence held in the room, while Quentin and Godfrey and I eyed each other in turn.

At last Godfrey turned to Mr. Vanderbilt. “No one saw either one, your daughter or the unannounced dancing teacher, after that?”

“No. I suppose if a man is to mislay a daughter, he’d rather it be to this charming apparition than to thugs from the docks, but . . . gone is gone. My wife is inconsolable. And I—am more so. Consuelo is a gentle, docile child, obedient to an extreme. That someone would take advantage of such virtues to wrest her away from us—! If you can’t find her and find an answer to my troubles soon, I will tear this city apart.”

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Vanderbilt.” Holmes sounded quite definite. “First, let’s hear from your wife, then I’ll examine the gymnasium where the abduction occurred and proceed from there.”

Mr. Vanderbilt’s pleasant face went from worried to haunted on hearing Holmes’s plan, but went to the door and asked the waiting butler to fetch his wife.

“Alva is distraught,” he said on returning to his desk, “to say the least. Consuelo is our only daughter, named for her mother’s closest friend. Alva has . . . great hopes for her.”

As a former governess, I was delighted to hear of a mother who was as ambitious for her daughter’s development as well as her sons. So often the girls were slighted in favor of the boys. Even I had to admit that Eliza Gilbert’s good education made it possible for Lola Montez to hobnob on equal terms with the leading men of her day.

So I awaited Alva Vanderbilt with some sympathy. The men had all risen even before she entered the room.

When she did, I saw a woman with a soft, square face flushed with emotion. I barely more than noted her elaborate Worth gown, although Irene’s acquaintance with the famed “man milliner” of Paris had forever made me aware of over-expensive clothing on other women, even in the most trying circumstances. I suppose I was as expert on that subject as Mr. Holmes was on more homely matters of calluses and cork fragments.

Alva Vanderbilt stood panting softly as the introductions were made: Mr. Holmes, Godfrey, Quentin. I rose when my own forged qualifications rolled off Mr. Vanderbilt’s tongue, but his wife’s gaze barely flicked over me.

“I’ve heard of Mr. Holmes from Mrs. Astor,” she said. “If you can do as well by us as you did by the Astors, we shall be all right. But you must understand: Consuelo is not any ordinary millionaire’s daughter.”

“I would not presume to think any millionaire’s daughter ordinary, madam,” Holmes said with an ironic bow.

Irony was lost on this lady. “Consuelo has been tutored in all the gracious arts. She is destined to be a great lady in your own native land, sir.” Her glance raked us all, for we were all British. “She will marry a duke.”

I couldn’t restrain myself. “The child is twelve?”

“Little time left for her training. She must make her debut
here in five years and must be introduced quickly in England. She is an heiress unparalleled. She’ll be snapped up at her fresh peak by the most titled man in England, save the royal family, of course. I do recognize that an American will never wear the crown.”

“Can you speak of her character?” I pressed on, for the men in the room appeared reluctant to address this lady for some reason. I’m only a humble former governess, but I am never too intimidated to speak up in the cause of a child, and in this case, a puzzled, frightened child surely, even if in Irene’s company, for Irene did not sound herself at all. “Can you say how she would respond to confusion and fear?”

“She will do as she is told. I provide a strict daily routine of self-improvement for her. She wears a steel brace, for instance, for several hours a day to improve posture.”

Here I felt my spine stiffening more in outrage than in sympathy.

“What sort of . . . appliance is this?”

“A rod up the spine, affixed by a bracket to the temples and chest.”

And we were worried about Consuelo in the hands of foreign torturers! “Was she wearing this, this Iron Maiden when she disappeared?”

“Yes. But she didn’t disappear. She was taken.” Alva, who had been addressing the mounted head of an African antelope on the wall behind me, snapped her gaze of agate to Mr. Holmes.

“Surely you will serve the Vanderbilts with more zeal and dispatch in the matter of a missing heiress than you did the Astors in the trifling forgery of a chess set.”

“I will bend my every asset to it. First, I must see the gymnasium where Miss Vanderbilt was accosted and taken.”

“Reede will show you upstairs, and Miss Bristol will answer all your questions, even if she can’t satisfy mine as to why she left Consuelo to the care of this extremely odd creature. When you are done with her, she may leave with your party. Her employment here is over.”

Miss Bristol in her corner started. “My things—”

“Will be found packed on the servant’s back entrance stairs.” Alva looked last to her husband. “I suppose you’re to be congratulated for having been so swift in procuring the services of this English snoop. He apparently has some little reputation. I want my Consuelo back within hours. Her reputation must not be compromised.”

I couldn’t remain silent, though all reason demanded it.

“Surely the woman who took her wouldn’t betray a child to such a fate.”

“Children are sold every day on the streets of New York. Don’t you read the newspapers? Haven’t your heard of the Hamilton case? It’s imperative that no hint of scandal attaches to my daughter. I will give my diamond-and-pearl parure to the one of you who claims credit for her swift, safe, and discreet return. Otherwise, none of you will see a penny of Vanderbilt money.”

At his desk, Mr. Vanderbilt’s face turned ashen, which was a good indication of just how costly his wife’s pearl parure was.

Our mother dominated our upbringing, our education,
our recreation and our thoughts
.
—
CONSUELO VANDERBILT BALSAN,
THE GLITTER AND THE GOLD
, 1952

It was swiftly decided, after Mrs. Vanderbilt left, that Quentin would interrogate the servants (and see to the worldly goods of poor Miss Bristol, who was trembling on the brink of tears). Godfrey remained to discuss financial matters, i.e., ransom, with Mr. Vanderbilt, and Holmes would see the gymnasium and trace the path from there to outside the house.

“Miss Bristol, you will assist,” he said, fixing the poor woman with a gaze at least as stony as Mrs. Vanderbilt’s. “Along with Miss Huxleigh.”

I cast appealing glances to Quentin and Godfrey, but they were already turning away on their separate quests.

I can’t say why Mr. Holmes desired my company, except perhaps to keep Miss Bristol from the brink of hysteria on which she teetered. So I took her arm and we both led him up the grand white stone staircase to the house’s upper regions.

Halfway up this mountain of laddered stone, he stopped to regard Miss Bristol.

“The first day I visited this house,” he said, “I glimpsed a dark-eyed nymph at the top, peering down at me. She seemed quite . . . shy.”

Miss Bristol spread her fingers on her no doubt palpitating
breast. “Oh, sir, she is the sweetest, most docile child. She had a terrible fear of this very staircase. It’s so wide and long. From the top, it looks like a mountain slope.”