Spider Dance (71 page)

Irene hesitated for so long that Mr. Vanderbilt noticed, looked around, and saw his error in etiquette. “But Mr. Holmes was already settled in the crypt when we got there. Quite an amazing feat. How did you manage it?”

“Let the lady tell it,” Holmes said, never glancing up at the millionaire. Having exchanged Havana cigar for his humble briarwood pipe, he was now fussing with the pipe’s draw and apparently preferred smoking it to taking credit.

“Really,” Irene said. “I can’t take much credit. It was mere coincidence. My associates and I were unearthing the history of Lola Montez, who of course was a major figure thirty to forty years ago both in New York and in Gold Rush California. The investigation into Lola’s enemies turned up a cadre searching for her vanished jewels. Ultimately, I learned from my . . . fellow investigator that the Vanderbilt family was being hounded for ‘jewels and gold.’ This shadowy gang of men followed and confronted me. I could only pretend we had some common aims. When I overheard their plot to abduct your daughter, I pretended to join them, took Consuelo as gently as possible, and protected her until we both could escape.”

“You enchanted her somehow. She seems little harmed by her plight. I’m quite amazed by how you managed to deceive such villains and still prevent my daughter from knowing how dire her situation was.”

Holmes spoke for the first time. “Mrs. Norton’s Pinkerton experience dates from the time when the founder encouraged the use of a female department. Her role in this delicate matter speaks to the foresight of Allan Pinkerton. Alas, after his death a few years ago, the policy changed and Pinkerton now employs no female agents.”

I couldn’t believe my ears! Sherlock Holmes espousing women detectives!

“Mrs. Norton,” he went on, “did what I and none of her associates, save Miss Huxleigh, had she been there, could do. She kept your daughter from dealing on her own with strange and sinister men until help could, and did, arrive.”

Mr. Vanderbilt had withdrawn a fine lawn handkerchief
and patted his brow as Holmes restated the dire situation his fragile daughter had faced recently.

“Indeed,” he told Irene and me. “I’m most grateful. I, of course, am quite willing to show it. Any sum you’d care to name—”

“Would not be acceptable,” Irene said.

The Vanderbilt eyebrows rose, for she had implied that her price was high.

While he was about to sputter some reply, she went on. “However, I understand New York City has a splendid new opera house and that your family was instrumental in its construction.”

“The Metropolitan, yes.” He was frowning at the apparently abrupt change of subject.

“I should like to sing in it,” Irene finished. “Someday.”

“Sing. Someday. Mrs. Norton, I have some paltry influence, but not over the engagement of artistic personnel.”

“My wife,” Godfrey said a bit sternly, “is an acclaimed European diva. She was prima donna of the Imperial Opera at Warsaw, and has performed at La Scala in Milan and the Opera House in Prague.”

“I didn’t know that,” Mr. Vanderbilt said quickly, still looking a bit green. I suspected the Cuban cigar.

“Oh, I don’t want a role with a company,” Irene said. “Just a chance to test my voice against the new house. I only need an orchestra and a few hours, and not now, for I’m out of voice. In the future sometime, perhaps.”

“Ah. A private . . . concert. That could be arranged. In fact, it could even be public, given your credentials. European performers do well in New York.”

“Yes, I believe it’s a family tradition,” Irene said, laughing merrily as her eyes met mine and Godfrey’s. “But, alas, we must conclude our various affairs here and return to Paris soon.”

Did I imagine it, or did Sherlock Holmes’s ascetic face relax with relief?

“So.” Mr. Vanderbilt eyed all of us in turn. “Your separate investigations intersected and you acted together?”

“Something like that,” Godfrey said. “I, of course, as a European representative of the Rothschilds in Bavaria, was also in contact with Mr. Belmont, the Rothschilds’ American representative. It’s all quite complex, Mr. Vanderbilt. What matters now is that Consuelo is home, unharmed—”

“I’m not so sure of that. She’s requesting discus-throwing lessons from Miss Huxleigh.”

I laughed lightly, my most unconscionable foray into fiction so far. “The child has quite an imagination. I would suggest drawing lessons. She is a dear girl, Mr. Vanderbilt, and I would, were I her father, endeavor to give her what she
wishes
, since her mother is so concentrated on what she believes Consuelo
needs
.”

He eyed me uneasily, then nodded. Once. Firmly. I believe he knew quite well that the mother’s ambitions threatened to overwhelm the child.

I sat back, content to remain silent from now on. If I’d bought poor young Consuelo but a few precious moments’ self-satisfaction . . .

Quentin caught my eye, and nodded. Something in his gaze made me look down and avoid all other eyes for the moment.

Irene had interrogated Quentin—there is no other word for it—when our weary but triumphant group, minus Sherlock Holmes, reconvened at the Astor House to discuss our recent adventures and their outcome.

“You’re sure,” she asked, and asked him again, “that Pink has no suspicions about our latest exploits?”

“None at all. She was absorbed by the society scandal involving bought and sold infants.”

“The Hamilton case,” I announced. “Something out of Dickens via Newport. I’ve seen that in all the newspapers.”

Irene looked surprised at my familiarity with American scandals, then turned to Quentin again. “This was the story on which you assisted her?”

He nodded. “A truly appalling American situation would keep her satisfied to quash the Jack the Ripper affair in Europe. I must say that Mycroft Holmes was extremely relieved when I wired him that Nellie Bly had found a homegrown cause celebre.”

“Mycroft Holmes?” I was astounded. “You report to him? What does his brother think of that?”

“Nothing.” Quentin looked amused. “Because he knows nothing about it. You think Sherlock Holmes is omnipotent, but he suffers as much from tunnel vision as the next man, perhaps more so.”

For some reason I flushed. “What did aiding Pink entail?”

“Exploring some of the most debased areas of New York City.”

“Is there nowhere that girl won’t go in the pursuit of a story?”

“Evidently not,” Quentin said, “but I can guarantee that she went nowhere near the Vanderbilts. I saw to that.”

“Which of course meant that you had to see to her,” I added.

He shrugged. “In my career as a spy I’ve had to spend time with mountain horsemen who consider chasing a human head around an arid plain fine sport. I’ve had to mingle with South Sea Islanders who have a taste for shrunken heads and human flesh. However, I’ve never spent time with anyone more implacable than Nellie Bly, whom we know by the gentle nickname of Pink.”

“What exactly did you do to assist this implacable Pink?” I asked, though both Irene and Godfrey were fidgeting in their respective chairs.

“I . . . bought babies.”

“For South Sea Islanders with a taste for human flesh?”

“They were mostly Irish babies, so I suppose if we’re to subscribe to Jonathan Swift’s savagely satirical essay on solving Britain’s Irish problem by exporting Irish infants for food, perhaps. But no, these babies were desperately wanted for themselves alone, by childless couples.”

“What can be so headline-worthy about such matters?” I
asked. Then I added, “Perhaps Consuelo Vanderbilt would have been more fortunate to have been traded at infancy, like a changeling, to a poor family who didn’t regard children as stepping-stones to their parents’ social standing and pride.”

“She might have been,” Irene noted from her chair, which was amazingly absent of cigarette smoke. “After what we’ve learned of Madame Restell and the Hamilton case, who’s to say whose parentage is genuine or false? One might need some master Book of Descendency to trace any one of our true origins.”

I swallowed and said nothing, for I’d made no headway on deciphering Madame Restell’s coded book.

“I suppose,” Quentin mused, regarding us all, “Nell and I are the ones surest of our family trees. I’m not at all certain that’s any sort of advantage.”

“It is to a Vanderbilt,” I answered, thinking of the foothills of burlap-wrapped gold in the family crypt.

“And wouldn’t you pluck Consuelo from that tyrannical family money-tree in a moment, if you could?”

“That’s ridiculous, Irene. A single woman like myself has no right to a child. I have nothing to offer but poverty, as opposed to palaces. But yes.”

My final word silenced all my friends. There! I’d said it. Wealth does not make worth.

“Children are worth nothing,” Quentin said, “across far too much of the globe, except in certain privileged pockets, where they’re worth far too much for anybody’s good.”

I couldn’t say what caused Quentin’s disturbing pronouncements, save that he’d relinquished a life of privilege in England to live on the selvage edge of savagery. He must have found some frayed remnant of that brutality here in New York City. With Nellie Bly. Pink. I wanted desperately to know what, and why, but was afraid to ask.

“At any rate,” Godfrey said finally to Irene and me, “you’ve uncovered the many mysteries of Lola Montez, including the gold she transported for the Commodore and his heirs. Is it certain that she’s my mother-in-law in absentia?”

Irene and I stared at him, hardly able to believe that extremely round-about lawyerly phrase.

What a way to put it! Well, we could either laugh or cry over all we’d learned about the madcap, sad history of Lola Montez, and Godfrey, bless him, had seen to it that we laughed.

Mr. Bennett—My enemies—made enemies because I was a proud woman—a self-willed woman—an ambitious woman, if you will, but an honorable woman, who would not become their instrument of wickedness—my enemies by falsehood, and forgery, and every species of crime, have assailed me, and hunted me throughout Europe and great Britain, and now pursue me to America—but I defy—I proudly defy the Jesuit band and their tribes of tools and instruments
.
—LETTER OF LOLA MONTEZ TO THE
NEW YORK HERALD
, 1852

I couldn’t believe we were packing to leave the Island of Manhattan far behind us to return to Paris.

How were the animals, I wondered? Had they missed us? Given our Persian cat, parrot, mongoose, and several snakes, perhaps not. One could only hope that they had not consumed each other in our absence.

I was fussing about the fact that our new New York clothes wouldn’t fit in our one trunk each, so Irene suggested that we bring them to Anna, formerly known as the Pig Lady.

“I must keep the checkered coatdress,” I objected. “It’s so
like the one that was ruined last spring, and is very practical.”

“Wear it aboard the ship, then. And we have more room. Godfrey came over with one large carpetbag, so we can certainly claim room in another trunk and call it his.”

“I still can’t believe that he realized instantly that he was needed here and came abroad so fast.”