The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes (5 page)

“That is hardly a logical reaction.”

“It is the result of the most impeccable logic. Review the facts. Has not Irene Adler demonstrated time and again an indisputable control over people and events around her? She was perceptive enough to foresee the King of Bohemia’s forthcoming royal marriage and wise enough to flee when she saw herself supplanted in his plans, if not his affections.

“She also anticipated a need for future protection and brought with her the compromising photograph of herself and the King. She evaded his best agents on five separate occasions. When his Majesty allowed my humble self to partake in the problem, she not only detected the net closing around her, but had the audacity—the audacity, Watson!—to follow my disguised self, and you as well, to the very doorstep of
221-B Baker Street
. There, dressed as a young man, she boldly bid me, ‘Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.’ “

Holmes sat back against the chair, smoke rising from his fevered face like steam from an overtaxed locomotive. “I bother to quote the King of Bohemia on only one subject: ‘What a woman!’”

“Forward hussy, if you ask me,” I put in, still defensive about my fine-natured Mary.

Holmes smiled ruefully. “How unfair it is that enterprise is called a harlot when it wears a female face. How did you put it in your account, Watson—‘the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.’? You call her an ‘adventuress’ as well. Two centuries ago the word designated a woman who lived by her wits; today it has been debased to describe a woman who lives by her willingness—especially in regard to men of influence and wealth.

“I believe you misjudge Madam Irene there, but you may speculate upon her character as your authorial right. Her death, however, is mere rumor until proven. No, Watson, I fear we have all played our roles in L’Affaire Adler as mere supporting actors to the woman’s wit and will. Had she been a man, I should have immediately penetrated the charade of her greeting—and farewell—that night here in
Baker Street
. Being hampered by the strictures of her sex, she uses our arrogant male underestimation of her to camouflage a daring nature.
The
woman is without equal.”

 
“You do especially admire her, then!” pounced I, for to him she is always the woman.

“And to much better purpose than romantically, Watson, although it would please those monthly readers of your little tales and your conventional heart if my admiration were merely amorous. “You see, I suspect that she fled En gland not only because the King of Bohemia was on her trail— and not simply because I myself was about to close the net on her. I suspect she had other reasons, some of them involving the mysterious Mr. Godfrey Norton.”

Holmes’s eyes narrowed fiercely. “But Irene Adler is not dead—oh, no, Watson, no more likely than that Moriarty did not exist. I would stake my life upon it!”

I sat silent in the face of such wholesale conviction. I had never known Holmes to be wrong when he expressed himself so strongly. As much as logic directed his remarkable detective powers, so too did a knowledge of human behavior, sifted through his inhuman isolation from the softer sensibilities.

“Yet, Holmes,” said I finally, “so many of our cases require delving the deepest emotions in their solving. Perhaps you encounter enough misdirected passions and misunderstood family matters, sudden disgrace and death in your work; you need not import such heartache into your personal affairs.”

“Quite right. Many cases depend upon reasoning back to events of years ago—family secrets, vengeance visited even onto the second generation. In a sense, the past shapes those who become victims or villains in the melodramas of my cases.

“It is my role to act as playwright to the whole, to draw the curtain open and then reveal the scenes in one logical series. Every event must be cobbled into place in the long train of previous events, as rungs make a ladder of logic. I would give a great deal to know what inevitable stages of incident produced the likes of Irene Adler. Show me a method of forming more women so, and I would show more interest in women!”

My eyes wandered to the photograph again. I confess myself stirred by a new admiration for something more intangible in that familiar form than mere surface attractions.

“There is one thing I regret deeply about the Adler case,” Holmes confessed in a lazy drawl.

I held my breath. Had the unthinkable moment finally come when “the woman” would claim her final victory over the great detective’s infallible intellect?

Holmes sighed, his face assuming that state of dreamy concentration I had only observed at the concert hall. There, lost in the swelling orchestral chorus or the soulful aria of the solo instrument, Holmes permitted me to glimpse the stern mathematics of music erecting a bridge of glorious sound between his rigidly separated intellect and emotions.

“I regret,” the great detective mused gloomily, “that I have never heard her sing.”

Disappointed, I watched Holmes raise his glass to the photograph’

“Good night, Miss Irene Adler,” he toasted with a smile that even I could not quite decipher. “Wherever you are.”

MEET CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

T
he author of almost sixty novels—mainstream, mystery, thriller, fantasy, science fiction and women’s fiction—Carole has been nominated for or won more than fifty writing awards. Many of her novels have received starred reviews in established trade journals and many short stories have won awards and been reprinted in “Year’s Best” collections.

She holds
RT Book Reviews
Lifetime Achievement Awards for Versatility and Mystery writing. The magazine also cited her in its first “Pioneer of Publishing” awards, and she holds numerous Cat Writers’ Association Muse Medallion awards. Her
New York Times
Notable Book of the Year,
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
, launched the first mystery/suspense series to feature a Sherlockian woman protagonist, Irene Adler.

Carole currently writes two bestselling series set in a Las Vegas worlds apart: the contemporary Midnight Louie feline PI mysteries (“
Remington Steele
with two couples and a cat” and an international terrorist subplot) and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasies set in a Vegas from Hell in 2013. Carole enjoys mixing adventure, mystery, fantasy, romance, humor and heart with social satire and underlying social issues.

As a journalist covering social issues and the arts, Douglas won many Newspaper Guild of the Twin Cities awards, including for Best Column, and an Honorable Mention in the national Catherine L. O’Brien Award (one of 10 in a field of 2,000), for an article on the destitute elderly.

In college, she was a finalist in
Vogue
magazine’s
long-standing
Prix de Paris
writing competition for women college seniors (one of 12 in a national field of 2,000), once won by Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

A vintage clothing fashionista, Carole also collects homeless cats and dogs and can be found frequenting zumba classes.

Email:
[email protected]

Website:
www.carolenelsondouglas.com

Blog:
http://www.carolenelsondouglas.com/blog

Facebook:
www.facebook.com/CaroleNelsonDouglas

Twitter:
www.twitter.com/CNDouglasWriter

Carole Nelson Douglas

. . .writing historical suspense

“A splendidly crafted tale of mystery and murder, horror and humor.”—
Anne Perry

~

“
Douglas
cleverly balances tragedy and farce in a gentle mockery of period adventure and a ruthless depiction of all-too-contemporary hatreds.”—
Kirkus

~

“This is a meaningful, daring feast of a book and I loved it.”—
Nancy Pickard

~

“a lively historical thriller as well as a smart and faithful extension of the Holmes canon. Irene Alder justly deserves the spotlight Carole Nelson Douglas shines on her.”

—Jane Adams,
Amazon.com

~

 
“Atmospheric, gripping, intelligent, and highly entertaining.”—
Gayle Lynds

~

 
“These modern scholars of Victorian literature are some cutups!. . . certain of these wits have turned to the historical mystery [to share] the fun of their scholarship. And fun it is. . . when Carole Nelson Douglas purports to tell how Irene Adler outfoxed Sherlock Holmes. . . this enchanting paragon comports herself beautifully on her adventures. . . the author adopts a saucy style and a delicious sense of humor. Both have irresistible appeal.”

—Marilyn Stasio
,
New York
Times
on
Good Night, Mr. Holmes,
a Notable Book of the Year

~~~~

. . .writing fantasy

“
Douglas
is a master of the well-told tale. . . Her large readership will want to see this one on the shelves.”—Roland Green,
Booklist

~

 
“Multitalented
Douglas
layers complexities and moral dilemmas into this series, giving it both action and emotional punch!”—
RT Book Reviews
on
Virtual Virgin

~~~~

. . .writing mystery

“Her fine Sherlockian novels. . . and her Midnight Louie books have turned her into a genuine mystery star. Pick one up and you’ll see why.” —Ed Gorman

~

“The mystery is strong, sensitive, humorous in parts, and very enlightening. The characters are full-bodied and revealing like no others I have read.”—
Mystery News

~

“a jam-packed, postmodern-Dickensian series.” —
Kirkus

Other titles by CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

Midnight Louie feline PI series

Catnap

Pussyfoot

Cat on a Blue Monday

Cat in a Crimson Haze

Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

Cat with an Emerald Eye

Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Cat in a Golden
Garland

Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

Cat in an Indigo Mood

Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Cat in a Kiwi Con

Cat in a Leopard Spot

Cat in a Midnight Choir

Cat in a Neon Nightmare

Cat in an
Orange
Twist

Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

Cat in a Quicksilver Caper

Cat in a Red Hot Rage

Cat in a Sapphire Slipper

Cat in a Topaz Tango

Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme

Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta

Cat in a White Tie and Tails

~~~~

Delilah Street
, Paranormal Investigator series

Dancing with Werewolves

Brimstone Kiss

Vampire
Sunrise

Silver Zombie

Virtual Virgin

~~~~

Irene Adler suspense series

Good Night, Mr. Holmes

The Adventuress
[formerly
Good Morning Irene
]

A Soul of Steel
[formerly
Irene at Large
]

Another Scandal in Bohemia
[formerly
Irene’s Last Waltz
]

Chapel Noir

Castle Rouge

Femme Fatale

Spider Dance

~~~~

Anthologies edited by Carole Nelson Douglas

Marilyn: Shades of Blonde

Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives

White House Pet Detectives