The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes novella) (5 page)

Holmes stepped forward, his brisk and commanding self shining through his brutish façade.

“A desperate woman will suffer any indignity to preserve the fiction of her marriage,” he said. “A despairing woman will destroy herself rather than allow the one man who should protect her to trade her like a bolt of cloth. A clever woman is quite another case. I stand here surrounded by clever women. Madam and madam.” He bowed to me and Mrs. Hemphill in turn.

“Yet the cleverest woman is she who convinces others to do her work for her.” He bowed to Sophie. “Mr. Montague,” he went on to the astonishment of the entire company, “it is cheering that your wife has persuaded you to revoke your cowardly skin-saving offer of her body to another man. It was
never necessary
, however.

“Madam,” he said to me, “it’s to your credit that you would exert yourself to save the honor and well-being of a friend but it was
never necessary
.”

“Madam,“ he told the madam, “you deal in selling flesh and will ever be unclean, and in this case you have been caught. It will never be possible again for you to turn Mr. Edison’s invention and its descendents into a devil’s workshop, at least not in this place and this time. I set Mr. Montague as guard upon the python until I send someone to collect and destroy the recordings within.

“Mrs. Montague, having accomplished her mission, may go home. Or wait with her husband.”

“But the Prince—” Mrs. Hemphill gasped. “I mean . . . the Eminent Personage. He is expecting. . .
 
.”

Here I took on a task I was the most suited for, for only I grasped what Holmes had been implying. “I will greet the EP and explain.”

“No, Irene,” Sophie cried, disturbed for the first time. “You need not sacrifice yourself in my place. I . . . It was—”

“Never necessary,” Holmes decreed again.

“It happens that His Royal Highness and I are previously acquainted,” I assured Sophie, and left for the one locked bedchamber.

It was still locked but my picks soon had me sitting upon the
siège d‘amour
in my street gown and hat, leaning one gloved hand on one of the paired golden metal stirrups at the far end
.

Not long after, a discreetly attired equerry opened the door and stepped aside as an imposing and instantly recognizable figure entered. The door just as instantly shut behind him.

“Good Lord,” his Royal Highness said. “What a start you gave me. An attired woman merely sitting on my chaise. Outrageous as ever. What are you doing in
London
, Irene?”

I had hopped down to curtsy. “You were expecting Sophie Montague, I realize, Sir. She had recruited me for her chamber drama as well as Your Royal Highness. I must say your playing the melodrama villain has been highly effective with Reginald Montague. He will be the most faithful husband in
London
from now on, so faithful that Oscar Wilde will write a play mocking him and call it ‘A Man of No Importance.’”

The “Uncle of Europe” grinned into his beard. “Sophie is my hatter’s god-daughter; I find it most amusing to play the hero instead of the seducer. Quite a saucy child to appeal to me for this charade, but at least it has allowed me a chance to see the peerless Irene again.” He nodded to the beautiful but bizarre piece of furniture that was the centerpiece of the room. “You’re sure you—?”

“Now, Your Highness, we did agree not to ruin so sublime an occasion by vulgar repetition.”

“Of course.” He sighed, then brightened. “Mrs. Hemphill will be most worried that I was ‘cheated’ of my prize and no doubt send me something really delicious. Perhaps several somethings.”

I left Bertie to contemplate his forthcoming feast and rejoined Mr. Holmes in the office, now empty of Montagues and madam. The Prince’s equerry stood guard over the python ottoman and its contents. One wondered if Bertie would destroy the recordings right off, or peek first, Holmes’s thought exactly.

“At least,” he murmured to me as we left, “you have the most incriminating discs up your sleeves.”

~~~~~

Back at
Baker Street
I divested my sleeves of their booty in the parlor while Mr. Holmes shed his latest disguise in his bedchamber.

“One thing I must know,” I told him when he emerged in his own guise, attired in City vest and suit. His clean-shaven face in an age of mustachios was an empty canvas for his disguises, I realized, and I quite liked it.

“How do I intend to destroy the compromising gramophone discs?” he anticipated me. “It will be a first. I suppose I’ll smash them with a hammer.”

I smiled to picture Mr. Holmes performing such a task, a veritable Carrie Nation breaking liquor bottles.

“Not that,” I explained. “I want to know why Dr. Watson’s story of our first encounter so badly garbled the scene of my wedding, which you witnessed in disguise at St. Monica’s.”

“Watson ‘garbled’ nothing. I, er, omitted certain unimportant details when relating the event to him.”

“Importance is in the eye of the beholder. I wonder that you didn’t regale him with the remarkable circumstances. Godfrey’s arrival at St. Monica’s was delayed and there was some question that the marriage wouldn’t be legal if it didn’t transpire immediately. The clergyman drafted a nearby idling groom as proxy
bride
groom.

“I was forced to stand beside a tipsy side-whiskered lout as the ceremony began, until Godfrey stormed in and you were demoted to a mere witness. Is that not a much more dramatic moment than the good doctor penned?”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Grand opera has accustomed you to high drama. A trifling fine point. We stood together at the altar only a minute or so.”

“Nevertheless, I believe that circumstance justified introducing myself into your chambers on that pretext.”

“Flimsy grounds, madam, exceedingly flimsy.”

“And where is the gold sovereign with which I tipped the tipsy groom?” I looked pointedly at his waistcoat. “You wore it yesterday when you returned to these rooms to find me in residence but I have not seen it since.” Nor was my photograph any longer in view.

He shrugged. “I was in disguise.”

“You are not now,” I pointed out, eyebrows raised. “Dr. Watson’s story ended with your vow to wear it on your watch-chain in memory of our encounter.”

“In memory,” he said, “not in perpetuity.”

I smiled, knowing I would get no more. “And I owe you—?”

“Nothing. This sordid matter required no great thought, but featured the usual messy marital maneuvers. Only the role of the gramophone was mildly of interest.”

“Still, I am most grateful.” I offered my hand, recalling from Watson’s narration that he had refused to take Willie’s six years ago, King of Bohemia or not.

Mr. Holmes hesitated. Then, observing it was gloved, did so.

“I hope,” he said, “that you have a new appreciation for the uses of fern dust and gramophones.”

I laid my hand delicately on his forearm, saying softly, “I do indeed, my dear Mr. Holmes, I do. My wedding, as you know, was hasty and sparsely attended. I’m afraid some of the niceties were neglected, so I take the liberty of amending one. You may kiss the bride.”

~~~~~~~

Well, Nell, this is been a long letter, more in the nature of a report, of my recent visit to England so far and Sophie Montague’s successful scheme to frighten, shame, and reform her philandering husband. As a parson’s daughter and the soul of respectability, you’ll be pleased that virtue has triumphed over vice, though it had to be goaded to the task.

As for my reunion with and ensuing farewell of Mr. Holmes, I do admit that it was very naughty of me to tease a man with an aversion to the complicated toils of gallantry and women. No doubt you will wonder about the upshot of my impetuous final proposal.

I’m happy to say that we parted with the capacity to surprise each other, as we did on the very first occasion of our meeting and which we do not often encounter in our usual dealings with others. As I paused on the walk below to search the bustling traffic for an empty hansom, I heard the faint first throbs of a violin from the rooms I’d just left.

What a divine instrument a violin is, Nell! Only the human voice may hope to echo its deep and soulful range of expression. I smiled to know that my visit had brought out the violin case, not the cocaine needle. You will be pleased to note that I am a good influence on Mr. Holmes and you will no doubt agree that this is the noblest role a woman may aspire to with a man.

In fact, his last words to me were that he was glad to see I was still unswayed by royal titles.
 

“I value honor over aristocracy,” I said, “and a man of impeccable integrity. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have met two.”

Color tinged his high cheekbones as he turned to the mantel and the Persian slipper and the covering stage business of lighting a pipe.

“And, one could say, I have married both.”

AFTERWORD

by Carole Nelson Douglas

With the first chapter of the first Irene Adler novel,

Good Night, Mr. Holmes

Why Holmes ended up in a brothel

A
small publisher of attractively designed books contacted me because the Sherlock Holmes story in a forthcoming fiction anthology had failed to materialize. Would I write one? The pay was modest, but I always jump at the chance to write a Sherlock Holmes-Irene Adler story. Readers of the eight Adler suspense novels are in mourning that the series is on hiatus for the second time, and I write the novellas for them as well as myself.

I didn’t think to ask the name of the collection before committing. I soon found out it was an eye-popping one:
Sex, Lies, and Private Eyes.
The collection featured classic sleuths far more modern, noir, and sexy, than the woman-allergic and ascetic Sherlock Holmes.

For me, the challenge became how to abide by the title in a manner perfectly in keeping with the Sherlock Holmes stories’ late Victorian setting and personality, and with his continuing encounters, thanks to me, with
the
woman, the only woman to have outwitted him, American opera singer Irene Adler.

My Irene Adler series debuted in 1990. That first novel,
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
, won American Mystery and
Romantic Times
magazine awards, and was named a Notable Book of the Year by the
New York Times
. The most recent (but perhaps not last) Adler novel came out in 2004.

I’d been the first author to make a woman from the Holmes “Canon” a protagonist of her own adventures, with Holmes and Watson in their proper supporting roles, and the first writer to move into the crowded arena of Sherlock Holmes spin-offs with a female byline. Since then, a few female-oriented Sherlockian novels appeared and some endured. Mrs. Hudson has headed a mystery series and the retired Sherlock finally took a very young wife named Mary Russell. Recently, two British directors have created updated film versions of Holmes and the characters.

In Rachel McAdams, Guy Ritchie created a charmingly larcenous minx for Robert Downey Jr.’s steampunkish action hero-calculator Holmes. Now, at the first blush of 2012, Steven Moffat of
Doctor Who
fame has given his Asperger-asocial young detecting genius
Sherlock
Irene Adler as a crop-brandishing dominatrix.

Every new interpretation reflects the time and mindset of its creators, but “my” Irene Adler was reinvented in reaction against the glib “Victorian bimbos or vamps” men who reimagine Holmes automatically produce and subconsciously use to invert the triumph, the wit, heart and nerve shown by “
the
woman” in Conan Doyle’s very first Sherlock Holmes short story in 1891.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the first writers to be trapped by the global commercial success of his early work, wouldn’t have cared what anyone did with his creation. He said so in a famous telegram sent to the American director William Gillette, who’d asked permission to marry Holmes in the first Sherlock Holmes play. “You may marry him or murder him or do whatever you like with him.”

But a reader like me, hooked in childhood on the characters and stories, does care.

And the reason Gillette asked Doyle’s permission to marry Holmes was the character’s firm denial of any “softer” emotions like romantic love. That facet of the character is one of many that made him immortal, so Irene and I have joined forces to explore that famous aloofness in “The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes.”

Here’s what Sherlock Holmes tells Watson about “
the
woman” at the beginning of
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
.