Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 10

"Well. G.o.dfrey. The English papers. It was . . . inescapable."

"How fortunate. Dear G.o.dfrey. Suddenly I am glad that he is far away and well out of this."

"You think G.o.dfrey more in need of protection from this monstrous act than I myself?"

She shrugged. "Men take gruesome acts personally. We women are used to our monthlies and childbirth and attendant pain. All of these are little deaths. Also other . . . matters. Men presume that they are not subject to such inconveniences as violence to their persons."

"I cannot say what men presume, having known so few of them."

"You are advancing fast, Nell. Bram Stoker in the hallway indeed. He is merely the smallest fish, or the net would not have detained him. I am interested in the leviathans that have been let go."

Rue Royale

To us, who for twenty years have been crying out that if the

Rothschild family isn't dressed in qhetto yellow, we

Christians soon will be.

-EDMUND DE GONCOURT

"Why such secrecy?" I asked Irene. "We have met openly with our baronial 'sponsor' before."

"I apologize. I have been imprecise, as your question so elegantly points out. Obviously, we have more than one sponsor, hence the secrecy. One of our sponsors we have met before: Baron Alphonse de Rothschild. The other, I believe, only I have previously met."

"Yet you know who it is? How?"

"By paying close attention to one key portion of the newspapers-though you berate me for ignoring the press in general-the society pages. Apparently I would have been better off ignoring the comings and goings of polite Parisian society and paying more note to the hackings of the London homicidal maniac of last autumn."

"Touche, as they say in swordplay, but I am merely a needle-woman. If my knowledge of the London atrocities proves a boon, I will be only too happy."

"And so it already has." Irene eyed the finely appointed interior of the carriage. "Not a place where I can deposit an ash."

"Surely we are not on our way to Ferrieres at this hour?"

"Heavens no. We will visit the town house of Baron de Rothschild, I believe, on the rue de Saint-Florentin, which is very near."

I could not quite stifle a yawn. "At least we are to remain in Paris. I could not have survived a journey of such length as Ferrieres."

Irene leaned her head against the tufted brocade that lined the vehicle. Small oil lamps illuminated the interior, making it seem as if we sheltered in the nook of some cozy inn.

"We will not be home before daylight," she predicted, drawing a pocket watch from the inside of her jacket to consult it by the jiggling lamplight.

Arriving past one in the morning at even a great house is a hurried, chill affair.

When the carriage stopped, the footman a.s.sisted us out and into the custody of another footman, who escorted us up some broad stairs and through tall gilded doors into an echoing entry dominated by a curving marble staircase befitting the Louvre, on which more footmen stood, bearing lamps. All wore the embroidered livery of the eighteenth century, and I felt like a fairy princess entering a fairy castle, deserted except for the mute, enchanted manservants who swarmed the place like ants at a picnic.

Because Irene was attired in man's clothing and I wore my st.u.r.dy checked coat-dress, we had no outer garments to offer the surfeit of willing hands around us, which seemed to be such a disappointment that half their number melted away in an instant.

A butler approached us and, after the hesitation of a fraction of a second, bowed to Irene. "Madame Norton?" He frowned at me. Butlers always did. Fortunately, I was not often in their presence.

"My companion is Miss Huxleigh," Irene said.

"A companion was not expected."

"The unexpected is always more interesting."

The man hesitated again. Although he cultivated the lofty impersonality expected of the best butlers, I saw that he was a man nearing sixty. The harsh night lamps picked out pockets of fatigue in his impa.s.sive features.

My presence seemed to present a quandary, but at last his eyelids flicked shut in resignation.

"Follow me," he said, turning away.

Actually we followed him as he followed the sole remaining footman, who carried the lamp.

Quite a procession we made, our footsteps echoing over the marble floors, our order a martial single file, with me bringing up the rear.

We skirted the cascade of stairs, I peering up its shadowy heights a little wistfully, and followed our guides down the dark and silent hall, our feet m.u.f.fled on thick Turkish carpet at last.

The smell of warmed oil and lemon wax became a kind of incense as we moved deeper into the house as if approaching a sanctuary.

At a pair of magnificent marquetry doors the butler paused, and the footman held up his lamp.

The butler opened a polished bra.s.s latch and preceded us into the room beyond.

"Madame Norton and Mademoiselle Huxleigh," he intoned in perfect English.

Irene preceded me within. I breathed a happy sigh. I could not possibly get into trouble treading along behind her train. Or her bootheels, rather.

The chamber was huge and shadowed. Only the pools of light around the sofa tables illuminated anything, and the ma.s.sive fireplace fairly pulsed with fresh flames.

Bits of gilt twinkled in the shadows like faint stars in a moonless sky . . . book bindings and picture frames, no doubt.

But we were not here to gaze on art treasures or on the oil-painted faces of forebears.

Our focus was on the neat man in sober black standing near the fireplace.

I had seen-met, I suppose, though the better description would be "had been presented to"-Baron Alphonse de Rothschild. The French branch of the international banking house of Rothschild was its most wealthy and influential.

And Baron de Rothschild looked every inch of what those two words implied, except that there were not very many inches of him. He was a neat, mild individual, with a snowy mustache and side whiskers the size of Cupid's wings that distracted one from his sharp and ever-watchful gaze.

"My dear Mrs. Norton," he addressed Irene in English, lifting one white eyebrow. "You wear bohemian dress tonight."

A tone of surprise, even of slight dismay, could not quite be concealed.

"It was necessary." Irene managed to glide forward in her man's dress like a lady wearing the latest intricacies of a Worth gown. "The site. The situation."

The Baron looked away as if so doing would spare him the details of what we had seen.

I was amazed. We were two women of no station or wealth whatsoever, yet this man of incomparable power was not willing to face what we had. Perhaps that is what wealth and power buys one: the ability to look aside.

"Miss Huxleigh." He nodded at me, who had hastened after Irene like an acolyte, astounded to be noted and even more so to be addressed.

"Sir," I said in acknowledgment. I did not know how I should address a French Baron, and did not wish to learn.

Even within a few steps of the Baron, we were lost in that ma.s.sive, high-ceilinged room, marooned on a desert island defined by a few wavering lamps.

I suddenly realized that no servant had lingered. How odd.

"Did you interview the witnesses?" the Baron asked Irene.

She nodded, but corrected him. "Witness. The young American lady."

The Baron started, then brushed a nervous finger over his mustache. "I was interested in your estimation of the scene, and of the young American lady. Please be seated." He indicated a sofa covered with what seemed to be down-filled cus.h.i.+ons upholstered in the fabric of the Bayeux Tapestry.

"Miss Huxleigh may sit down," Irene said with a quick smile. "In fact, I suggest that she does so, and you also, Baron. I am too . . . restless to sit. I think better on my feet."

"Ah. You thrive on crisis then. So do I, Madame Norton." His amused glance caught mine, and he nodded to the sofa while seating himself in a kingly chair with gilded arms and legs.

I did as indicated, but longingly eyed the fire twenty feet away, and especially the ma.s.sive pair of wing chairs before it, fit for a giant. My toes were chill in their hard leather boot toes. I should feel like Alice in Wonderland sitting in one of those huge chairs, my feet swinging toward the cheerful flames a full foot from the floor. . . .

"You have heard about the brutality of the scene?" Irene was asking the Baron.

He nodded gravely. "Was it as bad as they said?"

"Perhaps worse, but the true extent of the barbarism will not be evident until all is stripped bare in the Paris Morgue."

"I would not," said the Baron slowly, "have sent even as formidable a woman as yourself to such a scene, but-"

Irene waved a too-dismissive hand. I agreed wholeheartedly with the Baron. "What did you wish to know most?"

"The American mademoiselle. She was not involved?"

"Only as an innocent bystander. She is new to the establishment and apparently blundered into the death chamber."

"Poor child."

I could not tell whether the Baron was commenting on Pink's happening on the death scene or on her being new to the establishment. The Rothschild family was just that: many generations of intermixed family business and marriage, risen from the meanest poverty to the most luxurious wealth. As a good Christian I had been taught that the Jews had slain Him whose Name named my faith, but since I had become only very slightly acquainted with the Baron de Rothschild, I had come to see the offense as historic rather than personal. And one thing I could say for the Rothschilds: they were not known as profligate.

Irene did not comment on his sympathetic murmur, but instead paused in her pacing before him. "What is the question you really wish answered?"

He responded just as quickly as she had challenged. "Could this be the work of the man London called Jack the Ripper?"

She nodded, slowly. "It could. Although there are several objections to such a theory."

He seemed not to hear her qualification, but ran a hara.s.sing hand into the thinning white hair at his temples, as if we were not there.

"This is very bad. You know the tendency in London to place the blame on 'foreigners,' always a code word for Jews?"

Irene, less familiar with London nuances than I, could not nod, but I could, and did. The motion caught the Baron's quick eye.

"Yes, you see it, too, do you not, Mademoiselle Huxleigh?"

I did not, but was not about to admit it, so I again nodded soberly.

Irene looked betwixt us two, an expression of exasperation vying with one of amus.e.m.e.nt on her face. She waited. I always marveled that even when caught at a loss, she managed to turn a situation to her advantage.

Her silence encouraged the Baron to further voice his fears.

"Very bad," he repeated. "The pogroms in Russia these last years. The accusations in London last autumn. And now, if the poison has moved to Paris . . . I speak not only of the poison of murder, but of the venom of slander."

He had spoken long enough for Irene's quick mind to overtake her own ignorance of the events last autumn in London.

"You fear some ma.s.sive retaliation against the Jews."

"It takes a pin dropping to start some minor retaliation. These frightening, vicious deaths could cause a conflagration."

"Only two deaths in Paris, so far."

"So far. Yet I would be pleased if you would continue to investigate this matter."