Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 23

Many a young and sensitive creature . . . begs her father, husband or brother to take her to the morgue and although she lingers on the threshold a bit, and looks whiter than usual, she always finds nerve enough to enter and go through the ordeal.

-THE LONDON MORNING ADVERTISER

"I do not understand why we require Bram Stoker's company later," I said, as Irene and I crossed the bridge leading from Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite to the Rive Gauche, or Left Bank.

It was a cool morning. Mist hovered over the Seine like the breath of a river G.o.d, but pale sunlight brushed the tops of the chestnut trees.

"We have visited the Paris Morgue before, on our own," I added.

"I wish to see his reaction to the public viewing," Irene said, rustling along at a rapid pace.

Before we left our hotel, she had considered not wearing her usual women's dress, but concluded that since so many females attended the public viewing, the conventional was the less eye-catching attire. So her usual pale breakfast jacket had been replaced by a fitted cloak of golden brown silk grosgrain material, with figured brown velvet on pale blue satin forming the bodice, sleeves, and skirt revers. With our demure bonnets, rather than the extravagantly brimmed hats that were blooming like spring peonies on the heads of fas.h.i.+onable Frenchwomen, we looked as respectable as Salvation Army ladies.

"But he has seen the display many times before," I said, "in the company of Henry Irving."

"Yes, he has seen it before, but not 'after' the murders in the rue des Moulins or 'after' the murder at the Eiffel Tower. The courtesans' ident.i.ties are known, so their corpses will not be displayed, but the tower body will be on a slab, I am sure of it."

"A dead body is a dead body," I found myself saying with shocking callousness. "And if Mr. Stoker is already so familiar with corpses in the French form, I do not see why his reaction today should be any different than on any previous day. . . . Oh."

Irene stopped to confront my too-late conclusion.

"It is thought," I continued, "that a murderer cannot resist viewing his handiwork?"

"Especially when it is so conveniently laid out for him. There is virtually no risk, unless the victim's friends and family know him, and I am certain that the Ripper did not know any of his victims. The French authorities have allowed these exhibitions for almost a hundred years on the theory that every citizen should do his duty and help identify the unknown dead. They also subscribe to the notion that in cases of foul play the killer will be unable to resist joining the pa.s.sing throng."

"Pa.s.sing throng? How many sensation-seeking souls visit the morgue each day?"

"Hundreds, possibly thousands, depending on how sensational the deaths of those on exhibit are. The man who killed and cut his mistress in two before throwing the separate packages into the Seine, for instance, produced a swelling in visitors. Luckily, the police have kept these murders from the hands of the press so far, so the crowds will be smaller, and a suspicious party is likelier to stand out."

I walked alongside Irene on the uneven cobblestones. Ahead of us stretched the makes.h.i.+ft booths of the booksellers who had made this site famous for decades, and perhaps centuries. Behind us loomed that gray man-made mountain topped by gargoyles and flying b.u.t.tresses, a stone spiderweb of the medieval mason's art and a palace of Roman Catholicism with all its lurid history and superst.i.tions. Notre Dame. And between these two points, just in view as the apex of a triangle at the isle's far end, squatted the trilevel roofs of the Paris Morgue, holding not incense and Romanish ceremony, but the reek of decay and unseemly display.

This part of Paris reminded me of my more recent second visit to Prague, where G.o.dfrey and I had explored the ancient streets of the Old Town in search of a legend made flesh, another monster that had terrified a city's entire populace. We had found him, too, and he was not what we had thought him to be. How many monsters ever were?

Such dark thoughts made me loath to delve into the musty corpses of untold volumes on open display and sale in the rows of stands before us. What monsters might we unearth while hunting a t.i.tle whose very Latin mystery made it seem vile: Psychopathia s.e.xualis?

This was not a place and pursuit for the countrified likes of a Shrops.h.i.+re parson's daughter.

"You could perhaps make do with Mr. Stoker as an escort at the morgue," I suggested, as Irene moved into the first stand and tilted her bonneted head to read the faded gilt t.i.tles of book after book. "I am superfluous."

"Of course you are not!" She turned, one heavy volume already open in her gloved hands. "It is not just Bram's reaction I wish to gauge, but there may be other attendees who have a personal interest in the tower corpse. Then, too, I hope that we will be permitted to view the bodies from the bordello eventually, after we part with Bram."

"Is that necessary?" I asked faintly. "They are already identified, after all."

"But the nature of their death and wounds has only been determined during an autopsy." She put down the book, much disappointing the old, hairy, and pungent individual who operated the book stand.

Taking my elbow, she steered me to the walk along the river.

"You remember that it was by this very river that we saw the body of the sailor drawn from the water?"

"I do. He was in a most unpleasant state of . . . disrepair."

"Yet had we not seen him, and not visited the body in the morgue later, we would never have known of the odd tattoo that was the key to all the events both murderous and mysterious that came after."

"That is true."

"And you must admit that we did a great deal of good by untangling that puzzle." She smiled in a way that I could only describe as conspiratorial. "You must also admit that you have learned much of Jack the Ripper through the newspapers, far more than I, and are an invaluable expert on those awful events of last autumn in London-"

I would have spoken to deny my interest and expertise, but she tightened her grip on my elbow and went on.

"A side of you I have never before seen, this secret taste for grue. And you must also admit that, years ago, when we first became a.s.sociated, how you much desired to view Lillie Langtry for yourself despite much disapproving of her, in fact that your eagerness to see her was in direct proportion to your extreme disapproval of her."

"Well-"

"As you should also admit that the most improper circ.u.mstance of Quentin Stanhope's surprise escort on the long rail trip back to Paris from Prague last year was also the most welcome impropriety of your life, of which you will not tell even your dearest friend the smallest detail."

"Tell you!" I tried to wrest my elbow from her grip, but she had seized me as if I was the long-ago urchin who had sought to rob a parson's daughter. So would f.a.gin imprison an escaping Oliver Twist who had not surrendered all that day's beggings. "I . . . I-" I managed to twist myself free and took a firm stand. "There is nothing to tell, Irene. Nothing that you would find of any interest. It was a most . . . conventional journey. Trains, stations, endless countryside."

"Nothing? What did you talk of during all those 'conventional' days?"

"Talk of? I . . . don't remember. Exactly. And even if I did, it would be none of your business!"

"Aha! Don't remember indeed. You remember enough to plead forgetfulness. As G.o.dfrey would say in court, I rest my case. Nell, I am not exaggerating when I say that Sherlock Holmes, for all his wiles and his astounding deductive ability, is more at sea in these affairs than you and I. Only we can stop this fiend, though it will require us to face matters that will give us nightmares for years to come. I admit that I have the edge in suspecting the wickedness of the world, but I know that you are up to whatever this murderous fiend may force us to confront. And"-she dropped her custody of my arm-"I cannot face it alone."

I would have gasped at this last admission, had I not been holding my breath through her monologue. Irene's eyes were intent upon mine, and clearer than Russian amber.

"We can go forward and cross swords with this monster who kills women in such monstrous ways, or we can retreat and leave it to the gendarmes and Sherlock Holmes, as women always have before us."

I clasped my gloved hands. It was one thing to pore over the crime sketches in the ill.u.s.trated papers. It was another to confront death face to cadaverous face. I recalled Irene's nightmare, the first in my experience. She was putting the decision in my hands. It was not too late to withdraw. We could meet Bram Stoker, stroll through the macabre display as thousands did each week, then return to Neuilly to eat quiche and feed Casanova grapes.

Or we could delve into unholy books and b.l.o.o.d.y murder.

And perhaps save lives.

My fingers sought the comfort of the chatelaine in my skirt pocket, tightening on the trivial a.s.semblage of feminine tools as if they were the keys to the kingdom, as if I were a Papist clutching my superst.i.tious rosary beads. For the first time I saw that it was all a matter of faith, and a matter of who or what in which one put one's faith.

Since she had rescued me eight years before from the London streets, I had always put my faith in Irene. Now we were in Paris, and she was putting her faith in me.

I nodded. Grimly.

And I would so love to outwit Sherlock Holmes. Personally.

Morgue Le Fey

When the slabs are empty and there is no show to see, they are apt to complain that death allowed itself an intermission that day, without thinking of their good pleasure.

-VICTOR FOURNEL

If anything would have encouraged me to reconsider my rash decision, it was the severe disapproval the booksellers exhibited on hearing the t.i.tle Psychopathia s.e.xualis.

For the first time in my life, I regretted that I had learned no Latin, although I realized that the word s.e.xualis had unsavory overtones that made the word psychopathia even more mysterious and sinister.

Finally, one of these ancients deigned to excavate a musty cardboard box at his feet. He plucked the offending volume from it like a Burgermeister of Hamlin producing a dead rat.

The book itself was in surprisingly fine condition, considering the decrepit bookseller and stock.

Irene pounced on it, then read a random section. She frowned and turned a page, then another, her frown deepening.

My misgivings were immense. "Are you having difficulty reading it?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, abruptly shutting the book with a clap like small thunder. She paid a few sous for it and tucked it tight under her arm.

"I thought you could read German well."

"The typeface is one of those maddeningly intricate Germanic fonts, like reading The Book of Kells. I will peruse it later," she decreed. "Now, Nell, what does your lapel watch read? Heavens! Almost eleven. We must hurry across the Pont de l'Archeveche to the morgue."

As if anyone living would rush to visit the morgue.

My heart lifted to see children at play in the lovely gardens of the quai. French children are quite charming, possessed of somber, intelligent faces even in frivolous moments. English nannies were quite as much the fas.h.i.+on here as French maids were in London, and I breathed a sigh of pure nostalgia as we pa.s.sed through the budding flowers, and the flowering buds of French family life.

I would carry this enchanting picture with me as we plunged into the hurly-burly brutality of the Paris Morgue.

Luckily, our escort was a giant of a man, and we both spotted him pacing before the main building at the same instant. But it was the building that made the deepest impression, as it had before.

The Paris Morgue was, like the French flag and the French national motto, based on a trefoil.

I knew from previous experience that the door through which the bodies came was at the rear, near the river.

The public came to pay its calls on death from the front.

And this I had never confronted. This facade was as straightforward as death: a main building and two wings in miniature of itself, each with a Greek pediment. Heavy frontal pillars reminded one of cemetery markers at military attention, and above them on the main building were inscribed the words "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite." A quant.i.ty of narrow chimneys poked up from the side building roofs like rifles on parade.

The French Revolutionary motto struck me as particularly appropriate for a holding place of the dead, for where does any of us find perfect liberty, equality, and brotherhood, save in death?

Of course the French tricolor fluttered in the wind at the center of it all.

I have been known to harbor an English prejudice or two against things French. Yet I must say that it is particularly French, and specifically Parisian, to elevate death to the level of an exposition. On the one end of the river Seine, the Gypsy carnival of l'Exposition universelle transpired on the Champ de Mars under the pierced shadow of the Eiffel Tower. On this end of the river Seine, behind the Gothic bulwark of Notre Dame cathedral, this modest low building erected on a princ.i.p.al of three, like the Trinity, acted as mortuary, mausoleum, and public spectacle for le tout Paris.

The City of Light could be very dark indeed at times.

Bram Stoker spied us and hurried forward, tipping his hat as he arrived.

The crowds were quite astounding. Except for the occasional horse-drawn omnibus-high affairs with glittering wheels, the back ones much larger than the front, and curved stairs at the rear leading to the second level; how only two or three beasts could pull such dozens of pa.s.sengers I have no idea-the people came on foot, though one glimpsed the sole hansom cab or bicycle among the throng.

One sees workmen in crude corduroy trousers and loose, Gypsy-like blouses. Gendarmes in taut blue jackets spangled with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons in military rows. Old women carting baskets as ladies tote reticules. Children in short pants and full short skirts, charming as pastels in Montmartre. And respectable women, young girls even, dragging along reluctant male escorts as if their fathers, brothers, husbands were as good as tickets to the opera or ballet in serving as entree to this macabre display.

"I don't know what to expect," I murmured once we three had exchanged greetings.

Mr. Stoker cleared his throat. "I have never viewed the dead with female companions. Florence, of course . . ."

Irene picked up his unspoken thought. "I recall that the drowned man you rescued in the Thames and carried home to Cheney Walk in Chelsea upset her."

"Drowned. Dead, despite my brother Thornley's best efforts to revive him. I'll never forget my brother's working over the poor sopping wretch on our dining-room table . . . Florence never forgave the dining-room table for serving as hospital bed and then, plainly, a bier. She wanted to move, and soon after we did."

"It is handy to have a brother who is a doctor," Irene commented, eyeing me significantly.

The man's words came back to haunt me: "I could not allow him to enter an arena where one with his skills was so suspect."

If Sherlock Holmes's physician friend was in danger of suspicion in Whitechapel, what about the physician brother of a gigantic man who kept unG.o.dly hours and possibly patronized French brothels?

Could Bram Stoker have learned enough of surgery from his brother to perform the crude explorations committed upon the dead prost.i.tutes?

And were we about to explore the Paris Morgue with the very man who had perpetrated these internationally infamous slaughters?

I saw that no matter what we saw on our visit to the morgue, the most important observation I could make would be of the behavior of our eminent guide to the horrors within.

The crowd radiated the air of a holiday expedition. I heard English chattered among the French, and saw many girls as pink-cheeked as our new acquaintance Elizabeth. Thank G.o.d that she was not with us today! Despite any sordid scenes she had seen in the maison de rendezvous and finally on its gruesome siege d'amour, this virtual zoo of death was something no young woman should experience willingly. Bram Stoker stood behind us, a hearty wall of vested English tweed I was glad to have as b.u.t.tress, while we shuffled our way into the main chamber.

Five rows of people were shepherded along the gla.s.s barrier that bisected the room as neatly as a surgeon's scalpel making an incision, save this was an architectural division.

Bram . . . I mean, Mr. Stoker, had shepherded us in his own imposing way, and we were the among the "fortunate" few who could pa.s.s with our noses right up against the gla.s.s.