Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 59

-BROOKE KROEGER

FROM A JOURNAL.

"I cannot allow," Irene said, seated once again at the table across from me, "my anxiety about Nell and G.o.dfrey to distract us from the clues still to be uncovered here in Paris.

"I have thought and thought upon the events of the past two weeks," she continued in a soft monotone. "Yet the horrors we witnessed last night intervene, like scenes from some opera set in h.e.l.l itself. My mind struggles to populate the grotesque scenario with my nearest and dearest in the sacrificial roles. This is death to the investigator. I begin to understand why Sherlock Holmes is so aloof from all emotional entanglements. In this matter I must rely upon your reporter's cold-blooded instincts."

"I am very warm-blooded, I a.s.sure you! No one cares more about the downtrodden than I. But when I am playing a role during one of my 'stunts,' which is what the American press calls my 'detective' investigations in various false roles, I am used to suppressing my natural sympathies. How did you know who I really was? Did I say or do something to give away the game?"

Her lips twitched in what would have been a weary smile had she been capable of producing one now. Pus.h.i.+ng herself upright by the heels of her hands like an old woman, she left the table for her bedchamber. She soon returned bearing a bundle of letters and a small volume that she slapped to the tabletop.

"How did I know? The sprightly little book on your voluntary incarceration."

I blinked to recognize the garlanded and blossom-strewn cover before me, Ten Days in a Mad-House, priced at twenty-five cents and with the author's name etched in my most flourished script, "Nellie Bly."

"Your photograph is within," she said, "along with details of ice-cold baths and sitting fourteen hours a day on hard benches with no occupation and forbidden to talk. The Pinkertons apprise me of undercover work in America. In fact, the agency noticed your discreet departure for Paris and alerted me to keep an eye out for you, on the certainty that you would unearth something sensational."

"I expected to be writing Ten Days in a Paris Brothel. I didn't expect anything like the double murders there."

"Nor did I antic.i.p.ate a double abduction."

This silenced me, though little does. I picked at the embroidery knots on the table scarf, unsure what to say next, a rare state with me.

My every nerve wished to be d.o.g.g.i.ng the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes back to Jack the Ripper's home ground in London. The events in Paris were too scattered, too confusing for me to grasp. I doubted that even Irene Adler Norton, for all her gifts and her desperate stake in the outcome, could make them lead her to any conclusion worth having.

Yet . . . Sherlock Holmes was right. For me to desert this woman now would be inexcusable. I was not used to letting others' circ.u.mstances curtail my freedom.

"You will get a better story with me, you know," Irene said softly.

I looked up, blus.h.i.+ng furiously. "That's not my only concern."

"Oh, you are a relentless little bloodhound in the guise of a well-mannered spaniel, and I wouldn't have you any other way right now, Miss Pink. That is the name you use most, isn't it? The best lie is always the truth presented like a glorious gem in a false setting. I know the American 'Girl Reporters of Derring-Do' use pseudonyms. What is your real name?"

"Pink," I conceded. "I've always been called Pink and have always called myself Pink. It is Pink . . . Elizabeth . . . Jane . . . Cochrane."

She nodded and began shuffling through the letters she had fetched, laying them out as if they were tarot cards with omens written on them. G.o.dfrey's letters, I noticed with a wince.

"There is the question," Irene said, "of whether this cult or a similar one was meeting in Whitechapel last autumn. The question of whether Kelly or any other Ripper suspects attended their orgies."

"Those lunatics in Whitechapel? The English don't go in for bizarre religious cults."

"No, they exported all such people to America two centuries ago."

This glimmer of Irene's usual sharp commentary encouraged me.

"Religious maniacs are common to every race," she went on, "even the British. Besides, the London authorities suspected someone like Kelly from the first. Whitechapel teems with poor foreigners practicing odd beliefs."

"Paris is not London."

"No. The city also is not itself these days."

"Not itself?" I feared her mind was still somewhat unanch.o.r.ed, and who could blame her?

"No. Think! The exposition has brought thousands of people from far lands to the heart of the city, people with customs most Parisians would consider savage. Do you believe that the brutal copulation and mutilation we witnessed in the cavern last night, that Jack the Ripper's butchery of women in Whitechapel, is unprecedented? Ask me to detail for you the Arab bride's wedding night sometime when your stomach is particularly strong, as reported by that intrepid explorer, Sir Richard Burton. The women's bodies we saw bore evidence of similar ritual mutilations. Remember Krafft-Ebing: l.u.s.tmurder occurs in all places and times and may destroy children as well as women, and sometimes even men."

While I did as she said and sat silent in thought, Irene pulled the letters from their envelopes, slowly, softly, as if handling spun gla.s.s. It occurred to me that her husband might be dead, not merely missing. I could be watching a widow mourning her memories.

Certainly she was lost exploring her own personal world again, skimming one page, then another. I dared not speak.

"Here," she said suddenly. "I knew I had read something. It was in his letter to Nell. . . ."

Her voice and attention faded away again. I waited.

All of a sudden she began reading, in a strong, steady voice, as if performing.

Also, I thought that you would be wildly interested in the fact that some of the folk here believe our friend the Golem has risen yet again.

This time his reputed appearance has stirred even more panic than before, for it is a particularly b.l.o.o.d.y murder that they attribute to this automaton.

Of course, you and I and a few others know that the Golem's previous appearance was not what everybody a.s.sumed it to be, and that it is extremely unlikely that this medieval legend has bestirred itself to spread terror in the residents' hearts once again.

"Now that is significant," she said.

"I'm not familiar with this 'Golem.' "

"You would not want to be. It is a giant clay man, an automaton, conjured by a desperate rabbi to protect his people from a.s.sault, an ancient Jewish legend of Prague. Like all monsters summoned for good purposes, it went berserk and threatened those it was to protect until the rabbi removed the spelling paper from its mouth and it 'died.'

"I wonder if we have something similar at work here," she mused in her new and eerily distractable way.

Despite glimpses of her usual wit, she was still a woman scorched to the bone by lightning.

"The letter mentions 'a particularly b.l.o.o.d.y murder.' "

"Exactly. And G.o.dfrey was lured away from Prague. Obviously, Prague bears investigation. I do have . . . acquaintances in high places there. There we must go."

"Prague! That is half a world away from London and Paris. On the mention of a single murder you would go there?"

"I also have enemies there. Sherlock Holmes is correct: my activities here in Paris have caught the attention of someone operating in a larger context than a mere murderer, no matter how notorious. Obviously, the message left about G.o.dfrey was direct and personal. Nell's disappearance is less clear."

"She could have been abducted by Kelly. He escaped last night, as did several other cult members."

"She could have been taken by somebody completely unrelated to the cult," Irene said. "That section of the exposition was dark and deserted."

"She could have been taken by . . . Gypsies." I was grasping at straws from a melodrama.

"Yes, she could have," Irene agreed seriously. "They roam far and wide, and I sense this matter has sunk its roots in many places and times. I also think that we have been 'shepherded' for some time. Whoever shot at us outside Notre Dame cathedral, was he frightening us away from the catacomb and the evidence of cult meetings below, or toward it?"

"He?"

"I doubt that Annie Oakley has been drafted for this conspiracy, though I know of a certain heavy-game hunter who would have the nerve to fire a rifle at night in Paris. Whoever shot could have hit us if he wished to."

"Well, I don't like that!"

"Let Sherlock Holmes head west into the alleyways of White-chapel. I smell the Baltic salt of an east wind blowing, Pink." Irene faltered for a moment. "It is best that I not call you 'Nellie' and betray your public ident.i.ty."

It was best that she not call me "Nellie" because every instance would recall her missing friend. I nodded and saw a haunting darkness at the back of her eyes draw away.

"We must have Buffalo Bill examine the site of the shot," Irene said, "and find out if Red Tomahawk has yet traced the shoe print of the horse he discovered. Inspector le Villard will a.s.sist us, and the Rothschilds. We are not without our resources. No doubt I will think of others. And you will be a hardy ally, I am sure."

She mustered a pale smile. "I suppose I can rely upon you to record the matters that need recording."

I nodded, sick at heart.

This wind of conspiracy sounded like a child's hope of a happy ending. But what was I to do?

I opened my notebook and listed the things she had ticked off.

There the matter stood. I could follow Sherlock Holmes to London despite his and Irene Adler Norton's express wishes and risk arrest as a prost.i.tute, or I could chaperone Irene on a quest across half of Europe to redeem her losses. I thought the outcome of that course all too certain: both G.o.dfrey and Nell were already dead. We would be heading utterly away from any criminal who could ever answer to the name Jack the Ripper in a court of law.

Coda: The Vampire Box

As there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd

corners where a man could hide.

-CAPTAIN'S LOG OF THE DEMETER, DRACULA

Dark.

Motion.

Seasick.

I am sailing on the panorama s.h.i.+p.

And the boots are coming-!

No.

I reach up. Out. Pound wood.

Dark. Utterly dark.

Box.

I am in a box. Oh, dear G.o.d . . . !

I will go mad.

If I do not die of retching first.

My hands reach out.

Find limits again. I lie on some thick fabric. The dark is the shape of a box the length and width of my body and not much more.

A coffin.

I will go mad.

If I do not die smothering.

But I breathe.

Calm. I must keep calm.

Pockets.

The fabric is rolled around me like a rug, perhaps so I do not rattle in my box.

I manage to pat the checked wool at my sides where my arms are confined.