Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 21

A little before noon, a knock sounded on our door.

I started as if with guilt, for who would know how to find us at our new lodgings? Unless that Baker Street man . . .

While I imagined the worst, Irene rose to answer the door.

A snub-nosed boy in short jacket and beret stood there, in grinning possession of a note.

"He will come at once," he caroled in French so simple even I could understand it.

Irene drew a coin purse from her skirt pocket, from which she plucked a gleaming coin for the lad's open but dingy palm. "Well done; swiftly, too," she told him before bidding him adieu and shutting the door. At least he was too short to be Sherlock Holmes in disguise.

"Who is coming at once?" I asked as she glanced at the note's contents and nodded in satisfaction.

"Bram Stoker."

I sat silent. Once that name and that personage had stood for all that was stable and admirable in the flighty circle of actors, artists, and writers Irene had moved among during her early days in London before her operatic performing career took wing. Now I regarded it with shock and a certain bitterness.

She had immediately perceived my reaction and argued against it.

"Who better would I consult on the Wives of Henry VIII project than the consummate manager of Henry Irving, who is the consummate English actor of the age? We are fortunate to have made his acquaintance so long ago, Nell."

I said nothing.

She glanced at Elizabeth. "Between Nell's issues of last autumn's London newspapers, which she had the foresight to tuck among the trunks of clothes I removed from Neuilly to this hotel yesterday, and your memory and notes, I think you have sufficient material to take to my room for study. You may remain to meet Mr. Stoker, but I have theatrical business to discuss with him, so it is best that we confer privately."

"That's all right," Elizabeth said. "I don't mind being left out. Mr. Stoker is a frequent visitor to America when Mr. Irving is on tour, and I had lots of opportunity to read of him there. Besides, I do so enjoy rummaging through these ill.u.s.trated crime gazettes. They are such shockers, and so shockingly inaccurate. It's like reading a dime novel."

She promptly began removing our piles of Ripper doc.u.mentation to Irene's bedchamber.

"Irene," I said when Elizabeth was safely absent, "I really do not wish to meet Mr. Stoker again. As you may imagine, our encounter at the maison de rendezvous was exceedingly embarra.s.sing to us both."

"That is why another meeting would be so instructive, Nell. You can't think that I only wish to consult him about a vocal presentation, although he is an ideal expert? I wish to know the why and wherefore of his presence at the murder scene."

"I do not! He has a young wife, one of the three most beautiful women in London, according to that Punch cartoonist, George du Maurier, and a sweet young son of only seven or eight. I cannot imagine what such a man, with such a fine reputation and family, would be doing in that kind of establishment."

"Oh, you can imagine only too well, which is why you were upset. Yet we were there for innocent reasons. Perhaps Bram was, too."

"I do hope so, but I fear not."

Irene nodded, approvingly. "You begin to suspect the ways of the world. They are often disappointing."

"This has been a most disappointing sequence of events. I am told that all the people I have met are habitually immoral, and that even my closest friend has found it more expedient to pretend to be! So that everyone who is not bad in a wicked world must feign to be so to preserve what goodness is left! It is insanity!"

Irene had the grace to look a trifle sheepish. "We are traveling in society, Nell, and society is often hypocritical. Wealth and power always corrupt."

"Bram Stoker is not wealthy and not particularly powerful," I retorted. "And . . . I have always liked him."

Irene exchanged chairs to sit close to me and give my shoulders a bracing hug. "You may still like him, Nell! Bram is one of the most likeable men in London, after all, and I daresay Paris, too! Remember the Testament warns us, 'Judge not, lest ye be judged.'

Irene quoting Scripture was just one step up from Lucifer the cat doing so. I laughed, shakily. "But how can one judge how not to be judgmental when those famed in fortune and men's eyes lead secret lives that betray their wives and encourage every woman they meet to compromise herself, or at best, merely pretend to!"

"Not every man, Nell. The Prince of Wales is an acknowledged rake. After all, what else has been left for him to do? His mother seems likely to live into her hundreds, yet allows him no role in government."

"You make excuses for him."

"Because every one of us has reason for what we do, bad or good."

"Even Jack the Ripper?"

"Even Jack the Ripper."

"It is like solving a crime then, to detect the circ.u.mstances that turn a man mad."

"Indeed. As for Bram, you will remember that I told you years ago that I found the fair Florence a trifle chilly. No doubt Bram has, too."

When I frowned, she continued in an undertone that promised confidences, "Many women marry, produce a child or two, then no longer fulfill the marital role. You do comprehend, Nell?"

I had to think about it. "Florence Stoker-"

"-may likely be one of those. Henry Irving keeps her genial husband absorbed all hours of the day and night with his theatrical enterprise. Florence must rely for male escort on a man less taxed by work, William Gilbert."

"No! Gilbert is the womanizing cad who hosted the dinner party with all the D'Oyley Cart female chorus singers present for the Prince of Wales . . . where you mesmerized Bertie into falsely believing that he had indeed had his way with you!"

Irene nodded. "I doubt that the relationship between Gilbert and Florence is of that sort. She would not wish it, for one thing."

"Then why does he bother?"

"Gilbert keeps up his reputation as a ladies' man by being seen with a handsome woman on his arm. Florence gets out and about as she would not if she waited for her husband to ever be free of an evening, and can bask in her beauty being praised without having to deal with men who wish to possess her. It is an ideal arrangement."

"And Mr. Stoker?"

Irene smiled enigmatically. "That is the real mystery, now that he has been discovered in a Paris brothel. Was he merely caught by happenstance? It is his role to go everywhere, to a.s.sociate with the high-and-mighty so as to lobby in Irving's behalf. Or has he turned to seeking elsewhere what his wife won't give him? I admit that I am not sure of the facts in his case. If Florence is a wife in name only, as I suspect, he would be free to seek satisfaction elsewhere without worrying about bringing dread diseases home, although such contamination is always a risk for the adventurous."

"As well it should be! Really, Irene, I cannot believe that we are talking about people we know in this vulgar way. I don't wish to think about it."

"Then don't. But you must understand that most people wear armor of a sort, sometimes many different suits of it. In different places and at different times, they behave as different people. None of them are solely what role they play on any one occasion."

"But you are talking about theatrical people, like that odious popinjay Oscar Wilde. Oh! Don't tell me that he is deserting his lovely wife Constance for other women?"

An unreadable expression crossed Irene's fair countenance. "No, I think it is safe to say that Oscar is not unfaithful with other women."

"Amazing! That one so puffed up with himself, so artificial should actually be faithful to his wife!"

"You are reacting to the armor that Oscar has carefully shaped and donned to protect himself because he is too sensitive. Then there is Sherlock Holmes."

"Him! He is too arrogant to adopt a pose."

"So he thinks, but he does. Man of Logic. Man Who Stands Alone. Man Who Does Not Need Woman. At least I believe that I can guarantee that you will not find Sherlock Holmes in a maison de tolerance, Nell. Unless he is in disguise and in the pursuit of a criminal."

"Is everyone a fraud then? I am not!"

"Why, Nell, you have several roles you rotate regularly."

"Roles? What roles?"

"Parson's Daughter." Irene mimed simpering rect.i.tude so aptly that I laughed despite myself. "Indignant Governess." Again, her expression and att.i.tude became both humble and proud at once, like the heroine of a melodrama, and utterly amusing. "Innocent Spinster." She lifted a pair of invisible spectacles to her blinking eyelashes. While I laughed, she added, "or is that . . . Ignorant Spinster."

As my face sobered, trying to decide whether to show offense, she added, "and I am Prima Donna. Woman of the World. Frustrated Artiste. Married Woman. Adventuress. Solver of Enigmas."

"Is there anyone we know then, who is not encased in false fronts?"

My question had truly given her pause. For a moment she gazed blankly at the far wall. Then she smiled like the Mona Lisa and turned that fabled expression of enigmatic satisfaction on me.

"Why, yes, Nell. There is one."

"Who?"

"G.o.dfrey," she said simply, opening her hands to show the emptiness of any other answer. "G.o.dfrey."

While I sat stunned at the undeniable truth of her choice, Elizabeth returned to the room, and I was forced to subside into my role of Ignorant Spinster. Irene was right; roles did prove useful.

The Judgment of Paris

By all accounts, Florence was an enchanting hostess and made a comfortable home for her husband and his friends, when they were there. In every way, she was a social a.s.set. By Victorian standards the marriage, although lacking

pa.s.sion, was successful.

-BARBARA BELFORD, BRAM STOKER

Within ten minutes another knock sounded at our door. As Irene swept it open, I saw Mr. Stoker's tall, imposing figure, his red beard and mustache immaculately trimmed, and his gray eyes serious.

Given his usual energetic yet amiable nature, he seemed rather dampened. I suspected he dreaded this meeting as much as I did, whatever pretext Irene had put upon it.

In fact, as he crossed the threshold he glanced from her to Elizabeth to me, and I sensed something I had never glimpsed in him before, reticence, and also a strange excitement.

"Such a bevy of beautiful ladies." He tried to boom out the greeting in his old hearty manner, as he doffed his hat like Sir Francis Drake for Queen Elizabeth. He was ever gallant with the female s.e.x, though his gentlemanly attentions could never be taken awry for forwardness.

Now as he glanced around at us, I understood that his bonhomie might be a pose, and he might be intimidated by us, that we three exercised a certain cla.s.sical power over him, like muses or furies.

I studied we three from his point of view. Irene was of course exquisite in a pale blue silk skirt surmounted by a frilly breakfast jacket of pale pique edged in lace scallops and tied extravagantly at the neck, waist, and wrists by royal blue satin ribbons. Elizabeth, I realized, was a remarkably pretty girl and certainly knew how to gown herself to remind gentlemen of that fact by wearing a rosewood and cream-plaid wool gown with a broad girlish sash at the waist. A wide white collar at the neck and deep cuffs on the sleeves added a casual air. Perhaps even I had been elevated to a higher level of attractiveness by the showier surrounding flowers. My day gown was of saffron-colored jersey trimmed with neat pleats, innumerable tiny b.u.t.tons, and copper-colored cord at neck, waist, and bodice.

At any rate, Mr. Stoker blushed and bowed as if he had never spent half his life in the company of glamorous women of the theater.

Perhaps my "catching" him in the bordello two evenings ago had made him too conscious of the presence of any kind of women, even respectable women such as ourselves. Mostly. He must not have encountered Miss Pink at the place, for he treated her with the courtesy a well-bred girl deserved.

Yet there was an undeniable nervousness in his manner, and he seemed to tilt like a top first to one of us, then another, as if we all were at once equally irresistible and intimidating.

How strange to see such a man of the world off-balance. I could now understand why Irene insisted on my presence while banishing Elizabeth, who excused herself and departed the room even as I entertained the thought. I, like she, had met him years ago, when he was closer to thirty than to forty and he was not yet the world traveler and raconteur. We would be able to judge any change in his manner or personality.

A new thought hit me like a hod carrier's barrow: as a theatrical manager Bram Stoker kept late and unaccountable hours. Could he be a candidate for the work of the Whitechapel Ripper? If he was a worthy suspect here-and the Paris police apparently thought he was-he would be a suspect there, however unlikely.

I sat at the large round table that had so recently supported pages of lurid drawings and speculations, where Mr. Stoker had so recently advanced to take my hand while avoiding my eyes. I remembered Mr. Holmes's comment that suspicion of the Ripper murders had emigrated into the middle and even to the upper cla.s.ses. I also recalled his reluctance to let his physician friend join the hunt for fear he would be mistaken for the hunted simply because he had surgical skills. If even Sherlock Holmes felt incapable of defending his closest a.s.sociate from the taint of suspicion, the net must have been flung far wider than the public had heard.

And if anyone could be the Ripper, then everyone was suspect.

"That is an inspired idea, Irene!"

Bram, impresario that he was, had forgotten all recent awkwardness in his enthusiasm.

He sat on the edge of the pet.i.te French chair, Irene's big ba.s.so perched on Miss m.u.f.fet's tuffet, as his large hands smacked his knees with enthusiasm. "It would travel anywhere, such a production, and you would, of course, change gowns with each queen, so it would be quite a fashion parade, which the ladies like. And, in your case, the gentlemen could not help but like it as well. The key is the composer. English, naturally. Perhaps even Sullivan. He fidgets to escape the confines of ditties. Such an enterprise would go over very well in America. Your being a native returning from triumph in Europe would sell newspapers like candy. I heartily endorse the idea, and will do all I can to encourage and promote it."

"I am delighted, and grateful," Irene said, "but I cannot begin immediately. First I must investigate a small matter for an eminent client here in Paris."

"You still supplement your income with private inquiry a.s.signments? I thought you had married a successful barrister and had retired from both stage and cloak-and-dagger work."

"Once a singer, always a singer," Irene said lightly, forbearing to add that G.o.dfrey was a successful barrister on foreign soil only because he undertook delicate a.s.signments involving matters that crossed borders and involved bankers and bureaucrats and aristocrats.

"I am worried," she added, "on your behalf, Bram."

Mr. Stoker's transparent expression quickly sobered into concern as she went on.

"You seem to have stepped awry of the Paris police the other night. Have their suspicions lessened?"

"Who knows?" he said uneasily, rising to pace to the window that overlooked the street, hands in his trouser pockets. "I came to Paris with Florence. She prizes the few shopping expeditions we can take together, since I am so often abroad by myself . . . with the Lyceum company of course, which is hardly by myself. She will never accompany me across the Atlantic again, not after she and Noel nearly perished in the tragedy of the steamship Victoria sinking. That was almost two years ago near Dieppe on her way to Paris, but she will brave the Channel and the North Sea. She has returned with Noel to Ireland. Of course I have my sister Matilde to visit here in Paris. She married a Frenchman, you know."