Irene Adler: Chapel Noir Part 46

"I will go as well," said a voice behind us.

Penelope Huxleigh stood at the open door of her chamber, already dressed in some plain dark stuff. I realized that she had been awake and listening to us for a long time.

Irene stood up. "Capital, Nell! Bring your chatelaine. I will fetch my pistol and dress at once."

"What will I carry?" I asked.

"Your wits about you," Irene said. "And I will lend you my lead-headed cane for the rest."

The French Connection

Once he said that reding a description of the tortures visited upon their victims by the Red Indians had tempted them to imitate them.

-RICHARD VON KRAFFT-EBING, PSYCHOPATHIA s.e.xUALIS

I was so angry that I had been left to sleep, supposedly, while Irene made maps and Elizabeth made herself a part of our company, that I did not even object when Irene decreed that we all must dress in male garb.

"As long as there is a pocket for my chatelaine," I said stiffly.

"Oh, Nell," Elizabeth said, "men have ever so many more pockets than women. You could carry three chatelaines."

"One is sufficient."

Our dressing session, and my redressing one, was interesting, to say the least.

Our pantaloons and stockings fit under the coa.r.s.e, uncomfortable trousers Irene produced, and she permitted us to wear our walking boots, which she said were not that much different from men's shoes.

I kept my corset and camisole on, though she and Elizabeth used only camisoles under . . . well, what can I say? She felt that men's white starched shirt collars would be both too noisy and too visible for our uses, so we were given dark sailors' jerseys to wear, which required pulling over our heads. Hers and Elizabeth's were part of her fencing wardrobe. I thought I recognized mine from G.o.dfrey's long-ago impersonation of a seaman during our Monaco adventure.

We were short a jacket, for Irene owned only one man's suit and the short Eton-style jacket she produced fit Elizabeth and not me. I was permitted to wear a mock-mannish plaid wool jacket from my own walking suit. m.u.f.flers, caps, and hats finished off the ensembles, and a more pitiful trio I have never viewed in a full-length pier gla.s.s before.

"It will be darker outside," Irene said, donning black-leather gloves and pulling a peaked cap low over her eyes.

At least all our hair was decently up, though our headgear completely obscured it, contrary to our previous guise of fallen women, where our hair a.s.sumed the same condition. Irene adjusted Elizabeth's bowler lower over her ears and jammed down my tweed cap known as a deerstalker as well while pulling up my m.u.f.fler, until only my nose tip and eyes peeked between louring barriers of wool plaid.

"Remember," she urged, "stride. Step wide. And do not bunch together like geese, but rather strut like ganders. You fear nothing in the night."

I feared a great deal in the night, but I feared being usurped in my place as Irene's companion in crime-solving even more. How this brash young American girl had wormed her way so deeply into our alliance, presumed Pinkerton or not, I cannot say. If only G.o.dfrey were here to make a trio instead of this immoral upstart! He would provide the strength and sagacity that only a man can offer. And then, well, then I thought of Quentin. Surely a man who had performed government service in the most wild and treacherous outposts of the British Empire, upon which even the sun feared to set, surely he could have provided the aid we might need, not a green girl of uncertain history and proven frailty.

Yet Irene had some reason for including her in our expedition. "Because I can use you," she had said, her voice chilly, as if she felt Elizabeth might be one to use her instead, if she could.

But that must be my imagination! I am much troubled by imagination in one instance only. I always imagine the worst. In this case, I felt Irene was rushing in all directions without a calming influence. G.o.dfrey's, or mine.

James Kelly-debased creature!-was in the hands of the French, who are better at locking up madmen than almost anyone, as they have so many. Jack the Ripper would be Frenchified, a fate worse than death in my opinion.

So this outing was nothing more than a wild-goose chase, Irene's abjurations for us to act like ganders to the contrary.

I scratched the rough wool collar at my neck. Men wore a great deal of coa.r.s.e wool apparently. This was good for the sheep farmers of Shropshire, no doubt, but not for more tender skin.

I took a step, repelled when the thick fabric between my limbs rubbed together, almost hobbling me. Dreadful! No wonder men like Kelly went insane, walking around garbed like this all day.

Still, if Pink . . . Elizabeth, that is, could do it, so could I!

"Ready?" Irene asked.

We answered together, like soldiers, then glared at each other.

I was pleased to see Elizabeth's shoulders twitch in her woolen jacket. She scratched her nose above the dark m.u.f.fler, and then at her leg. We were as ready as geese in gander's clothing ever could be. Irene led the way down the back stairs, and tonight we encountered no one.

A service entry opened on an alley-courtyard. The mist lapped at the stoop.

"Careful!" Irene whispered. "There's a high step down, remember?"

The surrounding stonework shone as if sweating in the muted gaslight. It did not so much rain in Paris as drizzle, and the night was a blanket of invisible dampness.

Irene handed me her cane. I recognized the carved amber dragon's head-G.o.dfrey's sword-stick! Even as my gloved hand wrapped around it, I felt faintly ill to think that G.o.dfrey was out in the wild world without this form of defense. Surely we were safer in Paris.

"Do not touch pavement with the sticks until we have pa.s.sed the watcher on the avenue."

I had forgotten about the sinister figure Irene had pointed out earlier to Elizabeth. She stepped forward at a brisk but silent pace. I felt like a child jumping over puddles when I matched my gait to hers, but our pace was so swift and businesslike that within a minute we were turning into the street onto which the hotel faced. Looking neither right nor left, with Elizabeth and I paired behind Irene's lead, we moved past the hotel's raked five-story wings and into the light of the entry facade, with its flaring exterior side lamps and the glow of chandeliers within.

Here we were able to hail a cab, or Irene was, with a brusque upward signal of her hand.

The clop of the horse's hooves as we wheeled away was as shocking as sudden applause on that empty street.

Irene turned to peer out the tiny, book-sized rear window. "No vehicle follows us. We have eluded our pursuer."

"Your pursuer," Elizabeth said, careful not to raise her voice so the driver up top would hear feminine tones issuing from his three masculine pa.s.sengers.

Irene, of course, could speak in a booming ba.s.so if she chose, but neither Elizabeth nor I were equipped to be convincing male impersonators, save by the dark of the moon.

"My pursuer is your pursuer now," Irene observed.

"Where do we go?" I asked.

"Back to the rue des Moulins."

"We would never pa.s.s muster as customers there," I objected. "It is too well lit inside."

"I do not intend to go inside," Irene said in her deepest contralto, "I wish to go beyond it a good ways, but on the same axis."

"Why-?" Elizabeth asked in a husky whisper.

"I wish to find another disturbed wine cellar, and perhaps another scene of a crime."

"Why? Jack the Ripper is captured."

Irene was silent as we jostled over damp stones that made a slight sucking sound under our spinning wheels, like sticking plaster being pulled from a wound.

"Baron Rothschild," Irene finally answered, "had said that anything he could provide was at my disposal. I sent for maps of Paris days ago."

"We did not see them arrive," I noted suspiciously.

"I did not wish to be premature, but I have never been satisfied by the condition of the wine cellar beneath the brothel."

"It was dark, damp, dirty, and full of dusty bottles and smoky-smelling wooden casks," I enumerated with some heat. Albeit whispered. "A typical wine cellar."

"Yes . . ." she agreed slowly enough to tacitly disagree.

"It did connect to the sewer," Elizabeth pointed out with gusto. "I have always found that deliciously interesting. Is that what intrigues you, Irene?"

"Yes. Except that I don't think what we glimpsed was part of the infamous sewers of Paris."

"Oh!" Elizabeth sounded bereft. "If Jack the Ripper had been using the sewers of Paris, it would have been so . . . dramatic."

"Jack the Ripper was dramatic enough with his vanishing act in the byways of Whitechapel. But I admit that Paris is as intriguing a city underground as it is above ground. Those who excavate for the new underground train system in London may not like what they dig up. If I have calculated correctly, on a street near the Parc Monceau we will find another oddly altered cellar. I admit that mathematics is not my forte, although I have a certain flair for the merciless logic of music. If I have not done my sums properly, this expedition is useless. I can only hope that my formula will prove accurate."

The carriage lurched forward, then back, in that time-tested motion that indicates arrival by putting pa.s.sengers' stomachs into a semblance of seasickness.

Irene hopped down to the street and drew a five-franc coin from her waistcoat pocket, which she tossed up at the driver, who caught it as it flashed into his upraised hand. It was astounding what skills being an opera singer had given Irene. I fully believe she could have become a sharpshooter like Annie Oakley, should she wish to. Perhaps it was all those trouser roles she had played that suited her dark soprano voice.

Even Elizabeth seemed struck mute by her coin trick.

It was, of course, a completely man-about-town gesture. That was why Irene did it, as part of her role, not from any personal need to show off. So few understood that about a consummate performer: the individual is subsumed into the part and then into the whole of the production. Irene only played the prima donna when she was cast-or had cast herself-in the role.

Once the cab had clattered off in search of another fare, and I'm sure it would be a long one, Irene's jaunty air vanished. She eyed the empty street.

"I am hoping for another innocent-looking entry to the lower levels," Irene said. "Let us walk and look high and low. Mostly low. Looking tipsy would be useful, as well."

She lurched into a shambling gait, still in full stride, swaggering from one side of the street to another, stumbling into doorways and testing them for entry.

Tipsy. I watched Elizabeth follow in Irene's footsteps, so to speak, but in another direction. She was most unconvincing and looked disabled rather than drunk.

I attempted no such nonsense. I would be the sober friend hoping to see these two tipplers home.

We were in luck that the traffic on this street was scarce. Residents kept their noses indoors.

One of Elizabeth's more dramatic but pathetic lurches brought her across my path, where I "steadied" her. Him. I clapped him hard upon the back. "Steady, fellow," I grumbled in as low a voice as I could muster. "Do you miss the warmer work inside that maison?" I whispered, as she straightened at my command.

"Warmer indeed, Nell," she responded with a disgraceful wink. "I almost hope that Irene doesn't find a path to the chill cellars below."

I pushed her away in disgust, as my role called for. I began to see the attraction of pretending to be someone other than oneself. It excused a purely honest reaction that must be stifled and concealed in polite society.

We heard the sound of approaching steps.

"Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques, "Irene began singing in a tiddly ba.s.so.

Elizabeth rushed to the wall she leaned against to prop her up, and hush her up.

An ill-dressed man lurched past us, his unshaven face slack with alcohol poisoning, his working-man's blouse and trousers wrinkled and . . . odiferous.

Irene's song faded at our attentions, and the man's bleary look returned to the cobblestones his feet stuttered over. In a few instants only the small scuffles of his distant boots could be heard.

Irene leaned back against another barred door, frowning. I pushed the annoying deerstalker up on my forehead so I could see more than the checked umbrella edge of its brim, which clashed abominably with the pattern of my jacket.

"I doubt we shall find anything so convenient as a door," I said.

"I would hate to have to take you two through the kitchen to the wine cellar. You would not fool a gnat."

"You mean Elizabeth would not," I said.

"I am unbelievable?" she answered. "You cannot even act drunk." Our raised walking sticks were about to cross like swords, until Irene stepped in between them, and us.

"If you are coming to fisticuffs in the street, please do it in male voices at least."

Irene glanced up at the first-floor level around us to make sure that no shutters or windows had opened.

"Now." She jerked our hats down on our heads and restored our walking sticks to an upright position at our suited sides. "What I seek will look more like a workman's hole than a door, I have concluded. Look for a niche a rat could disappear into."

A rat! The idea was not appetizing.

Elizabeth bent to survey the grilled windows below street level.

"Kitchens and sculleries," I told her.

"Perhaps not all."

So we continued down the deserted street, now crouching instead of lurching, all the better to peer into darkened arches of half windows sunk into the foundation of the buildings.