Chapel Noir (29 page)

30.
Jack L’Eventreur

However, the cerebral anomalies claim the principal interest,
since they very frequently lead to the commission of perverse
and even criminal acts
.
—
RICHARD VON KRAFFT-EBING,
PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS
.

FROM A JOURNAL

“Here, Pink.”

Irene Adler Norton had emerged from her bedchamber with a heavy step and matching expression. Our breakfast table, already cleared by the hotel staff, was bare except for a Belgian lace cloth.

On that elegant surface she laid a volume so slim compared to most that I took it for a book of poetry.

I reached for it, but her hand claimed its closed cover in warning. “This is a dangerous book.”

I could only imagine the most lurid possibility. “It contains witchcraft?”

My answer softened her stern expression into a faint smile. “Don’t we all wish that life was so simple? That we could encounter Macbeth’s three witches and hear our futures foretold? No, this book contains great evil, but nothing that is the least bit supernatural. I almost wish that it was.”

At that she drew out a side chair to sit at the table. I examined her face closely.

“Did you send Miss Huxleigh . . . Nell, on an errand so you could show me this book confidentially?”

She hesitated in answering. Her mood held the same sober air of concentration I had noticed last night when, having viewed the anonymous body found near the Eiffel Tower, we stood outside the examining room at the Paris Morgue. This was a woman of unsurpassed vitality and finesse, but in this moment and that one, she was so subdued that I sensed a much deeper vein to her character.

This confused me. I had never before met a woman I so admired, or so wished to be like. Yet at this moment, I realized that I did not know her at all. I wondered if anybody truly did.

And, of course, I was positively itchy with envy. Why wasn’t
I
worth diverting to such an enthralling errand as meeting with the renowned and most superior Sherlock Holmes, of attempting to outfox Sherlock Holmes himself? Surely I would be more up to the job than dear but sadly sheltered Miss Penelope Huxleigh! In a strange way I resented Irene’s instinct to protect her English friend. On the other hand, I would never have been admitted as easily to the Paris Morgue without Irene’s connections, though I would have managed it somehow on my own eventually. I have never failed to cross any barrier, however forbidden.

“Miss Pink,” Irene said at last with a sigh, employing the name as a good rider uses a crop on a horse: barely touching the twitchy hide and yet getting a finer performance with that delicate goad than from all the harsh blows such beasts of burden have suffered through human history.

Oh, she is formidable, in ways I can barely yet imagine!

“You recognize the extravagantly vile wounds that were inflicted on that poor woman,” she went on, her voice as slow and soft as a lullaby. Again, her unnatural containment warned me that we were in deep waters. “We have been privileged to know the worst, which is denied to most women—for their own good, we are told. Now you must know more, and know worse. We cannot continue without your reading that book. Do you wish to, after what we have seen?”

I am used to rushing into situations and seeking answers, then calculating the consequences afterward. Irene’s somber tone and expression made such behavior seem hopelessly shallow.

I reflected. My headlong race toward knowing life in all its beauty and ugliness had brought me to this place and this moment. No doubt it came from being on my own at an early age. Although my wits were quick, there was so little that girls or women were expected or allowed to do once they had lost the protection of a father or a husband. This had forced me to plunge down avenues most women would cringe from. There I discovered an unexpected freedom and the means to support myself without eternal servitude in the factories or shops.

Now I was poised to learn even more of what most women never suspected and far more than many men knew. Did I want to?

Yes. I glanced at the battered and mottled posterboard surface guarded by Irene’s graceful fingers. They never fell into a position that did not look as if she was about to execute a Chopin polonaise on a Biedermeier piano.

Pure evil, she said, lay beneath her lightly balanced fingertips. Evil ready to rush through the portal of my eyes and suffuse my mind. I had seen so much, why should I not know more? Not for me the glaring innocence that shrouded Nell’s perceptions like a floor-length bridal veil! I reached for the book, and Irene’s fingers melted away at my gesture.

A sense of heady power gripped me. Opening the pages as I pulled the book toward me, I found myself shocked sooner than I had expected to be. This devil’s tome was written in German! Like most Americans, I only speak one language. Plain English and lots of it. I glanced up in confusion.

“German is not unlike English,” she assured me. “Let the letters and words and imagined sounds wash through your eyes and mind. You will begin to understand words and phrases here and there. Then I will translate, so you understand entirely. It is best to approach evil edgeways, out of the corners of your eyes.”

I nodded, and did as she said.

The entries were short, only a paragraph or two or three, or a page or two at most, and numbered. Yet a pattern emerged, even in the runes of a foreign language. As I began to comprehend, I came to appreciate her method of introducing me to the unthinkable. Slowly, she drew her chair nearer, until we sat side by side, elbow to elbow, like fellow students. Her forefinger touched a word. She spoke its English equivalent. The pattern became clearer and clearer. Before I knew it, I understood all.

I sat back. My voice came in a hush. “Your grasp of language is magical. Surely you could have . . . eased Nell into this topic?”

“Mentally, yes. In terms of her emotions, no. She is a true spinster. I am a married woman and you . . . you are a woman who has forced herself into the dark side of such matters, for reasons I find vague, but undeniable. We are women of the world.”

I lowered my eyes, unwilling to object to her assessment, yet regretting it. “A spinster. It implies a busy but rather benighted creature. Will Nell never be anything more than that?”

“She has already edged well past it, though she doesn’t realize it. I believe it will take the proper gentleman to correct the condition. I am not going to force her to confront things that her upbringing and nature have not prepared her for.”

“We are all indeed dependent on the proper gentleman still, in this day and age, aren’t we? Is that why you married Godfrey?”

Irene shrugged. “Improper gentleman are of no use to anyone but themselves. I once fancied myself as you, Pink, daring to live outside a woman’s ‘proper’ role. My pursuit of an operatic career immediately put me into the shadowed sisterhood of women of the stage. Once everyone thinks the worst of you because you pursue what you are best at, you learn to live without needing the regard of anyone. Except yourself. That is the purest form of freedom. I did not cultivate wealthy sponsors when I sang, and I did not marry Godfrey because the state was respectable.”

“Why did you marry then?”

“Because . . . he accepted me not only as I was, but as I will be.”

“I doubt any man will ever accept me as I am,” I said rather glumly, for I am young enough to still covet glass slippers, even though they would be terribly uncomfortable.

“Perhaps one will,” she said, “when you act like yourself.”

I frowned at her, tempted to ask what she meant by that, tempted to make my own confession . . . but such frankness was dangerous, given my position. She leaned across the table to pat my hand.

“As for your own path, which you seem dead set upon but not much distraught on taking at the moment, much to Nell’s distress, perhaps one must meet many improper gentlemen to recognize a proper one.”

I blushed. I can’t help it. I have been an unabashed blusher since childhood. I have also loathed this tendency all my life, but it has proven useful despite myself. A woman who cannot blush cannot be underestimated, and being underestimated has been my greatest weapon in a world full of improper gentlemen, and far too few improper gentlewomen.

I shut the book with a thump. “One ghastly thing is clear. Jack the Ripper is no legend. He is a commonplace. A common criminal, God help us. I admit I have glimpsed his shadow before in wife-beaters and confidence men and every manner of low, lecherous man, but never in so murderous a form.”

“If he is not singular, something else should be evident.”

I thought. I had put a brave face on it, but reading about vicious slaughters still made me quiver deep within, especially when victim after victim was more like me than not. Irene had a point, though, and I’d be damned if I should not prove bright enough to see it.

“If he is not singular,” I repeated slowly, as if it were a mathematical theorem, “there is a reason and a pattern to what he does. It is revealed in this casebook. It is that he is . . . not so singular, and therefore—if you know how to look at it—he is predictable.”