Chapel Noir (4 page)

“You sound as sweet as ever to me.”

“That is because you have no ear for music.”

“Most people do not. You are far too exacting of yourself. Why not do as Godfrey has suggested, and seek a new career in stage acting? That would not require the ceaseless practice that opera does.”

“I cannot believe
you
encourage such an immoral occupation.”

“I have mellowed. And you are married now,” I added pointedly. “Madam Adler-Norton.”

“Still, even if it now basks in your acceptance, the stage is a demanding mistress. And Paris has its supreme actress in Sarah Bernhardt. I am not so rash as to set up in competition to her.”

“You are an American. The French find your kind fascinating for some reason. And you are British-trained for the stage. Even the Divine Sarah could hardly compete with that. In addition, you are much prettier than she.”

“Heavens! You praise my art, my American birth, my looks. That is sure to be bad for me, Nell.”

“I don’t doubt it, but you seem to need cheering up. I know! Why don’t you read Godfrey’s latest letter aloud while I crochet? It would be an excellent vocal exercise for you, and I do so enjoy it.”

“His letters, or my reading them?”

“Both. Now, if you find any little passages that are . . . personal, you may simply omit them. I am impressed by Godfrey’s narrative style. He is most descriptive for a barrister. It shall seem as if he is in the room with us while you read. Please do.”

She obliged by plucking the fat envelope from the table beside her, the unwholesome fictions of Monsieur/Madame Sand forgotten on the figured Turkish carpet, as all such enterprises should be.

“I’ve only read it once myself,” she murmured, casting an odd look at me from under the raven wings of her eyebrows. “I might stumble over the handwriting.”

“Poor Godfrey! Writing on a train can be a most challenging task. I know this from experience. Yet he has been a faithful correspondent—a letter sent back from the first day’s journey already—and deserves a formal hearing.”

An enigmatic smile quirked Irene’s lips as she regarded the letter like an actress a script. “I shall skip the greeting; it is no doubt too flowery for your ears.”

“Godfrey flowery? You do intrigue me.”

Irene shook the parchment sheets to loosen the folds, then began.

“My . . . dear.”

I noticed that her eyes had dropped halfway down the first sheet by the time she finally pronounced the word “dear.”

“You are right: an exceptionally florid beginning for a barrister,” I murmured to my crochet egg.

“It is his first letter to me since we have married,” Irene murmured back.

“If it is too personal, I certainly don’t wish to hear it.”

“No.” Irene waved a graceful hand. I detected a certain wicked glint in her golden eyes. (Yes, they are indeed literally gold in certain lights. One fairy godmother had given her brown eyes such a warm hue that Midas would envy them at times.) Irene cleared her throat imperiously for my attention: she was now committed to presenting the letter as a stage reading.

“My dear,” she repeated, launching herself fully upon the task. “Although I have traveled this route before, I find it even more fascinating a second time. Perhaps solitude makes a more observant, though melancholy, traveling companion.”

“Nicely put. That solitude bit.”

Irene looked up from the letter to nod at my interruption.

For the next few minutes I was treated to an excellent description of the mountainous terrain and meadows punctuated with cows that I had seen myself during my solitary rail trip to Bohemia en route to Irene’s rescue years before.

Godfrey’s narration was so vivid I could close my eyes and envision the very scenes he described.

Unfortunately, my mind also relived Irene’s Bohemian escapade (however much I would like to forget it), which fortunately predated Godfrey, and which resulted in the King of Bohemia pursuing her and me to London. There he engaged a renowned consulting detective to pry from Irene’s possession a photograph of herself and the King together. This was a remembrance of the days when he had been merely a Crown Prince and she a prima donna. She was also a brash American who assumed that an enamored European king, albeit minor, would deign to marry a beautiful, talented, intelligent, and spirited diva of absolutely no means and no family history that she has ever shared with anyone, including me!

In this instance she was the innocent and I the sophisticate, but I cannot say I relished the exchange of roles.

For one thing, it brought a man far more formidable than the hugely handsome King of Bohemia into our lives: the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.

Of course, this Holmes was astute in one respect: he never liked the King of Bohemia. When the King began mourning “what a Queen she would have made” and bemoaning how it was “a pity Irene was not on his level,” Sherlock Holmes was wise and sly enough to answer that, from “what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to Your Majesty.”

These words are emblazoned on my mind, for I witnessed the exchange in disguise when the two men came to Irene’s residence to wrest the photograph from her and found the house empty. Those words bring me a reluctant, but no less warm glow for that fact. Much as I despise the source of such high praise for Irene, I must admit that Mr. Holmes was detective enough to get that one incontrovertible fact, at least, precisely right.

“Nell! Are you listening?” I was startled from my reverie as Irene, actress that she was, darted me a sharp glance to see how I was appreciating her rendition of Godfrey’s words.

“Yes, of course. Wonderful,” I murmured. “Please go on.”

“I must say,” Godfrey obediently said through the medium of Irene’s fluid voice, “that without conversation or company to distract me I find myself strangely mesmerized by the countryside.

“Perhaps it is our steady but serpentine upward progress toward the dazzling white peaks tinted rosy by the westering sun.

“One feels like a Lilliputian mounting an assault on some sleeping Gulliver’s body, yet the soft roll of mountain meadows outside my window is far more fecund than bone and sinew beneath the soft skin of earth.”

“Why that is almost like Mr. Tennyson,” I commented, crocheting apace.

There is nothing so cozy as a domestic scene warm with lamplight and the murmur of someone reading aloud. I sighed in sheer content.

“Our train,” Godfrey went on through the offices of Irene, “has only eleven passenger cars, but a hunter’s green engine trimmed with a great many gilt curlicues.

“This industrious machine leans into the task of leading its train of attendants up the mountain like a bull into an attack on a toreador: mechanical head down until the horns, or cowcatcher in this case, brush the tracks; mighty lungs (or firebox) huffing and puffing until billows of steam waft past the passenger windows. We hear its labored breathing (chug-chug) and our excitement cannot help but mount as we feel our vehicle pull upward, upward, into the Alps.

“As we sense ourselves pushed back into our plush upholstered seats, we pant as if we, too, were exerting ourselves to the maximum. Every muscle tenses, and still we rise higher and higher with the train, at an angle growing ever more vertical until we seem to be set on piercing the sky—”

“Goodness,” I interrupted. “I remember some steep grades when I made my solitary way to Bohemia to rescue you from that faithless King, but nothing so strenuous as Godfrey describes. My heart is quite pounding from the tension.”

“Yes,” Irene murmured, her eyes fixed upon the page. “Perhaps my reading is overdramatic.”

“That is always a possibility,” I admitted, “but don’t stop now. It sounds as if that poor train and all its passengers could quite tip over backwards on the mountaintop.”

She continued.

Yet we have now driven into the snow-shawled uplands, a shining white expanse that looks as cool and soft as eiderdown, encouraging the engine’s Herculean effort to reach the summit. From the window we can see the setting sun casting a rosy glimmer over the swelling snowfields.

Our engine strains as if to outrun the setting sun, a steel ramrod determined to drill through the imperious mountain blushing in the last rays of daylight.

Clouds of steam, or perhaps the cooler clouds caught on the mountain’s peak, rush by our windows. All we can hear is the monotonous, fierce throb of pistons.

Our upward motion seems to have slowed nevertheless, as if we are poised upon a precipice with no guarantee of summoning sufficient force to tip the balance and break through to the other side.

And then the long, lonely battering ram of steel plunges into the last barrier: a tunnel through the Alpine rock and snow. Darkness encases us as the train’s whistle shrieks its triumph. We go roaring deep into the hidden darkness of solid stone, suddenly level and gathering speed, suddenly plunging down faster and faster.

The burnished whiteness of the snow and steam as we emerge on the other side seems like a glimpse of paradise, another world. A strangely satisfying peace descends upon the passengers with the setting of the sun as true twilight steals upon us from the dark, wooded valleys below.

Strain is past, and we feel free to doze in our upholstered seats, our foreheads nodding against the cold window glass, our eyes immune to the magnificent scenery dimming like a stage setting before us.

We have climbed the mountain and made it ours, and all else is nothing.

In the stillness that followed Irene’s last declaration, I caught my breath. I saw that I had not been crocheting for some time.

“Well,” I said, “I do not know whether to cry
Bravo
or
Brava
. Quite a stirring passage. Thrilling one might say. I feel quite exhausted.”

“I as well,” Irene admitted, staring into the moth-wings of flame beating in the small parlor fireplace. “Performance is so taxing.”

“I had no idea riding a train to a mountaintop could be so enthralling, although I have been there myself.”

“By yourself,” Irene added.

I nodded.

“And not by yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you made a return journey in the company of Quentin Stanhope. Did you not notice then the thrilling aspects of railway mountaineering?”

“Ah, not in the manner Godfrey describes. Perhaps such a reaction is only for the solitary. When one has someone to talk to—”

“Quite,” said Irene, fanning herself with Godfrey’s letter. Her face looked quite flushed in the firelight.

“Is there not more of the letter to read?”

She glanced at the last page. “Oddly, no. Obviously, the journey has released Godfrey’s powers of . . . description.”

“They do say that travel is broadening.”

“Yes, they do.” She glanced at me. “I was sure you would approve, Nell.”

3.
Nell and the Night Visitors

“A Monsieur le Villon of the Paris police, I believe,
speaks highly of your amazing deductive abilities.”
“Monsieur le Villard,” Mr. Holmes corrected me.
I bridled a bit, then showed confusion. “I beg your pardon?”
“Is the French connection you speak of Monsieur le
Villard, not le Villon?”
“Yes, you are right! These French names are so similar.”
—
CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS,
THE ADVENTURESS

At night the countryside is darker than death and quieter than a confession. One becomes aware that one’s cottage is an artificial island in a great dark sea of tossing fields and whatever chooses to prowl them.

A fierce pounding at midnight on a thick oak-wood cottage door sounds like blunderbusses exploding under the casement windows.

I sat up in bed, heart galloping like a coach-and-four.

The moon was dark and so was the piece of night framed by my unshuttered window.

The booming began again. Our simple cottage seemed under siege.

A third bout of thunder forced my feet onto the chill bedside rug. I fumbled for the lucifers and lit my candle while my feet probed the dark for slippers to fill.

A flash of light under my door made me seize my dressing gown and fight my arms into its commodious sleeves.

Footsteps on the stairs!

Were we being invaded?

I tossed my long braid over my back so it should not catch fire in the candle flame, picked up the icy pewter holder, contemplating using it as a weapon, and rushed into the passage.

All I glimpsed was Irene’s waist-length hair rippling like a chestnut brown river against her scarlet-brocade dressing gown. She vanished into the puddle of lamplight that preceded her down the stairs.

Heedless as a child, I scurried downstairs in her wake, feeling no fear now but for her.

She was already at the wide front door, wrestling one-handed with the latch. “Nell! Good. Hold this.”

I
was now the Lady with the Lamp, only I held my candlestick in the other hand.

Irene attacked the latch again.

“We dare not admit anyone, Irene. It could be robbers. It likely
is
robbers.”

“Robbers don’t knock.”

“Ruffians then, with unthinkable designs. Sophie sleeps at her own cottage tonight. We are two women alone.”

“Not quite alone.” Irene smiled grimly and lifted the handle of the small pistol from her dressing gown pocket.

Even as she pushed the hard latch over, and I opened my mouth to voice another objection, the knocks sounded again, virtually driving the door open.

Irene snatched the oil lamp from my hand and stepped back, lifting the fluttering light to reveal our visitors.

As I feared: strange men. Two of them.

Even Irene recoiled from the dark, overcoated forms filling our doorway like the night made incarnate.

Her trusty little pistol, I reflected, had looked a bit too little. I searched the hallway for handy cudgels. Only the umbrella stand, alas, and Irene stood between me and its contents.

“Madame. Mademoiselle,”
one man said, nodding rather than bowing.

As I suspected! They were French. Worse and worse. And they knew that one of us was married, the other unwed. They had been studying us.

“You are alone?” the stranger inquired, looking past us.

What did he think? That we entertained visitors at half past-whatever in the morning? Only the Frenchman!

Irene had retreated as far as she intended and withdrew the pistol from her pocket.

“Madame Norton,” the speaker rebuked, at last doffing his slouch-brimmed hat.

“Inspector le Villard,” she returned, also returning the pistol to her pocket. “You look a thorough villain in that hat and coat. Why didn’t you announce yourself at once? Come in, then.”

I clutched my dressing gown close.

“We apologize for intruding at such an hour,” the French policeman went on in his execrably accented English. “It is not our wish, but there is no help for it. When the Great demand, the mice must scramble.”

“Oh, you are not a mouse,” Irene answered, laughing. “Nor am I.” She turned to see me cowering behind her. “Nell, hurry upstairs and dress while I settle our visitors in the parlor. Their business is obviously too urgent for the formalities.”

I started up the steps, grateful to creep out of their sight in my shocking state of disattire. On the other hand, I was most anxious to hear what had brought the French police inspector and his companion to our country door at such an indecent hour.

Irene, as usual, was right: one of us must be properly garbed and able to attend to the situation with dignity. I rushed upstairs to don my petticoats and corset in the almost-dark, lace my boots askew and misbutton my gown.

The flickering candlelight kept time with my shivers as I dressed in the chill bedchamber, my icy fingers mismanaging every stage.

At last I was reasonably clothed and hurried downstairs.

Irene had lit the two oil lamps in the parlor. The man with Inspector le Villard hunched over the charred logs in the fireplace, coaxing flames from the remnants of the woodbox.

Irene’s pistol lay openly on the small table beside her chair, as I might leave a crochet needle in plain sight.

None of my implements was in view, however, for Inspector le Villard had set his dripping hat atop my worktable and had taken my chair.

I was forced to perch like a parrot on a tapestry-upholstered stool beside Irene’s chair.

“You understand that I am entirely against this,” François le Villard had been saying when I entered the room. He had utterly ignored my entrance and did not quite look at Irene. The inspector was a dandified individual much given to waxed facial growths, yet I was pleased to see that he possessed enough gentlemanly instinct to dislike addressing a woman in her dressing gown.

Irene had few qualms about being so addressed. No doubt it was a result of her many years on the stage. Actors and singers are always being seen half-dressed both offstage and on. It quite destroys their sense of propriety.

My reaction to the scene could not be farther from her mind. Her fingers were tapping the tabletop near the pistol. When she was abstracted or impatient her fingers often mimed playing some mute piece of music.

“You have fully stated every objection you could to coming here, being here, and remaining here, Inspector,” Irene noted. “Now that your objections to your duty are done, what is the nub of the matter? Which Great Personage has forced you to such an unpleasant task? Or is it a name that dare not be spoken?”

While le Villard hesitated, Irene glanced at me. “I suppose we should offer you some refreshment.”

“No!” Le Villard nearly shouted the word. “There is no time. You must accompany me into Paris at once. This matter is better understood when it is seen rather than heard.”

The man at the fireplace stood and began to speak rapid French.

As he talked, Irene leaned forward, then sat up straighter, and then straighter still, like a puppet being drawn to attention by an unseen force. She was virtually at parade attention, and I could not say why.

Oh, how my head aches to hear a foreign language rattled off like a laundry list! Irene knew French like an Englishwoman’s maid in London, but I! Only the caught crumb of a familiar word here and there hinted at some meaning.

Le Villard sat in my chair with his head and eyes cast down. The words
“abbot noir”
were bandied back and forth by the strange man and Irene more than once. Whatever he said drew her face into a mask of troubled disbelief.

This nondescript man who accompanied Inspector le Villard was no servant, as I had first thought, but his superior.

“I must go,” Irene murmured to herself and only incidentally to me. She stood, shaken out of her strange paralysis. “I must dress.”

The men exchanged impatient glances.

“Four minutes, gentlemen,” she said sternly, reading their concern. “If you wish to clock me—”

She was clattering up the stairs like a racehorse before she finished her sentence.

Inspector le Villard did withdraw a gold timepiece from the vest beneath his sopping cloak and dry inner coat. He clicked the lid open.

I moved to Irene’s chair, but the unnamed man did not sit, not even on the vacant chaise longue by the now-crackling fire.

Casanova, under his cage cover for the night, cackled eerily, startling both men.

“The parrot,” I said.

“Le perroquet,”
the inspector repeated to his superior.

They nodded gravely.

A loud clatter in the hall announced Irene’s return, booted and . . . as I had feared, dressed in men’s clothing.

The inspector leaped to his feet as I did to mine.

“The time?” Irene demanded.

“Four minutes, Madame,” he admitted.

She came to the table to swoop the pistol into her frock coat pocket.

She had twisted her hair atop her head into an burnt brown froth all more charming for its carelessness. She was not attempting actually to impersonate a man in this ensemble, although on occasion I had seen her carry off that guise uncannily well. Her attire now was a mere matter of speed, not deception, or so I thought at the time. Even I had to admit in my secret soul that this feminine interpretation of male dress, such as Sarah Bernhardt wore when sculpting in her art studio, had its charms. La Bernhardt affected pale colors, like the American author Mark Twain, but Irene wore black: dainty louisheeled boots and fine wool trousers and jacket, softened only by an ivory-silk ascot at the throat.

Inspector le Villard spoke with some consternation. “You are aware, Madame, that you could be arrested for wearing such articles in the public streets?”

“Really? The escort of yourself and the Prefect of Police himself, I pray, will prevent me from having my mission stopped for a trifle. I believe that this garb will serve us all better at the scene of the crime. Shall we go and find out?” She turned to me. “Nell, please do not wait up. This might take hours.”

“I certainly do not intend to ‘wait up,’ ” I said stoutly. “I will accompany you, of course.”

Even the man who did not speak English grasped my evident intentions. Had the situation not been so tense, it would have been amusing to watch the Frenchmen’s reaction, which was now far more appalled than it had been at the first sight of Irene’s unconventional attire.

They spoke at once, in French, to each other, then to Irene, and finally to me. They ordered, they pleaded. They almost wept with the intensity of their argument, as Frenchmen can when sufficiently stirred.

I imagine that the burden of all of it was that my presence was not required.

Or so Irene translated the jabber to me.

I swept into the passage. That is one of the many advantages of female dress: one can sweep. And one who sweeps has the advantage. I had learned that years ago from Irene, who was unsurpassed in the art of both sweeping and imposing her will on others.

“Nonsense,” I said, eyeing all three with my sternest expression. “Irene, your accompanying these two men, even though one is known to you, alone . . . at night . . . on who-knows-what errand, is completely improper. I must accompany you. Explain it to them.”

Irene, looking amused, did. They remonstrated some more, and more loudly, simultaneously spewing both French and English at me so that I could understand neither.

“If there is need for speed,” I told Inspector le Villard, “you would do better arguing with me in the carriage on the way to Paris.”

Incredulous, they looked at Irene.

She shrugged, a very Gallic shrug. “She is English,” she said, as if that explained everything.

Perhaps it did.