Chapel Noir (48 page)

“Oh!” I declared in some distress as we rounded a corner to confront a sadly familiar scene.

“Oh indeed,” Irene said. “The Musee Grevin made a superb effort to reproduce this scene.”

Granted, and at least the original didn’t involve dead bodies, for which I was supremely grateful. The Cairo market scene before our eyes was complete with European travelers, draped natives, and overburdened donkeys, only all were live.

Elizabeth laughed with delight. “Now I see it. The Europeans in the
tableau vivant
at the Musee Grevin weren’t part of the original scene, but exposition-goers. If we were to walk into that bazaar, we would become a real part of the false scene as well. This is more than theater, more than reenactment of reality in a far part of the globe, this is reality and more distant reality meeting in a fictional setting. I admit I am confused.”

Irene contemplated the scene, her walking stick planted dead center of her still figure, like a sword she rested point down after—or before—a duel or fencing match.

“So too the actions of Jack the Ripper may be a blending of two separate realities into one puzzling and disturbing appearance of absolute reality. Is it coincidence only that the murders appear to have moved from the crude stage setting of Whitechapel to the more sophisticated yet equally corruptible environs of Paris?”

I was pleased to hear her admit the many corruptions of Paris. I was tired of hearing the City of Light hailed as the quintessential modern capital when too much of it was yet the City of Dark.

Still, that afternoon all was festive and bright.

The infectious oompah-pah of German orchestras vied with the delicate bells and strange thin melodies of the Javanese Temple music and French sailors in striped uniforms singing
“Auprès de ma blonde
” as they lurched merrily among the crowds.

We ambled toward the Eiffel Tower to find at its base a mammoth kiosk in praise of American invention. There is no doubt that the
Exposition Tricolore
, the fair’s informal title, celebrated the red, white, and blue of America as well as the French flag.

In fact, the French and the Americans have been very cozy all along, much to poor England’s disadvantage. I suppose it is a result of both countries having stirred up revolutions against God-given kingships in the last quarter of the previous century. In fact, France’s insistence on marking the centenary of its bloody revolution had made several countries withdraw as official sponsors of pavilions, including Great Britain, Italy, and Russia!

Of course America had no such scruples as these great world powers. It was there with a Telephone Pavilion, with maps showing the invention’s tentacles of lines radiating from Paris to the outlying provinces. Along one wall an entire row of telephones with two earpieces were connected to ten telephone receivers at the Opera and the Comedie-Francaise. For fifty centimes, one could listen to both theater and opera, though why one would wish to blend two such different performances, both in foreign languages, I cannot imagine.

Elizabeth and Irene were like children competing for toys, both wanting to try the devices. I accompanied them in line, but refused all their pleadings to put the alien instruments to my ears.

“But, Nell,” Irene cajoled, “you remember how I first heard sound from a distant stage at Gilbert’s house years ago, when Bertie heard a murder committed over a telephone line to the Savoy Theater? This is the same, but much better. Please try it. You can even sense the actors moving from side to side of the stage as they speak, and the singing is remarkably good.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Irene. I also recall that the dinner at Gilbert’s was the occasion on which you allowed a Certain Personage to gain a Very Wrong Impression about you, and I have no desire to be reminded of that sad situation.”

Irene rolled her eyes and clamped the devices to her temples like a set of mechanical earmuffs, moving her head in time to the music only she heard and looking like an utter idiot, as did Elizabeth and every one else in the long row of other fools who had paid fifty centimes for the privilege.

After this exhibition in which my companions were actual performers, nothing would do but that they would see the rest of the American exhibition area.

Thus it was that I was treated to such cultural landmarks of the land over the ocean as the heads of every American president, including the current model, Grover Cleveland, carved into the bowls of meerschaum pipes! I can well imagine that these presidential heads would flush with shame when the lit pipe bowls burned cherry red.

Not only that, but the pipes were so huge one couldn’t even picture a man as large as Bram Stoker smoking one. And one pipe in particular was most strange.

“Which president is that?” I asked. “The one with the huge bushy head and beard?”

Irene burst into an aria of laughter that made heads in the room all turn our way. “La, Nell! That isn’t a president’s head. It’s a buffalo head. Get out your spectacles, quickly!”

While I was thus engaged, thinking to myself that a buffalo as president probably would have done the Republic good, a woman joined our party.

“Isn’t it a marvel?” she demanded. “That pipe has been promised to Buffalo Bill after the exposition is over. He rode over here from the show grounds to see the exhibit and tied his mount to the Eiffel Tower, can you imagine?”

I could imagine many fair-goers stepping around the horse droppings later and not being at all impressed that the souvenir was courtesy of Buffalo Bill’s horse.

“A pity,” Irene said with mock sincerity. “I was thinking what a fine gift this pipe would make for Sherlock Holmes.”

“Sherlock who?” asked the attendant, thus making my day surpassingly brighter.

While the American pavilion boasted exhibits on such modern marvels as the telephone, the telegraph, and the phonograph, the native gift for vulgar exaggeration was also in full flower, especially a larger-than-life-size representation of the
Venus de Milo
weighing over a ton and a half and executed in solid chocolate.

Whatever the medium, she was shockingly undressed and still missing significant limbs.

At last I was allowed to leave the shadow of the tower and tour the other buildings, although I did not see anything to equal the sheer nerve of American invention.

Irene was happy to see that Louis Comfort Tiffany, the son of our sometime client and benefactor, the international jeweler Charles Tiffany, had won grand prize in silver crafting. I was pleased to see that lad’s skills had advanced in the several years since Irene had been presented an example of his jewelry work by the proud but misguided father. The brooch was in the odious shape of a sinuous squid ornamented with irregularly shaped pearls, amber, and aquamarine . . . quite obviously worthless save in its maker’s eyes.

The sunlight was slanting and growing cool by the time we finished the grand tour of the major buildings and paused near an awning-shaded kiosk dispensing beverages and food.

“The cafés are crowded and noisy,” Irene declared. “Let us picnic here and we shall be set for the night.”

“Oh, Irene, I am already fatigued,” I said. “How much longer are we to stay?”

“Until the hunting is right. After dark.”

“What has this outing accomplished?”

Elizabeth made a face. “It has been fun, Nell. We are allowed to have fun!”

“Not when we are on a mission. We are on a mission?” I asked Irene anxiously, for my feet were tired and I had a headache from the close-fitting cap.

“Yes, but first I wanted to survey the fairgrounds. Buffalo Bill has suggested that we arrange to be in the Esplanade des Invalides before they light up the tower for the evening. He can’t join us until after his show ends and is tucked away for the night.”

“How will he find us in this mob?” I asked.

“I suspect that it will be easier for us to find him, but . . . don’t worry. He said he would send a ‘scout’ to locate us as long as we stayed in the entry area to the colonial section.”

“Hmmph,” I said as we walked another long way toward the riverbank. “There is only one exhibit I should like to see.”

“And what is that,” Elizabeth asked.

“The panorama building that is shaped like a ship.”

“Well, there it lies at anchor, dead ahead,” Irene said in a voice like Long John Silver, pointing. Everyone on the exposition grounds gawked and pointed and shouted to each other like sailors on shore leave.

I made out the interesting shape of the ship at the very edge of the Seine, and also a long line of people waiting to pay their entry fee and snake into the attraction. I was fated instead to view more of the usual vulgarities.

We stood in line at the entrance kiosk until our coins were taken, and I must confess that as we passed beyond the entry gate we found ourselves in an Arabian Nights environment where each few steps whisked us like a magic carpet to different distant and exotic sites. Representing the width and breadth of France’s colonial empire, the exhibit surprised at every turn with its sights, sounds, and, unfortunately, smells.

“I had no idea,” I found myself murmuring.

“No idea of what, Nell?” Elizabeth inquired.

“That France had a foot in so many regions of the world, on so many continents.”

“It’s not just the British who have marched in jackboots over the face of the Earth.”

“Well, no, but I thought that after we defeated Napoleon . . .”

“I am grateful that you did not defeat Washington,” she said with a smile. “This is quite a picture, though, scenes from the Americas to the Congo to Algeria to Java.”

“And smells,” I added, waving a gloved hand in front of my face as odors of fried rice and saffron wafted past us.

“This section,” Irene said, “is quite popular for those who tire of the French cuisine in the cafés that dot the exposition. The food is sure to be genuine, as the performers and workers live on these grounds.”

I noted that as the daylight ebbed, people from the panoramic ship were ambling from the riverside to the many foreign restaurants interspersing the exotic theater buildings. Already the swooping and soaring and notched and curved rooflines were becoming profiles against the pale sky, and the air was tinged with the chill of dusk. At the Tunisian cafe, crowds huddled to wait for coffee so thick and black as it poured into ornate cups that its odor clung to the scene forty feet around like a rich scented Oriental ointment to a wound.

Sound was as powerful as smell in the darkening dusk. I winced at the whining and percussive tones of Egypt and Algiers and the tinkling bells of Java.

At that moment I became aware of a European threnody amid the uproar, an off-tune screeching and eerie wailing. I looked around.

Irene, too, had lifted her head to hear better, picking out the wild yet somehow familiar discordance from among the strains of foreign music wafting around the buildings, gardens, and cafés.

“You recognize that, too. What is it, Nell?”

“Violins, badly played. I am sorry to say that the sleuth of Baker Street apparently murders that instrument when he is not on the trail of more punishable offenses.”

“The violin? Sherlock Holmes plays the violin?”

“I would not call it playing, sawing rather. And I did not see the crime while it was being committed, but he was the only person visible in his rooms . . . unless his physician friend has secretly accompanied him and was the culprit in torturing horsehair and catgut.”

“Nell!” Elizabeth remonstrated. “Please don’t put the poor honest fiddle in those terms. I prefer not to know how many creatures have suffered to bring music to the ages.”

“Music!”

By now we had followed the sound to its source between the theater of Cairo and an edifice as delicate yet towering as an Oriental headdress.

“Gypsies!” Irene exclaimed, delighted to have diagnosed the source of the sounds.

Indeed. We viewed a Gypsy encampment complete with surging campfire, circled wagons, and a poor swaybacked horse.

A crowd had gathered around the heat generated by the huge bonfire and were tapping toes and clapping hands to encourage the swarthy-skinned Romanies cavorting around the roaring fire, men and women together, while lean wolfish dogs nipped at flying hems from the fringes.

The fiddlers were three middle-aged men with dark curling hair and beards and sweat streaming down from one nest of unkempt hair into the other, and finally onto the checkered varnished surfaces of their instruments.

A most unappetizing display.

“Surely the Gypsies are not a colonial holding of France,” I shouted into Irene’s ear.

“Surely not. But they are chronic trespassers, and I think they have squatted here in more ways than one,” she shouted back. With the noise and the crowd I doubt anyone heard us, or that anyone cared if the Gypsies came here uninvited. What else did Gypsies do after all, and there were plenty of coins to be had here, even now spinning in amongst the flashing boots.

This appeared only to encourage the dancers, who whirled ever faster, the women’s many-petticoated skirts spinning wide despite their bulk to show grimy bare legs and feet, some with gold rings on their toes!

The men were even more unfettered, squatting like dogs into crouches, only keeping themselves upright by the swift kicks of their legs. One came kicking in this energetic yet repugnant fashion toward our group, his fiery gaze fixed upon us.

I had never seen a more primitive display until I sensed a presence behind me and turned around.

Oh, goodness. A figure loomed behind me in the dimming light like a statue, a vest of bones visible upon its chest, its dark, firelit visage framed by grease-slicked black hair and topped by a single feather, like a quill inserted into a plum pudding.

My frozen horror had communicated itself to my companions without my uttering a word. Irene and Elizabeth turned as one to view our new “shadow.” Neither seemed appalled.

“Red Tomahawk, I presume?” Irene inquired with her typical sang-froid, a French phrase for unshakable calm. “How did you find us?”