A Soul of Steel (19 page)

“A lamp sits on the table by the door, Nell. I’m going to toss you a box of lucifers. Stanhope’s box,” she added ironically. “I want you to light the wick and turn it up. Stay as close to the door as you can, but be quick and quiet about it.”

Something hurled toward me; I fought the impulse to dodge. The object hit the canvas I clutched to my bodice and slid down until my hand caught and cupped it against my skirt. I set the portrait against the wall and worried the small cheap paper box open. The wooden lucifer was tiny, fit for a doll’s hand. I struck it on the tabletop, breathing easier as warmth and light flared. It flickered out before I could even find the lamp Irene had spied on the way in.

I underwent a second struggle to extract another miniature wand and produce another burning flare. This time I touched it to the wick, but it seared my fingertips and I dropped it.

Irene said nothing.

I heard nothing. I saw little beyond the hot circle of my struggle. I must not fail. The next lucifer licked at my gloved fingers, but I held on until sparks spawned light. When I dropped the lucifer, the lamplight remained and grew as I turned up the key.

“Bring it here.”

I approached Irene as if fearing to wake an infant—or a fiend. Irene handed me her parasol and took the lamp. She moved forward, putting me in darkness that iced my soul. Something on the floor commanded her attention. I edged nearer to view a dark, mottled, sinuous form coiled like massive loops of nautical cable. She bent down, the revolver at the ready, then straightened suddenly.

“Yes, thoroughly dead.” She moved more briskly to the bundle she had identified as a dead man, the possible plague victim.

“Irene—?”

She sighed. “Now I understand. Venom. Snake venom. Quantities of venom, from an indecently large snake.”

“Not like... Oscar?”

“Not like any serpent even Sarah Bernhardt dares to keep. A cobra, I think, but I will let someone else identify the species. And its presence explains that.” She stopped by the table where the lamp had rested. “I noticed it when I entered.”

I had not, but my eyes now took in all its sinister implications. Some sort of abandoned chest, I would have said but minutes before. Now I saw that it was a cage, perhaps two feet long, pierced with tiny air holes, a small door eloquently ajar. A scum-slimed saucer sat beside it.

Irene sniffed the contents fastidiously. “What did Oscar drink, before you bestowed him on Sarah?”

I shuddered. “Milk. A small saucer of watered milk.”

“Empty, save for dirty milk scum. The serpent must have been neglected these last days, been hungry.”

“But the dead man?”

“Did not live here. He came here. Perhaps he knew of the snake, perhaps not. The maid spoke of only one occupant.”

“But, Irene, Quentin Stanhope
lived
here, according to your investigation. Quentin Stanhope—and cobras, assassins? I cannot credit it. It makes no sense. This cannot be the same man I knew in London, though I barely knew him.”

She looked at me, all insouciance fled, and nodded grim agreement as she replaced the revolver in her reticule and drew the strings securely shut. “I know, Nell. I know.”

Chapter Fourteen

SLEEPING SNAKES LIE

“If our
main objective, Irene, is to find Mr. Stanhope—and I am not at all sure that it should be—then why are we rattling across the cobblestones of Paris en route to a soiree
chez
Sarah?” I inquired with what I thought was admirable restraint.

“Because,” Irene answered imperiously, “I wish to meet the Empress of All the Russias.”

“Truly?” returned I. “From your costume, I had concluded that you were intending to
play
the Empress of All the Russias.”

“That she could.” Godfrey’s smile looked doubly dazzling under the dark portcullis of his mustache. He eyed his wife with an approval I couldn’t fault, for Irene did indeed look fit to hobnob with an empress, if not to be one herself.

“I have renounced thrones for more interesting pursuits,” she said, unfurling her gauze and ostrich-feather fan rather theatrically. Her evening jacket was a transparent affair of black lace and jet that glittered like fairy netting in the soft light from the carriage lamps.

“For the time being,” she added wickedly. “Besides, I am most curious to know why the Empress of All the Russias acquired such a sudden desire to meet me that she would break long custom and deign to visit Sarah’s salon.”

“We know why,” I put in. “The Czar is fond of opera. No doubt he has heard of your private concert in Monaco— Sherlock Holmes himself warned you then that you had become too public for one supposedly dead—and recommended you to his wife.”

Godfrey’s smile had grown dubious, perhaps at mention of Sherlock Holmes. “And for this the Czarina violates her customary refusal to mingle with commoners and begs an invitation to one of
Sarah Bernhardt’s notoriously Bohemian
soirées
? No, Nell. Irene is right. Something more lies behind this invitation.”

“I am always right, except when I am wrong.” Irene regarded me closely. “Why are you so reluctant to visit the boulevard Pereire again, Nell? You know that Sarah is especially fond of you, and, more importantly, all the men in Paris eventually turn up at Sarah’s,” she added with a particularly sly smile.

“I rather doubt that! Even the Divine Sarah’s appetite for novelty must have limits. And the woman barely knows me! How can she be so ‘fond’ of me for so little reason? It is most illogical, even perverse of her.”

“Are you saying, Nell,” Godfrey said with lawyerly patience and a hint of laughter in his voice, “that to like you one would have to be perverse?”

“I am saying that... That Woman persists in paying me more attention than I welcome. And after our adventure in Montmartre today, I am not excessively enthusiastic about encountering any more... serpents.”

“Not even poor little Oscar?” Irene asked.

“Not even Oscar,” I answered. “And I resent that actress treating me as another exhibit in her menagerie.”

“Sarah means nothing by it, Nell. She merely finds you fascinating. She can never resist the exotic, even when it is so merely domestic.”

“I am not fascinating! I am not adventuresome. I am English.”

Too late I saw the corner into which I had painted myself and my entire race. Luckily, my two friends had amused themselves sufficiently at my discomfiture and did not press their advantage.

So Godfrey joined us at last in passing under the engraved S.B. over the door. From the murmur and clink emanating from our hostess’s salon, other guests had already arrived. A manservant took Irene’s lacy jacket and my fitted black silk jacket with the ruffle of black lace under its wide reveres.

“Why, Nell, you look quite empress-worthy yourself tonight.” Godfrey turned me like a top by the shoulders. “I could not see by the dim hall light of the cottage how splendidly you were gowned.”

I flushed, as I always did when a gentleman noticed my attire, which was a bit excessive this evening: Nile-green China crape sashed with black watered silk. A rosy epaulet of flowers decorated my left shoulder and more roses perched at the top right of my coiffure, a most pleasing and subtle touch, Irene assured me.

“Opposing sides, my dear Nell,” she had said while torturing my hair into ringlets with her curling iron. “Flowers or jewelry best play off each other when mounted on opposing sides. It is a question of balance.”

“So are my slippers,” I had complained then, for her own Nile-green shoes and stockings clad my feet. The two-inch heels were more than I was accustomed to, especially if I was to curtsy to an empress.

I still was uncertain that the lily of the valley scent she had sprinkled liberally on me had overcome the lingering singed odor of the curling iron. It did not matter. The Bernhardt rooms sprouted heavy aromas the way they did tropical blooms and exotic wildlife.

The first trophy I glimpsed in the salon ahead was the brown bearskin rug that had nearly devoured me on my first visit. The huge, ferocious head confronted all guests with glassy staring eyes the size of monocles, and bared fangs set in massive jaws a full foot apart. One misstep into the maw of this mighty floor covering, and Irene’s silken Nile-green stockings would be reduced to threads.

“It does pose a problem for trains,” Irene murmured, having followed the, ah, train of my unspoken thoughts. “Luckily, neither of us is wearing one.”

She bearded the bear first, sweeping ahead of the ever-courtly Godfrey and my ever-reluctant self. Into this hothouse of Oriental decadence Irene wore an insouciant gown of Rose Dubarry, the skirt and bodice draped with pink tulle dotted with black velvet and touched at the shoulders, décolletage, waist and bustle with black velvet bows tipped in gold.

The Tiffany necklace of diamonds mounted between opposing rows of pearls circled her neck, and affixed to it was the Tiffany pin Godfrey had given her: the diamond-studded clef and key device, signifying her twin interests of music and mystery. This was Irene’s commoner coat of arms, signifying an aristocracy of wit and talent that no amount of blue blood could contest.

Her dark hair was banded by a narrow fillet of gold over the forehead. A high panache of pink ostrich tips vibrated above her topknot like an amusing crown. Long flesh-pink gloves of undressed kid gave her arms a scandalously unattired look.

She stepped over the snarling bear head in this most dainty of costumes, pink silk slippers with black velvet bows on the toes mincing expertly around the fearsome impediment.

Irene’s entrance was not unobserved by the two dozen guests present, although some were no doubt expecting the Empress. Men in formal black-and-white stood interspersed among a glittering flower bed of pastel evening gowns. Heads turned and lifted, cigarettes paused midway to mouths, conversation faded as Irene became the focus of all eyes. In the hush, I found my gaze focusing on a regal blonde woman opposite us. This commanding creature, as statuesque as a Greek goddess, wore a violet taffeta gown so lavishly encrusted with turquoise, copper and silver beadwork that it formed a rich, Oriental carapace. I wondered if she would crackle when she walked.

For a startled moment, I thought we faced the Empress of All the Russias and fought a mad impulse to curtsy. Then the guests’ chatter resumed and their ranks closed, removing this savagely attractive figure from view. Her presence had not escaped Godfrey’s notice.

“I know,” he bent to confide as he followed me into that crowded chamber of crimson walls and caged birds where scent and smoke mingled into a heady fog, “that you will record every exotic detail of this evening in your diary, including Irene’s ensemble. Do you ever report my mode of dress?”

“Well... not often. It is not so interesting.”

“Thank you.”

I belatedly eyed him. He looked handsome enough to be a play actor, as usual, the severe black-and-white of evening dress emphasizing his almost-black hair and pale silver eyes. Had he not been my employer, and now my dearest friend’s husband, of course, I might once have cherished illusions on his account. But to record the details of his attire—

“I am sorry, Godfrey, but this is a restrained age. Men dress as they should: with little vanity or display, in unchanging style. You will forgive me if I speak plainly. Men are judged more for what they do than for what they wear.”

“Yet I had to don a horsehair wig and antiquated robes to practice law,” he mused with a glint in his eye. “It seems that when men do really serious things, such as wage war, they must resort to silly attire. And consider that models of uniform dress, like our former military man Stanhope, often adopt the exotic, free-flowing wardrobe of the East. It speaks of male dissatisfaction with dull tailoring. Perhaps you could note that observation in your diary.”

“Perhaps,” said I, making no promises. My diaries were one area in which I was the final judge and arbiter, a deity unto myself on a modest and private scale.

We had maneuvered around the bear and past a buffet table laden with the usual (and often inedible) excesses of French cuisine and spirits. This cornucopia of the unappetizing was implemented with such barbaric fare as raw oysters and mounds of Russian caviar shining like beady black little serpent eyes.

We next confronted the richly carpeted dais upon which our hostess reclined on her famous divan, in a loose gown of Chinese brocade with a great billowing train of heavy smoke-blue velvet. None of the windows were open, for Sarah’s multitude of wild pets might escape, so the atmosphere was warm and soporific.

Madame Sarah herself wielded a massive peach-colored ostrich fan which clashed violently with her masses of red-gold hair. It nearly made me sneeze to look at her, though I did not dare, for fear I should undo my coiffure.

She saw us immediately.

“Irene!” Kisses cheek to cheek, Irene’s delicate ostrich headdress almost colliding with a sweep of Sarah’s intimidating fan.

“My adorable Godfrey!” A kiss (his) on the hand; a kiss (hers) blown over the trembling horizon of the fan.