A Soul of Steel (22 page)

“I did strive to prevent any distraction,” I replied, rising from my chair to approach Casanova’s cage.

The bird waddled over to the brass bars, actually welcoming company, especially when it bore an olive branch of plump Muscat grapes.

“You succeeded admirably,” Irene admitted, sipping from the coffee cup that accompanied her from rising until noon on mornings after such late evenings. “What did Captain Morgan say to you? I saw him showing you the clever little monkey.”

“Eerie beast!” I could not help shuddering when I recalled the creature clasped in that man’s arms like some demonic infant. “And Captain Morgan made no sense, though he insisted that I convey a message to you. I am thinking better of it this morning.”

Godfrey and Irene exchanged a glance. “You had better do so,” he said.

“But Captain Morgan is an odious fellow! Why should I serve as his messenger? And why should Irene be of interest to him?”

“Exactly, my dear Nell.” Irene’s eyes shone like the almost-black coffee that filled her cup. “Once again you state the obvious with scintillating originality. And you are quite right that I am utterly insignificant. Still, I would like the captain’s message.”

“Cut the cackle!” croaked Casanova, thrusting his ruffled head forward for another grape. I had neglected his supply in the heat of the discussion.

He got his grape and Irene got her answer.

“Captain Morgan was most rude,” I said. “He insisted that he was still interested in the skin of the cobra that you killed. He said that you would do well to surrender the skin to him.”

“That is exactly what he said?”

I sighed. “If you wish me to go upstairs and consult my diary—?”

“I do,” she answered. “There is nothing for accuracy like the words when they are first set down.”

I forsook Casanova, who kept calling “Cassie want a crumpet” after my departing figure, and thumped up the stairs to my bedchamber.

Irene was still lounging in the upholstered chair, feet up, when I returned, except that a cigarette was decorating her small enameled holder and filling the room with tendrils of smoke. “And?”

I stood before them like a well-drilled schoolgirl and read from my own hand: “The Awful Evening ended with the removal of the monkey from the piano chamber. The dreadful bear-slayer said, ‘She is a politician, this Madame Norton. Beautiful women make very dangerous politicians. Tell her that my interest in the cobra remains keen. Tell her that she should surrender it to me.’ “

I shut my diary, pursed my lips and waited.

Irene looked at Godfrey, who looked at me.

“That is exactly what he said—his interest in the cobra remains keen?” she asked.

I nodded. “It could not be clearer.”

Irene laughed then, a cascading gale that somehow made my taut lips want to twitch. “Oh, Nell, much about this affair could be made a great deal clearer, but I am glad that you are here to take such convoluted matters at face value.”

“Captain Morgan was not speaking literally?”

“Captain Morgan was warning me. His ‘cobra’ is your ‘Cobra.’ “

“I have no such thing as a snake!”

“He spoke of a man, not a man-biter. Quentin Stanhope. Remember? He used the spy name ‘Cobra’ in Afghanistan.”

I looked back to my diary pages, and the neat ink-blue words took on a sudden sinister significance. “Then the ‘cobra’ in which Captain Morgan remains keenly interested is... Quentin. And he wants you to surrender Quentin to him!”

“As if I had Mr. Stanhope to do so,” Irene pointed out good-humoredly.

I clasped the open diary to my bodice. “You would betray him?”

“No, but I do wonder what Captain Morgan would attempt to do if he knew Mr. Stanhope’s whereabouts. Do not worry, Nell; at the most I would use your Mr. Stanhope as a Judas goat.”

“The poor man! No wonder he fled this cottage as one might a trap.”

“I think his flight had more to do with Captain Morgan—perhaps the possessor of an air gun, do you think?—and a great deal to do with you.”

“Myself? But I am of no significance in this matter.”

“At the moment you are a go-between for hunter and prey.”

“And what role do
you
play in the game of cat-and-mouse?”

“Ah.” Irene inhaled the smoke from her cigarette as if it were food for thought, and expelled a dreadful idea. “Call it, rather, a game of cobra-and-mongoose—or tiger. I am convinced that Captain Morgan is the person that Mr. Stanhope knew as ‘Tiger’ in Afghanistan.”

Even Godfrey sat up at that. “ ‘Tiger’? Are you certain, Irene?”

“I am, but my facts are not. I will have to ask you to do more pottering amongst the official papers.”

“There will be no record of the English-Afghanistan War in Paris!” I pointed out triumphantly.

Irene regarded me as if I were auditioning for the role of a madwoman. “Of course not. In London.”

“You are sending Godfrey to London?”

“No, I am going with Godfrey to London.”

He laughed softly, obviously hearing for the first time this latest intemperate scheme. Unfortunately, Godfrey was a good deal more accommodating than myself.

“Well, Irene, you cannot go to London!” I said.

“It may mean Mr. Stanhope’s life,” she advised me.

“I am sure that he is well suited to preserving it himself.”

“Matters must be investigated there if we are to get to the bottom of this.”

“I am not at all convinced that I wish to get to the bottom—or the top—of this. And certainly
you
cannot go to London!”

“Why not?”

“Irene, must I constantly remind you of the obvious? You are presumed dead. You are living in virtual anonymity by your own wish. You are known in London. If you go there, you will betray your existence. You may attract the attention of the King of Bohemia’s agents—who may not truly have given you up. And you will certainly risk drawing the notice of Mr. Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street.”

“He knows that I am alive.”

“But he warned you in Monte Carlo to avoid the kind of matters he delves in. I know what you are up to, do not deny it! You will immediately seek out the Dr. Watson who is associated with Mr. Holmes. In so doing, you will stride right into the serpent’s jaws. You will ruin your anonymity!”

“Goodness,” said Irene calmly. “Quite a case you have built up. Indeed, it is awkward for me to venture from the Continent. You are quite right, Nell,” she added with becoming contriteness. “I would, of course, immediately find this Dr. Watson to learn whether he is Mr. Stanhope’s Dr. Watson, although the likelihood is... well, unlikely.”

She sighed and was silent.

I closed my diary and glanced at Godfrey, who was regarding Irene’s bowed head with concern, or at least surprise. She sat up abruptly, her entire manner animated for the first time that morning.

“But of course! That is the solution! Once again, Nell, your inescapable logic has shown me the way. You must go to London with Godfrey while I remain safe and undetected in Paris. How could I miss such an obvious conclusion?”

“I? And Godfrey? But—”

“You are not in danger of detection; nor is Godfrey. Neither of you had a public reputation in London, as I did. Unless you led a double life—? No. Certainly you can both be more discreet than I. And since Nell would worry during my absence in London—”

“I would indeed.”

“I will remain at home here in Neuilly and worry about
you!”

Irene sat back with the happy expression of a child who has successfully protested a bedtime by persuading the governess to stay up with her.

“Why must anyone go to London at all?” I muttered.

“Because, dear Nell, Captain Morgan is a very dangerous man who is not only on the trail of poor Mr. Stanhope, but also of the man whom Mr. Stanhope hopes to protect. And now Captain Morgan is convinced that we are involved in the matter. We must delve deeper into the affair for the sake of our own skins, if nothing else. Is that not true?”

“I do not like your figure of speech.”

“Which figure?”

“Skins,” I intoned. “I have had enough of bearskins. Nor do I care to encounter snakes in any form, even metaphorical, as in this Captain Morgan’s case.”

Godfrey laughed. “We must, dear Nell. Irene has requested that the Paris police surgeon inspect the, er... form... of the deceased cobra as well as its victim. He promised to call tomorrow, and I suspect that he will.”

“You agree with this scheme, Godfrey?”

He thought for a moment, while regarding Irene fondly. “I agree that we must take action. Whether we like it or not, our taking in Stanhope has attracted the attention of those with the most noxious motives... to Stanhope himself—and to us all.”

“Then it is settled!” Irene rose and shook out her taffeta robe until it crackled. “I will remain here and pursue snakes, of various sorts, while you two will visit London and interview medical men named Watson who served in Afghanistan.” She sighed and gave me a grave look. “I think, my dear Nell, that you have chosen the better part.”

“All the world’s a stage,” the parrot proclaimed as if cued.

I suspect that he was.

One good thing can be said about preparing for travel: it so occupies the mind that the ordinary shocks and surprises of life seem strangely muffled.

Thus I was like a person moving rapidly through a fog in the two days preceding Godfrey’s and my untimely departure. Thoughts of Quentin Stanhope collided in my mind as I dealt with shirtwaists and stockings, corsets and collars.

Though I well knew that this trip—like all of Irene’s schemes—was designed to distract me from the case of reason and restraint, I also sensed a hidden purpose. Yet I could not argue with her intent to safeguard Quentin, no matter how rudely he had behaved toward me. I was so triumphant at having persuaded Irene to remain safely behind that I did not contemplate one obvious fact until I was alone with my thoughts and my wearables: by going to London, I would almost certainly encounter Quentin again, should Godfrey and I have any success in our inquiries.

So I often found myself standing with a knot of petticoats clutched to my bosom, my heart pounding. I moved my latest diary from one hidden place to another, and finally burdened my trunk with the volume. If anything should happen to me, if the steamer should sink in the Channel, so too would my tenderest thoughts.

I didn’t give much thought to Irene or to my traveling companion, Godfrey. For the first time, I faced a matter so pressing that my own affairs, such as they were, took precedence over my lifelong dedication to the welfare of others. I had not the slightest thought to spare for the most commonplace things around me. Even Lucifer had a downcast look as he lounged on my counterpane and watched the contents level of the trunk rise. Casanova serenaded me with such innovative variations as “Cassie want a trumpet” to catch my attention, in vain.

With customary efficiency, Godfrey had dashed out to book our passage from Calais. We faced a short train journey followed by a hopefully calm crossing and another short train journey at the other end. I confess that the notion of seeing London again, of breathing British air, quite excited me. Certainly it was only that which caused my heart to give little, breathless skips now and then.

“He is here!” Irene announced the next day, pausing breathlessly on the threshold to my bedchamber.

Only one type of personage (excluding Godfrey) could cause that sudden exuberance, the pink on her cheeks and the fire in her eye: an emissary from the realm of crime and chaos beyond the ken of most gentlefolk.

I set down my small pile of handkerchiefs and went below, where our parlor housed a representative of the Paris Prefecture of Police.

Godfrey paused in the pouring of a sherry—these Paris police are ever ready to mix business with pleasure—and nodded to me as I entered after Irene.

“Our dear friend, Miss Huxleigh. Dr. Sauveur.”

I nodded at a hedgehog of a man with a quantity of unruly brown hair erupting around bright brown eyes and an unfortunate, though imposing, nose.

“Dr. Sauveur is associated with the Paris police,” Irene explained unnecessarily. I can make some deductions quite unassisted. “He has examined both the unhappy Indian man who perished in Montmartre and the cobra I killed.”

“How fortunate,” I murmured as I sat.

“Most unfortunate,” the doctor contradicted me. “This incident is a complete puzzle.” He flipped up his coattails and sat, cradling his glass in both hands with a familiarity all too common to the French when it comes to alcoholic beverages. “I am more baffled than when I first heard of the case.”

“Perhaps,” Godfrey suggested after he had brought me a glass of Vichy water, “you could begin by telling us the condition of the man.”

“Dead.” The doctor laughed. “And by cobra venom, though there were no fang marks upon the body. Most puzzling.”

At this Irene nearly leaped out of her chair. “No bite marks? But the snake I shot—”

“Was venomous, Madame. You did well to dispatch it. Yet it was not the means of the Indian gentleman’s death.”

“Do you mean to say, Dr. Sauveur,” Godfrey demanded, “that my wife and Miss Huxleigh found a man dead of snakebite alone in a room with a poisonous snake—and the snake was innocent?”

Dr. Sauveur shrugged and sipped sherry. “That is what Inspector Dubugue asked. But facts are facts. There were no fang marks on the dead man.”

“Were there any other marks upon him?” Irene inquired.

The doctor looked up with a moue of distaste. “I understand, Madame, that in your... past you were a theatrical performer and were thus accustomed to arming yourself as you went to and fro at night. Or so Inspector Dubugue tells me that you told him.”

Irene smiled mysteriously at his disapproving tone. Once she would have told him sternly that she had been a prima donna, not some obscure supernumerary one corset-cover removed from scandal. Now she dared not advertise her past respectability without betraying her past identity.

“My wife,” Godfrey put in for her, “is American. It is not uncommon that respectable women there carry weapons for self-defense.”

“Ah, America. Always the Wild West Show, no? So the Inspector told me that he was told. Still... for a woman to go armed in Paris is as unusual as for a man to die of snakebite without a mark upon his skin.”