Good Night, Mr. Holmes (12 page)

One by one and two by two the guests departed. I knew Irene had capitulated when she collected the quiet gentleman and withdrew despite all pleadings that she stay. Lillie Langtry left only then, drawing the remaining lone gentlemen after her in a train.

Mrs. Stoker finally revisited my table. “Nicely done, Miss Huxleigh. May we count on you for Sunday next?”

“No! That is, I will not be able to come here again.”

“Oh?”

“It is not possible. I am sorry.”

“Another position? But this is for a few hours only. Perhaps you can manage it.”

“I cannot,” I said firmly, trying to excuse myself with the truth. “I am not comfortable in such a role.”

“Ah, you disapprove of our set. That is understandable, given your clerical background. Well, I cannot argue with philosophical differences. Cook will pay you on your way out. Good day.”

My pay was a half-sovereign, nearly enough to make me reconsider. I waited where Irene had left me, and a hansom soon rattled up. Her escort leaped out to aid me inside, then tipped his hat and walked down the road.

“You were not planning to go alone at all,” I reproached Irene. “You did not tell me about Mr. Pinkerton.”

“A lady needs an escort, however perfunctory, but I required a more sensitive observer than he. We will have a tea party post-mortem by the hearth tonight. Did you manage to acquire any delicacies for dinner? You had motive and opportunity. Oh, do not bestir yourself so; I already feared as much. We shall have Mrs. Minucci’s lasagna—again. By the bye, it is not Mr. Pinkerton. The gentleman is
a
Pinkerton, a fellow London agent, only one of several.”

“
Hmm
. And what have you achieved by making a spectacle of yourself and a pourer of me?”

“A great deal. Someone mentioned the Zone. I shall have to look into the matter of ‘old Norton’ further.”

“But he’s dead!”

“The dead, my dear Nell, are often the surest source of knowledge. After the agony columns, you would do well to study the obituaries. Whole novels by Thackeray and Hardy, scores of Wagnerian operas and dozens of Webster’s ‘White Devils’ and ‘Duchesses of Malfi’ lie hidden among those succinct little threnodies to perished greengrocers and consumptive debutantes.

“Survivors and heirs, old family wounds and fresh new wills, marriage and remarriage, greed and sorrow. Sometimes I even suspect that they contain the traces of murder never found out—murder by hand and more frequently murder by word. The latter is not a criminal act but can be equally lethal.”

This thrilling monologue, rendered with affecting drama, held me rapt but dubious. “You read all this into the daily obituaries, Irene?”

She simply smiled. “The dead speak volumes. And why not? Who—at last—is to contradict them?”

Chapter Seven

U
NEXPECTED
V
ISITORS

The jaunt
to Cheyne Walk might not have uncovered the Zone of Diamonds, but it showed me Irene Adler playing a role in which I had never seen her:  
femme fatale.

I had always assumed that Irene’s worldliness far exceeded mine and usually avoided speculating as to what extent. Certainly she rivaled the Sphinx in keeping silent on her past. As for the present, while she associated professionally with men, I saw no signs that the connections were anything other than that. I could never have stomached living with a courtesan, no matter how discreet.

Yet it puzzled me that a woman of Irene’s beauty should ignore the giddy temptations presented to unattached women in her position. The only explanation was the pride she took in her many talents; she would not spend them cheaply—and most women cede their own pursuits when they wed (or even when they stoop to being some man’s mistress), becoming more fabled for their role than their reality.

Then, too, possibly Irene had been wounded in an early romantic attachment and henceforward escaped the blandishments of hearts, flowers and other less-sentimental realities that lurk beneath the Valentine lacework. Even in my limited experience, romantic stirrings brought painful confusion rather than joy.

Whatever my speculations, though Irene violated every minor convention governing a woman of good reputation during our association, I never saw her bow in the least to behavior that hinted at the sordid scandal so beloved of the newspapers.

The spring of 1882—and of Irene’s dazzling debut into Chelsea society as a personality, if not a gainfully employed artiste—brought sweeping changes to our chambers high above the operatic warbles of Saffron Hill street peddlers.

First, if I may edge my own small achievement to the fore, I received certification as a qualified “typewriter girl,” as an operator of the new typewriting instrument was now called. The document, engraved in a spidery longhand, struck me as incongruous given the mechanical skill it celebrated.

I soon found myself in modest demand as a “temporary” employee called into offices throughout the City and surrounding villages to spin copperplate into cold type, so to speak. Other than needing spectacles—a tasteful if inhalation-inhibiting pince-nez that perched upon the bridge of my nose—to decipher these often illegible scribblings, I found the work congenial. Unraveling the mysteries of various hands to produce readable type gave me a strange satisfaction. In grander moments, I saw myself as revealing Rosetta Stones of lost meaning to a waiting world.

Surprisingly, my nomadic employment suited me. Perhaps I had acquired Irene’s taste for the ebb and flow of sudden assignments. More likely, my humiliating experience at Whiteley’s had converted me to the benefits of will-’o-the-wispery: since I seldom stayed long at any establishment there was small opportunity to make enemies or edge into office intrigues.

I became a fearless patron of the ubiquitous omnibus and soon knew the major streets of London as if they were limned upon my palm. I had money in my handbag and feathers on my new workaday bonnet. In other words, I felt myself an independent woman.

If Parson Huxleigh’s orphan daughter was surviving, Irene Adler was thriving. Her jaunt to Bram Stoker’s tea had earned her an audition for the latest Gilbert & Sullivan light opera at the newly built Savoy Theatre on the Embankment. Her soon-won role did not suit her voice, she said dismissively, but she relished immersion in the theatrical life again and rigorously pursued the Zone of Diamonds among the Chelsea set.

I fretted that she must travel about town so late at night, but as usual was dismissed.

“You worry about me, Nell? You who so nearly donated all your worldly goods to a Whitechapel waif when we met? My profession requires the freedom of the city. I must go about alone at night; how else would I rehearse and perform?”

“I would feel better if you had escort home.”

“Oh, that could be arranged,” Irene said with flashing eyes. “A good many gentlemen of the town stand ready to escort even a bit player like myself home after the performance—with a detour to a private restaurant, a carriage ride through Hyde Park... No doubt you should sleep easier if I obtained such shepherding.”

“Heavens, no! It’s simply that I worry for your safety.”

“Worry not. I have my devices.”

“Wit will not talk you out of every corner,” I warned.

“This will.” Irene produced a sinister little revolver from her all-purpose muff.

“Gracious! I’ve never seen such a fierce mechanism. It’s somehow more intimidating than a typewriter was to me at first.”

“It’s meant to be intimidating, darling Nell.”

“You could actually discharge it at someone?”

“If it meant my life.”

“Put it away! Its very existence proves that you take my point. London streets at night are dangerous for a woman alone.”

“It is dangerous for a woman alone anywhere at any time,” Irene retorted. “Such is the nature of the society and century in which we live. It is up to women to reverse the situation.”

“You fancy yourself as dangerous?” I had never thought of a woman as a weapon, only as a bulwark and that of the home, not the larger society.

“Oh, I am very dangerous, Nell. You have no idea what a Bohemian you reside with. If I had my way, we would live in a very different world.” She smiled and tucked the gleaming black revolver into a pocket inside her muff. “And I doubt you’d like it all.”

“
Hmph
,” I sniffed, knowing better than to pursue such a conversation. Irene would have her anarchist moods. I refused to let my own sensible opinions serve as a lucifer to light her incendiary ideas.

So Irene came and went at her late hours, and I came and went at my more conventional times. Often our paths would not cross for days. It was mere chance that I happened to be at home one windy and wet April afternoon when a note was delivered to Irene, who had risen late and was sipping chocolate in her Oriental wrap.

A sudden rustle of stiff silk jolted me from the latest novel of Mrs. Oliphant, which I had obtained at a circulating library.

“We must neaten up at once, Nell! We are to have an eminent guest.”

“A guest?” I leapt up guiltily, straightening the antimacassars covering my easy chair’s worn arms. Our only guests hitherto had been Mr. and Mrs. Minucci or their singularly untalented daughter, Sofia.

I began sweeping the scattered newsprint into the fireplace to both warm our environs and eliminate clutter.

“Not the Agony Column!” Irene shrieked, rushing to rescue the lurid pages from the blaze. “And it is ourselves we must first make presentable—very presentable. Mr. Oscar Wilde is to arrive at three.”

“Oh. Him.” I dropped the armful of ribbons I had swept from the seat of Irene’s sewing chair back to the cushion. “A most nonsensical person. I don’t doubt that disarray ‘inspires’ him.”

Irene paced, fanning the note before her face. “However you judge him, he is a man of the moment in London’s artistic circles. Notorious, yes, but with notoriety comes... notice. This is exactly what my poor stalled career needs. And”—she turned triumphantly to me, her eyes shining—”he mentions a private matter I might help with. I believe he is a client.”

“Truly, Irene, I prefer you walking out at all hours to rehearse an opera over continuing in this tawdry investigative sideline of yours. Better Mr. Wilde be a sponsor than a client.”

“Why not both?” Irene said lightly. “Besides, I am so put out at my failure with the Zone of Diamonds. All my inquiries have led no further than this ‘old Norton,’ whom I begin to swear does not and never did exist. If I successfully assist Oscar Wilde, who knows what doors shall open to me?”

“Unsavory ones, I’ve no doubt,” I murmured.

“But I am a ruin!” she suddenly cried, shaking out her wrap. “I must make myself respectable.”

I held my tongue as Irene dashed into her chamber, leaving me to tidy the main room and conceal my daybed niche behind the threadbare curtains that masked it. With our best efforts at our separate talents—mine domestic and Irene’s cosmetic—our rooms and persons were ordered if not ordinary by three o’clock.

A knock did not come at our door until three-twenty. Irene opened it to the same tall, pale young man who had praised my pouring abilities at the Stokers’ reception. Of course I did not expect him to remember me.

“Miss Adler.” He bore a bouquet wrapped in tissue, which he changed from hand to hand as I unobtrusively removed his damp greatcoat and arranged it on the unnamed (and unclothed) dressmaker’s dummy that Irene used in the front room as a coat rack.

Mr. Wilde noted the bizarre stratagem with an approving nod and began unpeeling wet tissue from the wind-chilled flowers. I thought of onion skins.

“I confess myself at a loss, Miss Adler, in selecting a floral offering to adequately pay you tribute. I rejected the lily for obvious reasons: another, although equal, beauty has claimed it. The sunflower, although greatly favored, is too full-blown for your refined loveliness. I considered the regal iris, but it is a touch common. Thus I have—”

Oh, get on with it, I thought uncharitably while subsiding into the background. Irene smiled politely at this flowery discourse as if she cared what blossoms he would produce. They would be wilted within a week in any case.

“—decided upon the rare Holland tulip!” With this he whisked away the last of the tissue, revealing a cluster of blood-purple blooms ruffled to cerise along their extravagant edges. Even I gasped at their glory.

“They are called Borgia Tears, but, alas, have no scent.”

Irene laughed, delighted, as she took the glamorous bouquet. “You are not only a wit and poet, Mr. Wilde, but a sublime diplomat. You have chosen perfectly—give me the royal color and velvet sheen of the opera house curtain, give me mystery and drama over mere odor any day.”

“And for your charming companion...” Here, to my horror, Mr. Wilde turned to me. “I see you were as taken with her pouring at the Stokers’ as I and have stolen her away to preside at your hearth. I anticipated no other lady, but could not resist lily of the valley at the florist’s for my rooms. Accept this nosegay, dear Miss...?”