Good Night, Mr. Holmes (27 page)

“Oh, please, Irene. I have not come all this way to annoy you. I have been terribly worried.”

She suddenly rose from her languid position and drove stiff fingers into the hair at her temples, as if easing an ever-present headache.

“Nell, I know only the most selfless motives brought you here, but lend me your patience as well as your loyalty. I must acquaint you with the
dramatis personae
of my unfolding little drama.”

“You talk as though you were caught in the plot of a grand opera.”

Irene laughed in a way I had never heard her express mirth before, a bit bitterly. She rose, the lace flounces of her robe curling behind her like seafoam as she stalked aimlessly around the chamber.

“Grand? No, the plot is not grand at all, nor is there any occasion for singing. I have mentioned you often as an old school friend of mine—don’t lift your eyebrows at my fiction. These... noble ... people know nothing of how working women in London must band together to survive; this explanation was simpler. Come, I will show you your room. Unpack, settle in, rest... then join me at dinner.”

She took my hand to lead me down a broad hall flanked by gilt furniture to a set of rooms nearly as grand as hers.

“And there?” I asked on what would be my own threshold. “What should I do at dinner?”

“Watch and pray,” Irene said cryptically, leaving me without another word.

I found my baggage within and a short, sturdy person who identified herself as Ludmilla, my maid. I persuaded her to leave after she had loosened my laces and had seen me into a lavish dressing gown that no doubt was Irene’s. Then I sat upon the testered bed—or rather, tried to sit; the feather quilt puffed so high that it nearly reached my waist.

Thus ensconced with my feet up so some blood should reach my head and aid concentration, I tried to puzzle out the situation. I had no mind to meet the overgrown “Willie” and his clan, nor to eat at a royal table where I should not know the fish fork from a pitchfork. I clasped my hands to clamp my rising dismay between them. The palms were damp. I tried to return my feet to the floor and found myself sinking even deeper into the down. It made the encompassing “situation” into which I had marched so confidently seem like the most luxurious sort of... quicksand.

Irene had apparently had no such qualms, for she was radiant at dinner. A servant stood behind each of us ready to assist in any way, so my table manners were handed to me upon a silver platter. It was impossible to go astray.

I bobbed with respectful independence on being presented to the Royal Family before the meal: the Crown Prince, so much of everything that Irene’s letters had described that I was left quite speechless; his mother, an astoundingly tiny woman with Delft-blue eyes and hair the color of blonde lace; his sister-in-law, the Duchess Hortense, an unfortunate creature in whom every family feature had found its most ungainly expression, and his unmarried younger brother, Bertrand, who was not as tall as the Crown Prince, and was balding and stuttered.

The middle brother was away at the family estates in southern Bohemia; one look at the angular Hortense would explain why. The father, the King in this case, was ill in his chambers, which explained why all the women wore subdued colors, even Irene. I, of course, always dressed in sober shades, so was perfectly proper in my charcoal faille dress with wine-colored velvet trim, even among royalty.

For all the easy chitchat, it was a strained occasion. The desultory evening that followed was mostly lost on me when all relaxed and conversed in German. Indeed, there was nothing for me
to do,
save watch and pray as Irene had urged.

I was rescued from the tedium into which I had sunk by the unheralded arrival of a small bristling grey dog, which flung itself at my skirts. Everyone laughed at this canine liberty, and I found it a relief to confront something that could communicate with me. I even began to cast my mind back to London, wondering how Godfrey and Casanova were getting on.

“Spaetzl has found a new friend,” Irene announced in English. “A Schnauzer,” she explained. “Pray let us give the dog a stroll in the portrait gallery while I lecture my friend on the von Ormstein ancestors.”

“Excellent.” The Queen’s face was as pale and seamed as Antwerp linen under her age-silvered blonde hair. The Prince stood as if to escort us.

“No, no, your Highness,” Irene said hastily. “You must not leave your family. It is my role to set my friend at ease.”

She led me off so quickly that no one could gracefully follow. The little dog capered at our heels, snapping at the velvet bows trimming Irene’s train.

She paid this attack upon her person no mind, but rushed me up marble stairs as wide as a Prague street (which were, on the whole, rather narrow) and into a long gallery. Trees of candelabra lit the length of the hall, flickering on the paintings that lined the walls and glinting from random curlicues of gilt frame.

“Look at this, Nell.” Irene pulled me toward a dim oil painting.

I gaped at a puddle of female skin tones—an anonymous Renaissance nude sprawling by a brook. Only a male painter would think so much billowing flesh artistic. “Must I?”

“It’s Reubens, I’m sure of it! And this next one—no, not the ermine-collared gent with the harelip, that’s some ancestor of Willie’s—here, this one!”

I saw red—the painting’s predominant color—and hazarded, “A Titian?”

“Yes!” Irene looked with narrowed eyes up and down the gallery. “And all labeled ‘By an unknown artist’! It is a crime; this hall is lined with mislabeled masterworks. If I were queen I’d import a Louvre art expert instantly. These paintings are worth a fortune and they’ve been forgotten. I suspect the oversight occurred in the late seventeenth century when the Hapsburgs moved their capital from Prague to Vienna. They meant to take everything of value with them, but like all royal families in sudden transit, became careless in their packing.”

I was possessed of an awful suspicion; Irene regarded unclaimed historical treasures like the Zone of Diamonds as fair game. “Irene. You don’t mean to... rescue... these works yourself?”

“Abscond with the paintings? You have grown imaginative, Nell! I have become successful, not depraved. No, I merely point out that a firm hand is needed here.”

‘The King’s business, surely.”

“He is gravely ill and has been so since before I met Willie in Warsaw.”

“The Queen, then.”

“I said a firm hand.”

“Ah... the Crown Prince.”

She laced her arm through mine and led me down the portrait-strewn gallery. Behind us the little dog’s nails clicked as it deserted us for the main chamber. “Willie... I have not yet told Willie what these paintings are.”

“Whyever not?”

“Because Willie has not yet told me what I am to be.”

‘To be?”

Irene shrugged carelessly. “Or
not
to be.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Irene, I have traveled relentlessly for five days, worried the whole while; I am in no mood to play cryptic games. As Casanova would say, ‘cut the cackle!’”

She drew back, her topaz-colored eyes widening. Then she laughed until the marble echoed and the painted faces all along the walls seem to smile with her.

“I had no idea, Nell, that Casanova numbered among your intimates.”

The stamp of my foot ended the echoes. “Casanova is a nasty, ill-spoken parrot, but at least he makes his meaning plain.”

“You are quite right. I have mystified you too long, only because I am mystified myself. Here, let us sit on this exceedingly uncomfortable marble bench. Thank God for bustles.”

“Well.”

Irene sighed. “Willie is madly in love with me.”

“Of course.”

She smiled at my partisanship. “He has showered me with gifts—most of which I have refused. He has escorted me about two ancient European cities as if permanently attached to my skirts. He was overjoyed when Dvořák proposed me for the Prague National Opera. He speaks as if we shall never part—”

“Then...?”

Irene studied the paintings. “Then I may very well be in a position soon to ‘rediscover’ these lost glories. It would mean much to the kingdom’s purse strings, and to the pride of the Czech people, of whom I have become very fond.”

“Then why not do it now?”

“Because Willie has not spoken.”

“Is it to be tit for tat?”

“No...” Irene turned back to me. “But I have struggled too long to turn over my high card without seeing what the other hand holds. Your Mr. Norton is right; court intrigues boil in these ancient cities. Warsaw, Prague... both are satraps of the greater Austro-Hungarian empire and spring from traditions of their own that resist the yoke of rule. It was only recently, after two hundred years, that the Czechs have been allowed officially to use their own language.” She tapped her foot on the hard marble. “I will take no step until I am sure my ground is firm.”

“So that is why I am here—to coax a proposal of marriage from Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein?”

She shook my arm admonishingly. “Nell, Nell, your memory is still inferior to none, but no, I need no aid with Willie. He gives all indication—”

She leaned nearer, her eyes bright. “It is no secret that most
prima donnas
wear genuine jewels, not paste, on stage, jewels bestowed by their wealthy admirers. It’s even less secret that they are mistresses to many of those admirers. I refused Willie’s offerings—even a suite of garnets, so gorgeous—but I could not compromise my independence. What one may accept from a client like Mr. Tiffany, who is after all a shopkeeper, one may not accept from a king, for a king—even a prince—has power and must not think he can use it in such a relationship as between man and woman.

“Willie was not used to being refused,” Irene confided. “The novelty quite undid the poor man. One evening after dinner he took me to a room in this castle and showed me the crown jewels. He put them upon me with his own hands, then clapped those royal hands and a photographer emerged from the next chamber. We were photographed together, I with rubies and diamonds garlanding my wrists, my neck, my temples. He gave me the photograph, saying it was an offering I could keep until a day when I could accept his gifts in reality...”

“He does mean to marry you! But, Irene, you would be queen. That can’t be!”

“And why not? Am I not queen on the stage, even when I sing the role of a Spanish cigarette girl?”

“You are sublime on stage, but... you are American, Irene. Surely a title holds no allure for you, with your native independence—”

“Independence! Independence is a step on the road to sovereignty. I will rise in this world as far as I can, and have you not seen the Prince? He is courtly, devoted, assured, a man of Continental upbringing, a lover of music—”

“Exactly. He is a European, a man of noble blood. However much he may admire you, he cannot, will not make you queen—”

She lashed upright like a whip, her silken gown crackling around her. “You know nothing of Willie, or the relationship between us. He has extended me the greatest respect. Another man in his position would have expected my favors by now. Oh, how can I expect a sheltered violet like yourself to understand these things, the... unspoken promise that may exist between a man and a woman!? That was not what I called you here to talk about!”

“Irene ...” I had never seen her so agitated, so easy to offend.

It was I who should have taken umbrage. Irene blithely dismissed my lack of sentimental education even as her words reminded me with piercing clarity of my lone moment of romantic magic, when the scales had fallen from my eyes with a blindfold, for just an instant—years before in a children’s playroom in Berkeley Square. Irene was too enmeshed in her own difficulties to heed my involuntary gasp.

“My possible marital adventure is not the most pressing problem, at any rate,” she continued.

“What is, then?”

“The King.”

“I have not met him, apparently he is ill.”

Irene rose and took a tiny step away from me, paused, then stepped back to press very close. Her face held the same brisk intelligence I had seen of old as she stared down at me. “The King is... dying. That everyone knows.”

“Oh. I’m very sorry, but I don’t see how I can help—”

She leaned closer, her silks snapping like distant lightning, with her voice the hushed contralto thunder that followed it.

“There is something that no one else knows—or, I should say, that only one other knows. I am convinced that he is being slowly poisoned!”

Chapter Nineteen

R
OMANCE IN A
M
INOR
K
EY

To see
my friend, Irene Adler, and the Crown Prince of Bohemia together in early 1887 was to witness the idyllic enactment of a Viennese operetta or a Strauss waltz.

Even I, who was most skeptical of their future, found myself softening as I accompanied them through the baroque beauties of old Prague.

Yet I remained hopelessly tongue-tied in the Prince’s company. Despite the fact that he, like Irene, was two years my junior, I found myself utterly intimidated by his foreign ways, his larger-than-life size, and even by his title. His heroic robust perfection awed me; Wilhelm von Ormstein made all romantic figures of fiction and fact shrink by comparison.