Another Scandal in Bohemia (11 page)

Godfrey’s mood visibly lifted as Irene’s optimism sprang into full flower. He smiled and nodded throughout her speech, and at one point I thought that he would actually applaud. (During the “fate of entire governments” part, I believe.)

“Then what on earth is the matter?” she finished up.

He sighed and sipped, sipped and sighed. Men are so deliberate at times!

“Baron Alphonse’s emissary was most definite on a certain point.”

We leaned forward as one, Irene and I, recognizing the crux of the matter as hounds scent prey. “Yes?” we chorused.

“You must also attend this meeting.”

I sat back, satisfied. “Of course it is only proper that your wife be present at such a vital juncture. The Baron shows much nicety for including Irene.”

Godfrey regarded me complacently. “The Baron exhibited enough nicety to insist that you also attend.”

“I? Surely not! Why would Baron Alphonse de Rothschild even know of my existence?”

“You sound insulted, Nell,” Irene said with amusement. “I imagine the Baron is aware of you because his family operates the most efficient spy network in Europe.”

“Spies!”

"Information gatherers and dispensers,” she amended. “Every successful business depends upon such servitors, and bankers more than most.”

“I do not like the notion of some ‘spy’ knowing about my existence,” I said.

“At least we can rest assured that the Rothschild spies are thorough.” Irene turned to Godfrey again. “Are Casanova, Lucifer, and Messalina included in this rather blanket social invitation?”

“No... but they were mentioned.”

Even Irene was impressed. “What are your reservations?”

“You have named them. The Rothschilds are rich and powerful. Such people draw envy and enemies. They are also of the Jewish faith. Such folk draw controversy, particularly in these times. Working for them might be dangerous.”

“A wonderful recommendation!” Irene cried, carried away again. “You said yourself Paris law was dull.”

“I am also troubled by their inclusion of you and Nell in the meeting, and its secrecy. I cannot be sure what they have in mind.”

“Of course you cannot,” Irene said. “That is what makes life exciting. Don’t be such a... barrister, Godfrey. Obviously the Rothschilds have become aware of your sterling qualities. If they take notice of us humble females attached to your star, so be it. We can only be courteous and go and find out what they want.”

“Curiosity,” I warned, in a voice of doom.

“What?” Irene asked.

“You can only be curious,” I responded, “and think what trouble that has caused you in the past.”

“Yes,” she agreed happily, rising to dance over to Casanova’s cage and whisk away the chintz cover.

“
Arrhhk
/” The bird protested past indignities as his blindfold lifted. He sidled along the perch, cocked his gaudy head, and, for the first time in his long and blasphemous life, supported me to the hilt.

“Curious!” he barked at Irene, thrusting out his neck until his feathers ruffled. “Curiosity killed the canary.”

“You’ve got it wrong,” Irene told him, nose to beak.

The large yellow beak opened, but she darted back before he could close it on her nose.

“Has he?” I wondered.

Godfrey caught my eye, his expression as he watched Irene half doting and half apprehensive.

I feared that our little domestic trio was to the family Rothschild and their minion birds as canaries are to hawks, but I said nothing.

Chapter Seven

STAG PARTY

Why is
it that large French country estates resemble nothing so much as the overblown public buildings of London? Perhaps, even in retreat, the French cannot help showing off.

Certainly Napoleon is a prime example of that, even if his antecedents were Corsican offshoots of an obscure but prolific Italian family. I have no reason to be fond of Mediterranean islands or of any of their products, however infamous, given the island of Crete’s sinister role in another of Irene’s adventures the previous spring.

The Rothschild château Ferrières reminded me of the Royal Courts of Justice building recently erected on Fleet Street opposite the Temple where Godfrey and I had toiled together: acres of shining white stone interrupted by an excessive number of spire-topped towers.

We had much time to gaze upon the massive edifice as our coach, pulled by two ponderous, feathery-hocked horses, ground up the circular drive. Following a train journey from Paris to tiny Ozoir-la-Ferrière and a subsequent jolting in the Rothschild conveyance I was not surprised to find that the great house cast a double image in my tired eyes.

At last, however, we all three stood on solid paving stones gazing up at what, to me, resembled an inverted chest of drawers belonging to a giant. I said so.

Godfrey looked askance, for a gentleman of dignified bearing was descending the stairs toward us even as I spoke. Irene’s eyes again swept the grandiose facade as if she were viewing it for the first time, then she attempted, successfully, to stifle a snicker.

We were all in reasonable order as the dignified gentleman offered a welcome and led us indoors. If the Chȃteau de Ferrières’ exterior was imposing, its interior positively intimidated. The Great Hall was ornamented in Napoleon III style. Unfortunately, the Bonaparte influence had not only changed the face of Europe on the battlefield but had altered the surface of many a house and garden on the fashion front for some decades after his well-deserved defeat.

My humble English pen balks at listing the quantity of precious items strewn about, save that they included several plump towering pillars, a king’s ransom in ormolu and gilt, paintings as ubiquitous as postage stamps, and an outright infestation of fringed and tasseled furniture, much of it velvet in vivid shades of rose and moss-green.

The centerpiece of this domestic exhibition was a tall marble column surrounded by a circular couch. Atop this column sat a clock with a figure that I supposed to be Atlas bearing the world on his weary shoulders. On the other hand, it could have represented the architect of Ferrières facing the task of constructing such a bloated edifice.

The distinguished gentleman turned us over to the guidance of a soberly dressed woman who conducted us up a massive staircase. I resisted the urge to turn back and gaze on the impressive room below, for fear I should fall, or at least turn into a pillar of salt. My attention was fixed, at any rate, by a succession of heroic-sized paintings depicting ancient gods and goddesses in the pursuit of game both animal and human, and all of it virtually undressed.

“Shocking,” I muttered.

“Rubens,” came Irene’s reverential whisper. “Snyders. “Desportes.”

Being wise, Godfrey took in all and said nothing.

We were shown in turn to separate suites along an endless passage of such accommodation.

Although my bedchamber was spacious, it featured a canopied bed, which I dislike due to dust and other invasions of an insect nature. And the walls were covered in a colorful fabric with a design of... perching parrots. Was there no escape?

The moment the conductress had opportunity to disappear in the manner of good servants, our doors popped open on the common passage, and we began a round of visiting, inspecting, and judging each other’s chambers.

“A veritable fairy-tale palace!” Irene excl
aim
ed at the entrance hall of her suite, as she led Godfrey and myself through bedroom and toilet chamber into a private bathroom with fireplace. “Everything appears as if from invisible hands. Look! The fires are lit, the proper bags are delivered before we arrive.”

“Monsieur le Baron
was most cordial in greeting us,” I put in, determined to make the best of our summons to this palatial pile.

Irene gawked at me most rudely. “That was not the Baron, silly Nell; that was the butler. The Baron will greet us at dinner, which the housekeeper told us was at nine.”

“Short rations for a long time,” Godfrey commented as he sat on the wood-enclosed bathtub and began fiddling with the spigots. “And we may not even see the Baron himself. I was visited by emissaries.”

“Surely we have not been brought all this way—before the hunting season—to see only an understudy!” Irene objected.

“Most ingenious,” Godfrey ajudged the plumbing, “especially considering this chateau was constructed thirty-some years ago.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “the sanitary facilities are almost English in their efficiency. At least I shall have a good bath.” This last was an oblique comment on the tiny room that so poorly served this function at Neuilly.

Irene, deaf to complaints about her cherished cottage once she was ensconced in a palace again, chattered on. “Fruit baskets bedeck every room,” she told Godfrey, “which ought to quench your appetite. Our Nell has attained the proper Englishwoman-abroad’s dream: hot water and lots of it. And I will have a Rothschild in the flesh for dinner tonight, or I will raise a ruckus that will shake the Rubens from their walls.”

“You sound quite a cannibal,” I protested as a timid knock rapped on the entrance hall door.

Irene strode to answer it and discovered a white-capped maid in mid-curtsy. It seemed we were all simultaneously subjected to such visitations, and were needed in our suites to direct our attendants in unpacking.

I also heard mention of assistance at our baths and dressing for dinner, but hoped that I had misunderstood the extremely misunderstandable language of France. At least a man servant stood waiting beside Godfrey’s suite door.

Of the further ordeals of being a guest at Ferrières I will not say much more. The maid found my disinclination to disrobe in front of her most incomprehensible, but did insist on drawing my bath.

I confess that I found sinking into the warm fragrant water of a zinc-lined tub while firelight fluttered on the gilded fittings rather amenable. And despite the acres of time that stretched to the dinner hour, finding the clothes the maid had tucked away and then dressing—by myself, of course—used up sufficient time that I barely had a moment to eat an apple before a knock on the door called me to the feast below.

Godfrey wore white tie and tails, which always made him look taller and more handsome, neither of which quality required amplification. Irene had restrained herself from bringing her new Worth gown, instead donning midnight blue velvet softened with pearls and silver cord. I wore a “surprise” dress—not my staple costume of black and old rose with the reversible reveres, but the second Liberty gown, a luminous ivory satin over pale pink taffeta that blushed through like a tinted seashell lighted from within.

“Nell positively glows,” Godfrey said gallantly, offering me his free arm.

“She is one of the fortunate few who can wear pink without looking fatuous,” Irene commented. “I, on the other hand, look like Little Bo-Peep in pink.”

“In midnight blue you look as if you would lead a great many sheep astray, rather than merely lose them,” Godfrey told her, eyeing the gown’s formidable décolletage.

“I hope I am appropriately gowned to meet a Rothschild, as I will not be fobbed off on a mere flunky or two,” she responded quite sternly.

“Irene, you are tediously curious,” I warned her again.

“Better than being curiously tedious,” she retorted. “Onward, to dinner at Chateau Questionmark.”

We three tripped down the long, broad royal staircase like the Three Musketeers off to mutual duels with d’Artagnan.

From the main hall, the head butler conducted us to a drawing room appointed all in white. Irene flounced into that pale background like a royal widow, but I was afraid to sit anywhere, lest I leave some disarray behind, some unseen soil, even an indented cushion that would create a gray shadow.

The butler poured us each a sherry in glasses as delicate as a crystal bird's egg, then withdrew.

Irene settled onto a white brocade bergère, a blue-black rook nested on a snow bank, cosseting her burnished liquor. “We seem to be our own best company so far this night.”

“Interesting,” said Godfrey, flipping up his tails one-handed and sitting on a hard chair.

I hovered by the closed doors, hoping for footsteps.

“This is carrying invisibility too far,” Irene said at last, rising. She floated soundlessly over the pale Aubusson carpet to another door and jerked it open.

Two pale-faced men in evening dress stood there.

Godfrey leaped up. “Durfort. Marbeau.”

“The gentlemen who called upon you?” Irene inquired in a deceptively limpid tone.

He nodded slowly.

“Now they eavesdrop upon us,” she went on, her voice gaining timbre. “You appear to have been visited by a delegation of sneaks, Godfrey.”

One man stepped into the room. “You mistake us, Madame. We were about to announce the arrival of Baron Alphonse from Paris.”

Irene’s tilted head and lifted eyebrows made her face a mask of polite incredulity. “The Baron arrives by the back way?”

“The Baron arrives discreetly,” the other man returned.

“In his own house?”

“Sometimes, Madame, even that is required.”