Another Scandal in Bohemia (36 page)

I was not aware of paling. Allegra kept hold of my hand and seized my arm to guide me to a chair seat.

“My dear girl,” I said when I had caught my breath, “you must put no faith in these street entertainers. How irresponsible of that gypsy woman to have said that! Don’t you see the opposite and more sinister implication?”

“Oh.” Allegra sat on the arm of my chair, suddenly sober. “She could have meant that I will see Quentin soon because I, too, will ere long be dead.”

“Nonsense!” Irene interrupted with her usual spirit. “Allegra is the apple of all our eyes and could not be safer. Gypsy fortune tellers are amusing but not a source of honest information. Speaking of safety—” She eyed Godfrey and myself in turn. “How went your interview with the estimable Tatyana?’

“Vile woman!” I blurted out despite myself. “She makes Sarah Bernhardt seem the soul of sweetness and light. I sense a deep unhappiness in her, yet it is clear that her immoral relationship with the King is more a matter of politics than of personal satisfaction, and somehow I find that more detestable than honest passion. She spoke quite readily of betraying the King if the Rothschild coffers opened wide enough to persuade her.”

Irene turned to her husband, who had become as withdrawn as she had been but moments before. “And what did
you
think of her, friend barrister?”

“A formidable woman and a wily opponent, as you suspected. She is the power behind the King, such as he is. One wonders if he requires a strong woman to lead
him,
either to good or ill.”

Irene shaped her clever, pretty hands into a steeple, spreading her small fingers and thumbs, and regarded this mirror image of opposing extremities.

“The King I knew,” she said, “considered himself strong enough to neither fear nor need an equally strong woman. Perhaps... vanity has since led him astray.” Her glance at Godfrey was swift and piercing. “Perhaps I would have been a good influence.” She smiled wickedly. “Then again, I am not thrifty. Perhaps I would have bankrupted the royal coffers and driven him into the hands of the bankers, the blackmailers, and the political plotters sooner rather than later.”

Godfrey spoke slowly. “He always was cold-blooded about his marriage, but at the beginning he at least wished to be discreet about his outside interests. I must wonder why he has capitulated to such an open alliance with this Tatyana when he would have hidden Irene in southern Bohemia?”

“If Tatyana is whom I believe her to be,” Irene said, “she is not merely a mistress, but a fellow plotter, a cohort. She may not even be his mistress; that may be a mere subterfuge. Certainly, she has no true feeling for him. Nell? Did you watch and observe?”

“Religiously, Irene!”

Godfrey stirred. “What does Irene mean, Nell? Was more going on at the visit to the Belgrade Hotel than I realized?”

“I’m sorry to disillusion you, Godfrey, but I had a hidden assignment. Irene is convinced—on very little evidence, I might add—that Tatyana is the Russian woman we glimpsed consorting with Colonel Moran at Sarah Bernhardt’s salon.”

“That woman’s hair was a heavy, honey blond!” Godfrey objected instantly. “And she was not quite so tall.”

Irene chortled triumphantly. “How specifically you noticed, husband dear! Yet men are so swayed by externals. It never crossed your mind, I would wager, that you have just spent nearly an hour in the same woman’s company.” He frowned, trying to mesh his memories of the two women.

“Nell, however,” Irene went on, “suffers no such handicaps, although I admit she was as much a Doubting Thomas as you. So, Nell, what is your verdict?”

“She could be the same impertinent creature,” I admitted, “with her hair tinted red. And she could be wearing high heels. Yet, in that case, should she not have immediately recognized you and Godfrey, if not me as well?”

“Who is to say that she hasn’t?” Irene suggested. “Certainly she will not oblige us by confessing that! If she is the spy I suspect, she is far too subtle to give away a game until the last card is played.”

“The fur is most suspicious,” I added.

“Fur?’ Irene inquired.

“Her gown tonight—other than being most shockingly... unanchored—was edged all over in some very soft brown fur, like Messalina’s, only much lighter in texture and color.”

Irene eyed her silent spouse, who was looking more appalled by the moment.

“No doubt Godfrey hardly noted such details of dress, even such an interesting... unanchored... gown. And did you have an opportunity to consult your diaries, Nell, and did a blond woman loiter near Notre Dame when we encountered Quentin there?”

“Yes,” I murmured unhappily.

Why it distressed me so much when Irene was right about some apparently trivial detail, I cannot say, except that I am the diarist and she rarely deigns to write down anything.

“In fact,” I added, “on rereading my observations I must ask myself if she could not have easily administered the cobra poison injection that leveled poor Quentin at our feet on that unfortunate occasion. She brushed by him very closely, and she was wearing a gown edged in some brown fur, although the weather was warm for it.”

“Ah!” Irene leaped up in a huntress’s rapture. “I thought she might have been suspect in that. And this fur sounds the nature of a trademark. A woman like Tatyana is prone to a fatal vanity. Can you recognize sable when you see it, Nell?”

“I fear not. But if it is brown, fine, and looks costly, I suppose that is what she wears. My diaries also confirm the point you mentioned, that a Russian spy named Sable was in the neighborhood of Afghanistan when Quentin, as Cobra, went head-to-head with his traitorous fellow British spy, Tiger, whom we now know as Colonel Sebastian Moran.”

‘Perfect!” Irene crowed, prancing around the room as gaily as Allegra. In fact, she caught the girl’s hands in passing and they both galloped over the carpets as if at a May dance, until they collapsed together on a sofa, laughing. “We have named our mongoose and it is a Sable,” Irene chortled.

“Oh, Mrs. Norton, you are such fun!” Allegra said, panting, “but I have not the slightest notion of what you are talking about most of the time.”

“Welcome to the ranks of those who know Irene,” Godfrey said a trifle grimly. “Why did you not tell me your suspicions?” he demanded of his wife in the next breath.

“Because I wanted an objective observer, and—pardon me, Godfrey—men are not always the most objective when it comes to femmes fatales. Now you may tell me what
you
think of Tatyana, her motives and ends, her scarlet-dyed hair and shifting furs.”

“Nell exaggerates the furs,” he said uneasily, “but I believe that you are right: she does not love the King. I doubt she could love any man, she is so enamored of herself and her games of manipulation.”

“It is possible to loathe men, and still use them; in fact, necessary. Yet if she is indeed a Russian spy of longstanding, any alliance she makes will only serve her first loyalty, to her country and perhaps to a man who introduced her to spy work.”

“Colonel Moran?” I suggested.

Irene whirled at my question. “I doubt that, although they may be associates of long standing.”

Another matter puzzled me. “If we have deciphered her role and presence, why should she not know us?”

“She may, but she would no more reveal that than I would drop my pose of Lady Sherlock and go about as ordinary Irene Adler Norton.”

“There is nothing ordinary about you, Mrs. Norton,” Allegra intoned in the voice of pure heroine worship.

“Thank you,” Irene said modestly, “but we dare not bask now that we have measured our opponent. Obviously, the King is the weakest link in this alliance, and there we should concentrate our attention. We know that rivals do not sit well with him. Perhaps we should try his soul. Perhaps Godfrey should pay some outward attention to the fair Tatyana.”

He jumped as if scalded. “I think not, Irene. She is no one to trifle with.”

“Oh, pooh! I am not suggesting any serious seduction, merely a few politenesses of which news may travel back to Prague Castle. You might send her flowers, for instance, in thanks for today’s interview. And you will always be chaperoned by Nell, of course.”

Irene glided to take hold of Godfrey’s lapels in the same insinuating manner as the detestable Tatyana, although with a far more silken, mocking touch, almost as if she had anticipated Tatyana’s wiles and their exact form. “I know I can trust you utterly, dear Godfrey, no matter what vixen you are forced to associate with.”

“I have no difficulty associating with the trustworthy vixen; indeed, I am accustomed to it. But what of the untrustworthy vixen?” he murmured.

“A vixen is only as untrustworthy as her victim,” Irene declared, “and I have implicit faith in you.” She turned to us. “As well as in Nell and Allegra.”

She regarded us two with a blinding smile, but I noticed a cast of deep unease on Allegra’s face that rivaled a similar expression on Godfrey’s.

After dinner, employing wiles that I would hitherto have attributed only to the despised Tatyana, I managed to separate Allegra from my friends by suggesting that I could use her advice. I refused to say upon what subject—which wildly intrigued Irene, but she could not harass me in public.

Thus Allegra came to my chamber for the alleged consultation, while Irene and Godfrey proceeded about their own business of the evening.

“How sweet and clever of you!” Allegra congratulated me as soon as my chamber door closed upon us.

“Whatever are you speaking about?”

“Why... how you arranged for Godfrey and Irene—I mean, the Nortons—to escape our tiresome presence so they could be alone. Obviously, they were dying for some privacy.”

“What is obvious to you is far from so to me,” I returned, affronted. “And my... request relates only to you and me.”

“Surely you noticed that this rooming arrangement is most trying for a married couple?”

“It is? I am afraid that has not occurred to me, and other than the Incident of the Wandering Chambermate, I have noticed no dissatisfaction with the present arrangement.”

“You have been sleeping alone,” Allegra noted.

“I should hope so. I am a spinster, after all, and I do not see what is not my business.”

“I am a spinster as well,” Allegra pointed out with a disavowing pout, “but I am not blind!”

“Nor am I,” I retorted, getting to the matter at hand. “There is something of which I must know more, which has nothing to do with the rooming arrangements of my friends, wed or unwed.”

I sat on the upholstered chair, as I was the elder. Allegra, instead of taking the straight chair, as, say, Godfrey would do, plumped herself down upon my bed, wrinkling the coverlet.

“What, Miss Huxleigh, is your hidden purpose for this meeting?^’ she demanded mischievously. “And do you have nothing to eat? I am hungry already.”

Since I had seen her consume great quantities of mediocre Bohemian food at dinner, I was surprised, to say the least.

“There is some fruit in a basket on the desk.”

“Fruit! Oh, well.”

She flounced to the desk to capture some grapes and returned to my bed, which she proceeded to bounce upon. Indeed, I had forgotten the exuberance of the young, and blessed fate that my governess days were over.

“What are you worried about?” she asked, silting up to peel a grape in a disgusting manner. “Cat’s eyes!” she announced, swallowing the product of her depredation.

I tried to remember that even the young can be valuable witnesses if properly led during an examination.

“Allegra, dear; I am most fearful that I have not heard the full report of your and Irene’s day about Prague. Certainly I have heard nothing of the Queen’s role in all of this.”

“Oh, the Queen. What a darling! So shy. So... well, shockingly unqueenly. Irene says that she has had a cruel trick of fate played upon her, and that whenever the World attempts to turn a Queen into a Pawn, it is up to We Women to Right the Balance.”

“We women?’ I stared at Allegra, who was lying prone upon my lofty feather comforter, popping peeled grapes into her mobile mouth.

Allegra sat up by pounding her fists into the over-ambitious feathers. “Yes! I think it quite remarkable of Irene to forgive her former rival and take her part. The King is unworthy of both of them put together, even though, between us, Irene would be six times the Queen poor Clotilde will ever be!”

“Irene... told you of her former... expectations of the King? I didn’t know—”

“What do you think we talked of during four interminable days of rail travel across Europe? The King... men in general and particular. Fashion. Men in general and particular. My possible future. Irene’s past. Men in general and particular.”

I had not expected to experience the spasm of jealousy that I did. Allegra now knew such things a decade before I even had considered them.

“What men... in particular... did you speak of?”

“The King, of course. He is our main target on this mission. And... Godfrey, a bit. Irene was most understanding of my admiration for him, but she says that it will pass. And... Quentin,” she added, biting her lip.

Tears suddenly polished her already bright eyes. “I remember him from the pinnacle of my youth, dear Miss Huxleigh—and you as well. He is the first person whom I have cared for who is supposed to be dead. I admit that I cherished a... fondness for him, although we were related, but Irene says that this, too, is quite natural. She said that I was fortunate to have such a worthy object of admiration in my youth.”

I had been young in those days, as well, as young as I ever was. I clasped my hands, then donned my pince-nez, and took up a blank notebook.

“Allegra. I am most interested in your and Irene’s visit to this fortune teller. Did the Queen go as well?”

“Oh, yes. She went everywhere with us. She wore one of her maid’s gowns and... she loved being nobody. Really and truly! She is so much more pleasant away from the castle. Almost like an ordinary person. I cannot tell you what good our outing did her. She almost wept to return.”

“What did the fortune teller really say? I could see that you reported only part of it.”