Another Scandal in Bohemia (37 page)

“Could you?” Allegra pounded the feather quilt like a child in a tantrum. “I did think I had been so... subtle.”

“Allegra. I once was your governess. It is true that I was young myself then, but I was not blind,” I said, paraphrasing the minx.

“Oh, Miss Huxleigh, you are not half so blind as you would have us all think! And I must tell you. My fortune spoke so glowingly of Uncle Quentin. I shall see him again, I know I shall! Only—” Her face sobered.

In an instant her high spirits fell. A childish look of fear touched her features.

“Oh, Miss Huxleigh, the woman said such... odd things. It was not the small thing here and there that struck me—that I shall marry many times and have many children. One expects to hear such nonsense from a gypsy fortune teller. Or that Irene will have a tattoo and go to Tibet. How I wish that you had been there! Perhaps you could have made some sense of it She spoke... direly also... to all three of us. I confess that it haunts me.”

I decided to begin with the fortunes that least touched me. “What did she say to the Queen?”

“Oh, that was odd! She said that Clotilde would rise higher in the world than she appeared to be at this moment.”

“Indeed, Clotilde has already done that. Could the fortune teller have recognized her?”

“In the Old Town? I doubt it, but it is possible. Then she said that she saw a chess board—”

“Irene’s metaphor!”

“Exactly. With three Queens and two Kings upon the squares.”

“A chess set has two Queens and two Kings.”

“I know. It is like a secret message from one of Uncle Quentin’s anonymous spies! Clotilde was quite bewildered, but Irene leaned forward and listened as if she took this all quite seriously.”

What could I say? That I had sat in the same rug-draped room with Irene eighteen months before, and learned that the letter “G” named the man whose fate entwined Irene’s? The King of Bohemia’s middle name was “Gottsreich,” which Irene thought of at the time, not “Godfrey,” whom I knew then as a kind employer who was hostile to her, not as my friend’s spouse-to-be. So far as I knew from my one experience, the gypsy fortune teller had an unnervingly accurate record, which Allegra could not know, and would not know until I had wormed every detail from her.

“What did this woman—she was old?”

“Aren’t they always?”

“I fear so. What more did she say of Clotilde?”

“That true love had not found her, but would.”

“A sop.”

“Perhaps, but it cheered the Queen.”

“Was a date given for this miracle?”

“No.” Allegra blinked and bit her lip again. “Dear Miss Huxleigh—may I call you ‘Nell’? I feel the fortune-teller has drawn us all together in common hope... and common disaster.”

Who was I to insist on proper formalities when so much that was improper was unfolding around us?

“Call me what you will,” I urged her, “but tell me what you know.”

“Dear Nell... I must say that although the woman promised me a reunion with Uncle Quentin she also promised much danger—soon. And for Irene—”

“What did she say about Irene?”

“She said that three queens reigned in Prague at present. One would triumph; one would escape; and one would... face mortal danger.”

“Irene triumphs. Always.”

“In... Prague? Always?”

“In Prague as well. True, we fled this city once, but that was triumph. It is all in how one looks at it, Allegra.”

“Yet the old woman said that Irene was in mortal danger.”

“She said so—specifically?”

“Yes. And... myself.”

“You! Why should anyone wish to harm you?”

“I cannot imagine. Irene was most disturbed, I could see, although she made light of all our predictions after we had left the place. I sensed that she regretted taking us there.”

“So she should. She has a fearful weakness for the lurid. Remember that most fortune tellers should be on stage, and often have been.”

“Yes, Nell.” Said quite meekly, despite the personal presumption I had permitted in a weak moment. I had my own frailties.

“Did the old woman say anything more of... your Uncle Quentin?”

“Oh, how careless of me! I have forgotten that you, too, knew him from years back, and that your reacquaintance is what returned him to our family, however briefly.”

‘Acquaintance,’ it seemed to me
_,
would no longer quite describe Quentin’s and my relationship, though I could not explain this to Allegra, no matter what she called me.

She grasped my hands, as if wishing to warm her own, which were icy.

“The woman was most odd about Quentin. She spoke of one dead and not-dead. I wondered if she confused Quentin with the Golem! She spoke of one cast away and imprisoned, who would—pardon me, Nell, I know you take such talk seriously—‘rise again.’ She murmured of evil plots and ‘plots’ that sounded like grave sites. She was most cryptic.”

“ ‘Crypt’ indeed is the word. All nonsense, as you would see had you not been infected with ‘Prague fever.’ This ancient town, with its medieval quarters and its Cabbalistic history and its current affairs that shroud reality in plot and counterplot is not a wholesome influence. Now, I have seen sights that truly chill the blood, and I have not had to leave the environs of the Belgrade Hotel to accomplish it.”

“How so?"

“You are young, and could not understand.”

“Miss Huxleigh. Nell. I have told you all. You can but reciprocate.”

“I am not sure that even I understand myself what transpired.”

“Then you must share the experience.” Allegra patted the feather quilt, which sank six inches at her attentions.

I eyed it askance. Sitting upon goose-down always made one sink like a stone, and look like a drowning goose.

“Do get comfortable,” Allegra urged, “and we do not wish anyone to overhear us.”

“Here? In my room?”

She leaned near. “The walls have ears.”

“I doubt it.” Yet I studied the wallpaper, which was excessively busy in the Austrian style. Could not such design mania conceal the subtle peephole?

“Hop up,” Allegra urged.

I eyed the quilt. “I do not ‘hop’.”

“Then leap like a gazelle, dear Nell, and tell me your deepest worries. Believe me, not a word of it shall pass beyond these ears.”

I obliged, and found myself the proud possessor of a peeled grape that I did not wish to touch, given her grisly appellation for same.

‘Tell me,” the dear girl urged, and I confess that the temptation was intense.

“Well,” I began, “it seems that the archvillainess Tatyana has conceived an ill-advised interest in Godfrey.”

“Oh, there is nothing ill-advised in such an interest at all,” Allegra assured me. “I am surprised that you haven’t realized that.”

“I was his type-writer girl at the Temple,” I said. “Such an interest would have been quite inappropriate.”

“But it would have been such fun, Nell. Have you never suffered from an ill-advised interest in your entire life?”

“Once,” said I, accepting another rather slimy grape and ingesting it.

“In whom?” she demanded rapturously.

I knew what she expected, the untrustworthy minx, and was prepared for her.

“A country curate,” I replied, “by the name of Jasper.” Then I recited chapter and verse in all particulars about the unfortunate Curate Higgenbottom.

I soon had Allegra drowsy and begging to repair to her room—whether Irene was there yet or not—while I was free to speculate on the significant pieces of information I had cajoled out of her in two hours, with the aid of two given names and six grapes. Casanova would have been proud.

Chapter Twenty-four

MINUET IN G

My next
interview was with Irene herself. I encouraged Allegra to send her to my room by allowing my reminiscences of the lamented Jasper Higgenbottom to put me into an apparently distraught state.

By the time Irene arrived, I had recovered, but had decided to let her think my concern was due to Allegra’s account of the gypsy’s report on Quentin Stanhope. Irene’s dramatic nature always responded best to extremes—be it romantic subplots or murderous main plots.

“Nell! What is it?” Irene demanded the moment she arrived. “Allegra said that you were most disturbed.”

“I am. And I am... appalled that you would bring such innocents as Allegra and the Queen to that miserable gypsy fortune teller we visited our last time in Prague.”

“Why shouldn’t I? I took you there, didn’t I?”

“That’s no excuse. And now I hear that this awful creature has predicted great danger for those I hold dear. How irresponsible of you to attempt such a thing without me present.”

Irene smiled, gathered her lilac taffeta combing gown around her like the crackling tissue that wraps a Worth creation, and sat on my single upholstered chair.

If she extracted a cigarette, I expected to scream, but she fortunately had left her smoking apparatus in the suite.

“You want a complete report on the fortune concerning Quentin, I suppose,” she offered.

“That would be nice.” I sat on the straight chair.

“That would be more than nice. It would be most intriguing.”

“Irene, you don’t for a moment believe that woman with her crinkled hands and shriveled roots and lethal powders and jangling skull lamp speaks anything but drivel?”

“Well... she hit the mark last time regarding my romantic disposition. ‘G.’ Who would have thought that meant Godfrey then? Not even you.”

“That is true, but many men have names beginning with the letter ‘G’.”

“Name three.”

“Ah... Geoffrey. Godwin.”

“Godwin could be a surname as well.”

“Geoffrey. Gregory... Gabriel!”

“The last is honestly angelic, but not common.”

“Still—”

“Even fewer names begin with ‘Q.’ ”

“Agreed,” I said, my throat suddenly dry.

Whenever I tried to anticipate Irene, she usually jumped me from an oblique angle, as a knight outmaneuvers a rook. “Can you think of three?” she asked roguishly.

“Only one,” I admitted brazenly. “Quentin.”

“There is Quinn.”

“A surname,” I snapped.

“And Quincy.”

“Another surname.

“You are right, Nell, as usual. We always come back to Quentin.”

“Did the fortune teller introduce him by mentioning ‘Q’ as a first initial?”

“Exactly. Of course Allegra immediately blurted out that this must mean her Uncle Quentin before I could stop her. I could have wished for more restraint. No one thought of ‘Queen’ Clotilde.”

“Of course! ‘Queen’ is her first name in a sense! What was said about this ‘Q’ person?”

“That such a person was possibly as good as dead and in great personal danger, but would shortly triumph, would in a sense be reborn. When Allegra pressed her about her uncle, the old woman assured her that she would see him again, and soon, but that Allegra herself was in danger.”

“I don’t like that, Irene.”

“Neither do I! The irritating crone suggested that we all were in mortal danger. That is no good way to ensure return customers.”

“The Queen too?”

“The Queen above all, although the wretch was most cryptic about who really
was
the Queen. She could have meant Clotilde. Or myself. Or someone other.”

“Not I,” was my comment.

Irene smiled. “I fear not. How did your interview with the demanding Tatyana go?”

“Such a strange woman, Irene. I believed that yours was a dramatic persona. Now that I have seen this Tatyana in closer quarters, I find her even more overwhelming than yourself.”

“How comforting to know that one’s own excesses can be exceeded by another.”

I examined her face for traces of sarcasm but discerned none.

“You’re certain this woman is a seasoned spy,” I asked, “and that she recognizes us all from our brief encounter at Sarah Bernhardt’s salon?”

“I would stake my life upon it, and, now that I have heard the gypsy’s prediction, fear that I do.”

“Can this Prague tangle truly be so serious, Irene? So far Godfrey’s excursions among the bankers are routine. Aside from our spectacular vision of the Golem, Prague seems as sleepy as always, and the Queen’s marital anxieties are not unique. Even men who do not wear crowns keep mistresses.”

“Oh, how worldly and callous you are becoming, Nell. Doesn’t her plight wring your heart? Poor Clotilde, a stranger in a strange land, isolated in Prague Castl e, utterly rebuffed by the one Bohemian legally and morally obliged to care for her—”

“Extremes,” I reminded her, trying hard not to sniff in a superior manner. “I remember a day not a year past when we sneered at her portrait in the
Daily Telegraph
.”

“Sneered? I do not sneer, no more so than you blurt.” Irene on the brink of laughter was always a persuasive force.

I found myself smothering a snigger. “I must commend you for showing pity for a rival, and a successful one at that.”

“I can afford to be magnanimous about Clotilde, dear Nell. I have found a far more formidable rival.”

“You mean that Tatyana woman! I am so sick of her. She does nothing discernable, save associate with the King and presumably do what mistresses do. To elevate her into some overwhelming force responsible for everything from Quentin’s collapse at Notre Dame to the King’s disinterest in his Queen is to make her more than any one woman could possibly be! Your fascination smacks of obsession, Irene, even of delusion.”