Another Scandal in Bohemia (6 page)

“I wanted only a single gown to begin with—” Irene said.

“Two.” Worth held up one imperious, and inaccurate, finger. His bulging eyes narrowed, a trick that did not flatter them. “I see feathers, many feathers.”

“Like your peacock gowns,” Madame Worth prompted.

“Peacock feathers!” Irene repeated in the same tone as she had stood dreaming before this dress when it was undonned. “I love those colors—”

He nodded. “I have done this twice. Once, long ago, when crinolines made skirts into canvases for the dressmaker’s art A complete gown of peacock feathers, and more recently, for Lady Curzon, a gown beaded overall in the likeness of individual feathers.”

“With iridescent green beetle shells as the eye of each feather,” his wife added.

“Oh, yes,” Irene cried rapturously, extending her clasped hands like an ingénue in an opera viewing her beloved for the first time. “Wonderful.”

“No. Not for you,” Monsieur Worth pronounced.

Now it would come. The denouncement. The end.

‘Too gaudy for you,” he went on. “Something... different. Come back Wednesday and you will see.”

“Wednesday? That soon?” Irene was too amazed to argue.

I was astounded by the grace with which she relinquished the peacock feathers.

“I waste no time. Now, we must discuss a less pleasant matter: your performance in my dressing room.”

“I thought you would refuse to work with me,” Irene admitted.

“So I should have, yet you still came up.”

She shrugged with a soubrette’s charm. “The gown was too tempting not to try on.”

Monsieur Worth stood, which frankly did not add much dignity to his figure.

“I am English,” he said, “yet I have become French, and my custom, my family and my fame lie in this land I have adopted. You are American and have adopted other lands. I am a genius. I have changed the façade of fashion for over three decades, until empresses bow to my wishes, but only because in matters of the toilette, I am always right. You are a performer, and something of a genius at solving human mysteries, I have heard. I am a tradesman. No matter how the world echoes my name, I am never, and never will be, on an equal footing to my patrons. I am both their inferior and their superior, and I understand that position well.”

He smiled suddenly, though it was hard to detect the change of expression under the cover of his enormous mustache. (Thank heavens that Godfrey—and Quentin Stanhope— restrained themselves.)

“I mentioned that I do not always like them,” he went on, “and that some I like quite well. It is your good fortune, Madame Norton, to have irritated those whom I do not like, and to have intrigued one of those of whom I”—he glanced at his wife with a smile—“we, are quite fond. When you have redonned your own clothes, I would like you to call in my chambers upon a personage who requests your confidential attendance, the Queen of Bohemia.”

Chapter Four

T
HE
Q
UEEN’S
C
ONFESSION

“I cannot
withstand so many rapid changes of fortune in one afternoon,” I complained in the dressing room as I unhooked the line of rear fastenings that closed Irene’s velvet bodice.

“Two,” Irene repeated in muted glee. “Two Worth gowns. And now
this!”
She whirled on me before I was done, her face aflame with twin triumphs. “Do you remember her, Nell?”

“You speak as if we had met. I remember seeing her portrait in the newspapers. Rather unflattering.”

Irene began to pace, despite the gown that was ebbing farther down her shoulders at every step.

“Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen.” The long foreign name tripped off of Irene’s tongue like the syllables of an aria sung about a bitter enemy. “The King of Scandinavia’s daughter, that His Royal Highness, Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, was compelled to wed by virtue of becoming King of Bohemia.”

“Which title he assumed,” I reminded her, “on the death of his father, whose murder you proved.”

“That was a mere chamber murder, Nell, solved in private in the late king’s own bedroom, No one knows what happened but the family circle and we two—and the poor, deluded servant girl who was the victim of rebel and royalist alike in that affair. I wonder what ever became of her?”

I captured Irene during a restless swing past and firmly resumed my unhooking. Sometimes it was best to treat Irene as an errant schoolroom charge.

“Nor,” said I, “can I keep up with your change of subject. Surely you will not see this Scandinavian woman?”

“If you mean the Queen of Bohemia,” she intoned with relish, “how can I refuse the royal command?”

“Easily. Say no.”

She sighed, drawing several still-fastened hooks all the tighter. “I can’t disappoint Monsieur Worth twice in one day. I will have to go through with it.”

“But you... you loathe this woman, Irene! Because of her, the King spurned you. You should have been queen; even he admitted it, to the very last, in front of myself and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.”

“The road to hell is paved with ‘shoulds,’ Nell.” She shrugged out of the bodice, then raised her bare white arms while I lofted the gown over her head.

Irene soon had inserted the hanger and installed the dress on its hook. She patted the velvet skirt in farewell, then turned toward the Liberty silk at last.

This unconventional gown required no help in donning; in moments Irene was her respectable, clothed self. I had never expected to regard the aesthetic mode of dress as a kind of return to sanity, but so I did now.

She resumed pacing. “I suppose I must not light a cigarette in Monsieur Worth’s environs; how frustrating. At any rate, the question is not how I feel toward this usurping princess, for Willie was himself at fault in not telling me that his fate was locked into a royal marriage. The question is, what does this woman want of me?”

I shook my head. “I cannot begin to guess.”

“Then we must see her.”

“No treat, that,” I said stoutly. “From her sketch, she is a long-nosed creature as bland as milk.”

“Yes.” Irene sighed happily at the remembrance. “And just think! Sketches can be—and usually are
—enhanced
by the artist.” She turned to survey herself critically in the
mir
ror from toe to top-knot, ending with a satisfied smile.

“Let us go and pay our disrespects to another royal personage, my dear Nell. We are becoming rather good at it.”

Monsieur Worth—along with his spaniel and compress—no longer occupied the upstairs salon, but Madame Worth was present. She led us with soundless steps down a thick hall carpet to a closed mahogany door.

“Her Royal Highness wished to see you alone,” Madame Worth noted, favoring me with a glance.

“Miss Huxleigh is more discreet than a church mouse,” Irene said quickly. “I am sure that the Queen will not object when I explain Miss Huxleigh’s vital role in my... enterprises.”

Madame Worth looked dubious, but opened the door for us herself. Evidently no servant was to know of the meeting, an ominous sign.

The parlor within was papered in green velvet flocking and furnished with many polished wood pieces, so it seemed very English, after all.

A tea table glittered between a matching pair of sofas upholstered in shiny sable horsehair. On the farther sofa sat a figure wearing a lightweight steel-blue cloak, the hems of its floor-length skirt and waist-length over-cloak edged in gray ostrich feathers. A gray felt bonnet brim trembled with more of the simpering feathers, and pink velvet roses massed against the wearer’s hair and cheek on one coy side.

Altogether an insipid ensemble for one whose coloring was as pallid as whey, I thought uncharitably. Queen of Bohemia or not, Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen had far to go if she was to make me forget her role in destroying Irene’s fondest expectations, if not breaking her heart.

This so-called Queen was self-conscious enough to start at our entrance and move as if to rise. Irene restored the situation to its proper tone by executing a small curtsy. I managed an uncivil bob, but the Queen seemed little interested in social courtesies.

“Madame Norton.” She looked unerringly toward Irene. “Please be seated, but your companion, I fear—”

“No one fears Miss Huxleigh,” Irene said, stepping around the sofa to take the indicated seat. “I never consult without her; she is the soul of Prudence, even though her Christian name is the classical Penelope. Besides, who is to pour if we have urgent matters to discuss? I cannot manage teapots and think at the same time.”

“Oh, I as well!” the Queen exclaimed in a tone of pathetic relief. Her French had a slight, Scandinavian singsong, and she eyed me nervously. “Miss... Hussey may stay if she will swear to say nothing of what we discuss.”

Irene smothered a hoot at this latest corruption of my surname. “Oh, she will be as silent as the grave, our Miss Hussey. Depend upon it. I do, however, ask her to take notes on occasion. You must warn her if any matter is of such sensitivity that she dare not write it down.”

The Queen slid me another uneasy glance from dismal gray-green eyes. “Miss Hussey will recognize such a juncture, I fear, only too well.”

Her nod admitted me to the society of the sofa. I came around the one Irene occupied and found myself neatly finessed into position behind the Georgian silver teapot that I would command.

Now that I was seated, and virtually ignored as the two women warily eyed one another, I could further examine the Queen’s appearance. When Irene and I had studied her likeness in the newspapers at the time of her engagement to the King of Bohemia—and “studied” is too scholarly a word; we had dissected her like a biological curiosity—our verdict had been unflattering.

I saw nothing before me to change it. Queen Clotilde was a vapid blond woman, a sort of human daisy who looked as if she would shed her petals at the mildest breeze. Her pale hair, so fine it shone like wet satin, made her oval face seem browless and lacking eyelashes. True, this gave her large, limpid eyes a certain sad prominence, like a spaniel’s, for they drooped at the corners.

And her nose! This long, unlovely feature ended too short a distance from her upper lip. She had one of those overpraised rosebud mouths, small and bowed, but with little natural color. Apparently she lacked the artifice to enhance a single one of her unfortunate features. I am not in favor of artifice, but could see its need in this case. Her eyes were rimmed with the red that should have warmed her cold lips and cheeks, not from weeping, but by virtue of her almost-albino nature. Even her hidden ears, I suspected, would be awkward in some way.

I made my observations, all the while fussing with the tea things. Most domestic chores are a perfect disguise for a wandering mind or eye. I couldn’t help clattering spout to cup and spoon to dish; did the Queen know of Irene’s former connection to the King? As soon as I offered a cup of tea to her gloved hand, the Queen, in fact, seemed to forget me, and saved her nervous glances for Irene. What did Clotilde know?

My friend suddenly took the conversational reins that had lain slack for far too long.

“And how may I assist Your Majesty?” she asked outright. “Monsieur and Madame Worth said that you wished to consult me.”

“Consult you,” the Queen repeated. “You make it sound like a transaction. Perhaps it is. I could not help overhearing you... admonish the ladies in the dressing room.”

“Ah. The flaws of theatrical training. My voice, I am told, carries well."

“Superbly, Madame, but so did their voices beforehand. I am curious about these puzzling affairs they mentioned, in which you take an interest, and about your cleverness. These women implied that you had aided the future Princess of Monaco in avoiding a scandal before her forthcoming marriage.”

“That is true.” Irene leaned forward to take the Meissen cup, thin as a butterfly wing, that I offered her. “I of course cannot tell you the exact nature of her difficulty—”

“Of course not!” The Queen seemed ready to press her palms to her ears at the very thought. “But the matter was of a personal and delicate nature?”

“Of the most personal and delicate nature,” Irene said complacently, sipping what I had discovered to be a delicious cinnamon-flavored tea.

“I see. But I do not understand how you undertake such matters."

“For friends,” Irene replied. “And for fees. I acted as an inquiry agent in my youth for the Pinkertons in America and for private parties abroad. Some were American themselves, such as Charles Lewis Tiffany; others were English, such as Oscar Wilde.”

“Oh. Oh my, Madame. You have indeed aided some prominent individuals, and I doubt that your youth can be spoken of in the past tense.” Queen Clotilde smiled as she sighed, her breath agitating the curling feathers at her neck and bosom. She herself, I saw with some surprise, was a mere girl, perhaps of twenty or so.

Yet she was an aristocratic ghost, this woman, a pale specter who frightened even herself. She had sipped the tea but once. Now it sat cooling within the exquisite rim of her cup while she sat before us nursing cold, aristocratic feet.