Chapel Noir (53 page)

Coda: The Vampire Box

As there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd
corners where a man could hide
.
—
CAPTAIN’S LOG OF THE
DEMETER, DRACULA

Dark.

Motion.

Seasick.

I am sailing on the panorama ship.

And the boots are coming—!

No.

I reach up. Out. Pound wood.

Dark. Utterly dark.

Box.

I am in a box. Oh, dear God . . . !

I will go mad.

If I do not die of retching first.

My hands reach out.

Find limits again. I lie on some thick fabric. The dark is the shape of a box the length and width of my body and not much more.

A coffin.

I will go mad.

If I do not die smothering.

But I breathe.

Calm. I must keep calm.

Pockets.

The fabric is rolled around me like a rug, perhaps so I do not rattle in my box.

I manage to pat the checked wool at my sides where my arms are confined.

My right hand feels the thorny bulk of my chatelaine, my left the wad of a notebook.

They have left me unmolested, despite my memory of the madman with the eyes of a dead devil and the groping hands.

My stomach spasms. Sick.

I will go mad.

If I do not die in my own vomit.

Perhaps I can move a finger to find the slit of my pocket.

There!

Perhaps I can work out the small knife on the chatelaine, cut a hole in this wood box and let some of the darkness out. In time.

I will go mad, cannot breathe in the dark, the close . . . !

My box is moving, taking me somewhere. Someone has seen to it.

Irene! She will be frantic.

She will look for me.

But I am moving, in a box, on land, over water? Far away.

I will go mad if they do not let me out soon.

But . . . sleep is coming. Unnatural sleep. I fear it. Welcome it. I cannot go mad while I sleep.

My left hand finds the pocket slit and two fingers slip within after exhausting effort.

I will go mad, but I will write it all down at the first opportunity.

Afterword

Now it should be obvious why I delayed in releasing what now lies before the reader, scholarly and popular alike.

I could plead the massive amount of material. A daily diary, begun early and recording a preternaturally long life (also composed in the leisurely and convoluted sentences so popular in the nineteenth century), occupies numerous volumes, all written by hand. (And a painstakingly spidery hand Miss Huxleigh used, too. No wonder she needed spectacles, although I suspect that the needing of spectacles is what created the penmanship.)

I could point out that a scholar like me charts an undiscovered country and must first make maps before she pens travelogues. I have not only had the heretofore unknown Huxleigh material to study and present in a logical manner, but newly discovered fragments from the Pink journals and remnants from the anonymous “Watcher.”

Enormous as the task was, that alone did not cause the delay. I must admit to reading and researching the Huxleigh diaries in chronological order. I am as surprised as my readers with what the advancing years bring and, given Miss Huxleigh’s volubility, they bring a good deal.

After much research I have determined that all of the details about the well-known individuals mentioned in this account tally with what is known of their lives and habits. True, their exact whereabouts during the second half of May of 1889 is not always possible to confirm.

A record does exist, however, that the Prince of Wales used at Madame Kelly’s noted Paris establishment an elaborate
siège d’amour
made for him by an M. Soubrier in 1890. Such would be needed to replace a previous model defaced by the events described in Miss Huxleigh’s diary. Apparently the Prince changed both his cabinetmaker and his favored brothel after the events of 1889.

Nellie Bly’s account tallies with documented events of her family life and reporting career. Although she was busily publishing stories for the
World
of New York City in the spring of 1889, she had sufficient energy and enterprise (and telegraph communications were sophisticated enough then) that she could have slipped away to Europe on the trail of sensational subject matter, such as the legal brothels of Paris. She could have also briefly visited London during the previous autumn when Jack the Ripper was active.

The Prince of Wales formally opened
l’Exposition universelle
May 16, 1889, along with Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show. Only Red Tomahawk has left little evidence; in that period the doings of native individuals were seldom recorded, sad to say.

Naturally, or unnaturally, details relating to the Jack the Ripper murders and suspects have been documented and analyzed to infinity. The upholsterer Kelly was indeed a suspect and did indeed escape to France and Paris just after the last Whitechapel killing.

Given the extraordinary events and theories of these remarkable testimonies, I stand back, braced and ready, to take and return the fire of all who read this account and the one that follows and still dare to disbelieve.
Castle Rouge
, to be published in fall, 2002, will offer even more astounding revelations. The demands of research and verification, not to mention the quantity of the materials, prevent the presentation of these astonishing events in one volume.

It is only fitting that I finish my labors for the first portion of this duology on the brink of the millennium, although about even that exact year the scholars can, and do, argue. At least they will be silent on that issue for another thousand years.

I suspect, however, that the Jack the Ripper debate will still be raging then.

Fiona Witherspoon, Ph.D., A.I.A.
*

November 5, 2000

*
Advocates of Irene Adler

Perhaps it has taken until the end of this century for an
author like Douglas to be able to imagine a female
protagonist who could be called “the” woman
by Sherlock Holmes
.
—
GROUNDS FOR MURDER
, 1991

About this Reader’s Group Guide

To encourage the reading and discussion of Carole Nelson Douglas’s acclaimed novels examining the Victorian world from the viewpoint of one of the most mysterious women in literature, the following descriptions and discussion topics are offered. The author interview, biography, and bibliography at the end will aid discussion as well.

Set in the period of 1880–1890 in London, Paris, Prague, and Monaco, the Irene Adler novels reinvent the only woman to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes as a complex and compelling protagonist. Douglas’s portrayal of what the
New York Times
called “this remarkable heroine and her keen perspective on the male society in which she must make her independent way,” recasts her “not as a loose-living adventuress but a woman ahead of her time.” In Douglas’s hands, the fascinating but sketchy American prima donna from “A Scandal in Bohemia” becomes an aspiring opera singer moonlighting as a private inquiry agent. When events force her from the stage into the art of detection, Adler’s exploits rival those of Sherlock Holmes himself as she crosses paths and swords with the day’s leading creative and political figures while sleuthing among the Bad and the Beautiful of Belle Epoque Europe.

Critics praise the novels’ rich period detail, numerous historical and “semihistorical” characters, original perspective, wit, and “welcome window on things Victorian.”

“The private and public escapades of Irene Adler Norton [are] as erratic and unexpected and brilliant as the character herself,” noted
Mystery Scene
concerning
Another Scandal in Bohemia
(formerly
Irene’s Last Waltz
), “a long and complex
jeu d’esprit
, simultaneously modeling itself on and critiquing Doyle-esque novels of ratiocination coupled with emotional distancing. Here is Sherlock Holmes in skirts; but as a detective with an artistic temperament and the passion to match, with the intellect to penetrate to the heart of a crime and the heart to show compassion for the intellect behind it.”

About This Book

Chapel Noir
, the fifth Irene Adler novel, opens in the Paris spring of 1889 as the controversial Eiffel tower is unveiled as the centerpiece of an elaborate world’s fair. Irene Adler’s barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, is away on secret business for their patron, Baron de Rothschild. Irene’s longtime companion, proper parson’s daughter Penelope “Nell” Huxleigh, is shocked when the Baron asks Irene to investigate the brutal murders of two courtesans in a bordello patronized by aristocrats. The savagery recalls London’s Whitechapel killings of autumn, 1888. Is Jacques the Ripper now terrorizing Paris?