Good Night, Mr. Holmes (38 page)

Our new coachman, John Jewett, drove the party. He was a hearty man of middle years with a nicely protective air toward his female passengers. I confess myself excited beyond the stimulation of a change of permanent address, my first in six years. I sensed a tension in the air, more in Irene’s aspect than Godfrey’s. She was quiet, her normally incisive eyes heavy-lidded as she expressed a dangerous spiritual
ennui
alien to the Irene I knew. She reminded me of certain photographs of Sarah Bernhardt, resembling a gorgeous, coiled lazy serpent waiting for the right moment to slough off inactivity and strike.

The villa in St. John’s Wood looked promising by night. Lights warmed the long, ground-floor windows that reached the floor in the Italian style. The coachman waited while we disembarked to view the property.

“It is called Briony Lodge,” Godfrey said.

“What a lovely name!” said I at once.

Irene remained silent as Godfrey escorted us within. The place was as advertised: spacious and well appointed. As we examined the rooms both up and down, I saw that Godfrey had already imported our furnishings from Saffron Hill. I gasped to see the “Jersey Lily” standing guard in the upper hall. To all this care, Irene responded with the barrister’s noncommittal
hmm
.

The kitchen below-stairs was clean and well-equipped. The cook had retired for the night, but we were assured that she was adept. Godfrey at last brought us ‘round again to the handsome sitting room. He went to the tall windows from which we had seen the gaslight pouring, drawing the blinds in turn with a dramatic flourish.

“And lastly, ladies, I present a feature that most recommends this particular property.” He moved to the fireplace wall, where a tapestry bell-pull hung.

“I have seen a bell-pull before, Mr. Norton,” Irene noted sardonically, “although I have never before personally possessed such a luxury.”

He said nothing, but pressed the painted paneling just beside it. A recessed panel sprang back with a snap. Beyond it lay a dark compartment large enough to accommodate the cabinet photograph.

I clapped my hands in delight.

“Bravo, Mr. Norton,” Irene murmured, moving to inspect the space. ‘The villa came with this hidey-hole?”

“Indeed not. I had it put in myself.”

“Oh?”

Godfrey regarded her expressionless face with amusement. “The carpenters were brought here blindfolded, by carriage, and so returned. They saw only this room and were driven from Greenwich to Battersea both coming and going to confuse their sense of direction. This nook is our secret, we three.”

“What of the coachman who drove them?” Irene demanded.

Godfrey assumed a look I could only describe as belonging on a choir boy at Westminster.

“There was no coachman. I drove them myself.”

Irene lowered her eyes. Otherwise she moved not a muscle. I realized that the entire situation rested on her approval.

At last she lifted her head, and her hand, as in one motion. She was mistress of exquisite gestures. The limpid flex of her wrist reminded me of the languid power of the Deity’s hand reaching toward Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Irene held this artistically presented hand at shoulder level, as a queen extending a favor. Her lips lifted like the Mona Lisa’s.

Godfrey hesitated a moment; he respected women, but tribute was not his coinage. Then he took Irene’s hand, swiftly turned it and brushed his lips across the inside of her wrist.

I couldn’t help wondering how she avoided giggling at the tickle of his mustache, but Irene looked quite sober and more than a bit taken aback. She turned to regard the hidden compartment, giving us both her back.

“Well done, Mr. Norton,” Irene murmured as she gazed into the empty space. “Very well done indeed.”

“Everything?” he inquired.

She half-turned to face him, her profile tilted up to his. “Everything.” Neither moved nor spoke for a long moment.

I stood frozen like the audience at the climax of a play. Then the moment was gone and Godfrey and Irene were turning to me. It was all I could do to resist applauding.

“My dear Nell,” Godfrey said, as if noticing me again. A broad smile stretched his dark mustache into a thinner black line. “I have quite forgotten a special surprise for you.”

“Oh, really! Indeed, I do not require any special surprises,” I said modestly, thrilled nevertheless.

He led me into the dining room, Irene following. In a dark corner of the chamber he paused and, whisking a garishly figured cloth aside, revealed the brass cage of Casanova.

“Ex Why-Zed,” the parrot caroled.

I glanced to Godfrey, who was grinning and tilting his dark head at the same angle as Casanova’s scarlet and yellow poll. “You had started him on his A-B-Cs when you left, my fine Nell. Casanova is a reprobate and difficult to teach, so I brought him directly from J-K-L to X-Y-Z. At least he goes from A to Z now.”

“Cut the cackle!” Casanova screeched.

Someone was laughing. It was Irene and it ill became her.

“Really, Godfrey,” said I, “you need not have relinquished the bird so soon. No doubt he would have learned much under your tutelage.”

“Fleurs du mal, fleurs du mal,”
the feathered fiend hooted.

“Baudelaire! Mr. Norton, you didn’t!” Irene was openly shrieking in laughter behind me. “Not Nell’s bird! Baudelaire!”

“It’s not my bird,” I asserted. “And I barely speak French, so your hilarity is lost upon me.” They were both laughing uproariously, Godfrey collapsing against the wall, Irene covering her mouth with both hands, tears streaming from her eyes. “Furthermore, Irene, I wonder how you shall welcome this beast’s vocalizations when you must overhear them daily.”

“Are you finished, Mr. Norton?” she inquired at last.

“Not quite. If I may be excused?”

She nodded curiously as he left the room and then the house.

“Casanova aside,” I confided, “I like the situation.”

“Yes.” Irene moved to the cage. “What a vulgar creature; he is dyed all the colors of the rainbow.”

“I believe that Godfrey has done well,” I persisted.

“Oh, Godfrey has done excellently, though he takes a great deal upon himself. Such perfection quite chills my blood.”

“Perhaps you are not accustomed to it, save in yourself,” said I.

Godfrey’s hasty steps sounded in the hall. We rushed out. Godfrey carried some burden in his arms like a baby.

“There’s a small parlor to the right,” he said, dashing into this last unseen room.

Irene and I followed to see him deposit his burden on a table with a thump. It was his father’s chest. Irene was drawn to it, running her hands over the wood as if to shape its contents as well as its exterior.

“Another of your erstwhile belongings,” Godfrey said.

“I ceded it to you,” she reminded him.

“I ceded it back, as I do Nell’s blasted parrot. I have not been able to make head nor tail of its contents. Perhaps you would care to try again...?”

Irene spun away from the chest, from his persuasive voice. Only one kerosene lamp lit the room, casting more shadow than light. She moved toward the ill-lit bay window, pausing beside a huge, crouching silhouette of furniture. The flickering lamplight picked out the cabbage-rose pattern of a shawl.

Irene’s hand suddenly swept away the shawl, the fringe shivering in light and shadow, to unveil another surprise. A grand piano squatted in the bay.

“This came with the furnishings?” she asked stiffly.

I remembered the throat-soothing potions she had left behind in Bohemia and considered that no elixir could smooth the emotion that roughened her question.

“It goes with the house,” Godfrey said, quite firmly.

“I see.” Irene was silent for a long while. “Lock up the place, then, and take us home. I am tired.”

So we returned to Chelsea, both of us eager to quit our impersonal rooms there, yet each dreading to confront the special gifts that Godfrey had brought to our new quarters.

“We can keep the cover over the parrot,” Irene said that evening, brushing her radiant hair.

“And can we keep the piano shawl over the keys, as well?” I asked.

“You and Godfrey Norton! You rush in where angels fear to tread.”

“Then we will be at home in heaven,” said I, and doused the light.

“More logically and likely in hell,” she predicted from the dark.

Chapter Twenty-seven

A
F
AMILIAR
F
ORM OF
A
DDRESS

I cannot
say which of the three objects in our new quarters was the more ignored in the week that followed: the Norton chest, the grand piano or the bird, Casanova.

The parrot required food and water (our housekeeper, Mrs. Seaton, cleaned the cage). It greeted me as rudely as ever, but in the course of my tending I found that plying it with peeled grapes (a great favorite of Irene’s) encouraged a gentler diction. We even were making progress on “Cassie want a crumpet?”

Irene sometimes paused beside the cage to coo French at it in hopes of stimulating some
risqué
phrases. I wouldn’t have recognized a naughty French phrase if I heard it, which is no doubt why a foreign language is always favored for such things. I quite suspect that the French couch their most licentious thoughts in English or German.

Save for a daily drive at five o’clock through Regents Park, our lives were models of domestic tedium. I had never before appreciated how much the struggle to earn one’s daily bread gave life structure and even excitement.

Godfrey called on us once or twice a week, not pleased by our lethargy. He frowned at the closed chest and the covered piano and whispered little French nothings, of a salacious nature, I fear, to Casanova.

His third visit was quite different, however. On being admitted that evening by Mrs. Seaton, he burst into the sitting room, where I sat sewing and Irene reading.

“News!” Godfrey flourished the
Daily Telegraph.

Irene sat forward. “Of the King? He is in England!?”

“No, of your former employer, Tiffany. He is in France. He is in Paris, in fact, for the auction of the French crown jewels.”

“Oh, is that all?” Irene reluctantly set aside her book.

“It is the auction of the century. Diamonds dating back to Cardinal Mazarin will be sold, as well as those inadvertently left behind by the fleeing Empress Eugenie.”

“What is it to me?” Irene said. “I have funds, but not so many that I may bid against Mr. Tiffany.”

“Miss Adler, this is the collection of jewels from which the Zone of Diamonds disappeared. They are its sister stones, so to speak. I propose that we go to Paris to observe the auction. We both speak French. Perhaps we can uncover some clue to the Zone’s whereabouts.”

“Go to Paris?” Irene took the folded newspaper Godfrey had been waving under her nose and studied it. “The auction occurs in only three days.”

“We can be in Paris in one.”

“The best clue to the Zone lies buried in that box of your father’s.”

“I know, but if we are stalled in the present, then we should inquire into the Zone’s past.”

“This is mad!” Irene laughed despite herself. “One can’t simply pick up and go on a wild goose chase to Paris—”

“Why not? My time is my own, as is yours; no cases pend. We could reclaim your trunks in person. Besides, Paris in May is most delightful.”

Irene worried the braid on her skirt as she considered. I had never seen her so indecisive. Suddenly she glanced up at Godfrey. “Very well. If you are game, I am. But I still think the scheme is mad.”

“As do I!” I put in. “Irene, it would be most improper for you to travel with Godfrey unchaperoned, and I have no intentions of going to such a sinful city as Paris!”

“A pity,” Godfrey said, “for if you went you’d see that Paris is not so much sinful as seductive, therefore the guilt, as with beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Yet it is best that you remain to tend my office in my absence; I’ve dismissed your replacement.”

Delighted as I was to contemplate the daily discipline of work, the notion that Godfrey could so blithely forego my company on an adventure stunned me. I glanced at Irene, who was regarding Godfrey with equally keen surprise.

‘Irene?”

She shook herself at my voice as if escaping a reverie. “Mr. Norton is quite correct This will be a whirlwind trip, will it not?’ He nodded. “Dear Nell, I cannot in good conscience drag you from pillar to post so soon after our thrilling escape from Bohemia. And we... might uncover news of the Zone.”

“You will go, then?” Godfrey said hopefully.

Irene nodded. “Despite one serious drawback to your proposal.” She glanced sternly at me. “And that drawback is not propriety, Nell; I refuse to abide by conventions that hamper my freedom. No, the great pity is that our flight has left me with no suitable gowns for my first visit to Paris.”

“My dear Miss Adler, you would take Paris by storm in rags, like a good Republican; in what you wear tonight, the city will fall at your feet.”