The Adventuress (44 page)

Irene’s amber eyes grew dark and dreamy as she gazed at the window. “An unknown blackmailer is part of the scheme; the loose end of the Viscount D’Enrique, who is close to the situation but barren of tattoos, or at least of the right tattoo in the proper spot; the dead sailors, two of whom died as if fleeing a demon, yet no obvious source of demons has appeared—except Singh’s snake, and Sarah has that now.”

Godfrey frowned, his agile legal mind balking at the apparent non sequiturs of her musings. Irene went on.

“Louise Montpensier and her uncle also came to this site. We have no knowledge of the state of Édouard Montpensier’s skin, but it seems unlikely that he joined the tattooed brotherhood when his brother died, or Jerseyman would not have so forcefully inducted Louise.” I shrugged at Godfrey, who shrugged in turn at me. “We have on the fringes, embroidering this motley group, as it were, the wealthy Alice, Duchesse de Richelieu, and her Grimaldi prince. And we may have undiscovered Quarter members lurking nearby.” Irene suddenly sat up straighter. “Or have we? Ah, there is no hope for it. I must consult Sherlock Holmes.”

I turned to Godfrey, mouth gaping, to find that he had turned to me with the same mute but unlatched expression.

Chapter Thirty-five

I
N
A
NOTHER’S
G
UISE

Sarah Bernhardt
swept into the Norton suite the following afternoon with her rice-powder pallor, her flaming golden hair swathed in scarves, and her painted crimson lips pouting, or—as the French more elegantly put it—pursed into
une petite moue.

“Such an insufferable man, my dear Miss Uxleigh,” she complained, sitting on the green brocade sofa, which clashed wonderfully with her cerulean silk gown. “I am amazed that he is civilized enough to speak French.”

The Divine Sarah wielded her gold-headed walking stick like a scepter, an expression of frozen hauteur making her usually mobile face resemble that of a disheveled corpse.

“These English—pardon me,
cherie
—are so stiff. Your Mr. Olmes as good as told me that I was a bored prima donna and had no problem worth consulting him upon.”

“What did you say?” I breathed.

“That I am a dramatic actress and not an operatic prima donna. That I do not sing publicly, that I have never sung, that I never intend to sing, although I may play Hamlet.”

“What did he say?”

“That Ophelia may be more... up my alley?” She dispensed with the scarves in a series of gestures as airy as they. “I told him that I have played this part in Paris already. I then asked him if he had been in Paris and he said, ‘Briefly, Madame’.”

The Divine Sarah leaned closer, her golden-brown eyes twinkling wickedly. “ ‘Recently, Monsieur Olmes?’ said I. ‘Recently enough,’ said he, clamping his teeth down very hard. A difficult man to seduce, I think.”

I looked around for Godfrey, but he had gone out on another of his mysterious errands.

Madame Sarah laughed, that rich, unbridled laugh that was so recognizably hers. It was odd to hear it issue from Irene, who now stripped two or three gaudy rings from her fingers and deposited them in a sweetmeat dish by the sofa.

Still laughing softly, Irene collapsed deeper into the cushions, looking more like Sarah Bernhardt than ever, except for her citrine-colored eyes. She had even augmented her perfectly straight nose to the autocratic sweep of the Divine One’s.

“Did you not tremble, Irene, masquerading as Sarah Bernhardt before the foremost detective in Europe?”

“No. A woman of such an exaggerated theatrical type does not appeal to Mr. Holmes on any level, moral or personal. His own dramatic instincts are cleaner, more surgical. He is a master of the understatement, while Sarah is always her own larger-than-life poster. Another’s disdain is one’s best disguise. Mr. Holmes considered me a silly, self-indulgent female not worth worrying about, beyond showing me the door.”

“But what did you learn from this masquerade?”

“One, that he has come here from Paris. Two, that he is aware of the Montpensier case, as I suspected.”

“How did you learn that?”

Sarah surfaced in an instant. “I plan to produce a play, Monsieur Olmes. A great
tragedie.
I have heard of so sad a case, a beautiful young girl killed by her wicked uncle, drowned in the Seine. I wonder if you could solve it for me so I have an ending for my drama.”

“And?”

“He grew most stern and informed me that while the newspapers may profit from private tragedy, it behooves the rest of us to respect it. Perhaps I should search the classical sources for my plots, as did the Bard of Avon. Had I ever considered playing Lady Macbeth? I seemed to share her bloodthirstiness.”

“Then?”

“I rose to leave, carelessly dropping the invitation from Alice to my palace concert—sealing-wax side up. Well, my dear Nell, he had it in a flash and returned it to me, only glancing at the sealing wax, so eager was he to show me to the door. Perhaps it was my perfume.” Irene fanned herself with a languid hand, wafting some tiger-lily scent toward my undefended nostrils.

“Perhaps he smelled a rat,” I replied.

“Touché,
Nell!” Irene always admired a well-delivered insult. “But you see what I have learned?”

“No, I do not, other than that Mr. Holmes is a sensible and upright gentleman, one not to be swayed by the wiles of a Scarlet Woman of the Stage.”

Irene smiled tolerantly. “Don’t you see? He
knows
that the wax belongs to the palace. Yet he has not the least notion of the wider reaches of this web. He is following a single filament—Louise Montpensier’s death and her uncle’s disappearance—from Paris. Somehow he has obtained the letters sent to her uncle and has had the good fortune—or the brilliance—to find the sealing wax first.”

Irene rubbed her hands together in a most lusty Lady Macbeth manner. “Now Sherlock Holmes is working his way to our part of the puzzle, and he does not yet suspect any of it! Is it not delicious?”

“It does not sound at all edible, Irene, but most dangerous and dishonest. What did you think of him?”

“Mr. Holmes?”

“You did not call on Mr. Gladstone, the prime minister!”

She leaned back, coiled into her gorgeous Byzantine robes like a girlish Sarah. “He is not handsome.”

“No.”

“Arresting, rather. When I first glimpsed him, years ago, I said that he had a busy, interesting face.”

“I would have to consult my diaries on the precise phrasing.”

“No matter. His mind is like a clockworks, always ticking and whirring. I fear that in the presence of an ultra-feminine woman it ticks in yawning, four-four time. I was as bland to his detective constitution as chamomile tea. I bored him! I presented a nigh perfect impersonation of the most alluring actress of our age, and I bored the man silly!” She laughed rapturously. “He is remarkable. We must hurry or he will anticipate us all, as he almost did in London.”

“Hurry at what, Irene? What is there for us to prove?”

She sat up and spoke in her normal tones.

“We must see that Louise and Jerseyman have claim to whatever treasure is discovered. We must ensure Louise and Mr. Winter’s desires for independence and foil Louise’s uncle permanently. We must absolve her aunt of all complicity in the illusion of her niece’s murder. We must protect Alice from the revelations of the blackmailer by unveiling him—or her—and then alert the prince to the ulterior purpose for his expedition.”

She frowned. “And I really do think that we must find out how Sherlock Holmes discovered the manufacturer of the sealing wax, for therein lies the key to the whole problem. Oh, poor, prescient Mr. Holmes, you begin innocently at the exact point where all my efforts are leading me!”

Chapter Thirty-six

A
N
ORTON
T
OO
M
ANY

FROM THE CASE NOTES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

I am
suffocating from fine weather.

This unrelenting sunlight is clouding my faculties of reason. Perhaps some perfume still lingers from the overbearing presence of Madame Sarah Bernhardt, who, I suspect, visited me yesterday to exercise her colossal vanity, for she had no discernibly legitimate reason to call.

Of course, such women are often oblique, but something nags at my memory of that encounter. If I were in Baker Street, I would turn to my violin—or to the hypodermic needle Watson so dislikes.

However, the air cleared when le Villard arrived today. His telegram came this morning and the man himself followed on the heels of it, such is the wonder of modem rail travel.

“My dear Holmes!” He grasped my hand. “You look pale. Can it be that the charms of what the poet Liegeard has recently christened ‘the Blue Coast’ have not pleased you?”

“Charms are in the eye of the beholder, le Villard. I am not here to stroll. In fact, I have hardly shown my own face since I arrived.”

“You must evolve a monograph on the art of disguise,” the detective said.

“My dear fellow, monographs occupy my idle moments. This is not one of them. I may shortly find it necessary to leave this place of coastal dalliance, however heavenly its color.”

“Then you will have to drop the Montpensier murder?”

“On the contrary. I have one or two theories that require proving. I have telegraphed to various points of travel in Europe, England and America.”

“America?”

I smiled at le Villard’s incredulity. That same naive, albeit flattering, air of surprise pervaded the tone of his frequent footnotes to my translated monographs, all of his explications singing the praises of the author’s brilliant methodology.

Despite his Celtic quickness, le Villard was as easy to confuse as Inspector Lestrade. “When I have assembled the necessary facts, I will reveal them,” I said. “As for writing a monograph on disguise, I am not interested in arming the criminal element more than it already is. However, since my stay in Monaco, I have learned a good deal about sealing wax. There may be a new monograph in that.”

“Sealing wax? Oh, you mean the strange stuff on the letters sent to Édouard Montpensier?”

“Strange stuff indeed, le Villard! Did you know that there are three hundred and sixty-eight varieties of sealing wax in Europe alone? In this case, the sandalwood scent put me on the proper trail. Such a scent is not favored in northern Europe, so I was pointed to the Mediterranean. From there it was simply a matter of
makin
g the proper inquiries. Also, Édouard Montpensier has been seen about Monte Carlo, making his own inquiries.”

“Montpensier! Here? You amaze me, my friend.”

I could not help smiling wearily. “Have you ever viewed a piece of embroidery from the wrong side, le Villard? All one sees is an untidy pattern of knots, and colors scattered randomly.

“So an investigative puzzle offers first the underside of mystifying knots. Yet there is always a pattern. The missing Montpensier girl’s father died in Monte Carlo. The distinctive sealing wax upon the strange letters sent to her uncle is made in Monte Carlo. It is not amazing at all that Édouard Montpensier should hurry here; he is but one knot in a scheme of many that will make perfect sense once the matter is turned right side up.”

“You say ‘missing.’ You suspect that Louise lives?”

“I suspect that it is possible. And then there is another knot whose presence nags at me—these English Nortons who briefly entered the affair in Paris.”

“I admit that Mr. Norton piqued my suspicions of Louise’s possible survival, but this pair’s involvement has been purely peripheral.”

“They are still knotted into the fabric. The name ‘Norton’ is exceedingly common in England, but I have reason to remember it from a case not long past. I first dismissed a connection; I do not believe in coincidence. Now I am not so sure. I have been visited by a very commanding woman, an actress; she has put me in mind of—what was this Mr. Norton’s first name, le Villard?”