by Irene Adler
“How …”
Sherlock shrugged his shoulders. His long, sharp nose reddened. “Yesterday, in the barn, I spotted it on the ground and thought it would give you pleasure to have it back.”
I squeezed it in my palm. “Yes, definitely.” I wavered, but then I found the courage I needed to ask him, “Sherlock, in view of the oath we swore …”
He waited, staring at me.
“Could you tell if it was you who gave it to me?”
He smiled. “If I answer you, will you give me your word that you won’t ask me that again?”
I nodded.
So did he.
“Yes,” he replied, pointing to the pendant. “I just gave it to you. Is it the same one?”
And so I understood that even the oaths we’d sworn had their dark side. And that when I asked questions or answered them, I needed to think very carefully about what to say — especially when dealing with Sherlock Holmes.
* * *
Lupin arrived at the inn two hours later, literally covered in mud and coated with something better not specified, much darker and more foul smelling. Its stench quickly filled the entire inside of the carriage as we departed. Despite his appearance and the smell, he was beaming.
“I discovered two things,” he announced. “Actually, three.”
From his position in the coachman box, Mr. Nelson asked Lupin to speak louder, as he could not hear him very well.
“The first,” Lupin continued, “is that they have a huge pigsty at the Montmorency mansion.”
Sherlock burst out laughing. So did I. That was where that stench had come from!
“I had to hide there for almost an hour,” Lupin confessed. “But it was worth it. My friends, this is something really big. Much more important than any of the others we’ve been involved in up until now. We’re talking about … high nobility. I don’t know if you understand what I mean.”
“Go on,” Sherlock said.
“Don’t keep us in suspense, Arsène,” I added.
“Mr. Montmorency had absolutely not left, as the butler led us to believe, but was hiding on the estate, exactly as Sherlock supposed.”
“Clearly,” Holmes commented.
“As soon as I went into the house through the little window in the washroom,” Lupin continued, “I saw him conversing with his butler. They were talking about that Bernache —”
“That scoundrel who sent his stooges to rob me,” I said.
“Exactly,” Lupin continued. “They agreed that it had been a very poor choice. And that they would need to change methods as soon as possible … or else they would not get the map.”
“Did they read our message?” I asked.
“You bet! It must have been the first thing they did, because they were very excited. They were all convinced we had decided to negotiate to sell our fragment of the map. Because you were right about this, too, Sherlock: that parchment is part of a map.”
Our friend Sherlock stifled an expression of visible satisfaction behind his habitually composed mask.
“But there’s one thing that even you couldn’t know. Actually, two things,” Arsène said. “The first is that there is someone else behind Mr. Montmorency. A person they call the Grand Master. And he’s the one who gave the orders to retrieve the fragments of the map.”
“The Grand Master …” I murmured. Those words stuck in my head as if in a spider’s web.
“So Bernache had to find the part of the map that Montmorency was supposed to deliver to this … Grand Master,” Sherlock said. “And you discovered his name and where he lives?”
“No, no name,” Lupin said. “But I figured out that he communicates with them via mysterious messages. Which all come from Paris, naturally.”
“Paris!” Sherlock exclaimed. “I suspected that.”
“But that’s not all,” Arsène continued. “Montmorency himself possesses a fragment of the map that’s very similar to Irene’s.”
“You saw it?”
Arsène got a sly expression on his face. “I did a little something more, really,” he murmured.
“So perhaps we should say that Montmorency used to possess a fragment of the map?” Sherlock asked with an amused smile.
“And that he lost it in the pigsty?” I added.
“Exactly,” that rascal Arsène Lupin answered, pulling the fragment of the map out from his filthy clothes.
Chapter 11
A JOINT DECISION
Once again, the three of us — Sherlock, Lupin, and I — found ourselves in the attic of the d’Aurevilly house by candlelight. A steady drizzle beat against the windows. From time to time, one of the nearby branches scratched noisily against the roof.
Kneeling on the ground, Sherlock was trying to match up the two fragments of the map as Lupin and I looked on. After a couple of attempts, he arranged them one above the other along the left side of a bigger, invisible square.
“They’re from the same map,” he decided after looking at them carefully.
I only saw lines with illegible, faded handwriting, except one line that was thicker than the others. It looked like a snake or a branch, or something twisty. Apart from that, they were just yellowed parchments smelling strongly of dust.
“A map of what?” I asked.
“Of the city of Paris,” said Sherlock, without thinking twice.
I could not figure out how Holmes had come to that conclusion, and it seemed to me that even Lupin was at a loss. But we were both in awe of our friend’s confidence.
Sherlock pointed a finger at a line that was drawn heavier than the others. “This is the Seine, the river in Paris,” he explained. “It traces precisely this bend as it leaves the city.”
I stayed silent, looking at the map.
“Of course,” Lupin commented.
“You can check if you want,” Sherlock added.
Wrapped in his bathrobe, Lupin sat down on the floor. Despite the hot bath that Mr. Nelson had arranged for him on the ground floor in the back of the house, Lupin still smelled of the pigsty, and I imagined that he probably would for days.
“I believe you, I believe you,” he blurted out. “So now we have two fragments of an old map of Paris … what do we do with them?”
“In order to answer you, my friend, I should need to see all of it, with the eight pieces that form it,” Sherlock said.
“Or ask Mr. Montmorency,” I said.
“I doubt he knows,” Holmes replied. “Rather, it would be better to ask the Grand Master of Paris.”
A map of Paris. The Grand Master of Paris. All the clues were telling us we should go to the capital if we wanted to unravel this mystery.
“But what does all this have to do with my mother?” I asked. “And the lady in the cathedral?”
Neither of them could answer that.
“The facts are more straightforward than we think,” Sherlock pontificated at that point. And as so often happened to him in those moments of self-pride, he grew silent.
“And that would be, if you please?” Arsène asked him.
“I believe you should try to talk to your mother, Irene, and discover what she knows about this story, without telling her anything about the map.”
I nodded. It seemed necessary at that point, even if in my heart, I felt it would be better never to tackle that discussion with her. “I can do it tomorrow afternoon, when I go to read Paul and Virginia to her. Then, that evening —”
“Wait. Wait. Another fact, Arsène, is that you can’t keep hiding yourself away in this attic,” our English friend interrupted. “Sooner or later you have to go back to your father.”
“You can forget about that!” Lupin retorted.
But Holmes ignored him. “In the meantime,” he continued, “my week of freedom in Brussels will soon come to an end. My frie
nds, the facts tell us that if we really want to solve this mystery, we must split up and then get back together quickly, no more than two days from this evening, to tell each other what we’ve discovered.”
“Sherlock, what are you saying? We’ve just found each other again!” I tried to object. But it was useless.
“Arsène, you and I need to leave tomorrow morning as early as possible to look for this Grand Master in Paris, while you, Irene, will talk with your mother to find out what she really knows,” Sherlock said. He rummaged through his pockets, pulling out a meager roll of banknotes. “I should still have enough francs to pay for a couple of nights out … if you don’t want to rely on your father.”
“I’d rather sleep in the street!” Lupin declared.
“But I would not,” Sherlock responded. “Plus I have a suitcase to take back to London. And I have time until I have to return the day after tomorrow. Give me the name of a hotel you know.”
“Why? There are thousands of them,” Lupin replied, shrugging.
Sherlock insisted until Arsène decided they would stay at the Alchemists, a dive in the IX arrondissement. That night my anxious young spirit was confronted by thousands of doubts. I decided to try to dissuade my friends from the idea of going to the capital.
“Papa says that every kind of danger lurks there,” I said. “There are soldiers patrolling every street … starving, poor people roam the neighborhoods … and there are fires.”
But they were adamant, just as they were also adamant about my staying at Evreux, where I should wait for their letter or, as Arsène said many times, his return.
And so they left.
* * *
When I got up for breakfast the next morning, I was alone. My father had left at sunrise to take care of some business in the city of Amiens.
Mr. Nelson greeted me warmly. He confirmed that my guest, Sherlock Holmes, had left in a carriage at the crack of dawn.
“Alone?” I asked him.
Without waiting for a reply, I ran up to the attic. But I found it deserted.
I slipped my hand under my collar and squeezed the golden pendant that Sherlock had given me (possibly twice), feeling only a sad distance.
Mr. Nelson hovered around me that morning, trying to tell me a secret. When I finally let him do so, he told me that Masters Holmes and Lupin had left the two fragments of the map in his custody and that they only had a copy with them, which Master Holmes had sketched out with great precision.
Evidently, Sherlock Holmes had not slept the previous night.
I withdrew into a beastly silence, which I did not even break at lunch, despite Mr. Nelson’s attempts to temper my bad mood.
In the afternoon, I went to Mama’s room at the usual time. I found her sitting on her little sofa, smiling. I don’t know why, but her smile seemed to reject me, almost hatefully.
I had difficulty reading, and Mama noticed it.
“Is everything all right, Irene?” she asked.
“No, everything is not all right,” I would’ve liked to have answered.
Nothing was all right at all, because a mysterious woman had involved me in a shady affair that I could not understand, and my two true friends had left at dawn to help me solve it.
I felt overwhelmed by a totally groundless, terrible rage. Closing the book with bad grace, I let it fall to the ground.
“Irene?”
I looked up at her. “Mama?” I asked. “Do you know anything about a certain map of Paris? A map divided into eight parts?”
Her expression turned both stunned and frightened. “What are you talking about?”
“Did you ever know a blond woman … someone who you talked to about me … and who is looking for a map of Paris?”
I saw her try to get to her feet, her legs trembling beneath her. “Irene, I don’t understand what … you’re talking about —”
“What about Mr. d’Aurevilly? Did you know him? And the Montmorencys? Do you know any of them?” I went on.
“No, Irene, no! But why are you asking me these questions? And why are you being so … aggressive?” my mother asked.
“Then why do they know me, Mama?” I persisted, wanting an answer.
Mama flopped onto the little sofa. She leaned her head against one of the columns that held up the canopy and whispered with her last bit of strength, “Irene, what on earth has come over you?”
I left the room in a rage, my blood boiling. I went and shut myself up in my room. I heard Mr. Nelson’s footsteps and my mother’s agitated voice, and that was enough for me.
That evening, when our butler knocked on the door to my lilac-colored room to invite me to come down for dinner, he found it empty, with two dresses fewer in the wardrobe.
He realized immediately that I had escaped via the steps hidden in the vines. But it took him almost a day to realize that Arsène Lupin’s boneshaker had disappeared from the garden.
I was a day ahead of him, and I was raised in Paris. Once I got there, I would have no difficulty finding the Alchemists Hotel.
Chapter 12
THE ALCHEMISTS OF PARIS
The term boneshaker, I decided, was not just a nickname, but also the true name of that diabolical wheeled device.
When I could finally glimpse the walls of Paris, it was a little past noon, and I no longer could feel my back, let alone my backside. I located a postal stop from its sign, went into a small inn, and, francs in hand, asked for a ride. It felt like a luxurious way to travel, seated next to the postal worker on a hard carriage box. I imagined Arsène’s expression when I told him where I had left his iron contraption.
Believe me, after that trip I was absolutely certain that no one would ever be able to invent a comfortable bicycle, let alone that anyone who was not as crazy as Arsène would ever be able to ride one.
After the long siege of that winter and the resulting starvation, Paris had turned gray. The streets were mostly deserted — few people, few inns open, and no animals running loose, as had been the case in the past. The famine must have been even more terrible than I had supposed. The Luxembourg Gardens seemed covered with ashes, which shocked me, as did the string of closed, barred windows along Napoleon’s residences.
I thanked the postal worker for giving me a ride and set about looking for the Alchemists Hotel, heading toward the quarter where they had told me it was located — the Marais. Not so long ago, the Marais had been a swamp, and now it was a maze of short houses and narrow alleys. I found the Alchemists just before the rue du Temple, where the money changers’ and pawnbrokers’ shops began. There, embarrassed Parisians handed over their most valuable goods in exchange for a handful of francs. Papa was right, I thought, as I passed a grimy, wet intersection. For some people, war was an opportunity. Every event and every action that man took caused unexpected consequences, upward or downward. Someone is always higher than us, and someone is always lower than us.
Above, I noticed that the trees seemed unconcerned about the fate of the war, for the first buds and tender leaflets were already sprouting. Below, strong, revolting smells seeped out through the half-open doors. Cabbage soup in the best circumstances. Mouse, shoe, and belt soup when there was nothing else. As always, poverty and luxury were no more than a few blocks apart, but in entirely different worlds.
Sherlock and Lupin were not in their room, but the woman who ran the little hotel knew exactly who I was inquiring about. When I asked her if she had a room for me, she scrutinized me coldly, as if she was guessing my age and the amount of francs I had with me.
She said she did not. In order to negotiate over the price, I thought.
I did not want her to realize how confused and frightened I was. I kept thinking that I had run away from home and was completely alone in a city that had just emerged from a war. But to the eyes of outsiders, I wanted to show myself to be a worldly, indep
endent girl. I could not know how ridiculous this must have seemed.
“If you really want,” the woman suggested, “I can have a straw pallet added to your friends’ room.”
My eyes lit up. “That would be perfect!” I exclaimed.
“But it will still cost you as much as a single room for yourself,” she clarified.
That was fine with me. My first concern was not about money, but about finding myself in Paris without any plan.
I asked her where I could get a bite to eat, and the woman peered at me again, her expression like that of a wolf. “It depends how much you want to spend, miss.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I replied. “I’ll take care of it myself.”
I found myself on one of the bridges that crossed the Seine, not far from l’Île de La Cité and the black spires of Notre-Dame. The river flowed slowly, carrying debris with it.
I wandered near the Lutèce arena, to the one building I knew well — my home. It broke my heart to see the windows and front door barred. What had been the window of my bedroom overlooked a small park, where boards, planks, and rubble were thrown together now. Only two of the trees surrounding the fountain had survived the chaos.
A woman walking near the walls looked like one of our maids, and I thought of calling out to her. But I stopped myself, putting a hand over my mouth. I was not sure it was her, and I realized that even if it had been, I would not have known what to say.
So I went back to the hotel, reaching it at the end of the afternoon. A glance from the woman on the ground floor was all I needed to know that Lupin and Sherlock had returned.
I climbed the wooden stairs of that filthy dump two by two, knocked on the door, and cried, “Lupin! Sherlock!”
“Irene!” Arsène hopped up. “So that old crone wasn’t having us on. It’s really you!”
“In flesh and blood, gentlemen, despite your shake-everything vehicle!” I said.
“You must be crazy!” Sherlock greeted me. “Coming all the way here alone.”
“And how are you so sure I was alone?”