The Adventures of Irene Adler : The Irene Adler Trilogy

by San Cassimally

  ‘My dear Sarah, how kind of you,’ I said giving her a hug.

  ‘Ah, Quand Même...’ Here she meant, “Ach, Why not?” She had opened the windows to let the sun in, and through the one on my left I could see the morning mist rising in the Bois de Boulogne, revealing its green splendour in the tantalising manner of strippers in Montmartre uncovering their charms. The Seine seen through the other one, was already bathed in spring sunshine and was busy with river traffic. We could hear the bargemen bantering in their Parisian argot and laughing raucously. Suddenly my hostess made a grab for my hand across the table.

  ‘Ee-reine,’ she said opening wide her eyes. ‘I know what will make you change your mind and stay- at least for a few days more.’

  ‘All I need is a good excuse,’ I said with a laugh. ‘Or just an excuse, it doesn’t even have to be all that good.’

  ‘This has been troubling me for a long time, not because I am all that attached to worldly things. I love my jewels of course, I love beautiful things, but friendship is more important. I have been greatly disturbed since one of my friends stole my skull.’ She began. I laughed.

  ‘But my dear, you must excuse me, your skull seems firmly fixed on your shoulders. It’s your marbles you’ve lost.’ She laughed.

  ‘I like your English sense of humour,’ she said. ‘No, I was referring to Victor Hugo’s skull.’

  This time I was mildly puzzled. I didn’t even know that France’s most respected man had died. Nor could I imagine how his skull had ended up with Sarah. She enjoyed my discomfiture and proceeded to tell me the story of Victor Hugo’s skull. She rose and went rummaging in a drawer for a silk-bound notebook. Her carnet, she called it. When she found it, she invited me to sit next to her on an armchair. She opened it, and I saw a poem in what I recognised as her messy handwriting. I’ll read it to you, she said.

  ‘I’m glad your voice is rather better than your scrawl,’ I said. Indeed she had the most lyrical, the sweetest voice I have ever heard. One of the main pillars upon which her reputation as the world’s finest actress rested was her oratory.

  ‘Shut up and listen.’ And I read the lines silently as she spoke them:

  Le rideau tombe...

  Les spectateurs partis,

  Par le silence de la tombe

  Le theatre est envahi.

  Mais Sarah, ta gloire

  Vivra pour toujours

  Dans la mémoire

  De tes spectateurs

  Et admirateurs

  Éblouis

  Par la magie

  De tes gestes,

  Ta voix en or

  Le décor

  Et tout le reste.

  Dans cent ans Sarah

  Quand poussière

  Ta chaire

  Sera

  Ton crâne impérissable

  Durera pour toujours

  Et ton renom sera inépuisable.

  I append a modest translation:

  When the curtain falls

  And gone the spectators

  By the silence of the grave

  The theatre shall be wrapped

  But Sarah, your glory

  Will live forever

  In the memory

  Of your spectators

  Your admirers

  Dazzled by the magic

  Of your gestures

  Your golden voice

  The scenery

  And everything else.

  In one hundred years

  When dust

  Your flesh shall become

  Your imperishable skull

  Will last forever

  And your fame will never fade.

  No need to say that I greatly admired both Hugo’s homage and its recipient’s rendering.

  There were two photographs in the carnet which my hostess showed me next. It was of a human skull. A gift from France’s most eminent man of letters. It bore a splendid sapphire encrusted in its forehead. On its back it had the poem, beautifully etched in miniature characters which would have required a magnifying glass to read.

  ‘And you’ve lost this unique masterpiece?’ I asked. Sarah nodded.

  ‘Stolen?’ She nodded again. She was obviously very upset about this. No, she had not involved the police. This was a matter that had to be resolved between friends. It was beautiful watching her and listening to her as she expounded her stance.

  ‘As you know I want, no, I demand clarity in all my relationships. I never chew my words, even with princes. I told Bertie that he was a sodden nincompoop. You see unless I know who has done the act, I cannot look at the other five women in the eyes. And I love them all with all my heart.’

  ‘Even the thief?’

  ‘I have already forgiven her, but first I need to know who she is. Oh, one of the women is a man,’ she added looking away, in a gesture calculated to mystify. No wonder she was France’s best actress. She had such a sense of timing.

  I wondered whether she had considered that thieves might have broken in whilst she was in Paris. She laughed. No thief would go past Maximilien and Ali Gaga.

  ‘Who are they?’ I asked. She laughed.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  The incident occurred last winter. Every year she gives a party in honour of Marie Madeleine.

  ‘Mary who?’

  ‘The patron saint of whores. The one Our Lord befriended. Maria Magdalena.’

  ‘?’

  ‘Well Irene, you will agree that you have never met anybody who is less ashamed of the things that she has done. I don’t care who knows, but I have been a member of the world’s oldest profession.’

  ‘Well, I know you have had lovers-’

  ‘All actresses have patrons, otherwise we would starve. Personally I manage very well, thank you. But whilst building up my career, I was always penniless. No, what I mean is that I used to fuck men for money, men I had never met before. Une pute quoi? A whore. It was mostly arranged by Maman and her friends. Macquereaux. Pimps.’ I knew that she was illegitimate and that her mother was a courtesan.

  ‘Maman and my Tante Rosine, were courtesans. Let us not chew words here. What are courtesans, but whores? Poules de luxe. We fuck men for money. Now I don’t, I only do it for pleasure. Mind you they’d be stupid not to offer gifts of jewellery or whatever, but time was when we needed money for our daily bread. Or we’d have had nothing to put under our teeth.’

  She told me how at fifteen, still a virgin, her unofficial guardian, Rosine’s lover, the Duc de Morny had claimed her virginity. He was the illegitimate half brother of Napoleon III, born out of wedlock to the Queen of Holland, Hortense de Beauharnais. You couldn’t make this up. He had offered to start a handsome fund in her name for the prize. Sarah had disliked the idea but Maman had talked her into it. She could never refuse her anything.

  ‘That was the second time I was losing my virginity,’ she said, adding cryptically, ‘I lost it three times altogether.’ When she became an actress she had no problems sleeping with rich patrons. For money, or jewels, sometimes to help raise money to fund a new production. Or for the hell of it. Obviously many actresses do the same thing. She was not one to cast stones at anybody.

  Our bodies are our own and we do what we like with them. Quand même!

  ‘So, what I am saying, is that many of my friends are whores, like me. Mind you, they prefer the appellation of courtesans. But not me. I call spades spades, except if I tread upon one in the dark, when I call it fils de pute. I like to call whores whores, because I see no shame in it.’ I am not easily shocked, but there was I, gaping at her in wonderment.

  ‘So, every year, I invite those friends of mine who I have worked with both on stage and in the maisons de passe, for a party.’

  ‘You said one of the women was a man?’

  ‘O
h yes. Many young male actors meet with the same difficulties. And they do the same as us. Ask Marcel Proust. He was an habitué of the male bordello. Why, he even owned one. Honoré Morton started his stage career as Coquelin’s understudy, and later became quite well-known.

  Coquelin is France foremost comédien, as you know. He has often played with me, usually in the minor roles. Morton, not Coquelin. He was a well-known homosexual.’

  ‘Coquelin?’

  ‘No, Morton.’

  He never had rich patrons, so he had to do it for money when he was broke. Without going into details, let me just say that he and I have worked together both on stage and in bed.’

  ‘?’

  ‘Rich men can afford exotic tastes. Some love to have two women, others a man and a woman. Let’s not look for the flea.’

  ‘Do you suspect him then?’ She looked at me in shock. It took her a while before she regained her composure.

  ‘The thing is a theft has taken place, there are six candidates, but I do not suspect any of them. I have one hundred percent trust in all of them.’ So I was being asked to investigate a crime with not a single suspect.

  She began by telling me the details. Did I know that she had discovered paradise on earth? It’s her retreat at Belle-Ile-en-Mer, in La Pointe des Poulains, in Brittany.

  ‘I never believed in the coup de foudre - love at first sight, as you English call it, when it comes to a man. But with my refuge, however, that’s exactly what it was. The coup de foudre.’ She had caught sight of the old abandoned fort at Pointe des Poulains, on a visit, and had been so taken by its beauty that she decided that she had to have it by any means.

  ‘Of course the great advantage is that buildings don’t answer back,’ I said with a laugh. She shook her head.

  ‘Don’t you believe that. You never have a quiet moment. The wind’s always howling, the sea crashing against the rocks. You have sea-gulls shrieking night and day. However, the strange thing is that it is easier to filter away these sounds en bloc. It’s funny, but it’s true that the first thing that comes to mind about my hideout is the silence. Please Irene, stop me going on and on, I do tend to wander off tangents.’ I was bewitched by the music of her voice, and I had all the time in the world.

  ‘I love tangents.’ I said.

  In the course of the day, she had told me the full histories of her relationship with the people she refused to call her suspects. Sophie Houellebecq, who started as her understudy. After giving a good account of herself in a couple of plays, she had achieved a certain notoriety playing the soubrette or confidante. Monique Bourgeois. She was two or three years older than Sarah. She had a promising career, but was unable to attain her full potential when she started becoming a cow.

  ‘?’

  ‘Oh, that’s what we say when someone begins to swell. Elle s’avachit.’ Anyway, she ended up playing roles of jovial spinster aunts.

  Everybody spoke of Amélie Bosquet as a future Rachel, but as she suffered from nerves, she was often unable to perform at her best. She was given few parts. When she was, the critics raved about her, but producers were reluctant to invest large sums in her. Pascale Cottard came top at the Conservatoire, but she allowed her career to be destroyed by her addiction to the poppy. She failed to attend rehearsals and had the habit of bursting into tears for no reason. Gilberte de Poissevain came from a rich family, and the critics spoke of her as the “next Sarah”. She was indubitably the most talented of the lot. ‘She had a voice comparable to mine.’ She could make her audience cry as readily as she could make it laugh. Incredibly though, she never took the theatre seriously, much preferring high society. She was the mistress of Moïse Pereire, a scion of the illustrious family who owned Railway and Maritime companies.

  ‘You’ve been on Boulevard Pereire in the Seventeenth arondissement, haven’t you? She had ended up by marrying him. Moïse died young, leaving her with a huge fortune. Although she talked of coming back to the theatre, she had too many social and family commitments to re-ignite her career.’ She had, however, maintained her friendship with Sarah all her life. What all the women had in common was that they had all moonlighted as prostitutes, although Gilberte obviously had no need for money.

  ‘Whilst we actresses had little choice in the early days, Gilberte simply loved playing the part of a poule in real life.’

  ‘It was the zeitgeist you understand.’ I nodded.

  They had all at one time participated in partouzes or threesome with Sarah. Morton and Sarah was a much sought after combination for rich patrons who loved having a man and a woman at the same time. Naturally they paid well over the odds.

  ‘You must have done it yourself, non?’ In truth I had not, but I nodded absently.

  These were the people Sarah had invited to Belle-Ile to celebrate La Marie Madeleine. She had organised it every year for the last eleven years except twice. Once, when she was travelling in America, and the other time when Maurice was seriously ill.’ Maurice was the son she bore to the Belgian Henri Prince de Ligne.

  ‘That fils de pute claimed to be in love with me. Said he’d kill himself if I refused to marry him and all that, but he sent his uncle to see me. Offered me money to stay away from his nephew.

  The fate of the Belgian monarchy rests with you, he said in a trembling voice. The fellow was something like one hundred and three in the line of succession. I sent him packing. I want neither your money nor your nephew, I told him.’ Maurice was born shortly afterwards. It was widely known that the boy was something of a disappointment to her mother. He was wilful, lazy and spoilt, but she submitted to all his whims. She gave him limitless funds which he gambled away.

  Never once did she refuse him anything he asked, however extravagant. Not until he started making common cause with the enemies of Dreyfus. This was what made her sever all links with him. After arranging a generous stipend to be paid regularly to him, of course. She couldn’t let the poor dear starve, could she? She hadn’t heard from him in over a year now.

  ‘Do not darken my doorsteps ever again until you, son of a Jewess, cleanse yourself of all your hatred for our people,’ she had said. And that was that.

  Now she was entreating my assistance to solve the mystery of the theft, as the next Marie Madeleine was just days away. The same six people as last year had confirmed that they would be coming to La Pointe des Poulains.

  I had next to no idea how I would tackle this task, but the bigger the challenge, the less I am likely to resist it. My friends in Water Lane are always alarmed whenever I embark on what Armande calls my rakeless ventures. Sarah simply could not envisage giving offence to the people she loved most in the world. ‘Be as tactful as you can,’ she urged. A difficult circle to square, I mused.

  ***

  On Friday, Sarah and I caught an early train at La Gare de Montparnasse for Lorient in Brittany. After the eight-hour rail journey, a boat picked us up and we crossed over to Sarah’s paradise on earth. There are few places around France where the sea unleashes its waves with greater fury, but it was surprisingly calm that day. The moment we reached the retreat, we were greeted by the sight of a crocodile roaming freely on the rocky grounds around the building. A dour man in a wheelchair seemed to be talking to the reptile. He had no legs.

  ‘Meet Ali Gaga,’ she said, bending down to rub the nose of the beast. Ali used to stay with her in Paris, but as he was getting too big, she relocated her to La Pointe des Poulains. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘the little cheri can roam freely.’ Little?

  ‘But who looks after him?’ I asked.

  ‘After her,’ she said sternly. How did she know? I wondered.

  ‘Why, Maximilien of course. Did I not tell you about him?’ Maximilien was manoeuvring his vehicle with remarkable wizardry, with the help of hand-rims. These were smaller wheels fitted coaxially to the outer ones. Though he was legless, there was nothing the man seemed unabl
e to do, except go up the steps leading to the house. His role in life seemed to be that of a watchman of Sarah’s paradise as well as Ali Gaga’s keeper. Sarah proudly told me that Maximilien needed no help to look after Ali. His lack of legs in no way impeded his movements. He fed her, among other things, milk and honey as well as meat and fish. The beast lived in a heated compound Sarah had built for her, with her own pool to wallow in. Besides, she had created artificial rocky pools all over the grounds for the sole purpose of keeping Ali happy. Maximilien changed the water regularly, did the cleaning and the maintenance, heating hectolitres of water everyday. Ali was free to roam, and her keeper had trained him to avoid no-go areas. Naturally the beast was a serious enough disincentive to thieves. Did I understand now why no outsider could have entered the house to steal the skull? Maximilien did not so much scowl as growl at me to show his hostility. He obviously hated distractions. Sarah pacified him by giving him a peck on each cheek.

  Madame Guérard was already in situ. She had come here a few days earlier to prepare for the feast, receiving provisions they had ordered and cleaning the accommodation units. The lady was her mother-substitute and her confidante. Sarah called her by the quaint name of Mon P’tit Dame. She had great organisational skills and was as dependable as waves. The main building, Le Fortin, as Sarah called it, was a large rectangular cream-coloured edifice with windows all round.

  From the outside it looked like a prison. In the distance the Lighthouse at Sauzon stood out. In spite of the large number of rooms on two floors, Sarah had too many friends and relatives to accommodate all of them. As she insisted that none of them would be refused a room whenever they felt like visiting, she had constructed a complex consisting of smaller villas, orbiting the main building, which she called Les Cinq Parties du Monde. Five Continents!

  ‘I did the plan myself,’ she explained merrily. ‘You know of course that I am an artist and a sculptor?’ She had only reminded me of this a few hundred times. ‘I am also something of an architect.’