Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes)

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  “The supervisor did not at first suspect.” Madame Worth’s deep voice hushed in the presence of sudden death. “So many of them fall asleep at their work.”

  Irene approached the motionless figure while our guide held back. I followed her, patting my skirt pocket for the small mother-of-pearl-covered notebook and pencil Irene had bought me since our arrival in Paris. I had remarked that such grandeur was inappropriate for the minor or macabre matters I might jot down on an outing.

  “Au contraire,” she had enunciated in her perfect French. “Macabre matters require more formality than most. Consider the funeral.”

  I did consider such macabre ceremonies as I stood gazing over Irene’s fountain-of-tulle shoulder at the slumped figure of the bead-girl. I noticed little: the cheap woolen bodice and skirt; fingertips still reddened from the pressure and punctures of the thin beading needle; a knot of tobacco-brown hair; a pallid slice of face.

  All the shopgirls were wan, even the youngest, and the French naturally tend to sallow complexions, but no doubt I am jaundiced, so to speak, against them.

  “Perhaps she has merely fainted,” I suggested.

  For answer, Irene stepped aside, the movement acting as the drawing of a bejeweled black curtain on a living tableau. Tableau vivant, the French put it in that Frenchy way of theirs, only this scene was a depiction of death.

  Now I saw it—the means! Sewing shears embedded to their large, looped handles in the maroon wool of a bodice back; a darker ring of red soaking into the surrounding fabric.

  “An eternal faint,” Irene commented, leaning over to eye the pearls and crystal beads that scattered from the dead girl’s extended hand like semi-precious birdseed. The figure before which the tiny treasures were flung stared open-eyed at the human sacrifice before it.

  Irene nodded to the figure’s lavishly beaded skirt. “The bead-girl was working on this fashion doll when she was murdered.”

  “Fashion doll?” I stared at the small form, which had previously struck me as some wicked, well-dressed fairy presiding over the death scene.

  “Fashion doll,” Irene repeated a bit impatiently. “The finest French dressmakers send samples of their latest styles to the great ladies of many lands, to the Courts of St. Petersburg and St. James, to Vienna, Madrid, Rome.”

  I studied a pale bisque face with rounded cheeks and chin both tinted dawn-pink, with round blue-glass eyes and painted lashes and brows. This fat, waxy doll seemed cruelly complacent keeping guard over the spare form of the dead girl. Her yellowish lean hand stretched toward a feeble trail of tawdry glitter, toward the heavy blue satin hem of the gown that clothed the doll, the raw, needle-pierced fingertips still ruddy despite the clutch of pale death’s chill hand.

  The doll’s toy fingers were the color of ivory, each tiny nail sculpted into place. One finger wore a miniature ring of gold and topaz.

  “No rings,” Irene said, taking inventory of the corpse as if it were a different kind of doll. “She was not engaged, but that doesn’t rule out a rival among her sister sewers. Stab wounds usually indicate a crime of passion—and opportunity. The fatal weapon was near at hand.”

  She looked up at Madame Marie. “Surely there were witnesses.”

  The Frenchwoman shrugged. “Their work is taxing and leaves little time to take their eyes from it. According to what the other girls said when I was called, they heard only a deep intake of breath, a gasp, and looked up to find Berthe slumped among them. They, also, suspected sleep at first. One even shook Berthe’s shoulder before she saw the shears.”

  “I would speak to that one,” Irene said.

  Madame Marie looked to the open door crowded with worried faces. “We have twelve hundred such girls working here. I do not know their names—”

  “Twelve hundred?” Irene recovered from her surprise. “Ask the one who first noticed to step forward.”

  Initially Madame Worth’s request was met by dropped eyes and shuffling feet. Then a harsh wave of whispering agitated the girls who stood askance with the haunted eyes of a Greek chorus.

  Finally one of them limped forward, her body twisted into a hunchback. I could see why she sat at a table all day and strung beads; what other work could such a one seek? She approached reluctantly, and gave her name even more reluctantly to Madame Worth.

  “Genevieve Pascal,” Madame Worth repeated, turning to Irene, who had already heard the name forced from those bloodless lips.

  “Mademoiselle Pascal,” Irene began with great politeness. “First tell me, please, who she is.”

  Genevieve’s lusterless hazel eyes lifted to Irene, first traveling over the intricacies of her gown. Such humble seamstresses seldom saw the full results of their labor, I realized, or the women who wore them.

  “Berthe Brascasat,” Genevieve whispered.

  “What of her family? Who must be notified?”

  The girl shrugged one already high shoulder. “Who knows? She came each dawn to sew, and left each sunset with the rest of us.”

  Irene ran a hand over the glittering Braille of her necklace. “I understand that she made this wonderful piece.”

  “Part of it, the center. Others did the fringe.”

  “And this doll, she was working on the skirt?”

  “Berthe was given the most challenging work. Her eyesight was perfect and no one was so delicate with a needle. She could anchor a bead to a single thread.”

  Madame Marie nodded heavily. “Our best bead-girl. I saw that she received the most demanding work.”

  Irene glanced toward the doll. “This porcelain face is oddly familiar.”

  Madame Marie smiled ruefully. “The gown is destined for Maria Feodorovna, Empress of the all the Russias.”

  “The doll is a double!” I blurted out, despite my swearing only twenty-four hours before that I did not blurt under any circumstances. “A doll double.”

  “Exactly, Miss Hussey,” Madame Marie agreed. “We have many such.”

  “Did Berthe work on other dolls?” Irene asked.

  “But of course. She was superlative at her work. She beaded many a miniature skirt as well as the yards and yards of a full-size one, such as yours.”

  “Mine,” Irene repeated with some irony, her gloved fingers tightening on her skirt’s elaborate encrustations. “More hers.” She nodded at the slight form lying so still amid the fallen glitter. Irene, I think, had not until now considered the blinding, blood-pinching labor that went into such luxury as she admired. “A great pity,” she murmured.

  “Yes, her death is a terrible loss for the house,” Madame Worth said.

  Irene, I knew, had not been speaking of the bead-girl’s death, but of her drudgery-ridden life. She seemed almost about to say as much to Madame Marie, then lowered her eyes and set her lips.

  “The gendarmes must be called,” she said instead. “You must consult the records or the other workers to find her family, so they may be notified. And I—I must change clothing,” she announced abruptly, turning and rustling toward the young women still blocking the door.

  They parted for her as did the Red Sea for Moses, and, like the trusting Israelites, I followed meekly in the path Irene had created.

  Irene said nothing after we returned to the dressing room, allowing the vendeuse to ungown her as if she had become as senseless as a fashion doll. She did not speak until we were again in our carriage, the boxed gown occupying the opposite seat, rattling back to the peace of the country.

  “Twelve hundred, Nell,” she repeated at length with a shudder. “Twelve hundred young women toiling away until their fingers bleed and their eyes refuse to focus. It is hopeless. Murder could walk those crowded rows clad in scarlet streamers and they would hardly notice.”

  “Perhaps jealousy,” I suggested.

  “You mean because poor Berthe was the best bead-girl?”

  “Among so many with so little it doesn’t take much to instill envy.”

  Irene nodded, looking tired, then leaned her head back
against the tufted black leather. Her bonnet feathers jostled to the bound of metal wheels over city cobblestones and later country pebbles.

  “Twelve hundred. I wonder what they are paid? Not much,” she answered herself. “Still—” She shook herself upright again. “Murder is not always so nice as to choose a select circle of suspects. And one must take what presents itself.”

  “You will look into this girl’s murder?”

  “That is apparently all I am free to do at the moment. Certainly I owe it to the poor child who only hours ago was laboring on my new gown.” She eyed the oversized parcel opposite us bitterly.

  “Will Monsieur Worth bill you, do you think?”

  “We shall see,” she answered with an air of distraction. “I must occupy myself as I can,” she added fiercely, with no great relevance.

  Murder at Maison Worth and the confidences of the Queen of Bohemia had not inspired Irene with a harmonious mood, I feared. Both incidents had reminded her of the ugly face the World is always ready to turn to the unprepared, and of how helpless most of us are in the face of fate or fact, incident or coincidence.

  My friend Irene Adler Norton did not at all relish feeling helpless.

  Chapter Six

  BANKING ON IT

  We returned home at dusk to find the parrot Casanova’s cage discreetly covered, the cat Lucifer cavorting unsupervised in the side garden with Messalina the mongoose, and Sophie gone to church (these Romans are most devoted to evening services, the better to bum a queen bee’s ransom in beeswax candles, I sometimes think).

  Godfrey was sitting in the wing chair by the fire, a brandy snifter in his hand and an expression of brown study upon his brooding face. Had he not been so convivial, I would have been reminded of Miss Jane Eyre’s Mr. Rochester.

  “One day,” I expressed myself with some feeling on the threshold, “I am absent and the entire establishment collapses? What shall we do for supper?”

  “Sophie left a cold quiche,” Godfrey replied.

  “Quiche is awful enough, but cold?” Words could not express my amazement and outrage. “Even the French would find that quaint comfort.” I bustled toward Casanova’s cage. Much as I abhorred the bird’s all too understandable rantings, he was unused to enforced silence before ten o’clock.

  Godfrey raised a languid hand. “Let the bird be. His ravings do not permit me to think.”

  I paused, appalled. Godfrey had covered the cage? I reserved the right to gag Casanova to myself, and jealously guarded it.

  “Lucifer is boxing outside with Messy,” I reported briskly. “They must be separated before they do each other harm.” Ordinarily I could count upon Godfrey to attend to domestic adjustments out of doors. In fact, he would always shoot up like a jack-in-the-box to mend such matters in the past.

  He didn’t move. “The cat was intent upon sitting on my lap. I thought it better to set him upon more lively prey.”

  I gaped at Irene, who was removing her bonnet and approaching Godfrey on cautious cat feet. Behind us, I heard André depositing the large dress box in the hall. For the moment, fashion was forgotten, no matter its costs.

  Irene had sunk beside Godfrey’s chair, her gloved hand on its rolled arm “What is it, my dear?”

  He glanced at her upturned face, his own features losing some of their distraction.

  “I’ve just had a most immodest proposal today, and I’m damned if I know what to do about it”

  “Oh?” she asked. “Does this involve a cancan girl from Le Moulin Rouge, by any chance?”

  “If only it did!” he replied feelingly. Before Irene could bristle at this defection, Godfrey looked up to find me fading on the threshold. “No. Stay, Nell. This involves you as well.”

  “I? I am sure I have nothing to do with it!”

  As usual, my response amused him despite his distraction.

  “You are always so sure,” he replied, “and most often when you know little about the matter at hand. Why are you so certain when you know absolutely nothing about this matter?”

  “Because... it is so clearly out of the way. You are not behaving as yourself. Even Irene is stupefied, and I certainly do not want to be drawn into any... matter so convoluted and assuredly personal to yourself. Yourselves.”

  He laughed then, sounding like himself again. “‘Stupefied.’ Irene is stupefied? Stand by the fire,” he urged her, “that I may study this unheard-of state.”

  She did so, enjoying his attention, and even turned coquettishly as if to better display this quality.

  I very nearly stamped my foot in frustration. “Oh, you both know what I mean! Something has happened, and I fear it is none of my business.”

  “But it is.” He stood as well, gesturing me to a seat. Then he turned again to Irene. “Did you have an interesting day at the dress-maker’s?”

  She laughed, relieved. “Imagine Monsieur Worth’s face, Nell, if he could hear Godfrey reducing him to a dressmaker. No, darling, I did not have a nice day at the dressmaker’s. First, I was presented with a divine gown, for which I may not have to pay—we shall see; then I was presented with a murdered seamstress, one of twelve hundred such girls so employed at Maison Worth.”

  Now Godfrey looked stupefied. “Surely you jest.”

  Irene sadly shook her head. “I wish I did, for the latter problem has severely curtailed my pleasure in the first matter. And what adventures have put you in such a quandary, pray?”

  “Quandary. How do you know that I am in a quandary?”

  “Godfrey, you are the most even-tempered of men. When you put out the cat, smother the parrot, let the maid waltz off with nothing in the larder but cold pie, and resort to a solitary brandy, you are obviously in grave difficulty. I deduced a blackmailing hussy, but then I am your wife and I cannot be expected to be objective in these matters.”

  Her words, lightly offered, sobered his face nevertheless. “I have been remiss,” he admitted.

  I straightened in my chair, expecting to have the domestic upheavals attended to shortly.

  Instead, he repaired to the Irish cut-glass decanter. “A brandy,” he said to Irene, suiting gesture to words. “New gowns and murder are most fatiguing, each in their own way. Nell?”

  “Nothing. Am I right in supposing that this is the Napoleonic brandy you bought with the proceeds of Queen Marie Antoinette’s Zone of Diamonds?”

  He nodded.

  “Too French,” I sniffed.

  Godfrey resumed his chair and his contemplative air even as he admired the liquor’s topaz color in his glass. Irene perched on the wing chair’s arm and stroked a charmingly errant dark lock back from his brow.

  I was more than ever minded to retreat, for certain domestic scenes should be private. Godfrey stopped me by speaking, facing into the fire as if recalling a distant day.

  “I have had an offer. A most strange offer.”

  “In your work?” I prompted.

  His glance was sharp. “For my work, yes.” He sighed. “As you know I have taken what legal assignments I can, specializing in cases that cross borders and involve knowledge of English and English law. This is modestly remunerative, and damnably dull.”

  Irene nodded sympathetically. Much as I deplored Godfrey’s use of expletives this evening, I had to admit that our stop-and-start lives since leaving England left much to be desired. We were either idle, or engaged on some dubious venture involving crime and its consequences. And the funds from the Zone of Diamonds had to be dwindling.

  Ever since, as a girl, I had come to make myself useful to my late parson father about the manse and the parish, I had been content in a purely domestic role, but Godfrey and Irene were far more worldly than I in more than the customary sense. They had thrived on invention and on contention, in court or on stage. Now fate had denied both their proper arena. In some ways, they were as much exiled from their natural environments here in Paris as Quentin Stanhope had been in Afghanistan. Thinking of Quentin, who might be alive—must be alive!—m
ade me clasp my hands in anxiety. Godfrey saw the gesture and misread it. How could he not?

  “Pray, do not worry, Nell. One might say that I have a golden opportunity; good fortune in such stunning and sudden degree that I do not know quite how to take it.”

  “Then the news is good?” Irene cried. “Godfrey, you always take things so seriously, I thought—”

  He raised a barrister’s cautionary hands. “The matter looks promising. Too promising. There are other considerations. And conditions.”

  Irene’s hands lifted and fell in rapid turn. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Godfrey! Do not keep us teetering on our chair edges.” (She spoke for herself; her appealing perch required teetering. I was firmly anchored on the commodious bergère and in no danger of toppling.) “What is it?” she urged.

  Of course he sipped the brandy before replying, I sometimes think such eternal dithering is the sole function of men’s clubs.

  “You have heard of Ferrières?” he asked.

  How like a lawyer to answer a question with another question! By now I was ready to install Casanova’s cage cover over Godfrey’s attractive but aggravatingly noncommittal face.

  “Ferrières?” Irene repeated. She prided herself on knowing anyone of consequence in Paris. “I have heard of no such person,” she admitted, crestfallen.

  “Ferrières is not a person, darling oracle, but a place.”

  “Oh,” I interjected. “Is it a... prison?”

  “Hardly.” Now Godfrey was showing frustration. “It is the country home of the Rothschilds, and there I—we— have been invited.”

  Irene almost fell off her perch, save that Godfrey threw an arm around her waist to steady her.

  “The Rothschilds? We—you—are invited to the Rothschilds’ estate.” Her amazement turned to suspicion. “The autumn Season in Paris has started. No one of any cachet would be caught dead anywhere else, and the hunt season does not begin until November. Why are the Rothschilds receiving guests in the country at this time of year?”