“Lucifers!” he announced.
“Surely you do not intend to smoke whilst flouting the laws of France, not to mention those of hospitality?” I inquired.
“We must light our own interior moon, Nell.” Irene lofted a shuttered lantern from the bag. It alone accounted for half of the clamor. My wince caused her to return it more softly. “We must be utterly quiet, Godfrey.”
“We shall certainly endeavor to be so.” He lifted a boot whose sole had been smeared with coal tar to smother his footfalls.
“I hope you do not leave a trail, as Lucifer does when he has been in the coal cellar,” I said, crocheting so briskly that the animal under discussion began bobbing about in an attempt to pinion my ball of thread.
“No need to wait up, Nell,” Irene advised, donning black gloves.
“I do not intend to.” I rose and retreated to the parlor, where Casanova held forth from his perch.
I did not often have an evening to myself. I intended to make full use of it by plying the parrot with my French and studying the creature’s pronunciation. This was an activity I did not care to pursue in public. So it was that I did not see them out, these charming housebreakers, although I peeped through the window with the lamp low. I saw the moon burnish their black shoulders to silver as they melted into the carriage that Godfrey would drive to the gloomy Montpensier residence.
When I turned back to the room, my insides were as knotted as my thread. Lucifer crouched by the bird cage, his fat tail twitching with unlawful appetite. “No, wicked cat! Avaunt! Leave my French tutor alone.”
I offered Casanova a grape from the dining-room sideboard. The sly old reprobate sidled to the bars and cocked his head, presenting me with a suspicious eye as round and bright as a billiard ball.
“Pretty bird,” I said stiffly, “pairlay-vhoo franzay?”
The ruffled neck darted forward. A flaking yellowed beak seized my bribe and would have snatched my fingertips had I not quickly pulled back. Casanova edged down the perch, which, despite daily attention from Sophie, still flaunted memoirs of chronic dropsy, so to speak. The bird transferred the grape from one talon to another, then eyed me, its head twisted at a conniving angle, looking like Long John Silver mentally measuring the captain of Stevenson’s Hispaniola for a coffin.
“No, you foul bird,” I admonished. “No escape. I’ve given you treasure, and you shall speak French. Now, pairlay!”
Thereafter Casanova trilled his French phrases, much to the irritation of Lucifer. I noted down phonetically the saucy but accurate pronunciations.
I did retire early, if only to demonstrate my absolute unconcern, but I did not sleep. The clock had struck two before I heard the sound of hooves in the lane; it struck three before my industrious criminal friends had installed the horses in the stable and crept into the house like the footpads they were.
“Well?” I met them on the stairs in my combing gown with lamp held high, feeling like an unlikely (not to mention anachronistic) offspring of Marley’s ghost and Lady Macbeth. “I hope your entry to the Montpensier home was more discreet than this. You woke me from a sound sleep.”
(A tiny untruth in the service of instilling guilt is permissible—even necessary—when dealing with wayward children and erring adults, as I had long since learned.)
“A pity.” Godfrey grinned knowingly up at me. “Then I suppose you are too drowsy to hear our tale.”
I sighed. “I doubt I shall sleep again, between your lumbering about the premises and that vicious bird gargling its gutturals all night.”
Irene shook her hair loose from the beret. “We were in desperate need of your skills tonight, Nell. While you lay dreaming, I struggled to copy the penmanship of a drunken sailor.”
‘Then you found the mysterious letters!” I clattered downstairs to follow the miscreants into the parlor.
Godfrey was unshuttering the lantern to reveal the ragged pile of papers that Irene strewed over the shawl-covered table. I eagerly picked up one; because of my former profession of typist, paperwork has become my greatest weakness.
“Why, this is virtually illegible, Irene.”
“You should have seen the original if you seek illegibility,” she replied rather sharply. “I am not accustomed to writing by the light of a shuddering lantern while bent over a bookcase with my ears perked for a footfall at any moment.”
“And this... what is this mess?” I demanded, staring at a veritable melee of crisscrossed lines.
“That is a sketch of the seal.”
“Lucifer might have done better with his claws.”
“Lucifer might have done better at the entire expedition,” Godfrey said. “The window catches were so old they were rusted shut. The formidable Pierre makes the rounds of the house every forty-five minutes—and the library’s high shelves are reached only by a movable ladder so possessed of creaks that it mimics a pump handle.”
“How dreadful.” I sat down at the table, pulled out the pince-nez I happened to have ready in my gown pocket and propped it on the bridge of my nose. “Perhaps I can decipher this scrawl, Irene, in daylight. With time. But the seal is an impossible jumble.”
“Exactly what I thought,” she said, “until I realized that the blurred appearance was intentional because it is a jumble, a jigsaw puzzle. The wax was not imprinted with one massive seal, but overprinted with several. And I think—oh, where are the previous sketches?”
Godfrey fetched them from the desk where she had left them rolled into pigeonholes.
“Where were these missives found?” I asked Godfrey, watching Irene’s hands shuffle pages around on the tabletop as if consulting an Ouija board.
“On the top shelf of the farthest bookcase,” he said. “A false back hid them. We had to remove two shelves with all of their books. Quietly. Within minutes.”
“Oh, dear. How did you ever know to look behind that particular shelf?”
“I did not. Irene did.” He nodded at her tumbled auburn curls, all we could see of her face as she pored over the copies. “You must ask her to explain the logic; I cannot. It has something to do with a Provençal cookbook being on the top shelf.”
“Well, of course!” said I. “Who would put a cookbook on a top shelf? Only someone who expected that shelf never to be disturbed. No woman worth her house sense would do it, but a man would, if he wanted to conceal a hiding place with books and wasn’t particular of the volumes he selected.”
“I see.” Godfrey sounded unconvinced. Male logic often trips over such small but telling details.
Irene suddenly lifted a sketch to the lantern light, then another and another. Her face was rapt with dawning excitement.
“Yes! If I turn this one... so... and this that way, and do this with the third—Yes! Now, where is the sketch of the seal?”
Godfrey fetched it. She held it so close to the unshuttered lantern that I feared it might catch fire.
“Yes! The seal blends all three letters we have seen tattooed on three vastly dissimilar people.”
“How extraordinary,” I admitted.
“And not the half of it. Look! There is yet another letter impressed into the seal. I believe—I am convinced!—that it is an ‘N’.”
“What does it all mean?” Godfrey asked, as a barrister will.
Irene sat back with a great sigh. “I don’t know. Certainly these two dead men and a young French girl are connected in a matter that involves at least one other person, perhaps several.”
“What did the mailed letters say?” I asked quite sensibly. “Oh. A lot.” Irene seemed too distracted by her puzzle pieces to go further, so Godfrey continued.
“I read them over Irene’s shoulder as she took notes. They were decidedly odd, even ominous. The earliest- dated ones referred to the ‘lamentable and curious’ death of Claude Montpensier and told Édouard of a matter in which Claude’s nearest relative, Louise, would figure. The letters said that although Louise was not of legal age, it made no difference, that the
uncle should arrange for her to be contacted by the writer, in secret.”
Irene nodded as I stared in confusion. “Now the uncle’s actions become understandable,” she said. “The proposal to meet with an undefended young girl without her guardian’s knowledge of the specifics is most bizarre.”
“At this point, cruel Uncle Édouard sounds a hero,” said I.
Godfrey shrugged. “Later letters grew more urgent, saying that it would be to Louise’s ‘advantage’ to respond to the request, that many people were involved in the matter, which was highly secret, and that the uncle’s demands for information were inappropriate, since he was merely a conduit and not the nearest relation of the dead man and thus not entitled to know more.”
“And all of these letters were written in French?”
“Grammatical French for some, others not,” Irene said. “Most were written in different hands and posted from various points on the globe. Some took months to arrive. The tone increases in urgency; the last letter came but a month before Louise was kidnapped and tattooed.”
“It seems some vast old plot, like Treasure Island!”
“Exactly, Nell.” Godfrey lit a cigarette and leaned against the window. “This is a sinister affair, I think, involving a number of desperate men. Louise’s uncle has violated some long-standing agreement by keeping his niece from these men. I doubt they mean to harm her.”
“But the assault! The tattoo!” I burst out.
“These are likely men of a seafaring nature, Nell, remember,” Irene said, “considering the far-flung correspondence. They are not apt to weigh the effect of a forced tattoo upon a well-bred young woman. In fact, they seem to have been striving to meet some obligation owed her father. With Louise presumed dead, I wonder what they will do.”
“Perhaps,” Godfrey said, “they will do what a solicitor would do in the case of a deceased heir. They will approach the next nearest relation.”
“Uncle Édouard!” Irene abruptly straightened. “Yes, he has not underestimated the import of the letters, else why hide them? And he has kept Louise from them.
Perhaps he wished to force the writers’ frankness,” Godfrey said. “Perhaps he too saw some gain in it... for himself.”
“And now that he thinks the poor girl dead—” I put in.
“He may deal with this... company... himself! To his own profit!” Irene’s glance sought our concurrence. “He may force himself upon them.”
“What is this scheme?” I wondered aloud. “And why would tattoos be the method of its initiation?”
Irene swept the papers into a pile and rose to lift a candle. “Excellent questions to sleep upon. I shall be most interested to hear your suppositions in the morning, Nell. In the meantime, Godfrey and I shall consult the sandman.”
I picked up my lamp and followed her to the stair. “For myself,” she continued, “I see but one sensible course. I must visit Sarah Bernhardt first thing tomorrow... or rather, tomorrow afternoon, as she never rises before noon.”
I glanced with amazement and dismay at Godfrey. He knew what I thought of that hussy, Divine Voice or not.
“And you must accompany me, Nell.” Irene’s voice floated down from the dark at the top landing, her lone candle winking like a bright star. “Sarah has been most eager to meet you.”
Godfrey was just swift enough to take the lamp from my nerveless fingers before I dropped it to the floor.
Chapter Twelve
RAPT IN BABYLON
Madame Sarah reclined upon a divan that was draped with oriental cloths.
Madam Irene lounged upon a pile of cushions.
Miss Huxleigh sat upright upon a chair.
A diaphanous scarf draped the Thin One’s no doubt scrawny neck, but her famous strawberry-blond mane spilled around her pallid face like a fiery fountain. Irene’s hair had been styled for the occasion in a similar free-flowing mode: she looked very French and more than somewhat wicked. I was sure that Godfrey would not approve but that Edward Burne-Jones would want to paint her. Then I reconsidered my conclusion about Godfrey.
I wore a gray-felt bonnet with a few pheasant feathers.
A cat that made Lucifer look saintly prowled among the heaped pillows, its sharp withers knifing the smoky air, its spotted amber hide shifting with each muscular step. I have never favored leopards as domestic pets.
Plant leaves as extravagantly broad as the ostrich- feather fan our hostess waved tickled the ceiling. Green tendrils snaked over the furnishings. An arrangement of peacock feathers brushed my nose if I did not sit absolutely still.
Somewhere in that crowded salon, I was given to understand, a serpent lurked. Certainly Adam and Eve had already long left this garden of excess, and Lilith herself was my hostess for tea.
Little in the ornate façade of the actress’s modem house on the Boulevard Pereire had prepared me for this ungoverned interior. Perhaps the “S.B.” carved above the door should have alerted me that I was entering a temple of vanity.
Irene and I were shown into the main salon, where crimson-damask walls reminded me of Mr. Poe’s Chamber of the Red Death. These bloody walls bristled with antlers, exotic masks, and weapons of sinuous oriental design. I nearly tripped on the massive open jaws of a brown bear when I entered. Many such still-carnivorous skins littered the carpets, as did pots of scent-heavy tropical blooms profuse enough to induce a swoon.
No wonder the Divine Sarah reclined upon her divan in the semi-stuporous pose she had made famous.
“So this is the admirable Nell you mention, Irene,” said the only animal exhibit in the chamber capable of speaking. The Divine Sarah coiled forward to peer at me.
I remained tongue-tied. My French certainly would not survive exposure to a wicked woman who declaimed in that language as if divinely inspired.
“I have had many lovers,” the actress told Irene, “but seldom a devoted woman friend. Now this Miss Uxleigh”—(That is how she pronounced my surname; I was delighted that even the Divine Sarah could be flummoxed by foreign words.)—“is indeed a rarity of world stature.”
“Merci,” I murmured modestly. Perhaps she was not so very wicked as I had thought.
“A jewel beyond price,” Irene said airily. “Have you visited the cafés of late?”
“Ah, our amusing masquerade. We were quite dashing, were we not? I really think you ought to have fought that duel, dear Irene. My son, Maurice, has fought duels twice in my honor since he has turned sixteen. Swords are so dramatic... and so harmless these days. I wonder how they ever won wars with them.”
“They didn’t.” Irene twisted in her pillows to pluck an apple from a basket. I gasped to see a fat, serpentine form slithering away as her hand reached out. “They used ships, cannon and cavalry, then guns. Swords were always mainly ornamental. Men can be so vain.”
“Almost as vain as women,” Sarah agreed with a laugh. “I imagine that Miss Uxleigh is not vain.”
“Oh, no. She is most refreshing, and almost always honest.”
“Almost always!” I objected.
“What an original pronunciation,” the actress said enthusiastically. I cringed in irritation as she spoke on. “A pity that I can master no English. I believe I would have as charming an accent in that language as Miss Uxleigh has in mine. There is no single advantage a woman of truly enduring fascination can possess that is so splendid as speaking with a foreign accent, whatever her origin.”
“Really?” I said in English, sitting more upright.
The actress’s painted red lips parted over white teeth that struck me as rather too large and pointed. “Vraiment,” she said to me simply, with a smile. Truly.
Then she turned to Irene. “I do so long to speak Monsieur Shakespeare as written, but to attempt to do so would draw attention to me rather than to the part. Please speak a bit for me, my dear. It is such a pleasure to hear Shakespeare in his own words.”
Irene complied by rising nearly as sinuously as I had seen our hostess do and launching into
Katharina’s curtain speech from The Taming of the Shrew.
Sarah Bernhardt listened almost visibly, a palm pressed to one temple, her spread fingers as white as an ivory comb against her flowing hair, her eyes closed and her pale profile tilted to the ceiling. The actress’s every pose seemed designed for a photograph or a portrait. Even as I recognized the art—and artifice—behind the façade, I felt mute admiration for such adept self-presentation.
Despite the magnetism Bernhardt exerted even when frozen into a complicated pose, Irene managed to divert my attention. She gave a quietly ironic reading of the famous “advice to wives” speech that pretends to submission but in truth urges subtle rebellion. I had seen Irene act before, of course, usually in musical surroundings—in Gilbert and Sullivan, for example, or before the intervention of an aria. This informal performance moved me more, perhaps because there was only Irene to create the illusion. Her character’s sly sincerity shone through the bizarre environment.
“Brava, brava!” Sarah cried at the end, clapping her hands over her head and lowering her small, feral face so that the wild waves of blondish hair made a frizzled mane behind her. “I could never play the shrew: there is no murder or suicide in the plot.”
Irene sat down again, searching for her half-finished apple.
“Utterly gone, my dear. Eaten. Panache tidies up so diligently. He is an anaconda. So much more useful than the boa constrictor that ate my sofa cushions. I had to shoot Otto.”
“S-shoot him?” I said faintly.
The Divine Sarah leveled her ostrich fan at an ottoman of particularly mottled design. “Otto. I did not even have to change his name.”
I need not report every odd detail of that bizarre meeting, or, perhaps I should say, every bizarre detail of that odd meeting. In the salon of Sarah Bernhardt, eccentricity came and went an honored guest.
What was most bizarre was that the great actress— and I could see that S.B. would indeed be formidable upon the stage—welcomed me, the soul of convention, as an intriguing new eccentricity in her chaotic domestic mise-en-scene. Perhaps excess always ultimately admires its opposite.
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