“Save,” Godfrey reminded her, “for the addition of Louise Montpensier—if the tattoos are the password in this strange conspiracy.”
“Louise takes her father’s place,” she mused.
“Why wait so long?” he countered.
“Because, my almost-always-perceptive husband, affairs reach a head now. Perhaps Louise’s two ugly fairy godfathers hoped to protect her by waiting until the last possible moment to brand her with the mark of the conspiracy.
“ ‘Mark of the conspiracy’? Comes to ‘a head’?” They ignored me.
“And the uncle?” Godfrey’s head tilted close to Irene’s.
She let her head loll back and slitted her eyes in thought—or in an attempt to keep the cigarette smoke out of them. I had never seen her more resemble Lucifer at his feline laziest. “An unexpected problem. He was to have been a conduit to Louise, who would take her father’s place, but then... well, you have seen him. He would not take second place in anything, and this is clearly a joint venture.”
“What ‘venture’?”
“Then, too,” she said, “somehow the blackmail of the duchess is connected.”
“The duchess as well? Irene, this is too much,” I expostulated.
“Really,” Godfrey said, “even I must balk at including the duchess. You go too far at last.”
“And the prince,” she intoned dreamily. “His role is key, if somewhat foggy. I must know more about his courtship of the American-born duchess.”
Godfrey leaned forward to remove the cigarette holder from her languid fingers. The last sinuous strands of smoke floated past their faces. He regarded her with an expression I could not interpret.
“I really think, my dear Irene, that you must put surmising aside for a while. It cannot be good for your constitution,” he admonished, a smile tugging at his lips.
Her eyes suddenly widened. “I am tired,” she said. Her glance found me. “And obviously too lost in my speculations to answer your astute questions, Nell.”
“Of course,” said I, rising. “Too much sun and too much smoke will addle the brain. I plan to rest before dinner and suggest that you both do so also.”
“An excellent idea,” Godfrey said in a voice like French silk.
“I will certainly take your advice under consideration,” Irene said.
I thought her answer most evasive but said nothing. I saw them as I left the room, Godfrey’s face close to Irene’s. They watched me leave with a curious intensity, like matched leopards too lazy to bound after an innocent passing gazelle.
While I did not comprehend the odd change in their moods, I stole quietly away to a most refreshing nap.
By day, the casino in Monte Carlo had the atmosphere of a church or a theater when no service or performance is scheduled. Visitors still milled about in the high- ceilinged grandeur, yet the building’s very vastness and rich ornamentation made the enterprise seem strangely deserted.
The casino was no church, but rather a Temple of Gaming. (I was still speechless from regarding the most recent decorative addition—the new ceiling fresco of the bar, which boasted an excessive number of nude ladies puffing on cigars and cigarettes, each one taking modest pains to keep her feet concealed!) The various rooms, known by the French as salles, bristled with high oriel windows and half-shell niches, with pillars, Palladian casements, massive paintings of a secular—even a pagan—nature, and huge gaming tables covered with green baize.
Irene and I eyed the empty bustle within the main salle, the Duchess of Richelieu at our side.
“I hate what gambling can do to those who are too foolish to stop!” our noble guide said passionately, upon observing the lethargic gamblers still slumped at the tables, driven to wager until their heads should nod onto a pillow of green baize. “But I am told that on this rock—the two million gold francs the casino has brought to the Grimaldi treasury—lies the security of the entire principality and its citizens.”
Irene strolled among the tables, watching the fall of dice, the collapse of losing hands of cards, the fateful spins of the red-and-black wheel of fortune.
I followed her through this bizarre foreign temple, where money changed hands in the form of colored chips and no discernible reason governed the process but luck. The duchess seemed amused by our awe of the great perpetual-motion gambling machine, the eternal inner clockworks of the icy white-marble exterior that baked in the Mediterranean sun.
We paused at a roulette table, the duchess remaining slightly behind us that we might better view the action.
“Sarah is an inveterate gambler,” she noted, sighing. “She spends her money as liberally as she has spent herself on the stage and lives far beyond her means. Still, she comes here to risk even more capital. Eager as I am to see her, I hate to see her ride this fickle wheel of fortune. But then... she is Sarah. She will do as she wishes.”
“The theatrical life,” Irene said with a nostalgic smile, “often encourages excess off the stage. So much emotion is spent in make-believe that real life can seem tame by contrast. I imagine that Sarah winning and losing at the wheel is as artful a performance as any she has given on the boards.”
“Oh, yes. Losing is always a tragedy.” The duchess lowered her eyes. “Sometimes it is even a real tragedy. As with Louise’s father’s death. You know that Eleanora Duse never gambles anymore? Do you know why?”
I shook my head, awed that our guide knew Duse, the Italian tragedienne and mistress of heartfelt emotion.
“It happened at this very table.” The duchess swept a hand past the oblivious seated souls. “A desperate young woman—a child, really—lost and lost again. Losers are common; few are noticed in the mob. Duse noticed, however, being ever alert to the human drama. The girl’s face grew more ashen, her eyes sank into banked fires. A final loss, and she reached into her reticule and dragged out a colored vial. She threw back her head and drank. In moments she collapsed, dead of some poison. Duse’s death scenes have been even more wrenching since but she has never gambled here—or anywhere else—again.”
“But why did the poor girl destroy herself?” I asked, shocked. “Who was she? Why would one so young be so set on gambling?”
“Duse survives, and the story, but not the origin of its true, tragic heroine. She was likely some well-brought- up young woman introduced to the pleasures of wagering by a worldly man. Losing more than she should have, she caught the gambling fever and wagered more than she had, until she could not face her losses. Obviously, she had counted on one favorable turn of the wheel to redeem all. When it didn’t—Who knows where she came from, or where her body lies? She is a lesson for the history books, at least, because she was young and presumably beautiful and her death was such a waste. And because Duse witnessed it and was touched.”
“Les inconnues de la roulette, ” Irene murmured.
“Your pardon?” said the duchess.
“I was only thinking, Your Grace,” Irene said, “that there are many forms of self-destruction for tender and willful young women. Some are prettier than others.” We had passed through the salles privées. The chatter of roulette balls, dice and gamblers’ tongues muted to a patter like distant rain as the duchess led us into a richly appointed office.
“Call me Alice,” she entreated Irene again. “I like hearing an American pronunciation. It is my father who is so enamored of titles.” She smiled at me. “And I long to address you as ‘Penelope’, Miss Huxleigh. I have never known a Penelope. I will feel like a character in one of dear Oscar’s plays in progress when I can call you Penelope. It is almost as perfect a name as Gwendolyn.”
“If Your Grace is certain that it would be proper.”
“Proper! You are the soul of propriety, Penelope. At the hint of your slightest disapproval, improper persons the world over must blanch in concert. Call me Alice, please. I am rich and titled, but not well endowed with friends. I trusted you both from the first, and your admirable husband, Irene. I envy you him, your extraordinary o
rdinary man, despite my noble marriage. In truth, the aristocracy can be such a bore. Do sit down.” We sat on the indicated glossy-black horsehair sofa. A tea service of Georgian silver stood at shining attention on a table before us. Alice sat opposite us on a charming little Louis XV chair and poured the tea.
Irene smiled indulgently at our titled hostess. “For all your impatience with nobility and ceremony and your distaste for gambling, Alice, you may well become the reigning princess of this artificial little hothouse world.”
“My dear Irene, I would have done so long since had Prince Charles, blind in more ways than one, not managed to hang on to life for so long.”
Alice’s blue eyes twinkled like the seas surrounding this fevered, rockbound principality. “The elder prince believes that his son’s sober nature requires a less lively wife.” She laughed, obviously enjoying our girlish chat. “Yet Albert is a mélange of opposites, like myself. He had a wicked reputation with the ladies after his divorce—yes, my dear Penelope, he did! On the other hand, he is shy with women and quite ready to settle down. As for my own youthful enthusiasms—”
“Dr. Tweedledum and Dr. Tweedledee,” Irene put in laconically.
Alice roared with decidedly un-duchess-like laughter. “You have Sarah’s delicious sense of satire, Irene. That is why I liked you at the outset. My indiscretions are in the past. I plan to be as proper a princess as our dear Penelope would make, had she any inclination toward royalty.”
“I? Dear me, no.”
“Save for the blackmailer,” Irene pointed out.
Alice sipped her tea. “Hmm. Indeed. But you and your cohorts will dispatch him shortly, I’m sure. At any rate, except for such vexing obstacles as a stern father and an unknown blackmailer, Albert and I have no other barrier to our happiness.”
“The prince is interested in forms of sea life?” Irene inquired mildly, a sure sign that she considered the answer significant.
“Oceanography, it’s called, my dear. He is quite a pioneer, though you would not know it to look at him. After he resigned his youthful commission in the French Navy, Albert studied under Professor Milne-Edwards. He most admires the work of a one-time American naval officer, Maury, on the mysteries of winds and currents. To Albert, nothing is so fascinating as that which breathes saltwater. He pursues submarine zoology and chemical oceanography as madly as most men would pursue mistresses. On one of his expeditions, he managed to collect specimens as deep as nine thousand feet. Perhaps they are mermaids! All this involves deep-sea diving apparatus and such, as from a story by Jules Verne. You may have noticed the abundance of seawater that surrounds the principality,” she added drily.
“But this second physician—”
Alice dimpled at the memory, then glanced at me. “Let us be frank. I am, to an extent, a commodity on the international marriage market. Like many Americans, my father wants me to obtain a title in exchange for bringing my new blood and money into a European nobility exhausted of both. I have followed my heart— Armand was madly in love with me, and so is the prince, as were my darling doctors—but I am also aware that I am well suited for the life that an aristocratic marriage entails.
“Yet, I am human. I was widowed and lonely, and these were brilliant men interested in my welfare, and most charming, both of them. Perhaps it is the poetic nature in me from my grand-uncle, Heinrich Heine. To the world, I am the ‘beautiful blond American’ who would be princess. To myself, I am much more complicated.”
“We see that, Alice,” Irene said, speaking for herself. “And we see that marriage to a prince entails compromises perhaps not always foreseen. I am delighted to hear that yours has such a strong interest in the science of the ocean. Has it always been so?”
“Since his youth.”
Irene nodded with extreme satisfaction. I looked at her suspiciously. She said, “It is obvious that you admire men of a scientific bent.”
Alice dimpled again. “I can also admire a man of a nonscientific disposition, such as a barrister, Irene. No doubt you, too, could have married a prince, with your beauty and talent, but there are rich compensations to be found with the uncommon common man.”
Irene remained strangely silent, sitting like the Mona Lisa, a faint, half smile upon her lips. Only I knew how close to the tender truth Alice had trod. Indeed, Irene had all of the qualifications for a royal life, save she had not had the fortune to persuade one of royal lineage to accept her lack of royal blood.
“We all make the choices most suitable for ourselves,” Irene said blandly. She turned to me. “Since I am already spoken for, perhaps Alice can exercise her matchmaking talents to find someone suitable for you, Nell.”
“No!” I nearly spilled my tea into the saucer.
“You do not wish to marry?” Alice asked, curious.
“I have no objection to the state.” I colored faintly to recall my girlish attachment to the young curate, Jasper Higgenbottom, and an inexplicable faintness in the presence of One Other Gentleman clearly beyond my reach. “I will have to do for myself in this regard, however.”
“I’m sure you will do excellently, my dear,” Alice assured me. “All my friends find you utterly delightful.”
“Oscar,” Irene put in impishly, “was most taken with our Nell in London, before his marriage.”
“Oscar was always being taken with some woman in those days—Lillie Langtry, for one. Now he seems to have overcome the habit quite dramatically,” Alice said.
I was glad to hear of our old acquaintance’s reformation. It struck me that there was always hope. If Oscar Wilde could change his womanizing ways, perhaps someday I could find a suitable spouse.
Drifting into a rosy study, I considered what kind of man would constitute a suitable spouse for myself now. Certainly not the rawboned Jasper. No, I was a more worldly woman these days. Thanks to Irene, I had seen much more of life than a Shropshire parsonage would have ever allowed. I could drink tea with a woman who admitted to liaisons with two men to whom she had never been married, and I winced only mildly. The road to hell is paved with such subtle progress.
“That will be our next project, Miss Huxleigh’s acquisition of a new surname, once we have disposed of this trifling matter of the blackmail,” Alice declared.
Irene stood. “An excellent idea. I shall suggest it to Godfrey immediately. But blackmail is never trifling. I must learn what progress he has made in his inquiries.”
“I’m delighted you could join me for tea. I must remain behind to speak to the manager, Monsieur Blanc. He frets that my distaste for gambling will influence the prince to disown his legacy, so I must reassure the old dear that I, too, am fond of gold louies. But I wanted you to see the casino, it is so splendid architecturally. I only wish that I could convert some of the tragedy it has caused into a source of innocent happiness and pleasure.”
“I am certain that you will think of something.” Irene’s eyes narrowed as if she already had. “Thank you for your unusual hospitality, Alice—a ladies’ tea in a gambling casino. I will let you know the moment our investigation bears fruit.”
Irene and I paused by the door to look back. The beautiful blond duchess stood like an all-too-breakable Dresden figurine amid the heavy red velvet and burnished-mahogany splendor of the office. I recalled how vulnerable Irene had been in Prague at the hands of the prince’s hostile family and felt a twinge of pity for our hostess, despite the irregularities in her life.
“I will await news eagerly,” Alice said. “I have heard that the renowned English consulting detective, Sherlock Holmes, is visiting Monte. Perhaps you can collaborate.” Irene’s face washed white, then rosy. “Sherlock Holmes? In Monte Carlo?”
Alice shrugged. “So I am told. Another of these uncommon common men, no doubt.”
We bowed and left, threading our way through the various salles. Irene expertly avoided the occasional dazed gambler who veered into our path and finally led us into the brilliant daylight. I stood blinking after the dark interior of
the casino, hearing gulls shrieking in the distance.
“An uncommon coincidence, Nell,” Irene murmured finally, “if true. Sherlock Holmes in Monte Carlo. It is ludicrous! But not a coincidence. Why is he here?”
Her fiery and demanding gaze pinned me to my silence. Answering impossible questions was Irene’s province, and she was clearly feeling out of her depth.
“Sherlock Holmes?” Godfrey looked as disturbed as Irene when he heard that news. “Again? That man has a gift for meddling in your affairs.”
“Or vice versa,” Irene said softly. “And just when I was beginning to make progress.”
“We cannot be certain that he is here for any reason involving our inquiry,” I pointed out.
They regarded me with something very like the pity one extends to the feeble-brained. I ignored their reaction, distressed to see my friends so concerned.
“I’m going to put cornflower oil on my eyelids and lie down and think,” Irene said, rustling off to her bedchamber without a backward glance to me or Godfrey.
I eyed him with some trepidation. “What can the man do, after all?” I demanded. “He can only go ’round and ask questions as we have done. He may be here on business having nothing to do with our matters. He may simply like to gamble—well, it’s possible. You have no evidence to the contrary. Why is his presence so problematical?”
Godfrey came near and leaned his hands on the arms of my chair so that his face was close to mine. I was fond of that face and it was not unpleasant, but the proximity allowed me to see the worry shrouding the familiar features.
“Because, dear Nell, Sherlock Holmes is a premier problem-solver and travels nowhere without a first-class problem to solve. Because Monaco is small, and visitors, like ourselves, are easily noticed. Because we are juggling a host of problems, with no solution yet in sight. Because, worst of all, Irene and I are supposed to be dead—and are not. He could recognize us and report that fact. And, most important, because Irene has always been intrigued by the blasted fellow and I’m a bit jealous.”
The Adventuress (v5) Page 18