Chapel Noir

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Ever since I met Irene Adler eight years ago my peace of mind has been sorely tested. I don’t know if we so much “met” as that she selected me as suitable for salvage. As I recently looked through my diaries for those days I could sniff an attitude of despair lifting off the yellowing pages like the smoky miasma that perfumes crowded London streets. Paris is airier, and therefore far less comforting than dear olde London towne. That portion of my diary sits on the table beside me.

  By night, when gaslights glitter through the fog and the cobblestones gleam like bootblack, London seems a landscape glimpsed in some Arabian Nights tale. By day the effect is more commonplace, as the city streets throng with omnibuses, hansom cabs, and pedestrians.

  Yet that daily, daylit London can intimidate even more than its dark nocturnal side; at least a respectable young woman like myself found it so in the spring of 1881. I trudged the streets of London town, wondering how I came to be adrift on this tide of strangers, my few belongings tumbled into the carpetbag at my side. I was alone and friendless and—for the first time in my four-and-twenty years—homeless and hungry.

  So there I was, much younger and quite lost, carrying not secret stones, but a laden satchel containing all my unworldly worldly belongings. A street urchin made to run off with it, for my numb fingers were no obstacle. Suddenly Irene was descending on us, not like the goddess of peace the name meant to the ancients, but like Diana on the hunt, an angry goddess. She drove off the small thief (after filling his grimy paws with coppers) and took me in hand and to tea (which, it turned out, she could as ill afford as I).

  From the first it became evident to me that Irene Adler was a fraud. Perhaps I should put it more gently. She was an aspiring opera singer who survived on her wits and some private inquiry commissions stemming from her work with the Pinkerton detective agency before she had forsaken America for England.

  The fine copper-colored silk gown and bonnet that so impressed me that day proved to be resurrected street market scavengings. From such remnants she configured an eclectic wardrobe to suit whatever persona she needed for this audition or that inquiry.

  My savior was not only in need herself, but was a human chameleon who recognized none of polite society’s boundaries. None! And that included outings in gentleman’s dress on occasion! Although she admirably spurned the aspiring actress’s easiest ladder to fame and fortune—the sponsorship of wealthy noblemen willing to trade pounds and jewels for a woman’s favors—in less personal matters of morality she practiced an alarming flexibility. I can best sum up her outlook in that ancient legal catchphrase and popular children’s chant: “finders keepers.”

  It was clear from the outset that she needed me as moral compass. Certainly her hardheaded survival skills were useful to a gently reared spinster who found governess work vanishing and employment as a shopgirl too brutal for words.

  We shared rooms in the Saffron Hill Italian district while I went to school to master the mechanical beast that was invading offices throughout London. I became one of the newly named typewriter-girls, and the first female such person employed in the Inns of Court when one Godfrey Norton, barrister, dared to hire one of the new breed. . . .

  Godfrey. My jaunt through the past had completely predated his arrival on our domestic front of two, and felt so pleasant for that reason, that a stab of guilt for my present contentment caused me to jab the crochet hook into my forefinger.

  “Oh, botheration!”

  “What is it, Nell?” Irene inquired.

  I was hardly about to confess that I had just realized that I did not miss Godfrey, her husband and my former employer, a man who was the closest thing to a brother I had ever had or was ever likely to have in this vale of woes.

  “My crochet hook has taken it upon itself to admonish me for inattention. It’s nothing, really. Not even a drop of blood.”

  “Then we shall hope that you do not fall into a hundred-year slumber until Prince Charming comes.”

  “Why Prince Charming would be interested in such an immobile girl as Sleeping Beauty, I cannot imagine.” When one catches oneself being selfish, it is always best to make rapid public amends. “I was just thinking about missing Godfrey,” I said piously. (I had indeed been thinking about missing him, only that I did not, which is a fine point that Irene need hardly be told.)

  She sighed and let her finger mark the place in her novel while she dropped it to her lap. “His journey has just begun. He will be gone a good deal longer.”

  “It is most inconvenient that the Rothschilds feel they can call upon Godfrey so often with so little notice.”

  “Inconvenient,” Irene agreed with a rueful smile, “but highly lucrative. And Godfrey enjoys the challenges of foreign missions.”

  As the lamplight flickered beside her, illuminating her face with some of the flattering glow thrown by theatrical footlights, I reflected that she looked not a day older than when we had met eight years earlier. I have no idea how time has treated my features. I have never been a beauty, and no one notices such things about me, including me.

  But Irene, now just past thirty, had been blessed with more virtues than one woman should claim. The fairy godmothers had flocked around her cradle, wherever in the wilds of America it had rocked, and left her infant self endowed with intelligence, a peerless singing voice, an indomitable will, and, of course and most obviously, beauty. Luckily, Irene also had inherited some few flaws that it was most useful for me to point out, and one was about to show itself.

  “This country life is so dull, Nell!” she burst out, hurling the inoffensive novel to the floor. (Actually, I suspect it was a rather offensive novel, having been written by that shocking George Sand woman, and the floor was probably too good a place for it.) “I do not know what I will do with myself while Godfrey is in Prague all these weeks.”

  “Surely you would not wish to encounter the King of Bohemia again?”

  “Godfrey may wish to forestall such an encounter. I am more adventurous.”

  “Exactly why he is selected for these diplomatic missions over yourself. I am sure Baron Alphonse is well informed as to your past Bohemian escapades.”

  “Escapades!” she mocked, even as her tone celebrated the word. “I believe that our mild entanglements in Prague are remembered only by ourselves. I do agree, Nell, that Godfrey deserves the Rothschilds’ recognition of his abilities, which far exceed the usual skills of being a barrister. There are times, you know, when I am quite content to play the proud helpmeet.”

  “Play! Exactly. All life to you is a series of roles to be played. If you are the bored and abandoned wife at the moment, I suggest a retreat to your former occupation.”

  “I am not as I was formerly, an unmarried woman. I do not know even what I would call myself if I sang in public again. Irene Adler has died in more than a few newspapers and some people’s imaginations. Can she be resurrected?”

  “Why not sing as Irene Norton?”

  “She is a stranger. She has no reputation. No history.”

  I thought. For all Irene’s force of will, when it came to her own interest she could be as indecisive as any ordinary mortal. Much of the confidence of the artistic soul is purely armor.

  “What of that lady violinist?”

  “Which ‘lady violinist’?”

  “She has two last names, hyphenated. The first is something feudal, and the second is Indian, East Indian.”

  Irene frowned with blank alarm, as if she thought me demented. Finally, her expression cleared.

  “Norman-Nèruda. Feudal-Indian, really, Nell! You are so quintessentially British! I believe her maiden name was Wilhelmine Nèruda, but she married a Swede named Norman. If I followed in her footsteps, I would be Irene Norton-Adler.”

  This time I frowned. “You follow in no one’s footsteps, Irene. You would be Irene Adler-Norton.”

  There came a long pause while her mind played with this new incarnation. Irene could never resist recasting herself in new roles. Or oth
er people.

  I nodded toward the parrot. “There is the piano and your vocal exercises.”

  “Yes—” Her face, suddenly pensive, rested on her bent elbow and clasped fist, a hoydenish posture I should never tolerate in one of my charges, though it had been years since I had seen employment as a governess. Still, the corrective instinct, once encouraged, is ingrained. I managed to hold my tongue.

  “But what is the use, Nell, no matter what I call myself?” Irene demanded, agitated again. “My scales only show how far my range and tone have degraded. One cannot dabble at operatic singing, Nell. One must be always in rehearsal, always performing. The voice must be kept in constant condition, or it soon sours.”

  “You sound as sweet as ever to me.”

  “That is because you have no ear for music.”

  “Most people do not. You are far too exacting of yourself. Why not do as Godfrey has suggested, and seek a new career in stage acting? That would not require the ceaseless practice that opera does.”

  “I cannot believe you encourage such an immoral occupation.”

  “I have mellowed. And you are married now,” I added pointedly. “Madam Adler-Norton.”

  “Still, even if it now basks in your acceptance, the stage is a demanding mistress. And Paris has its supreme actress in Sarah Bernhardt. I am not so rash as to set up in competition to her.”

  “You are an American. The French find your kind fascinating for some reason. And you are British-trained for the stage. Even the Divine Sarah could hardly compete with that. In addition, you are much prettier than she.”

  “Heavens! You praise my art, my American birth, my looks. That is sure to be bad for me, Nell.”

  “I don’t doubt it, but you seem to need cheering up. I know! Why don’t you read Godfrey’s latest letter aloud while I crochet? It would be an excellent vocal exercise for you, and I do so enjoy it.”

  “His letters, or my reading them?”

  “Both. Now, if you find any little passages that are . . . personal, you may simply omit them. I am impressed by Godfrey’s narrative style. He is most descriptive for a barrister. It shall seem as if he is in the room with us while you read. Please do.”

  She obliged by plucking the fat envelope from the table beside her, the unwholesome fictions of Monsieur/Madame Sand forgotten on the figured Turkish carpet, as all such enterprises should be.

  “I’ve only read it once myself,” she murmured, casting an odd look at me from under the raven wings of her eyebrows. “I might stumble over the handwriting.”

  “Poor Godfrey! Writing on a train can be a most challenging task. I know this from experience. Yet he has been a faithful correspondent—a letter sent back from the first day’s journey already—and deserves a formal hearing.”

  An enigmatic smile quirked Irene’s lips as she regarded the letter like an actress a script. “I shall skip the greeting; it is no doubt too flowery for your ears.”

  “Godfrey flowery? You do intrigue me.”

  Irene shook the parchment sheets to loosen the folds, then began.

  “My . . . dear.”

  I noticed that her eyes had dropped halfway down the first sheet by the time she finally pronounced the word “dear.”

  “You are right: an exceptionally florid beginning for a barrister,” I murmured to my crochet egg.

  “It is his first letter to me since we have married,” Irene murmured back.

  “If it is too personal, I certainly don’t wish to hear it.”

  “No.” Irene waved a graceful hand. I detected a certain wicked glint in her golden eyes. (Yes, they are indeed literally gold in certain lights. One fairy godmother had given her brown eyes such a warm hue that Midas would envy them at times.) Irene cleared her throat imperiously for my attention: she was now committed to presenting the letter as a stage reading.

  “My dear,” she repeated, launching herself fully upon the task. “Although I have traveled this route before, I find it even more fascinating a second time. Perhaps solitude makes a more observant, though melancholy, traveling companion.”

  “Nicely put. That solitude bit.”

  Irene looked up from the letter to nod at my interruption.

  For the next few minutes I was treated to an excellent description of the mountainous terrain and meadows punctuated with cows that I had seen myself during my solitary rail trip to Bohemia en route to Irene’s rescue years before.

  Godfrey’s narration was so vivid I could close my eyes and envision the very scenes he described.

  Unfortunately, my mind also relived Irene’s Bohemian escapade (however much I would like to forget it), which fortunately predated Godfrey, and which resulted in the King of Bohemia pursuing her and me to London. There he engaged a renowned consulting detective to pry from Irene’s possession a photograph of herself and the King together. This was a remembrance of the days when he had been merely a Crown Prince and she a prima donna. She was also a brash American who assumed that an enamored European king, albeit minor, would deign to marry a beautiful, talented, intelligent, and spirited diva of absolutely no means and no family history that she has ever shared with anyone, including me!

  In this instance she was the innocent and I the sophisticate, but I cannot say I relished the exchange of roles.

  For one thing, it brought a man far more formidable than the hugely handsome King of Bohemia into our lives: the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes.

  Of course, this Holmes was astute in one respect: he never liked the King of Bohemia. When the King began mourning “what a Queen she would have made” and bemoaning how it was “a pity Irene was not on his level,” Sherlock Holmes was wise and sly enough to answer that, from “what I have seen of the lady, she seems, indeed, to be on a very different level to Your Majesty.”

  These words are emblazoned on my mind, for I witnessed the exchange in disguise when the two men came to Irene’s residence to wrest the photograph from her and found the house empty. Those words bring me a reluctant, but no less warm glow for that fact. Much as I despise the source of such high praise for Irene, I must admit that Mr. Holmes was detective enough to get that one incontrovertible fact, at least, precisely right.

  “Nell! Are you listening?” I was startled from my reverie as Irene, actress that she was, darted me a sharp glance to see how I was appreciating her rendition of Godfrey’s words.

  “Yes, of course. Wonderful,” I murmured. “Please go on.”

  “I must say,” Godfrey obediently said through the medium of Irene’s fluid voice, “that without conversation or company to distract me I find myself strangely mesmerized by the countryside.

  “Perhaps it is our steady but serpentine upward progress toward the dazzling white peaks tinted rosy by the westering sun.

  “One feels like a Lilliputian mounting an assault on some sleeping Gulliver’s body, yet the soft roll of mountain meadows outside my window is far more fecund than bone and sinew beneath the soft skin of earth.”

  “Why that is almost like Mr. Tennyson,” I commented, crocheting apace.

  There is nothing so cozy as a domestic scene warm with lamplight and the murmur of someone reading aloud. I sighed in sheer content.

  “Our train,” Godfrey went on through the offices of Irene, “has only eleven passenger cars, but a hunter’s green engine trimmed with a great many gilt curlicues.

  “This industrious machine leans into the task of leading its train of attendants up the mountain like a bull into an attack on a toreador: mechanical head down until the horns, or cowcatcher in this case, brush the tracks; mighty lungs (or firebox) huffing and puffing until billows of steam waft past the passenger windows. We hear its labored breathing (chug-chug) and our excitement cannot help but mount as we feel our vehicle pull upward, upward, into the Alps.

  “As we sense ourselves pushed back into our plush upholstered seats, we pant as if we, too, were exerting ourselves to the maximum. Every muscle tenses, and still we rise higher and higher with th
e train, at an angle growing ever more vertical until we seem to be set on piercing the sky—”

  “Goodness,” I interrupted. “I remember some steep grades when I made my solitary way to Bohemia to rescue you from that faithless King, but nothing so strenuous as Godfrey describes. My heart is quite pounding from the tension.”

  “Yes,” Irene murmured, her eyes fixed upon the page. “Perhaps my reading is overdramatic.”

  “That is always a possibility,” I admitted, “but don’t stop now. It sounds as if that poor train and all its passengers could quite tip over backwards on the mountaintop.”

  She continued.

  Yet we have now driven into the snow-shawled uplands, a shining white expanse that looks as cool and soft as eiderdown, encouraging the engine’s Herculean effort to reach the summit. From the window we can see the setting sun casting a rosy glimmer over the swelling snowfields.

  Our engine strains as if to outrun the setting sun, a steel ramrod determined to drill through the imperious mountain blushing in the last rays of daylight.

  Clouds of steam, or perhaps the cooler clouds caught on the mountain’s peak, rush by our windows. All we can hear is the monotonous, fierce throb of pistons.

  Our upward motion seems to have slowed nevertheless, as if we are poised upon a precipice with no guarantee of summoning sufficient force to tip the balance and break through to the other side.

  And then the long, lonely battering ram of steel plunges into the last barrier: a tunnel through the Alpine rock and snow. Darkness encases us as the train’s whistle shrieks its triumph. We go roaring deep into the hidden darkness of solid stone, suddenly level and gathering speed, suddenly plunging down faster and faster.

  The burnished whiteness of the snow and steam as we emerge on the other side seems like a glimpse of paradise, another world. A strangely satisfying peace descends upon the passengers with the setting of the sun as true twilight steals upon us from the dark, wooded valleys below.