It was best that she not call me “Nellie” because every instance would recall her missing friend. I nodded and saw a haunting darkness at the back of her eyes draw away.
“We must have Buffalo Bill examine the site of the shot,” Irene said, “and find out if Red Tomahawk has yet traced the shoe print of the horse he discovered. Inspector le Villard will assist us, and the Rothschilds. We are not without our resources. No doubt I will think of others. And you will be a hardy ally, I am sure.”
She mustered a pale smile. “I suppose I can rely upon you to record the matters that need recording.”
I nodded, sick at heart.
This wind of conspiracy sounded like a child’s hope of a happy ending. But what was I to do?
I opened my notebook and listed the things she had ticked off.
There the matter stood. I could follow Sherlock Holmes to London despite his and Irene Adler Norton’s express wishes and risk arrest as a prostitute, or I could chaperone Irene on a quest across half of Europe to redeem her losses. I thought the outcome of that course all too certain: both Godfrey and Nell were already dead. We would be heading utterly away from any criminal who could ever answer to the name Jack the Ripper in a court of law.
Coda: The Vampire Box
As there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd
corners where a man could hide.
—CAPTAIN’S LOG OF THE DEMETER, DRACULA
Dark.
Motion.
Seasick.
I am sailing on the panorama ship.
And the boots are coming—!
No.
I reach up. Out. Pound wood.
Dark. Utterly dark.
Box.
I am in a box. Oh, dear God . . . !
I will go mad.
If I do not die of retching first.
My hands reach out.
Find limits again. I lie on some thick fabric. The dark is the shape of a box the length and width of my body and not much more.
A coffin.
I will go mad.
If I do not die smothering.
But I breathe.
Calm. I must keep calm.
Pockets.
The fabric is rolled around me like a rug, perhaps so I do not rattle in my box.
I manage to pat the checked wool at my sides where my arms are confined.
My right hand feels the thorny bulk of my chatelaine, my left the wad of a notebook.
They have left me unmolested, despite my memory of the madman with the eyes of a dead devil and the groping hands.
My stomach spasms. Sick.
I will go mad.
If I do not die in my own vomit.
Perhaps I can move a finger to find the slit of my pocket.
There!
Perhaps I can work out the small knife on the chatelaine, cut a hole in this wood box and let some of the darkness out. In time.
I will go mad, cannot breathe in the dark, the close . . . !
My box is moving, taking me somewhere. Someone has seen to it.
Irene! She will be frantic.
She will look for me.
But I am moving, in a box, on land, over water? Far away.
I will go mad if they do not let me out soon.
But . . . sleep is coming. Unnatural sleep. I fear it. Welcome it. I cannot go mad while I sleep.
My left hand finds the pocket slit and two fingers slip within after exhausting effort.
I will go mad, but I will write it all down at the first opportunity.
Afterword
Now it should be obvious why I delayed in releasing what now lies before the reader, scholarly and popular alike.
I could plead the massive amount of material. A daily diary, begun early and recording a preternaturally long life (also composed in the leisurely and convoluted sentences so popular in the nineteenth century), occupies numerous volumes, all written by hand. (And a painstakingly spidery hand Miss Huxleigh used, too. No wonder she needed spectacles, although I suspect that the needing of spectacles is what created the penmanship.)
I could point out that a scholar like me charts an undiscovered country and must first make maps before she pens travelogues. I have not only had the heretofore unknown Huxleigh material to study and present in a logical manner, but newly discovered fragments from the Pink journals and remnants from the anonymous “Watcher.”
Enormous as the task was, that alone did not cause the delay. I must admit to reading and researching the Huxleigh diaries in chronological order. I am as surprised as my readers with what the advancing years bring and, given Miss Huxleigh’s volubility, they bring a good deal.
After much research I have determined that all of the details about the well-known individuals mentioned in this account tally with what is known of their lives and habits. True, their exact whereabouts during the second half of May of 1889 is not always possible to confirm.
A record does exist, however, that the Prince of Wales used at Madame Kelly’s noted Paris establishment an elaborate siège d’amour made for him by an M. Soubrier in 1890. Such would be needed to replace a previous model defaced by the events described in Miss Huxleigh’s diary. Apparently the Prince changed both his cabinetmaker and his favored brothel after the events of 1889.
Nellie Bly’s account tallies with documented events of her family life and reporting career. Although she was busily publishing stories for the World of New York City in the spring of 1889, she had sufficient energy and enterprise (and telegraph communications were sophisticated enough then) that she could have slipped away to Europe on the trail of sensational subject matter, such as the legal brothels of Paris. She could have also briefly visited London during the previous autumn when Jack the Ripper was active.
The Prince of Wales formally opened l’Exposition universelle May 16, 1889, along with Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show. Only Red Tomahawk has left little evidence; in that period the doings of native individuals were seldom recorded, sad to say.
Naturally, or unnaturally, details relating to the Jack the Ripper murders and suspects have been documented and analyzed to infinity. The upholsterer Kelly was indeed a suspect and did indeed escape to France and Paris just after the last Whitechapel killing.
Given the extraordinary events and theories of these remarkable testimonies, I stand back, braced and ready, to take and return the fire of all who read this account and the one that follows and still dare to disbelieve. Castle Rouge, to be published in fall, 2002, will offer even more astounding revelations. The demands of research and verification, not to mention the quantity of the materials, prevent the presentation of these astonishing events in one volume.
It is only fitting that I finish my labors for the first portion of this duology on the brink of the millennium, although about even that exact year the scholars can, and do, argue. At least they will be silent on that issue for another thousand years.
I suspect, however, that the Jack the Ripper debate will still be raging then.
Fiona Witherspoon, Ph.D., A.I.A. *
November 5, 2000
* Advocates of Irene Adler
Perhaps it has taken until the end of this century for an
author like Douglas to be able to imagine a female
protagonist who could be called “the” woman
by Sherlock Holmes.
—GROUNDS FOR MURDER, 1991
About this Reader’s Group Guide
To encourage the reading and discussion of Carole Nelson Douglas’s acclaimed novels examining the Victorian world from the viewpoint of one of the most mysterious women in literature, the following descriptions and discussion topics are offered. The author interview, biography, and bibliography at the end will aid discussion as well.
Set in the period of 1880–1890 in London, Paris, Prague, and Monaco, the Irene Adler novels reinvent the only woman to have outwitted Sherlock Holmes as a complex and compelling protagonist. Douglas’s portrayal of what the New York
Times called “this remarkable heroine and her keen perspective on the male society in which she must make her independent way,” recasts her “not as a loose-living adventuress but a woman ahead of her time.” In Douglas’s hands, the fascinating but sketchy American prima donna from “A Scandal in Bohemia” becomes an aspiring opera singer moonlighting as a private inquiry agent. When events force her from the stage into the art of detection, Adler’s exploits rival those of Sherlock Holmes himself as she crosses paths and swords with the day’s leading creative and political figures while sleuthing among the Bad and the Beautiful of Belle Epoque Europe.
Critics praise the novels’ rich period detail, numerous historical and “semihistorical” characters, original perspective, wit, and “welcome window on things Victorian.”
“The private and public escapades of Irene Adler Norton [are] as erratic and unexpected and brilliant as the character herself,” noted Mystery Scene concerning Another Scandal in Bohemia (formerly Irene’s Last Waltz), “a long and complex jeu d’esprit, simultaneously modeling itself on and critiquing Doyle-esque novels of ratiocination coupled with emotional distancing. Here is Sherlock Holmes in skirts; but as a detective with an artistic temperament and the passion to match, with the intellect to penetrate to the heart of a crime and the heart to show compassion for the intellect behind it.”
About This Book
Chapel Noir, the fifth Irene Adler novel, opens in the Paris spring of 1889 as the controversial Eiffel tower is unveiled as the centerpiece of an elaborate world’s fair. Irene Adler’s barrister husband, Godfrey Norton, is away on secret business for their patron, Baron de Rothschild. Irene’s longtime companion, proper parson’s daughter Penelope “Nell” Huxleigh, is shocked when the Baron asks Irene to investigate the brutal murders of two courtesans in a bordello patronized by aristocrats. The savagery recalls London’s Whitechapel killings of autumn, 1888. Is Jacques the Ripper now terrorizing Paris?
For Discussion
RELATED TO CHAPEL NOIR
1. A theme of this novel is the double standard of sexual behavior expected of, or tolerated in, men and women then, and by implication, now. How do the moral codes, or lack of them, of various men and women in this book reveal character? How do they compare to modern times?
2. If Nell is a “Watsonette” and Irene Adler takes the leading Sherlockian role, how does this pairing illuminate the mores of the times? Would this interplay be possible if Nell were not such an innocent? Is innocence a handicap for a woman in any time period? Do you think that the “moral watchdog” role, as taken on by Nell and treated with some satire by the author, could be a much more pernicious trait than it is portrayed as here? Where is the middle ground for moral women in society today?
3. Masquerade is a key element in the novel and the series, which features several unrevealed characters, many of whom keep secrets from each other. Is mystery fiction a pretext for revealing the mysteries of character as well as of crime? The Pink Cochrane sections tell the literal truth of an actual woman’s life, yet would also explain how she became the “fallen woman” she seems to be. What attributes of the character made her take a pioneering path?
4. The character of Pink blends the worldly experience of Irene Adler with the innocence of Nell Huxleigh. Both Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes are knowing of the world, but apparently have not been corrupted by it. Do you think Holmes is a virgin? If not, what is his sexual history, and why? Does it matter, other than spawning decades of speculation and wishful thinking about Sherlock Holmes’s sex life? How does Mr. Spock of Star Trek fit into this literary mythos? Are women intrigued by logical, unemotional male figures, and, if so, why? How would this reflect inequality in society?
5. In the nineteenth century, Paris hosted several impressive world’s fairs and was known as a city of light and dark. Were you surprised by the city’s numerous tourist attractions and by the appetite for sensationalism in the displays of the wax museum and the Paris Morgue? How do these trends compare to the tabloid journalism and sex and violence in electronic media—novels, films, music videos—of today?
6. This novel shows women pursuing the killer of women. Does it differ from other novels featuring the Ripper murders you may have read? Were you surprised that the Irving/Stoker theatrical circle knew about the lustmurder studies of Krafft-Ebing? Did such knowledge influence Stoker’s Gothic fiction, particularly Dracula? How does the double sexual standard play into the notion of the supernaturally powerful man preying on women’s bodies and blood? Do you see parallels to the Dracula story and characters in this novel? Why has Dracula become such a popular cultural touchstone, along with Jack the Ripper? How does this novel reference scenes and characters from Dracula, such as the madman Renfield and the three brides of Dracula? Do you see a difference in the fictional way a woman author and women characters approach the violence of the Ripper case? Does the participation of Buffalo Bill and Red Tomahawk contrast or parallel the history of human savagery in New World and Old?
7. This story takes place on the brink of the 1890s, called the Mauve Decade, the Yellow Nineties, and the Decadent Nineties because of a cultural climate that was both artistically fruitful and yet celebrated evil and darkness. What elements of decadence appear in this novel, besides actions relating to the murders? Is our own culture experiencing an end-of-century/end-of-millennium appetite for dark entertainment? Is Hannibal Lecter the new Dracula?
8. Retellings of the Jack the Ripper crimes have made him into something of a heroic figure like Hannibal Lecter: cold, clever, and invincible, the center of endless fascination and even a kind of admiration for the very brutality of his deeds. Does this reflect an underlying misogynism in society? If the Ripper had butchered a series of men, would the crimes still be as famous?
RELATED TO THE IRENE ADLERO SERIES
1. Douglas mentions other authors, many of them women, who have reinvented major female characters or minor characters from classic literary or genre novels that reevaluate culture then and now. Can you think of such works in the field of fantasy or historical novels? General literature? What about the recent copyright contest over The Wind Done Gone, Alice Randall’s reimagining of Gone with the Wind’s events and characters from the African-American slaves’ viewpoints? Could the novel’s important social points have been made as effectively without referencing the classic work generally familiar to most people? What other works have attained the mythic status that might make possible such socially conscious reinventions? Which would you rewrite?
2. Religion and morality are underlying issues in the novels, including the time’s anti-Semitism. This is an element absent from the Holmes stories. How is this issue brought out and how do Nell’s strictly conventional views affect those around her? Why does she remain both disapproving and fascinated by Irene’s pragmatic philosophy? Why is Irene (and also most readers) so fond of her despite her limited opinions?
3. Why did Douglas choose to blend humor with the adventurous plots? Do comic characters and situations satirize the times, or soften them? Is humor a more effective form of social criticism than rhetoric? What other writers and novelists use this technique, besides George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain?
4. The novels also present a continuing tension between New World and Old World, America and England and the Continent, artist/tradesman and aristocrat, as well as woman and man. Which characters reflect which camps? How does the tension show itself?
5. Chapel Noir makes several references to Dracula through the presence of Bram Stoker some six years before the novel actually was published. Stoker is also a continuing character in other Adler novels. Various literary figures appear in the Adler novels, including Oscar Wilde, and most of these historical characters knew each other. Why was this period so rich in writers who founded much modern genre fiction, like Doyle and Stoker? Why did this period produce not only Dracula and Doyle’s Holmes stories and the surviving dinosaurs of The Lost World, but also Trilby and Svengali, The Phantom of the Ope
ra, The Prisoner of Zenda, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, among the earliest and most lasting works of science fiction, political intrigue, mystery, and horror? How does Douglas pay homage to this tradition in the plots, characters, and details of the Adler novels?
An Interview with Carole Nelson Douglas
Q: You were the first woman to write about the Sherlock Holmes world from the viewpoint of one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s women characters, and only the second woman to write a Holmes-related novel at all. Why?
A: Most of my fiction ideas stem from my role as social observer in my first career, journalism. One day I looked at the mystery field and realized that all post-Doyle Sherlockian novels were written by men. I had loved the stories as a child and thought it was high time for a woman to examine the subject from a female point of view.
Q: So there was “the woman,” Irene Adler, the only woman to outwit Holmes, waiting for you.
A: She seems the most obvious candidate, but I bypassed her for that very reason to look at other women in what is called the Holmes Canon. Eventually I came back to “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Rereading it, I realized that male writers had all taken Irene Adler at face value as the King of Bohemia’s jilted mistress, but the story doesn’t support that. As the only woman in the Canon who stirred a hint of romantic interest in the aloof Holmes, Irene Adler had to be more than this beautiful but amoral “Victorian vamp.” Once I saw that I could validly interpret her as a gifted and serious performing artist, I had my protagonist.
Q: It was that simple?
A: It was that complex. Any deeper psychological exploration of this character still had to adhere to Doyle’s story, both literally and in regard to the author’s own feeling toward the character. That’s how I ended up having to explain that operatic impossibility, a contralto prima donna. It’s been great fun justifying Doyle’s error by finding operatic roles Irene could conceivably sing. My Irene Adler is as intelligent, self-sufficient, and serious about her professional and personal integrity as Sherlock Holmes, and far too independent to be anyone’s mistress but her own. She also moonlights as an inquiry agent while building her performing career. In many ways they are flip sides of the same coin: her profession, music, is his hobby. His profession, detection, is her secondary career. Her adventures intertwine with Holmes’s, but she is definitely her own woman in these novels.
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