“Mrs. Astor surrendered to placate her daughters and Mrs. Vanderbilt now is the hostess of the moment.”
“You show an alarming accuracy about the rivalries of New York society ladies, Mr. Holmes.”
His laugh of acknowledgment was as short as a bulldog’s bark. “I doubt they differ much from the rivalries of the Corsican brotherhood, only it is blood feuds over ballrooms.”
“Well, Alva’s ball was six years ago and the Astor and Vanderbilt men are still outbuilding each other with larger and more extravagant seagoing yachts.”
“And the women?”
“Are still enriching the milliners and dressmakers and jewelers of the city and the Continent. It is a War of Millionaires.”
“I see.” He swept his cane and hat off the desk.
“That is all you wish to know?”
“It is. For now.”
“And what about matters that I might wish to know of?”
He paused before standing to take his leave. “I suppose I owe you pence for pound.”
Despite his warning that he would be a stingy source, I pressed on. “Have you seen Mrs. Norton of late?”
“Not of late.”
Was there the merest hesitation?
I went on. “The matter of Madame Restell was tragic and settled mysteries almost older than I am, but it resulted in no modern revelation suitable for the public print.”
“Such sordid matters do not belong in the newspapers.”
“I disagree there.” He had not quite denied the case’s relevancy to current events. “I’m investigating an offshoot of that unhappy history. It should cause quite a stir.”
“I believe that ‘stirs’ are what your profession seeks. I count myself successful when matters are resolved privately, or why else would a consulting detective like myself be called in?”
“Then you have been called in on some matter in New York beyond the crimes that surrounded the quest for Irene Adler Norton’s origins?”
He stood and smiled with that superior British aplomb I so loathe, looking down that arrogantly beaked nose at me.
“I am no more at liberty to discuss my possible cases than you are eager to reveal your possible ‘stories,’ Miss Bly. The only difference is that the results of your inquiries will eventually see the light of public amazement in the papers.”
“Not always,” I interrupted, standing. “Sometimes I am gagged.”
“Then you understand my position. I don’t seek revelation but solution, and my clients seek discretion. Good day.”
It was not. I watched him leave with a swift step that was also annoyingly confident.
The whistled chorus of Stephen Foster’s “Nellie Bly” grew as deafening as a chorale of crickets. A nearing cloud of smoke almost asphyxiated me.
“Brit gent come a-calling,” Walters said loud enough for several men to hear. “You going to run off with some titled English bloke and leave us flat, Nellie?”
Speculation on my private life fired many a bull session at the World and I knew it. I was young, not unlovely, and somewhat famous. It was assumed I would wed the first good prospect that came my way. That is exactly why I would not.
“I’d never leave my handsome knights errant of the press.”
They guffawed at my coy rejoinder. They knew I was not coy and they also knew themselves for an uncouth, opinionated, whiskey-and-cigar-loving lot no lady of gentle rearing would embrace.
I was no lady of gentle rearing, but neither was I eager to surrender my hard-won independence for any man. And that attitude would astonish them more than any wild stunt I might ever perform, even were I to ride Jumbo the elephant in the late P. T. Barnum’s circus.
“We’ll never understand you, Nellie,” old Broadhurst swore melodramatically, with a hand to his heart.
And didn’t I prefer it that way.
3
A POCKET FULL OF DEATH
New York City is cursed with its universal chocolate coating
of the most hideous stone ever quarried.
—EDITH WHARTON IN 1882, THE YEAR THE VANDERBILTS’
SHINING WHITE CHTEAU WENT UP
My house was the death of the brownstone front.
—ALVA VANDERBILT, UNPUBLISHED MEMOIRS, 1917
FROM THE CASE NOTES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
I had expected an urgent summons from a master of commerce on Fifth Avenue. Trifling as the game with the Renaissance chess set had been, I saw some hidden horror behind it.
Anyone, or any force, that would toy with millionaires and a priceless ancient artifact is capable of far greater games on a far more relevant board, such as our very lives and times.
The summons was even more urgent than I had anticipated, and from the wrong party.
“Mr. Holmes! Mr. Holmes!”
I heard the voice as soon as it exited the lift, playing counterpoint to the thump of pounding footsteps on the thick hall carpet. This may have been New York, not Mayfair, but even here such frantic gallops through hotel halls are unheard of.
Further, the fellow weighed at least twenty stone and had a limp, probably from birth, that he was pushing to its limit.
I greeted him at my open suite door.
Breathless, he hugged the doorframe, one leg tellingly cocked, the booted toe barely touching the Oriental runner.
On seeing me, he had lost his voice and stood panting.
“I’d ask you in, my good man, but we have no time to spare, I see. Have you a hack waiting?”
He nodded twice in answer to each of my comments. Although heavy-set, his bland, round face and meticulously trimmed mustache bespoke a man of little action but great acuity for all that is detailed in life.
“I’ll just fetch my hat and stick—”
“Hurry, please, sir.”
Quick as can be, I had taken his arm and was playing walking stick as I took the weight of his game leg so he could hop back down the hall as fast as a jackrabbit.
At the elevator he leaped up and down on his good leg in impatience until the creaking car finally returned to our level. His breath appeared to be on permanent leave, and I didn’t question him.
My friend Dr. Watson, were he present, would have wondered why, but the answer was obvious: I had learned all I need know from his appearance and clothing.
His gasps had turned to huffs as I sped him through the lobby and to the waiting conveyance. No city hack but a private carriage pulled by a very pretty pair of matched chestnuts.
He seemed surprised by my strength in assisting him up the one high step into the carriage, but my practice of the martial art of baritsu has made me far more powerful than I appear to be. I smiled to think that not a week before I had contemplated performing my old trick of bending a fireplace poker for my friends in the theatrical boardinghouse. But that had been in another guise, and that case was closed, along with my fledgling American stage career as well, alas.
“Mr. Holmes,” he sputtered valiantly as the carriage jerked into motion, then proceeded on silken springs. We entered the clopping and grinding traffic of New York City, which was no greater or different than that of Mother London.
“Save your breath, man. I am aware of most of the particulars already.”
“Someone else . . . reached you . . . First. In . . . possible.”
“You told me yourself.”
“Are you mad? I can . . . only . . . speak now.”
“But your person has told the story far more eloquently. Although I am not surprised that an event of horrific import has occurred on Fifth Avenue, I am rather amazed that Mr. William K. Vanderbilt’s private secretary should be dispatched to fetch me rather than some more suitable body servant from the staff. The need for secrecy must be dire.”
His pupils, small as dried berries behind his thick spectacles, grew smaller still as his irises widened against a sea of white.
“You know all that? Who has betrayed us?”
“Yourself, as I said before.”
“I spoke only your name since leaving the house. How is it you know which house I came from, and my station with my employer? He said you could be a wonder worker. Are you a spiritualist, sir?”
I could not restrain my laughter. “Quite the opposite. I depend solely upon solid physical evidence. Before I even laid eyes upon you I was aware that you were in your early forties, occupied in sedentary pursuits, so sedentary that only the gravest crisis would call you away from your post as Mr. Vanderbilt’s secretary. I fear this footrace he has set you upon today will tax your crooked ankle for some time.”
He glanced down at his high laced boots. “It seldom troubles me at all. But you are right, sir; I do not move much for a living. And I am employed by Mr. Vanderbilt, how did you know that?”
“In your haste you brushed against the stone railing as you left the house. None other on Fifth Avenue is a white-stone monument to French architecture. Your right pocket looks as if it has been floured.”
“True enough, true enough.” His wide eyes narrowed and his worried face frowned. “Now that you explain it your assumptions are not such a wonder as I thought.”
Watsons, God bless them, are everywhere. So I did not add that he also had a sister who played the harp, a brother who played the ponies, and a small addiction to pastilles.
“And the reason for my summons?” he asked after some time in silence.
“Life and death, of course.”
He shuddered slightly. “Fearful death.”
I did not say more. I wished to see the scene first, and hear from whoever had been first to discover it.
Shortly we passed the dark square house that had once belonged to the ill-fated Madame Restell. Most of the “mansions” along Fifth Avenue were of that somber ilk.
When I spied a flash of sepulcher white from the coach window, I picked up my cane.
“My name is Wilson,” my carriage partner said suddenly.
“Mr. Charles Wilson,” I retorted. He blanched again.
“The initials CAW are on the handkerchief that peeks from your breast pocket. I doubt that parents with the surname of Wilson would stray far from Mrs. Grundy’s baby-naming recommendations. Pray do not tell me your name is actually Cuthbert. I shall be shattered.”
“Cuthbert? I should hope not. Charlie it’s been since I could first gimp about on my bad ankle.”
“Well done, Mr. Wilson. We are here in record time, I am sure.”
I stepped out without waiting for the servant’s assistance and handed the now evenly breathing secretary onto the white limestone sidewalk. Beyond the shining peaked château at 660 Fifth Avenue loomed the dark Gothic spires of a mighty church. The other mansions along the street seemed as somber and forbidding as a Lower East Side tenement compared to the fanciful Vanderbilt edifice.
It was odd to contemplate “mansions” so contained, more like dark, Italianate crypts than the much-added-onto sprawl of London’s great houses. Of course London mansions had been imposing since the sixteenth century, and poor Fifth Avenue was a mere upstart of forty years at best, for I understood that commercial buildings were ever being driven farther north by these millionaires’ exercises in instant opulence.
We dashed up the paltry six steps leading to the entry. A waiting butler held the door open so as not to impede our progress. From first glance the house showed itself not to be what it seemed, which I find an interesting comment on the persons who inhabited it. The pale stone walls had been carved into the likeness of well-fringed fabrics.
Dark carpets floated on snowy stone floors in the wide hall beyond that extended perhaps sixty feet to an elaborate pair of doors.
“We must hurry,” Mr. Wilson urged.
“First I must know which is the room.”
“There! Ahead. To the right.”
“The first or second door?”
Mr. Wilson cast an anxious look at the impassive butler who had taken our hats and my walking stick.
“The second.”
Nodding, I led the way down the hall, along the stone and sparing the carpet any more impressions than it bore already.
“And this first room to the left?” I asked.
“The Grinling Gibbons room, for small receptions or daytime callers.”
Pale stone, carved within an inch of its life with geometrical and floral patterns paneled the walls. “Grinling Gibbons?” I asked. “Was he not the author of a treatise on ancient Rome?”
Mr. Wilson eyed me with some of Watson’s amazement. “He was the noted seventeenth-century carver and sculptor, nothing to do with Romans.”
“Ah.” All this decorative busywork was a rather trivial pursuit in my opinion. “And the room we hasten to?”
Mr. Wilson stopped and seemed to gather himself. “The billiard room, sir.”
“Hmmm.” I was not optimistic about encountering anything truly fearful in a chamber as frivolous as a billiard room. So far the floors had been disappointingly blank, not a spec of dust allowed to sully their surfaces. The carpeting looked as if it had been cleaned by one of those devilish electrified machines that Americans favored, which sucked up and swallowed anything in the nature of a clue.
Even as I noted the stunning size and scale of the place, a well-upholstered woman descended the grand staircase to the right. She was as handsome and adamant as Lady Liberty in the New York Harbor, although attired in the expensive fripperies that pass for the latest Paris fashions, which somehow did not flatter her overshot lower jaw that spoke of bulldog resolve.
My guide stiffened as he spied her, so I watched her imperious advance much as a courtier might await a royal personage coming abreast.
When she arrived even with us, her gaze was only for my conductor. He bowed his head at her passage. Her sharp footsteps never faltered, and I was accorded only the slightest glance and that at my clothing.
The door behind us opened to admit the clatter of Fifth Avenue. I heard the butler murmur that madam’s carriage was awaiting at the curb. Then the door closed again and we were left to the lonely silence of a mausoleum.
Mr. Wilson swallowed audibly.
“Mrs. Vanderbilt, I take it?”
He only nodded. I surmised that he would not be displeased if some unearthly force took Mrs. Vanderbilt from us all. America prided itself for its egalitarianism, but it struck me that its queens of society were as imperious as any Empress of All the Russias.
I was also struck by the difference between these two American women, Mrs. Vanderbilt and the woman, Madam Irene. Mrs. Norton was infinitely more comely if not less expensively attired, but Mrs. Vanderbilt moved as if she commanded every creature within her purview, man or mouse. And as if man would soon be reduced to mouse. Madam Irene was in admirable command of herself, but did not seek to erase the presence of others, witness how she had tended the poor injured churchman I had played to gain entry to her house in St. John’s Wood when we first met two years earlier.
Had I played the same disabled role with Mrs. Vanderbilt as she entered her carriage, she would no doubt have used me as stepping-stone.
American women, I was beginning to suspect, were like their sisters everywhere, not to be trusted, but in addition as willful as wolverines.
“This way, sir.” My guide was polishing his ruddy perspiration-dewed cheeks with his handkerchief.
And so we proceeded down that wide hallway, our bootheels the only sound in that palatial expanse.
As we passed the grand curving stairway from which Mrs. Vanderbilt had descended, I spied a dark-haired elfin sprite crouched at the top of the stairs, gazing down on us wistfully.
My work occasionally had brought me into grand halls and palaces, but none so oppressive as this, despite the light-colored stone of its construction.
At a pair of ornate wooden doors, Mr. Wilson stopped, tapping upon his game leg with impatience.
I stood back to let Mr. Wilson open the doors, but he then beckoned me inside and whirled to shut the doors behind us as if sealing out Satan
himself.
He had moved so fast I could not object that he had disarranged the threshold before I could examine it.
A familiar stench filled the room, undignified death in its most disagreeable form. I catalogued the immediately obvious contents of the large chamber. Its centerpiece was a billiard table set upon ornate wooden legs so stout and swollen they seemed to suffer from gout. Enough gilt fringe to circle several lampshades dangled from the corner pockets. Gilt metal inlay, probably gold, glinted from every curve in the carving.
The thing more resembled some bloated pagan altar than a gaming table. Over it hung an immense branched electric lamp of brass and opaque stained glass.
And on its green felt surface, the only ordinary thing about the table, lay a form that was the source of odor, arms stretched out and . . .
A soberly dressed fellow stood near a massive sofa several feet from the billiard table.
I spoke. “I must examine the entire room thoroughly, from the bottom up. Starting with the threshold. Mr. Wilson, if you will open the doors again.”
“No one in the house must know.” The man by the sofa’s voice creaked with recent disuse, but it held a modicum of command.
“Mr. William K. Vanderbilt, I presume.” I faced a man of no great height, but of regular, even bland, barefaced features, most notable for the waves of dark hair parted in the middle.
“Who is this dead man?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You have no idea why he’s in your house? Are any servants or workmen missing?”
“I’m not about to upset the house with such inquiries, but everything has been perfectly normal this morning. One would never know—” His glance slid toward the table, then avoided it. “No one in the house must suspect any problem. Your investigation must be completely discreet.”
“Then I require your patience. It is crucial that the floor and furnishings of the room be as untrampled as possible. The sooner I make my examination, the sooner those doors can be bolted again.”
Irene Adler 08 - Spider Dance Page 3