Irene Adler 08 - Spider Dance

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Bellevue sat on several acres at Twenty-sixth and First Avenue, on the lip of the East River, as the Paris Morgue sits upon the banks of the Seine. Like many institutions, it had grown over the decades into a cluster of two- and four-story buildings, a bit haphazard as to architectural style, which only testified to its vigorous roots in the community.

  In fact, I was aware of one paramount fact about Bellevue. It was the first hospital in the world to use hypodermic’ syringes. Thus a colonial outpost managed to lead a British institution to much that is useful, and, in my case, pleasurable. The business I was on would not be in the least pleasurable.

  I was not sure where on the grounds the carriage stopped, but no sooner had I alighted then another man met me.

  “Mr. Holmes?” he inquired.

  I was beginning to feel like an oddly welcome guest at a country house party where I knew no one.

  “Yes.”

  “This way, sir.”

  The way was lit by his lantern, though once we were inside a few electric lights stared from the wall fixtures. Those used to the flickering glamour of flame or the gas jet find electric illumination rather relentless, but I welcome these steady beams that permit no misinterpretation.

  I was taken down a passage so plain it obviously led to those unable to note its austerity: the dead. Entering a room, I felt the artificially cold air of a mortuary keeping room.

  My guide lifted his lantern to touch a switch. Cold electric light flooded the concrete-and-steel table before me.

  There, nude, lay the old man once cushioned on green felt in a millionaire’s residence.

  “We have fifteen minutes before the night watchman returns to where your carriage waits.”

  “Ten will be sufficient. Hold up your lantern, please.”

  “The electric lights—”

  “Are splendid, but I need as much and more.”

  My guide, a youngish Irishman whose wife and four children must be gnawing upon his unaccustomed absence from home this night, reluctantly stepped near the makeshift bier. He held up the lantern until I felt its slight warmth on my face.

  Nothing would warm the face below me, bloodless now and gray as granite.

  I had examined the mutilated hands and feet before, but now bent again to each extremity. The wounds were as sere as ancient papyrus, all blood washed away, the skin puckering along the gashes like parchment.

  Now I could truly see. Now I knew what to look for.

  I moved, and my able assistant moved the lantern with me.

  Yes! Rope burns at the wrists and ankles. Very faint, for the man had been dying, or freshly dead when trussed up in the Vanderbilt lighting fixture.

  What hath Edison wrought? Without such cold sources of light, such huge fixtures would not be possible. Without such an opportunity, this man would not have been used as a deus ex machina in some ancient play, lowered like the god in the machine to strike awe and fear into his audience. His audience of one man only: William Kissam Vanderbilt.

  What could this mild-mannered millionaire have done to invoke such bloodthirsty enemies? And why?

  The answer was bound to be both confounding and intriguing.

  12

  RAIDING THE MORGUE, ACT II

  Of incalculable value to any large newspaper is its ‘morgue’

  or library. Hardly an hour passes that some situation

  does not arise which requires reference to previous

  items . . . a treasure of necessary information.

  —STANLEY WALKER, CITY EDITOR, NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 1934

  Herald Square clearly took its name from the New York Herald office building that faced Thirty-fifth Street. This was a pleasantly low-profile two-story building faced with graceful Italianate arches. Not far away the Sixth Avenue Elevated roared past, and the area thronged with the marquees of theaters, dance halls, and even an opera house, as well as restaurants.

  “Pink works for the New York World,” I repeated for the third time as we stood on the bustling sidewalk and gazed at the unassuming building.

  “Yes, Nell. But I have no intention of allowing Miss Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, familiarly known as Pink and publicly known as Nellie Bly, another opportunity to use my past as the key to a sensational newspaper story.”

  I wore my new town gown that Irene had purchased for me at B. Altman during her shopping spree before broaching the Vanderbilt mansion in the guise of an Irish maid. For a ready-made costume it was fairly respectable. It was of cream-and-green plaid sateen, with the new three-quarter sleeves that were met by longer gloves, and the new slightly puffed sleeve at the shoulder. Irene was also attired for city business, but her ensemble mimicked an eighteenth-century riding costume with its dashing copper-colored satin jacket with large revers and cuffs over a skirt striped in peacock green and copper. She carried a large black leather handbag rather than the more formal reticule that she preferred. And inside the handbag was a letter in a long envelope of heavy linen paper that I had seen for the first time that morning at our hotel rooms.

  “What is that?” I’d asked when she’d paused to place it in her newly acquired handbag.

  “It is a precaution, Nell.”

  “Usually precautions are actions, not physical items.”

  “This is both.” Her gloved fingers waved it once before she latched the bag shut. “Before we left Paris, I asked Baron Alphonse for a letter of introduction from the Rothschild agent in New York. This awaited us at our hotel.”

  “You never mentioned it to me.”

  “Things were rather hectic, as you recall. Besides, I had no use for it until now.”

  “And what will you use it for today?”

  “To introduce ourselves to Mr. James Gordon Bennett Jr. and to induce him to allow us to see the newspaper files for 1861.”

  “The year Mrs. Eliza Gilbert died and was buried.”

  “Exactly, Nell. I am weary of other people waving hints of my family origins at me. I will know the truth, and the entire truth.”

  “Then you meant what you told Mr. Holmes.”

  “Which was?”

  “That you hadn’t the slightest intention of intruding on his assignment involving the Vanderbilts.”

  “Oh, that. Of course I did. I will settle the identity of this Gilbert woman, discover whether there is any possibility she might have been my mother, and then we will unfurl our sails and breeze back to Paris and Godfrey as fast as Mother Ocean will let us.”

  “Godfrey is not in Paris.”

  “He ought to be.” Irene shook her head as if trying to dislodge the veil furled on the keel of her sweeping hat brim. “What can be so fascinating in Bavaria that it should occupy an English barrister more than a week or two? I intend to wire the baron to that effect if Godfrey is not soon released.”

  I could see that Irene meant every word she said. For me the news was both happy and, oddly, sad. We would track down the history of the dead Eliza Gilbert. We would confront our new theatrical acquaintances (actually Irene’s childhood caretakers) with whatever facts we found and either confirm or eliminate the woman as a possibility for Irene’s mother. We would then speed home again, a consummation devoutly to be wished . . . save that I might be leaving Quentin Stanhope behind. Along, or even alone, with Elizabeth Pink Nellie! Not a thing to be wished in any event.

  So I regarded the dour office building now before us with a glum mood. Quentin had made it clear that his sojourn in New York City was Foreign Office business. He could not leave until it was accomplished. And I could not banish the conviction that, no matter how charmingly he partnered me at tea, his assignment had much to do with that inescapable and annoyingly forward and attractive young person named Pink!

  “She is only a few years our junior, Nell,” Irene pointed out beside me.

  “What?” Irene’s new habit of commenting on my unspoken thoughts was becoming as annoying as Pink herself!

  “Our friend Nellie. She lied in Paris. She is in her midtw
enties, and we have only edged past thirty.”

  “How did you—?”

  “You have been throttling the neck of the rose silk reticule I bought you at Macy’s ever since the child in the large pink straw hat brimmed with pink roses passed by.”

  “Really? I didn’t notice her, Irene.”

  “In any case,” Irene went on, “I agree that we are better off leaving Pink to her own devices and attending to ours. I hope this letter will be an ‘open sesame.’”

  With that she mounted the short flight of stairs to the building, I in her wake.

  For some reason newspaper editorial offices sit on the topmost floor. Irene and I labored upward, the building having no elevator, feeling the risers tremble beneath our feet as the great hidden presses kept their noisy pace.

  We exited at a floor as filled with smoke as a variety theater. Ladies were not often expected here, for the floors were dusted with ashes and dark disgusting islands where that awful American habit of “chewing tobacco” has missed arriving at the awfully but aptly named spittoons.

  Even the Rothschild letter, one would think, would not deign to be delivered here, were any such action up to a mere letter.

  Irene sailed through the muck in an evasive path that missed the worst of the filth and I followed in her footsteps.

  Our unusual presence finally inspired a man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a homburg (indoors!) to lower his booted feet from a desktop and inquire, “Lookin’ for something special, ladies?”

  “Mr. Bennett,” Irene said, smiling.

  The man removed a thick cigar stub from his mouth and pointed with it to a closed door. “You’re lucky. He seldom visits the U. S. but he’s just back from Paris for a short time. There.”

  There we went. Irene knocked. “Come in, dammit,” a voice commanded.

  Within was an office as civilized as the outer areas were not, though the smoke and clatter drifted in.

  Mr. Bennett was standing at a large mahogany desk, frowning at sheets of newsprint and chewing on the stump of an expired cigar like a mastiff on a bone.

  “Mr. Bennett,” Irene said for the second time.

  “Not me,” the cigar chewer said. “Him.”

  We turned to regard a well-tailored man sitting in a leather club chair before the desk. His hair was edged in middle-aged silver, but his large, pointed mustache was still jet black.

  He rose at once. “I am Bennett. How may I help you, madam?”

  “You may indeed help, but it is Baron de Rothschild and his agent, Mr. Belmont, you will oblige the most by aiding me.

  Irene extended the letter even as the man’s eyes moved from Irene to myself, and then back to Irene. “And you are—?”

  “Mrs. Godfrey Norton, and this is my companion, Miss Huxleigh.”

  By then he had opened and skimmed the letter sufficiently to return it to the envelope and hand it back.

  “How may I assist you?”

  “I need to consult the back issues of your newspaper for a certain date, or a few dates.”

  “What are they?”

  “Quite old, I fear. January of 1861.”

  “Ah, the Civil War years.”

  “That will cause a difficulty?”

  “On the contrary. This newspaper dates back to early in the century, but news chases the future, not the past, and copies were not always kept well. However, the war years would be more likely to be preserved. Davis.” He turned his eyes and voice to the man fretting over the desk full of newsprint “Write these ladies a chit so the dragon who guards the back copies below will let them browse amongst our wares.” He turned back to us. “You may only consult the papers, not take them.”

  “Information is all we seek,” Irene said.

  “And what would two such genteel ladies need with ink-stained editions from nearly thirty years ago?”

  “I seek to trace relations.”

  “Ah. Lost in the war, eh? Not likely to be found at this late date. Dispense with your gloves, is my advice. Ah. Thank you, Davis. You can return to worrying the front page.”

  Irene held the note between her white-gloved fingertips. “Thank you so much for your assistance, and your sanitary advice.”

  “The morgue—what we call our library—is on the basement level. My regards to Mr. Belmont. I hope to see him in Paris again one of these weeks. I live abroad now that I’ve founded the International Herald English edition. Good day.”

  “Perhaps I can return your hospitality in Paris one day,” Irene said. “We live there as well.”

  His eyebrows peaked with surprise, giving him a slightly satanic look, as we murmured the appropriate farewells and returned to the loud, reeking room outside.

  “Basement,” I commented, shuddering. “I had enough of cellars and catacombs and other dread underground places last spring.

  “‘Dragon.’” Irene quoted our former host. “That should be fascinating.”

  The basement was indeed belowstairs, and as dark and dank a near neighbor of Gehenna itself as one would fear.

  Similar ropes of electrical wires that swagged ten feet high across every New York City thoroughfare like giant musical staffs also had done their duty for this “morgue.” Bare electric lightbulbs dangled over the aisles between rows upon rows of filing boxes on shelves. The watery light they gave created as much shadow as illumination, and the rectilineal vastness and order was indeed reminiscent of a graveyard.

  “Note from Mr. Davis, eh?” demanded a bent, wizened old man whose spectacles pinched his nose so hard it had turned scarlet. Or else the drink had done it.

  “Ladies,” he further observed, looking us up and down and left and right in a most ungentlemanly manner. “Don’t get much ladies down here. I suppose it’s some picture of yourselves at Mrs. Astor’s latest ball you forgot to save and now must ransack my files to get. No issue leaves this place, not one, for no one.”

  He plucked a huge cigar from its resting place in a white porcelain soap dish and puffed until we were wreathed in smoke.

  “Our quest is not so lighthearted as you had hoped,” Irene said soberly, as if breaking bad news to our guide and gatekeeper. “We are in search of an obituary.”

  He peered through his own fog. “You’re not wearing black.”

  “The deceased passed on in 1861. I believe the traditional time for wearing black is long past.”

  He harumphed in admission of his wrong inference and puffed more smoke. If he had been the big bad wolf and we had been pigs’ houses, we would have been blown down by now.

  But smoke was not a deterrent to Irene, and I had grown used to being so assaulted, although I coughed delicately, by way of a hint. A hint not taken, or even noticed.

  “Sixty-one.” His eyes narrowed above the spectacles, though that may have been more from his own smoke than a pretense at deep thought.

  Irene gave him the date.

  “I can show you the section, but you ladies will have to get your dainty white gloves dirty, for you’ll have to page through the papers yourselves.”

  “We can remove our gloves, Mr.—?”

  “Wheems. And here I thought you ladies were born with them on.”

  He turned and led us down a maze of aisles: straight ahead, left, right, ahead again.

  In the eerie silence our skirts rustled behind him like the dragging tails of herded rats in a dungeon . . . and I do have reason to know that loathsome sound.

  “In luck, ladies.” He had paused to peer at a shoulder-height shelf. “This here’s the very box you want.”

  He assailed the box in question with several puffs of smoke, then looked at us.

  Obviously such a bent wizened creature couldn’t get the box off the shelf, especially with the cigar in his careful custody.

  So Irene reached up to slide a corner free, and we both caught it.

  “A table?” I asked.

  “This here’s not the public library on Fifth Avenue,” he reminded us unnecessarily. “No lions outside o
ur door. There’s a table around the end of the aisle. Put the box back when you leave.”

  This last instruction was called back over his shoulder in a haze of departing smoke.

  “Irene . . .”

  “I know, Nell. It is a filthy habit. I do plan to renounce it.”

  “When?”

  “Not when I am a stranger on another shore, digging through newsprint almost thirty years old.”

  We huffed and puffed our own way to the opposite end of the aisle and found the promised table, a slatternly thing of peeling paint and split boards and protruding nails and . . . spiderwebs bracketing its legs.

  ”Oooph!” Irene let her half of the box thump to the tabletop with a creak of old wood. “Old newsprint smells fusty and mildewy.”

  “Our gloves are already a loss,” I said, sliding my half of the box onto the uncertain surface and raising my dust-smudged palms.

  “Gloves will wash, Nell. The past only rarely opens its gates to us. Eliza Gilbert must at least be mentioned in the contents of this box for the date of her interment, if she did not merit a separate death notice.”

  We took off our gloves, and removed the first papers.

  “Ah!” Irene read the first page. “The funeral was the nineteenth of January and these papers are stacked from last to first of the month. We shall have a slightly shorter dig than the other way around.”

  “Not by much.” I coughed as she set down the first edition and a billow of yellow dust wafted up with a noxious ink and mold odor. “Who would have thought anything on earth would have competed with Mr. Wheems’s choice of cheap tobacco?”

  Irene was too intent disinterring edition after edition to agree.

  I made sure they stacked neatly, observing the narrow, old-fashioned columns and the paragraph-long headlines above the stories.

  “Here it is. The nineteenth!”

  The paper shook slightly in Irene’s hands as she laid it open on the pile of previous editions and began studying the double pages.

  “The obituaries,” I suggested, “are always toward the back.”

  “Who knows where they were then, and Mrs. Eliza Gilbert may have merited more prominent mention.”