“You are saying the disguise is too blatant?”
Irene snorted as delicately as a fawn, although as disparagingly as a hod carrier. “A child could see through it!” She conveniently ignored the fact that I had not, nor had I seen through Godfrey’s newest guise. Her eyes narrowed further. “Why did Dr. Hoffman not penetrate it? Or was he meant to, and did?”
“I don’t understand, Irene. You make this sound like a game within a game.”
“Exactly. A game within a game, just as the compass letters must nest within each other to attain their greatest meaning.” She gave me one of her extraordinarily luminous smiles. “You must tell Godfrey about your clever discovery, when he is himself again.”
“He is,” said the subject of our conversation, returning with his cuffs still rolled up from washing the last of the impersonation from his hands and face. “Do you mean to say that my astounding discovery has been eclipsed by Nell’s detective work with the maps?”
“I would not go so far as to say ‘eclipsed’,” said I.
“Nonsense.” Irene would have none of my modesty. “You must explain it to Godfrey.”
Which I did, much enjoying his initial confusion and dawning delight as the linking of the map with the conjoined tattoos became clear.
“Splendidly done, Nell! You have solved the cipher at the heart of this matter.” Godfrey leaned over the table to study the map, his handsome self again. “You know, Irene, we could overleap the whole tedious process of avoiding Mr. Holmes and of finding the conspirators and dash over to Crete to claim the treasure for ourselves. It is, after all, fair game.”
“And still difficult to put one’s hands on, or why would the blackmailer need to divert the prince’s oceanic equipment to the site? Besides, consider the cataclysm that buried the hoard twenty years ago, and the deaths that have followed. Perhaps it is cursed.”
“No!” said I. “I will not have a curse mixed in with all this stew. Tattoos and sealing wax and Sherlock Holmes provide enough nonsense at once.”
Irene suddenly sat at the table. “Nell is right. We must focus on the central knot. The question remains; why has Sherlock Holmes been drawn into this farrago? Why is he seeking sealing wax, and how did he find the manufacturer?”
“He followed Dr. Hoffman to the chemist’s shop,” Godfrey said. “This elderly Cremieux has been a patient of the doctor’s since Hoffman began practice twenty-some years ago. An arthritic affliction runs in the Cremieux family, and this Hyppolyte has long been too frail to leave the premises.”
“Why did Dr. Hoffman not say he knew the source of the wax?”
“It is secretly manufactured. I searched the workrooms for some time before I found the bricks of wax under a cloth. Luckily, old Cremieux is quite deaf, or he would have heard the extent of my search. Dr. Hoffman, besides, treats the man in his adjacent rooms, not in the shop. It is a process involving hand and foot baths, noxious herbs and manipulation.”
“Or—!” Irene slapped her open hand to the tabletop. “Perhaps Sherlock Holmes did not follow Dr. Hoffman to the chemist’s, but from it. That must be it! He is working backward to our muddle of blackmail, murder and sunken treasure—and maps. We must press on before he discovers the real problem underlying the Montpensier matter!”
Irene’s amber eyes grew dark and dreamy as she gazed at the window. “An unknown blackmailer is part of the scheme; the loose end of the Viscount D’Enrique, who is close to the situation but barren of tattoos, or at least of the right tattoo in the proper spot; the dead sailors, two of whom died as if fleeing a demon, yet no obvious source of demons has appeared—except Singh’s snake, and Sarah has that now.”
Godfrey frowned, his agile legal mind balking at the apparent non sequiturs of her musings. Irene went on.
“Louise Montpensier and her uncle also came to this site. We have no knowledge of the state of Édouard Montpensier’s skin, but it seems unlikely that he joined the tattooed brotherhood when his brother died, or Jerseyman would not have so forcefully inducted Louise.” I shrugged at Godfrey, who shrugged in turn at me. “We have on the fringes, embroidering this motley group, as it were, the wealthy Alice, Duchesse de Richelieu, and her Grimaldi prince. And we may have undiscovered Quarter members lurking nearby.” Irene suddenly sat up straighter. “Or have we? Ah, there is no hope for it. I must consult Sherlock Holmes.”
I turned to Godfrey, mouth gaping, to find that he had turned to me with the same mute but unlatched expression.
Chapter Thirty-five
IN ANOTHER’S GUISE
Sarah Bernhardt swept into the Norton suite the following afternoon with her rice-powder pallor, her flaming golden hair swathed in scarves, and her painted crimson lips pouting, or—as the French more elegantly put it—pursed into une petite moue.
“Such an insufferable man, my dear Miss Uxleigh,” she complained, sitting on the green brocade sofa, which clashed wonderfully with her cerulean silk gown. “I am amazed that he is civilized enough to speak French.”
The Divine Sarah wielded her gold-headed walking stick like a scepter, an expression of frozen hauteur making her usually mobile face resemble that of a disheveled corpse.
“These English—pardon me, cherie—are so stiff. Your Mr. Olmes as good as told me that I was a bored prima donna and had no problem worth consulting him upon.”
“What did you say?” I breathed.
“That I am a dramatic actress and not an operatic prima donna. That I do not sing publicly, that I have never sung, that I never intend to sing, although I may play Hamlet.”
“What did he say?”
“That Ophelia may be more... up my alley?” She dispensed with the scarves in a series of gestures as airy as they. “I told him that I have played this part in Paris already. I then asked him if he had been in Paris and he said, ‘Briefly, Madame’.”
The Divine Sarah leaned closer, her golden-brown eyes twinkling wickedly. “ ‘Recently, Monsieur Olmes?’ said I. ‘Recently enough,’ said he, clamping his teeth down very hard. A difficult man to seduce, I think.”
I looked around for Godfrey, but he had gone out on another of his mysterious errands.
Madame Sarah laughed, that rich, unbridled laugh that was so recognizably hers. It was odd to hear it issue from Irene, who now stripped two or three gaudy rings from her fingers and deposited them in a sweetmeat dish by the sofa.
Still laughing softly, Irene collapsed deeper into the cushions, looking more like Sarah Bernhardt than ever, except for her citrine-colored eyes. She had even augmented her perfectly straight nose to the autocratic sweep of the Divine One’s.
“Did you not tremble, Irene, masquerading as Sarah Bernhardt before the foremost detective in Europe?”
“No. A woman of such an exaggerated theatrical type does not appeal to Mr. Holmes on any level, moral or personal. His own dramatic instincts are cleaner, more surgical. He is a master of the understatement, while Sarah is always her own larger-than-life poster. Another’s disdain is one’s best disguise. Mr. Holmes considered me a silly, self-indulgent female not worth worrying about, beyond showing me the door.”
“But what did you learn from this masquerade?”
“One, that he has come here from Paris. Two, that he is aware of the Montpensier case, as I suspected.”
“How did you learn that?”
Sarah surfaced in an instant. “I plan to produce a play, Monsieur Olmes. A great tragedie. I have heard of so sad a case, a beautiful young girl killed by her wicked uncle, drowned in the Seine. I wonder if you could solve it for me so I have an ending for my drama.”
“And?”
“He grew most stern and informed me that while the newspapers may profit from private tragedy, it behooves the rest of us to respect it. Perhaps I should search the classical sources for my plots, as did the Bard of Avon. Had I ever considered playing Lady Macbeth? I seemed to share her bloodthirstiness.”
“Then?”
“I rose to leave, carelessly d
ropping the invitation from Alice to my palace concert—sealing-wax side up. Well, my dear Nell, he had it in a flash and returned it to me, only glancing at the sealing wax, so eager was he to show me to the door. Perhaps it was my perfume.” Irene fanned herself with a languid hand, wafting some tiger-lily scent toward my undefended nostrils.
“Perhaps he smelled a rat,” I replied.
“Touché, Nell!” Irene always admired a well-delivered insult. “But you see what I have learned?”
“No, I do not, other than that Mr. Holmes is a sensible and upright gentleman, one not to be swayed by the wiles of a Scarlet Woman of the Stage.”
Irene smiled tolerantly. “Don’t you see? He knows that the wax belongs to the palace. Yet he has not the least notion of the wider reaches of this web. He is following a single filament—Louise Montpensier’s death and her uncle’s disappearance—from Paris. Somehow he has obtained the letters sent to her uncle and has had the good fortune—or the brilliance—to find the sealing wax first.”
Irene rubbed her hands together in a most lusty Lady Macbeth manner. “Now Sherlock Holmes is working his way to our part of the puzzle, and he does not yet suspect any of it! Is it not delicious?”
“It does not sound at all edible, Irene, but most dangerous and dishonest. What did you think of him?”
“Mr. Holmes?”
“You did not call on Mr. Gladstone, the prime minister!”
She leaned back, coiled into her gorgeous Byzantine robes like a girlish Sarah. “He is not handsome.”
“No.”
“Arresting, rather. When I first glimpsed him, years ago, I said that he had a busy, interesting face.”
“I would have to consult my diaries on the precise phrasing.”
“No matter. His mind is like a clockworks, always ticking and whirring. I fear that in the presence of an ultra-feminine woman it ticks in yawning, four-four time. I was as bland to his detective constitution as chamomile tea. I bored him! I presented a nigh perfect impersonation of the most alluring actress of our age, and I bored the man silly!” She laughed rapturously. “He is remarkable. We must hurry or he will anticipate us all, as he almost did in London.”
“Hurry at what, Irene? What is there for us to prove?”
She sat up and spoke in her normal tones.
“We must see that Louise and Jerseyman have claim to whatever treasure is discovered. We must ensure Louise and Mr. Winter’s desires for independence and foil Louise’s uncle permanently. We must absolve her aunt of all complicity in the illusion of her niece’s murder. We must protect Alice from the revelations of the blackmailer by unveiling him—or her—and then alert the prince to the ulterior purpose for his expedition.”
She frowned. “And I really do think that we must find out how Sherlock Holmes discovered the manufacturer of the sealing wax, for therein lies the key to the whole problem. Oh, poor, prescient Mr. Holmes, you begin innocently at the exact point where all my efforts are leading me!”
Chapter Thirty-six
A NORTON TOO MANY
FROM THE CASE NOTES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
I am suffocating from fine weather.
This unrelenting sunlight is clouding my faculties of reason. Perhaps some perfume still lingers from the overbearing presence of Madame Sarah Bernhardt, who, I suspect, visited me yesterday to exercise her colossal vanity, for she had no discernibly legitimate reason to call.
Of course, such women are often oblique, but something nags at my memory of that encounter. If I were in Baker Street, I would turn to my violin—or to the hypodermic needle Watson so dislikes.
However, the air cleared when le Villard arrived today. His telegram came this morning and the man himself followed on the heels of it, such is the wonder of modem rail travel.
“My dear Holmes!” He grasped my hand. “You look pale. Can it be that the charms of what the poet Liegeard has recently christened ‘the Blue Coast’ have not pleased you?”
“Charms are in the eye of the beholder, le Villard. I am not here to stroll. In fact, I have hardly shown my own face since I arrived.”
“You must evolve a monograph on the art of disguise,” the detective said.
“My dear fellow, monographs occupy my idle moments. This is not one of them. I may shortly find it necessary to leave this place of coastal dalliance, however heavenly its color.”
“Then you will have to drop the Montpensier murder?”
“On the contrary. I have one or two theories that require proving. I have telegraphed to various points of travel in Europe, England and America.”
“America?”
I smiled at le Villard’s incredulity. That same naive, albeit flattering, air of surprise pervaded the tone of his frequent footnotes to my translated monographs, all of his explications singing the praises of the author’s brilliant methodology.
Despite his Celtic quickness, le Villard was as easy to confuse as Inspector Lestrade. “When I have assembled the necessary facts, I will reveal them,” I said. “As for writing a monograph on disguise, I am not interested in arming the criminal element more than it already is. However, since my stay in Monaco, I have learned a good deal about sealing wax. There may be a new monograph in that.”
“Sealing wax? Oh, you mean the strange stuff on the letters sent to Édouard Montpensier?”
“Strange stuff indeed, le Villard! Did you know that there are three hundred and sixty-eight varieties of sealing wax in Europe alone? In this case, the sandalwood scent put me on the proper trail. Such a scent is not favored in northern Europe, so I was pointed to the Mediterranean. From there it was simply a matter of making the proper inquiries. Also, Édouard Montpensier has been seen about Monte Carlo, making his own inquiries.”
“Montpensier! Here? You amaze me, my friend.”
I could not help smiling wearily. “Have you ever viewed a piece of embroidery from the wrong side, le Villard? All one sees is an untidy pattern of knots, and colors scattered randomly.
“So an investigative puzzle offers first the underside of mystifying knots. Yet there is always a pattern. The missing Montpensier girl’s father died in Monte Carlo. The distinctive sealing wax upon the strange letters sent to her uncle is made in Monte Carlo. It is not amazing at all that Édouard Montpensier should hurry here; he is but one knot in a scheme of many that will make perfect sense once the matter is turned right side up.”
“You say ‘missing.’ You suspect that Louise lives?”
“I suspect that it is possible. And then there is another knot whose presence nags at me—these English Nortons who briefly entered the affair in Paris.”
“I admit that Mr. Norton piqued my suspicions of Louise’s possible survival, but this pair’s involvement has been purely peripheral.”
“They are still knotted into the fabric. The name ‘Norton’ is exceedingly common in England, but I have reason to remember it from a case not long past. I first dismissed a connection; I do not believe in coincidence. Now I am not so sure. I have been visited by a very commanding woman, an actress; she has put me in mind of—what was this Mr. Norton’s first name, le Villard?”
“I... I do not recall. Of course my notes in Paris...” le Villard’s hands slapped his sides in self-disgust. “What foolishness I have shown.”
“You have no recall of the Christian name?”
“Ah, Gervaise, Guy—?”
“Godfrey?”
Le Villard’s dark eyes squinted. “Perhaps. I confess that Madame Norton was so distracting that I did not much notice the husband, or the woman who resides with them.”
“Ah. In what way distracting?”
“Monsieur Holmes, as you know, we French are connoisseurs of female beauty. Madame Norton is one to make any man who meets her regret that she—or he—is married. Her form is very perfection; her hair, her eyes—a medley of the shades of the sweetest honey, gold and brown, glossy and rich. Her voice rivals that of the Divine Sarah herself. Beyond this, she is intelligent and cha
rming. A woman of great quality. She could have been a queen.”
“So she would have been—pardon, le Villard. I compliment your descriptive powers, although you must concentrate more on detail rather than on the overall effect if you wish to apply your observations to police work. In this case, it has sufficed; I believe I have, er, seen the lady.”
“Then the Norton involvement is not innocent?”
“I cannot say. Nor can I yet say what the full implications of this affair are. Certainly Madame Montpensier is innocent.”
“You relieve me, my dear Holmes. At least I was not unwise to heed Monsieur Norton’s warning.”
“The unfortunate Mr. Norton.”
“Why do you say that?”
I smiled again. “It is an unfortunate man who stands in the shadow of a beautiful wife; then, again, it would be a great advantage in detective work. I myself often wish for invisibility.”
“But Holmes, you accomplish it superbly through the art of disguise.”
I nodded in acknowledgement. “I must consider these matters, le Villard, and then we will act.”
“You see a quick end to the Montpensier affair, then?”
“Oh, to the Montpensier matter, certainly.”
“There is another?”
“There is always another, my dear le Villard.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
AN UNPECEDENTED ENCOUNTER
What came to Irene was Sherlock Holmes.
“Godfrey!” she said at breakfast the next day, shooing the birds from her chair with the lace-flounced sleeve of her pearl-colored velvet morning gown. “We must pursue the avenue that Sherlock Holmes has opened for us.
“The chemist who makes the sealing wax, you mean?”
“I do.”
“But, Irene,” I objected over my morning cup of tea, “the sealing wax is surely a side issue now. The viscount has nothing to do with it; the prince’s yacht sails within the week. We have a great deal more to worry about than a mere means when the end itself is in sight.”
The Adventuress: A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes Page 31