The Adventuress: A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “I don’t doubt it.” Irene turned to the captain. “I wished to demonstrate, sir, that while general seamanship does not qualify one to recognize every bit of coast roundabout, even a simple sailor can commit a particular spot to memory if he has reason to.”

  “There’s no mystery in it, Madame,” the captain said gruffly, pulling a pipe from his frock-coat pocket. “Seamanship’s a matter of memory at bottom, as well as a nose for the weather.”

  “Oh, but there is a mystery in it, an old and rather dangerous one. My husband, Godfrey, shall continue.”

  Handsome in his evening dress, Godfrey stood like a robed barrister at the bar, a paper of notations in his hand. “We have,” said he, “heard a tale of treasure from this, er, thirsty seafaring gentleman before us.” He indicated Jerseyman, who was in the process of draining his glass.

  “He told of a pleasure boat that sank nearly twenty years ago, drowning many of the passengers and crew. The survivors, cast ashore, discovered, purely by the accident of their marooning, a massive golden hoard.”

  Sarah Bernhardt came suddenly upright on the sofa onto which she had subsided.

  The duchess was also shocked. “Irene said nothing of this!”

  “That is why it is a mystery,” my friend herself answered them, “and why we meet here to solve it.”

  “But you said you would settle the matter of my... private affairs possibly becoming public.”

  “And I will, dear Alice, but first things first.” Irene leaned back in her chair with a lighted cigarette and composed herself to listen once more to Godfrey.

  He strode to the fireplace to rest a hand upon the carved white-marble mantel. “Whether these artifacts were a Mogul hoard sunk in the fifteenth century, or plunder from ancient Carthage, it was obvious to all the survivors that they were beyond price.

  “They also shortly went beyond reach, for an after-gale from the same tremendous storm that had capsized the survivors’ vessel inundated the cavern in which they’d uncovered the treasure. A wave as high as a mast washed the cave and its secrets down the coast’s hidden underwater slopes to a burial as sudden and capricious as its exhumation after all these centuries.”

  “What a tale, my dear Godfrey! I must have a play written from it.”

  “Alas, my dear Sarah,” he rejoined with a bow, “there were no women survivors.”

  “It does not matter! I will play the heroic part, whatever the gender.”

  “There are no heroes, only survivors and schemers.”

  “Then I shall play the blackest villain among them!”

  “Is there such a one?” Alice wondered.

  “Certainly,” Irene said. “You are being blackmailed; that alone is a villainous act. It is but the latest of such committed by the one who has directed this scheme since its inception twenty years ago.”

  At this announcement we regarded each other in suspicion, for clearly this person must be among us, or there would be no point to the evening.

  Then Irene nodded to me. “Nell, if you would be so kind as to pass the example of your handiwork among the party...”

  I produced my drawing of the compass rose pieced together from the tattooed letters.

  Then she took up the tale: “So there were almost twenty men, of high and low birth, cast shoeless together on an unknown coast with a treasure they had glimpsed but seen vanish from their grasp.

  “It was not many years later that the first clue to the group’s existence surfaced—or sank, rather. For that twilight evening in the early eighties, when Bram Stoker attempted to save an apparent suicide from the Thames, was the beginning of my acquaintance with the... ah, case, shall we call it?”

  Irene smiled as she stood and began to walk around the circle of listeners, always the actress and, as such, careful to address each one in turn. She paused before Jerseyman.

  “There were some irregularities in the death, for Bram was unable to revive the man. First was the matter of his missing finger—the middle one on the left hand, commonly called the second finger, since the thumb is disregarded. The finger was completely severed to the first knuckle, which struck me even at the time as deliberate, for no accident is so neat.

  “Then there was the tattoo I discovered upon the dead man’s chest. Nell, will you pass around the first illustration? Even then my reliable companion recorded the anomalies we encountered.

  “Strangest of all was the man’s behavior. Mr. Stoker saw him hurtle over the railing and into the water. He resisted all efforts to save him—and Bram is well over six feet in height and brawny besides. The man acted as if fleeing what Bram described as some ‘devilish pursuer.’ No one came forward to claim the victim or to edify the authorities as to his identity.

  “It was not until Miss Huxleigh and I discovered a second body in the same condition being removed from the Seine several years later that I suspected that the two deaths were linked. We have little testimony as to the second man’s state of mind at the time of death, although the body bore bruises, but his left-hand middle finger had been similarly cut off and his chest was tattooed—with a different letter. Nell.”

  I passed around the second initial, ‘N’, pleased by the polite mystification on their faces. One was feigning. Could it be the ever-on-stage actress, Sarah? The oily Viscount? The well-schooled but socially ambitious duchess? The loyal doctor and lover? The captain? The humble sailor we knew as Jerseyman? This was becoming more instructive than a melodrama. I redoubled my efforts to take exhaustive notes.

  “But let us set dead sailors aside for a moment,” Irene said so judiciously that I felt I had only to turn my head to see the two corpses neatly laid out on the chamber’s perimeter.

  “Miss Huxleigh’s recording hand was set to work again only recently in Paris,” she went on, “when a young woman of fine family was abducted from the Bois de Boulogne, rendered senseless and tattooed with yet a third letter of the alphabet, ‘E’. When we found the pair who had assaulted her, we found a fourth and last tattooed letter, ‘O’.. Together, they made the French compass points—Nord, Sud, Est and Oest."

  “This is ridiculous!” the viscount interrupted, his face white against its hirsute adornments. “This is a children’s parlor game—compass letters and tattoos. I have better things to do.”

  “No doubt,” said Alice in firm accents. “One of them may be explaining to the prince how bricks of palace sealing wax have played a role in this conspiracy for nearly twenty years. I believe your induction as secretary precedes that by some time.”

  The viscount sat back, but not comfortably.

  “I agree that it is a sad tangle, gentleman,” Irene resumed, “but bear with me. It took many years for these events to occur, their tracing has taken weeks; their telling will require only minutes. And finding the guilty party behind them all will occupy only seconds.”

  “You claim,” the captain said, “that all of these circumstances are linked to the shipwreck and the treasure?”

  “And to murder, sir.” Irene smiled tightly at the sudden silence that smothered the room. Not even a shoe creaked. “It happens that the tattooed young lady—who is absent because she is no longer relevant to the case— is the daughter of a man who purportedly committed suicide in Monte Carlo in eighteen seventy-three, a man who bore a tattoo. Claude Montpensier.”

  “And despite his death and disgrace,” Godfrey said, still standing by the fireplace, “Claude Montpensier proved to be the ultimate clue to our puzzle, for his was the only name that we knew for certain would be listed among the passengers on the doomed yacht.”

  “What of the crew?” Jerseyman asked truculently. “Don’t we poor deck-swabbers count?”

  “Crew listings are carelessly kept and subject to last- minute change,” Godfrey said, reasonably enough.

  Jerseyman lifted his empty flute with a scowl. The doctor went to fill it.

  Captain Rousseau fidgeted on the delicate sofa, too dainty to contain his bulk. “A passenger could come ab
oard at the last minute in another’s place, too.”

  Dr. Hoffman moved discreetly among us, refilling glasses all around, except mine, for I needed no champagne when I was taking notes, or any other time.

  “The point, Captain,” Godfrey said, “is not who might have come aboard unofficially; the point is that I found at the Office of Marine Records a ship’s passenger list that included the name of the late Claude Montpensier.”

  All of us sat forward intently, even the women, who were presumed to be innocent. The viscount stroked his mustaches and affected a disinterested look. The captain sat back heavily, as if shocked. Could he have commanded the doomed ship himself? Why else was he present this evening?

  “Our sole known survivor,” Godfrey went on, eyeing the increasingly inebriated Jerseyman, “cannot recall the name of the vessel. I reveal now that it was the three-masted schooner Solace, out of Monte Carlo. It was struck by a gigantic storm and sank on April twenty-third, Shakespeare’s birthday, eighteen sixty-nine, off the north coast of Crete. We had already determined that the fragment of coast depicted in the conjoined tattoos drawn by Miss Huxleigh had to be Crete.”

  “Why? Why must it be Crete?” the captain demanded, his voice hoarse with some emotion.

  “Because,” said Irene, “that is where the Solace was headed and where her survivors washed ashore. It also is where the duchess has been pressured of late to direct Prince Albert’s oceanographic expedition. Obviously, at least one survivor of this wreck deeply wishes to return to the site. With the drownings of the sailors and the recent slaughter of the Indian sailor who had tattooed the men originally—and with the passage of time and the scattering of the conspirators—few remain to claim the prize. Now that the means—the prince’s innovative exploration equipment—exists to raise the treasure, you, Captain, as master of the prince’s yacht, are conveniently placed for such a scheme.”

  Captain Rousseau sputtered for a moment, then began coughing. Dr. Hoffman succored him at once with a glass of mineral water.

  “He is not a young man, Madame Norton,” the physician said, standing beside the coughing man, “and he has received a shock. I would not press him too hard.” The captain had taken a few swallows from the glass and now shook his head as if to clear it. “No, no. I am disturbed, that is all, because only today the prince told me that he wished to go to Crete instead of to Corsica.”

  “Excuse me if I doubt you. Perhaps, Captain,” Irene said with silky indifference, “you would not object to two of these gentlemen inspecting your person for a tattoo. We already know that the viscount was not on the ill-fated voyage.”

  “How?” that gentleman demanded, as if angry to be left out of so devious a plot.

  The Divine Sarah broke her silence with great style. “Because, my silly goose, you were foolish enough to duel ‘my son’ and let yourself be bared from throat to navel. And quite a circuitous trip it was; you should eat with more moderation, my friend. Then you would not require a corset for court affairs.”

  The viscount stood, his face as red as a Blue Coast peach. “The duel... your son? It was all a ruse to disrobe me?”

  “Yes,” replied Sarah with devastating brevity. “And my son was not my son, but my friend Irene.”

  The viscount glanced at Irene, then back to the actress. “This is outrageous. You mean to say that a woman bested me in a duel? Ridiculous!”

  “Like many ridiculous things, it is also true,” Irene said. “You forget I am... was... an actress also.”

  “You cannot ‘act’ swordsmanship, Madame.”

  “I did not need to. I’ve had some instruction in the art, and your skills are sadly spoiled for want of worthy opponents. But the duel was never the point, if you will; the point was whether or not you bore a tattoo. And you do not. Hence, you are innocent... of this, at least.”

  While we had enjoyed witnessing the viscount’s discomfiture—like all bullies, he had a legion of victims eager to see him fall—no one’s attention had been on the captain.

  That changed in an instant. We heard a horrible cry and turned. The captain was lurching from his seat, his eyes nearly rolled back into his head, a ghastly look of dread upon his florid features. He twisted like a wounded whale, then stalked forward stiff-legged.

  Dr. Hoffman and Godfrey moved toward him, both at once. Alice and I were frozen in horror, but Irene and Sarah were rushing toward the stricken man like Florence Nightingales.

  His flailing arms repulsed the men and gave the women pause. In the next awful seconds, we watched him put his hands to his throat and begin to strangle himself!

  “Stop, sir!” Godfrey ordered, rushing in to drag the madman’s hands down.

  The captain’s strength was phenomenal. He pushed Godfrey back as if he had been a straw in the wind, then turned and bolted for the closed window.

  “My God!” came the viscount’s strangled voice.

  At full tilt, the captain hurtled through latched panes of glass and the fastened shutters beyond. Night erupted into the candlelit chamber as if a giant fist had punched into our gathering.

  A tinkling and splintering sound ran ragged up my nerves. Irene and Godfrey, with the viscount and the doctor close behind them, ran into the hall and then outside.

  Alice had swooned, and Sarah tended her. Jerseyman sagged on the sofa, three sheets to the wind on the finest French champagne. I loosened my hands from the fists they had made and lowered them from my cheeks. Curious—or brave—I treaded over the few shards of glass that had fallen inside and reached the window.

  The captain lay in the garden a half-story below, Irene and Godfrey kneeling beside his unconscious form, the doctor and the viscount standing behind them.

  Irene looked up, illuminated with a kind of unholy radiance by the muted candlelight spilling from the window.

  “Nell,” she said, “will you fetch a candelabra to the window so we may see? I must know whether he bears a tattoo before he awakens and becomes quite unmanageable again.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  ULTIMATE REVELATIONS

  Alice Heine had begun to recover from her swoon and lay upon her brocaded sofa, attended by Dr. Hoffman and Sarah Bernhardt, while Jerseyman enjoyed a swoon of a different nature on the other sofa.

  Upon regaining consciousness, the captain had been carried upstairs. Although two housemen were restraining him, hoarse shouts and muffled thumps indicated that he still was quite mad, if no longer able to damage himself or the house.

  “Well, Irene, that ends it,” Godfrey said gloomily, standing at the shattered French window, his hands in his pockets. “Never has a matter been so resistant to unraveling. I was certain the captain was our man, but you saw Rousseau’s chest for yourself, bare of a tattoo. Apparently, the questions drove away his reason. I know I fear for my own. What is this nonsense I hear about a duel with the viscount?”

  Irene glanced at that individual, who sat impassively in a corner chair.

  “Nothing vital,” she said vaguely.

  Crossing the room, she gazed down in turn at the comatose Jerseyman and the reviving Alice. Then she strode to the fireplace, extracted a cigarette from her case and lit it with a taper.

  “I am glad that the captain’s injuries are only superficial. I think, my friends, that we have just observed an application of the potion that drove at least two sailors to drown themselves, one in the Thames, the other in the Seine. Singh sampled it also; otherwise, he would not have been an easy target for stabbing. Tonight Captain Rousseau came too close to exposing the culprit who hopes to claim all the treasure for himself. Thus he was rewarded.”

  “Why attack Captain Rousseau?” I asked.

  “He’d agreed to aid the master conspirator, of course. That’s why it was only necessary to divert the prince’s yacht to Crete. The captain already had been bribed to help recover the treasure.”

  “But, Irene, who is left to suspect?” Godfrey asked. “You admit the viscount is innocent—”

 
She sighed. “I said he was innocent of tattoos and innocent of blame in this scheme. I did not say he was innocent. That would be going too far.”

  “Oh, speak sense,” I said in turn. “You have run out of suspects, unless you claim that Louise’s uncle—”

  “No, of course not. Why do you think I sent him home to Paris?”

  “—or that Alice blackmailed herself.”

  “Devious, but impossible. There were no women survivors. She could not have been a passenger on that voyage, anyway, being only eleven years of age and in New Orleans then. I sent a cable.”

  “Irene!” Alice sat up, her blue eyes batting vaguely in the candlelight. “You sent a cable to determine my whereabouts?”

  “One never knows. Even Sarah may be suspect.”

  “How delightful!” cried the actress. “A murderess! My supreme role.”

  Irene merely laughed.

  “What exactly injured the captain?” I thought to ask.

  Irene smiled her approval. “I had not anticipated that we would be treated to a demonstration. A natural poison, not fatal, though the madness it induces can produce lethal results. I suspect mandrake root, whose unpleasant taste could be veiled in strong drink. Obviously, the captain paid scant attention to the liquid in the glass; he would expect something medicinal to taste unpleasant. We must ask Monsieur Cremieux, the chemist, about mandrake tomorrow.”

  “And tonight?” Godfrey queried. “Where do we stand tonight?”

  “At the apex of this long-standing accumulation of crimes. Only Mr. Sherlock Holmes is accustomed to stand on such an Olympian height, where he alone knows all, reveals all. I now claim that shadowy eminence for myself, and I wish to savor it.”

  “Irene! You can’t keep us in the dark any longer!” I had not meant to sound so injured. “Surely we deserve to know everything.”

  “You do. You all do. First, I was not disappointed to see that Captain Rousseau was untattooed, although I had to confirm it. You see, I know at last who has instigated every turning of this plot.”