“No, it could be Prince Bertrand.”
“What! My brother, now? You go too far. You forget yourself—”
“I do not, although you appear to have forgotten me!” Irene charged in return. “Oh, yes, how easy to point to the stranger in the family midst, but what motive would I have?”
“To see me King.”
“Well, that is a very handsome sight, your Majesty,” Irene said, suddenly lapsing into a teasing smile, “but you were equally commanding as Crown Prince, Willie.”
‘True.” He returned her smile.
“I did abstract the book. Penelope was with me and she knows I was investigating poisonous solutions that were already in the castle.”
“And?” The King was frowning.
“Did you know that apple seeds are lethal in quantity? Or notice that Hortense has been eating an enormous number of apples—and saving the seeds?”
“Yes, but... it is a habit. Hortense has always been of a nervous nature. She ... is compulsive, saves the seeds from oranges as well.”
“Hmm. And did you know that Bertrand employs a hair tonic?”
The King laughed. “He is vain, my younger brother, so short and now so prematurely short of hair. What of it?”
“Jaborandi, which he uses, is immediately fatal if taken internally.”
The King went to the table and poured himself more cognac. “So you are saying that two of my three siblings are suspects in the death of their own father. This is not possible. It will not be possible.” He spoke very definitely, a warning in his tone. “It will not be possible, not even to clear myself, should it be necessary. Not even to clear my dearest friend.”
Irene sighed and sipped the cognac. The glass glowed like a huge topaz against her black velvet bodice. “Then, your Majesty, I shall have to produce another suspect.”
I sat forward, my taffeta petticoats rustling like mice in a corner. My movements were as little regarded by the two of them.
The King’s voice was husky. “Can you do it, my dear? And clear yourself?”
“I will try,” Irene said, rising. She regarded the King as if addressing him on the same level, despite the disparity in their heights, their social positions. I would dare venture to say that she had attained an even loftier elevation in a moral sense. “But I will not accuse an innocent party, no matter how many royal skins it saves. Or hearts it breaks.”
“Let us hope,” the King said grimly, “that neither skins nor hearts shall suffer from this inquiry.”
He left us there, listening to his heavy footsteps fade, as the shadows softened around us like an airy cloak descending.
“Irene, can you do it? Find another culprit? Prove it?”
“I can, as I told Willie, try. You see, of course, that his family wants to use this pretext to end our relationship. They did not expect me to have the wit to point out their own vulnerability.”
“But the King will never allow a family member to be charged! You heard him.”
Now Irene spoke in commanding tones as she trailed to the table and refilled her own glass.
“If a family member murdered the late King, Willie cannot stop me from saying so. But I pray that is not the case, no matter how much Hortense or Bertrand might wish to be rid of me. Accusing one’s future in-laws of murder is no fitting end to a fairy tale romance in Bohemia, eh, Penelope? Not good light opera at all.”
Chapter Twenty-one
THE MIDAS TOUCH
“I go to town,” Irene announced late the next morning. “Will you accompany me?”
“Of course? But why go to town when the crime was committed here?”
“I wish to see the doctors on neutral ground where they will be more frank. They, too, must fear royal retribution. After all, they failed to diagnose the ailment while the King was yet living. And then I will see Mr. Dvořák—”
“Irene, I enjoy visiting the National Theatre, but dare we take time from this problem?”
“We will not be taking time from this problem.”
“To see Mr. Dvořák and talk music?”
‘To see Mr. Dvořák and talk politics,” Irene corrected me, drawing on pale lavender gloves that matched the rows of gathered ruching on her walking suit.
“And then I want to consult a gypsy woman. Mr. Dvořák should guide me there; it is from such elderly ears that he has traced his native folk songs.”
“A gypsy woman? Irene... whatever for?”
“Why, I wish my fortune told,” she retorted with a sidelong glance through her heliotrope veil. “All brides-to-be are superstitious.”
So off we went in a castle carriage down the steep hill and into the thick forest of gabled and tiled rooftops that was Prague.
The doctors resided in an impressively quaint house with windowboxes of pansies blooming on the first floor. Their long unpronounceable German names began with “S” and “D”, so Irene instructed me to refer to them as “Sturm” and “Drang” in my notes, for what reason I cannot fathom. Their ground floor waiting rooms were crowded, but Irene merely scribbled a word or two on her visiting card and sent it in. Moments later, the housekeeper ushered us into a consulting room where both physicians awaited us.
“Jaborandi, Miss Adler?” Dr. Sturm asked. He was short and plump, with a Vandyke goatee and mustache waxed to mouse-tail fineness at the ends.
“And apple seed?” put in Dr. Drang, who was tall, thin and beardless.
“Well, gentlemen, does either poison show in your tests?”
The doctors rubbed their hands together in tandem and exchanged glances. Dr. Sturm spoke first. “Detecting this type of poison is not an easy task when working backwards.”
Dr. Drang nodded vigorously, then said, “Yes, we suspect poison. We even have ruled out the more common ones—arsenic, cyanide, belladonna.”
Dr. Sturm spoke again. “Yet our tests of the stomach contents—excuse, ladies, my bluntness—show no trace of unacceptable elements.”
“Not even of apple tea?” Irene coaxed.
“No apples at all,” said Dr. Sturm.
“Not even Jaborandi?” she demanded.
“You are most familiar with the herbal apothecary,” Dr. Drang added with a bow.
“No,” Irene demurred, “only with what herbs are at hand in the castle. Then the late King was poisoned in some other manner than I have suspected and the substance may have been imported. What killed him?”
The doctors exchanged anxious glances. “Asphyxiation,” they chorused.
Irene and I looked at each other. I was beginning to feel like an audience at a Punch and Judy show, thanks to the way the good doctors paired their wooden movements.
“Can poison asphyxiate one?” I inquired.
The doctors frowned in perfect harmony.
“The skin,” said Dr. Drang, “appears to have been the medium. Then the lungs stopped functioning. Death would have appeared quite natural, even if witnessed.”
Irene rose. “Believe me, a king’s death is always witnessed; far too many people have a stake in it for him to slip away unnoticed. Thank you for your aid. Good day.”
We soon stood in the square’s sparkling sunshine, listening to swifts chirping under the gables.
“A different kind of poison, Nell,” Irene said. “Perhaps Willie is right; the odious Hortense and hairless Bertrand are innocent—at least of patricide.”
She eyed the young coachman, who sprang down to assist us into the heavily upholstered interior. “So attached to their comforts, these Germans,” Irene murmured as we sank into the tufted-velvet seats. “So comfortable with themselves as well, so unsuspecting of the subtle.”
I realized that she was digesting the new facts and remained silent while we rumbled over cobblestones to the National Theatre by the river, where Mr. Dvořák could usually be found when he was working on a production.
A theatre by day is a forsaken thing—like a puppet slumped with slack strings. Nothing drives the mechanism. It resembles a grea
t stranded snip whose engines have silenced.
Into this grand lifeless expanse Irene and I moved down the carpeted aisle to the group of men clustered near the orchestra pit. A violinist tortured his instrument into tune. The conductor berated the bass player. Mr. Dvořák slumped in one of the gilded seats, scribbling on his score.
Irene’s presence caught his attention slowly, like the latent scent of lilacs on a May day. He looked up, then around and finally saw her standing at a polite distance.
“Miss Adler, and Miss Huxleigh! Two maidens of spring. What a pleasant surprise. My head is to ache for all the rearrangement I do.”
“Could we speak, Mr. Dvořák?”
“Of course, Miss Adler, speak. I like to exercise this English. Not bad, eh?”
Irene perched on the arm of an unoccupied seat, bracing herself with the shaft of her ivory-handled parasol. I could never master such precariously casual poses and remained standing stiffly behind her, but Mr. Dvořák’s frequent glances kept me from being disregarded. Irene lowered her voice to a confidential level.
“I am on an errand for the King of Bohemia.” (The assertion was, I suppose, technically true.)
“Ah?”
“He is concerned about politics and the Czech national resurgence movement.”
“So he should be,” the composer said sternly.
“These Germanic families have long ruled other peoples in this part of the world—Poles, Lithuanians, Rumanians. I know, Mr. Dvořák, that even Bohemian... patriots... would not weep to see that royalty wink out.”
“My operas resurrect heroes of the old legends,” Mr. Dvořák said. “If these things inflame new heroes ...” He shrugged, his dark eyes expressively blank.
“The Prince—” Irene began, then corrected herself. “The King—”
“Is new man, new hero for people. He is safe—so long as he does not become despot.”
“But the old King ...?”
“Another story,” Mr. Dvořák said gruffly. “Another score, another libretto. I do not write these modern dramas. I write operas of the old days. Antique-ty, I think you say.”
“Antiquity,” Irene said, smiling. “So, it is possible, Mr. Dvořák?”
“In Bohemia, anything is possible. Even that a diva become a queen, who knows?”
“What of directing me to an authentic gypsy fortune teller, is that possible, Mr. Dvořák?”
“I thought you make your own fortune, Miss Adler?”
“Quite true, but even Macbeth had his witches. And I am innocent of his other sins.”
Mr. Dvořák laughed and nodded. He and Irene had reached some understanding without putting their common thoughts into words, into plain English as I understood it. I must have allowed myself a gesture of impatience, for Mr. Dvořák suddenly leaped up and addressed me.
“My poor neglected Miss Huxleigh. She is like the mountain laurel, so sturdy and lovely that all take her for granted. Here, I sign this page I must rewrite anyway. For you, for ‘Miss Huxleigh, who is remembered.’”
“Why, Mr. Dvořák, this is wonderful!”
“Now, you roll it like good music student, so it do not crack or the spring raindrops do not make the ink to run.” The composer turned to Irene. “You know the Powder Tower near Wenceslas Square?”
Irene nodded. “The entrance to Old Town.”
“Beyond that lies the University and the Joseph Quarter, where centuries ago Rabbi Jehuda Loew ben Bezalel is said to have made this monstrous thing called the ‘Golem.’”
Irene nodded, but I asked, “What is this ‘Golem’?”
Mr. Dvořák turned to me eagerly. “Good story. Very old story. Someday good Dvořák opera, perhaps? This rabbi, he make huge ceramic man controlled by holy words upon paper in his mouth. One day the rabbi forget to remove paper and the Golem thunders through Old Town, destroying all in his path. Your English lady author, Mary Shelley, use this old Prague legend to inspire famous story, I think. To this day, superstitious folk visit Rabbi Loew’s tomb in the Joseph Quarter, leave papers with prayers and problems on them, for to be solved.”
“And we must go there, where this... Golem... was born?” I said. “Are there no nearby gypsy fortune tellers?”
“None that know old ways,” Mr. Dvořák said.
“We want none but those,” Irene said firmly. “Thank you, Mr. Dvořák, for aid in matters both mundane and occult.” He frowned at the words. “Politics and magic,” Irene explained. “Both, I fear, are most overrated but bear investigation. Good day, then.”
I was eager to leave the theatre’s lifeless chill for the color and light of the riverbank. Irene told our driver to convey us to the Powder Tower. Once there, she instructed him to return in two hours.
I consulted the locket-watch on my lapel. “Two hours?”
Under the shadow of the huge Gothic tower lay a maze of narrow byways, crooked streets into which the sun could not stretch its golden fingers even at midday. I could picture the gigantic darker shadow of the Golem still stalking there.
‘Two hours?” I repeated. “Irene... you know, what Mr. Dvořák said of the Golem’s great size and relentless strength—it reminded me of the Prince.”
She did not correct my use of the outmoded title. “Our quarry is not Willie, Nell; I am more certain of that than ever. You mustn’t let your imagination run away with you. Simply pretend that you are exploring Portman market and tell me if you spy any occult signposts.”
The quarter thronged with people and wagons. Many of the buildings that loomed above us dated to the Renaissance with crowded gables, leaded-glass arcades and steep tile roofs interrupted by mean garret windows.
Irene’s comparison to a London street market was apt, for the old quarter exuded the smell—chicken noodle soup and poppy seed strudel—and sounds of a common folk’s exchange. Peddlers’ carts ground through the circuitous ways, wares ranging from glass beads to pots chiming to the motion.
“At least this area has a Biblical name,” I said righteously, more to reassure myself than make conversation.
Irene flashed me an amused glance. “Alas, no. The name has nothing to do with the ancient owner of a gaudy cloak. The Joseph Quarter is named after the Emperor in Vienna, Franz Josef, who gave the Jews full freedom of the city early in his reign. In a logic that escapes me, they then named the ghetto after him. Politics, Nell, is more mysterious than magic.”
We strolled past a vast cemetery, its ancient headstones cluttered together like some monster’s uneven teeth. One pictured generations of skeletons tumbled atop one another beneath the earth, their headstones above jousting for room as well.
“Rabbi Loew’s tomb, I imagine.” Irene nodded to a large, stately stone construction around which some figures clustered. “Perhaps we should leave a paper with our conundrum written upon it.”
“Why not ask the location of the Zone of Diamonds while you are about it? No, Irene, I would not risk raising that awful Golem. I hope Mr. Dvořák never writes his opera. Besides, who would he find to play the ceramic Frankenstein monster?”
“Almost any romantic tenor,” Irene riposted. “They are all large enough to play three people, although they tend to great girth rather than great height.”
We moved deeper into the maze of cobblestoned streets, farther into a haunting shadow. I lost all notion of direction; my frantic scanning for signposts at last found exactly what Irene had ordered.
“There! That signboard of an outlined hand with numbers written all over it—or is it an inn?”
“The very thing “ Irene made for the sign and darted under its shadow without a pause.
Meaning to urge caution, I followed. We plunged into an even narrower, darker passage. Odd odors latticed the air, as commanding as if they had become physical. In the distance, chimes chattered their glassy teeth. Irene was as intent as a hound upon the trace. My whispered urgings, the tugs of my hand at her sleeve went unheeded.
She followed the scent and the sound; I fo
llowed her.
We entered a chamber—at least I took it for a chamber. The area was so draped with curtains, shawls and carpets that it could have been a cave, for all we knew. A paraffin lamp flickered eerie light over the fabrics, making their cursive Oriental designs squirm like maggots in overturned earth. I welcomed the light enough to study its source—and gasped when I saw that the glass lampshade was formed into a milky skull. The chimes we had heard came from the red crystal pendants dangling from its slack jaw.
“English ladies?” a voice as old as the Powder Tower inquired from the dark side of the room.
“American and English,” Irene caroled back, braving the clutter to approach the ghastly lamp.
I saw then that the lamp sat upon a carpet-covered table and that low stools surrounded this island of gloomy light.
“We’ll cross your palm with kreutzers,” Irene offered, “if you’ll grant our palms a reading.” I jerked violently on her sleeve. “My palm a reading,” she amended.
A bundle of shawls detached itself from the background. Fringe swayed as a bent figure neared the table. Some interior current stirred the gaudy crimson glass to insistent chiming. It seemed the skull’s death-grin had broadened.
“Sit,” the crone suggested.
I did, in haste. Irene settled more slowly, as theatrical in her impeccably groomed fashion as the gypsy woman was in her unkempt way. I felt as if I witnessed a battle of illusion between two veterans of the art from very different worlds.
The woman extended a time-seamed palm. Irene honored it with a gold coin. The skull’s eyes seemed to warm as the crone’s clawlike fingers closed on the money. Irene extended her palm in turn. It looked smoother than plaster of Paris in the flickering lamp light. I wondered how anyone could read such an unmarked palm.
The gypsy leaned her face into the macabre light. Time had seamed her fragile skin into a lace mantilla of wrinkles, though coarse black hair lanced past her shoulders. “I see,” she began in the traditional way, “a sudden, dangerous journey.”
Irene glanced toward me and rolled her eyes.
“I see a tall, handsome, noble man. I see him pursuing you with all the energy at his command.”
Good Night, Mr. Holmes (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 22