“Well done, Mr. Norton,” Irene murmured as she gazed into the empty space. “Very well done indeed.”
“Everything?” he inquired.
She half-turned to face him, her profile tilted up to his. “Everything.” Neither moved nor spoke for a long moment.
I stood frozen like the audience at the climax of a play. Then the moment was gone and Godfrey and Irene were turning to me. It was all I could do to resist applauding.
“My dear Nell,” Godfrey said, as if noticing me again. A broad smile stretched his dark mustache into a thinner black line. “I have quite forgotten a special surprise for you.”
“Oh, really! Indeed, I do not require any special surprises,” I said modestly, thrilled nevertheless.
He led me into the dining room, Irene following. In a dark corner of the chamber he paused and, whisking a garishly figured cloth aside, revealed the brass cage of Casanova.
“Ex Why-Zed,” the parrot caroled.
I glanced to Godfrey, who was grinning and tilting his dark head at the same angle as Casanova’s scarlet and yellow poll. “You had started him on his A-B-Cs when you left, my fine Nell. Casanova is a reprobate and difficult to teach, so I brought him directly from J-K-L to X-Y-Z. At least he goes from A to Z now.”
“Cut the cackle!” Casanova screeched.
Someone was laughing. It was Irene and it ill became her.
“Really, Godfrey,” said I, “you need not have relinquished the bird so soon. No doubt he would have learned much under your tutelage.”
“Fleurs du mal, fleurs du mal,” the feathered fiend hooted.
“Baudelaire! Mr. Norton, you didn’t!” Irene was openly shrieking in laughter behind me. “Not Nell’s bird! Baudelaire!”
“It’s not my bird,” I asserted. “And I barely speak French, so your hilarity is lost upon me.” They were both laughing uproariously, Godfrey collapsing against the wall, Irene covering her mouth with both hands, tears streaming from her eyes. “Furthermore, Irene, I wonder how you shall welcome this beast’s vocalizations when you must overhear them daily.”
“Are you finished, Mr. Norton?” she inquired at last.
“Not quite. If I may be excused?”
She nodded curiously as he left the room and then the house.
“Casanova aside,” I confided, “I like the situation.”
“Yes.” Irene moved to the cage. “What a vulgar creature; he is dyed all the colors of the rainbow.”
“I believe that Godfrey has done well,” I persisted.
“Oh, Godfrey has done excellently, though he takes a great deal upon himself. Such perfection quite chills my blood.”
“Perhaps you are not accustomed to it, save in yourself,” said I.
Godfrey’s hasty steps sounded in the hall. We rushed out. Godfrey carried some burden in his arms like a baby.
“There’s a small parlor to the right,” he said, dashing into this last unseen room.
Irene and I followed to see him deposit his burden on a table with a thump. It was his father’s chest. Irene was drawn to it, running her hands over the wood as if to shape its contents as well as its exterior.
“Another of your erstwhile belongings,” Godfrey said.
“I ceded it to you,” she reminded him.
“I ceded it back, as I do Nell’s blasted parrot. I have not been able to make head nor tail of its contents. Perhaps you would care to try again...?”
Irene spun away from the chest, from his persuasive voice. Only one kerosene lamp lit the room, casting more shadow than light. She moved toward the ill-lit bay window, pausing beside a huge, crouching silhouette of furniture. The flickering lamplight picked out the cabbage-rose pattern of a shawl.
Irene’s hand suddenly swept away the shawl, the fringe shivering in light and shadow, to unveil another surprise. A grand piano squatted in the bay.
“This came with the furnishings?” she asked stiffly.
I remembered the throat-soothing potions she had left behind in Bohemia and considered that no elixir could smooth the emotion that roughened her question.
“It goes with the house,” Godfrey said, quite firmly.
“I see.” Irene was silent for a long while. “Lock up the place, then, and take us home. I am tired.”
So we returned to Chelsea, both of us eager to quit our impersonal rooms there, yet each dreading to confront the special gifts that Godfrey had brought to our new quarters.
“We can keep the cover over the parrot,” Irene said that evening, brushing her radiant hair.
“And can we keep the piano shawl over the keys, as well?” I asked.
“You and Godfrey Norton! You rush in where angels fear to tread.”
“Then we will be at home in heaven,” said I, and doused the light.
“More logically and likely in hell,” she predicted from the dark.
Chapter Twenty-seven
A FAMILIAR FORM OF ADDRESS
I cannot say which of the three objects in our new quarters was the more ignored in the week that followed: the Norton chest, the grand piano or the bird, Casanova.
The parrot required food and water (our housekeeper, Mrs. Seaton, cleaned the cage). It greeted me as rudely as ever, but in the course of my tending I found that plying it with peeled grapes (a great favorite of Irene’s) encouraged a gentler diction. We even were making progress on “Cassie want a crumpet?”
Irene sometimes paused beside the cage to coo French at it in hopes of stimulating some risqué phrases. I wouldn’t have recognized a naughty French phrase if I heard it, which is no doubt why a foreign language is always favored for such things. I quite suspect that the French couch their most licentious thoughts in English or German.
Save for a daily drive at five o’clock through Regents Park, our lives were models of domestic tedium. I had never before appreciated how much the struggle to earn one’s daily bread gave life structure and even excitement.
Godfrey called on us once or twice a week, not pleased by our lethargy. He frowned at the closed chest and the covered piano and whispered little French nothings, of a salacious nature, I fear, to Casanova.
His third visit was quite different, however. On being admitted that evening by Mrs. Seaton, he burst into the sitting room, where I sat sewing and Irene reading.
“News!” Godfrey flourished the Daily Telegraph.
Irene sat forward. “Of the King? He is in England!?”
“No, of your former employer, Tiffany. He is in France. He is in Paris, in fact, for the auction of the French crown jewels.”
“Oh, is that all?” Irene reluctantly set aside her book.
“It is the auction of the century. Diamonds dating back to Cardinal Mazarin will be sold, as well as those inadvertently left behind by the fleeing Empress Eugenie.”
“What is it to me?” Irene said. “I have funds, but not so many that I may bid against Mr. Tiffany.”
“Miss Adler, this is the collection of jewels from which the Zone of Diamonds disappeared. They are its sister stones, so to speak. I propose that we go to Paris to observe the auction. We both speak French. Perhaps we can uncover some clue to the Zone’s whereabouts.”
“Go to Paris?” Irene took the folded newspaper Godfrey had been waving under her nose and studied it. “The auction occurs in only three days.”
“We can be in Paris in one.”
“The best clue to the Zone lies buried in that box of your father’s.”
“I know, but if we are stalled in the present, then we should inquire into the Zone’s past.”
“This is mad!” Irene laughed despite herself. “One can’t simply pick up and go on a wild goose chase to Paris—”
“Why not? My time is my own, as is yours; no cases pend. We could reclaim your trunks in person. Besides, Paris in May is most delightful.”
Irene worried the braid on her skirt as she considered. I had never seen her so indecisive. Suddenly she glanced up at Godfrey. “Very well. If you are game,
I am. But I still think the scheme is mad.”
“As do I!” I put in. “Irene, it would be most improper for you to travel with Godfrey unchaperoned, and I have no intentions of going to such a sinful city as Paris!”
“A pity,” Godfrey said, “for if you went you’d see that Paris is not so much sinful as seductive, therefore the guilt, as with beauty, lies in the eye of the beholder. Yet it is best that you remain to tend my office in my absence; I’ve dismissed your replacement.”
Delighted as I was to contemplate the daily discipline of work, the notion that Godfrey could so blithely forego my company on an adventure stunned me. I glanced at Irene, who was regarding Godfrey with equally keen surprise.
‘Irene?”
She shook herself at my voice as if escaping a reverie. “Mr. Norton is quite correct This will be a whirlwind trip, will it not?’ He nodded. “Dear Nell, I cannot in good conscience drag you from pillar to post so soon after our thrilling escape from Bohemia. And we... might uncover news of the Zone.”
“You will go, then?” Godfrey said hopefully.
Irene nodded. “Despite one serious drawback to your proposal.” She glanced sternly at me. “And that drawback is not propriety, Nell; I refuse to abide by conventions that hamper my freedom. No, the great pity is that our flight has left me with no suitable gowns for my first visit to Paris.”
“My dear Miss Adler, you would take Paris by storm in rags, like a good Republican; in what you wear tonight, the city will fall at your feet.”
“An exaggeration, Mr. Norton,” Irene said drily, “most out of character for a barrister. We would leave...?”
He shrugged happily. “The day after tomorrow, and return in three days. I will make the arrangements first thing in the morning.”
Godfrey left soon after, leaving me speechless, but not for long.
“I suppose it will do me as much good as Casanova to croak about your plans,” I said. “I must express myself, however distasteful you find my opinion. Irene, this jaunt with Godfrey is most improper.”
She had returned to her book, so all I saw was the top of her hair where lamplight kindled auburn flames among its wood-brown luster. Her glance flashed its former fire.
“My dear Nell, if the outing were not half-mad and totally improper, it would not be any fun! Your friend Godfrey is well aware of that. He feels that I waste away here and wanted to provide me with an irresistible lure to action.”
“Apparently he has,” I huffed.
Irene smiled. “Apparently, but I think he has misjudged the lure.”
“You are not going because of the diamond auction?”
“No more than he is.”
“But why, then?”
She simply smiled again and shrugged. Later, I heard her humming “Frère Jacques” to Casanova.
Even the Temple’s almost celestial air of peace did little to quiet my conscience while I worked at the pile of manuscript in Godfrey’s Temple offices. The temporary typists employed during my absence had misplaced everything, lagging pitifully behind in their work.
I rapped the keys at my usual brisk pace, finding the activity a good method of dissipating my distemper. Pages flew through my platen, entering pristine and white to emerge soiled with type.
So I viewed the state of Irene’s reputation, until I finally considered that her liaison with the King of Bohemia, no matter how innocent, had likely ruined that reputation forever. And then, I could think of no man on this earth by whom I would prefer her to be improperly escorted than Godfrey Norton. In this case, he was the least of all possible evils.
Yet I also felt a sense of abandonment, as I had on Irene’s first removal to Europe. This time the pang was doubled; the two people most dear to me appeared perfectly able to dispense with my presence. So sometimes I typed through tears of self-pity, for which I berated myself, and then I made a stupid mistake and had to rip out the sheet of paper and start all over again...
Someone entered the office at a moment when I least felt like dealing with the public. I kept typing to the end of the sentence, then turned, about to exercise my frustration on whoever had been unwise enough to enter.
The visitor was a tall slender man with sharp features. His silk plush top hat was properly in his hand, but he looked at me so intently that I felt certain he could see the tears ebbing in my eyes.
“Mr. Norton, I perceive, is away from chambers for a few days,” he said swiftly.
I glanced through the open door to Godfrey’s sanctum. His wig and gown hung on their proper hooks and the cluttered desk retained an air of occupancy, perhaps because of his hasty departure.
“He is on the Continent,” I announced importantly. “But how...?”
The visitor smiled wearily, as if the question were all too familiar. “An empty envelope bearing the name of a Fleet Street ticket agent has fallen on the floor by the door. Obviously Mr. Norton discarded it just as he left.”
“With all this paper hither and yon you noticed that?”
“Observation is my profession.”
“Indeed. Many could say that. If I did not observe these handwritten documents properly, I should not be able to typewrite them accurately. I have a great deal of that very thing to do, so I suggest that you call again—”
“Perhaps you can settle my business now. Can you tell me whether Mr. Norton is a son of the late John Chappie Norton?”
The query doused my composure like a bucket of ice water. “How in the world should I know that?”
“You have worked with Mr. Norton for some time, although not in recent months. And you are observant, Miss—”
“Huxleigh!” I barked. “And it is true that I have... been away, but—” I would not, I would not ask this odiously prescient man how he had determined the length and interrupted nature of my employment.
He smiled briefly. It was not an expression that softened his angular features.
“You are reordering the documents on the shelf above you. Half the files are kept horizontally, half vertically, but the fattest—therefore the oldest—are vertical. Obviously, a substitute who is too lazy to reach a bit higher has interrupted your admirable system, Miss Huxleigh.”
“I had already concluded that the recent temporary was lazy, for the work is sadly behind. Any fool could see that. He apparently could not keep up.”
The gentleman smiled again. “But you have not answered my question.”
“I...” What to do? I couldn’t lie, yet I didn’t want to betray information Godfrey wanted to keep to himself. “It is not for me to say. Is it a matter of... inheritance?” I knew, of course, that Black Jack Norton had died penniless, but wished to ask the expected question.
“It is not for me to say,” the gentleman returned, “but I have been trying to trace relations of the late Norton for some time.”
I shook my head. “You must ask Mr. Norton when he returns.”
“And that will be?”
“Thursday.”
The gentleman nodded and replaced his hat as he stepped to the door.
“Sir! Whom may I tell Mr. Norton to expect?”
“Oh, I doubt he knows of me. But the name is Holmes, Sherlock Holmes. I will leave my card.”
I took it wordlessly and watched the tall figure move through the clutter with catlike precision. My eyes didn’t leave the door until long after he had closed it. When they did, they settled on the card, which contained not only the name of Irene’s rival for the Zone of Diamonds, but also an address that was hauntingly familiar, even from the day when Irene and I had first met, and then together had met the late Mr. Jefferson Hope.
“Two-twenty-one-B Baker Street,” I whispered, perhaps hoping that saying the address aloud would banish it. The print remained quite unaltered.
Chapter Twenty-eight
THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES
“Sherlock Holmes!” Irene exclaimed.
I was too bursting with the news of my recent encounter to withhold it a momen
t after my friend’s return to the door of Briony Lodge.
Now she stood in mid-threshold, her face blank with shock.
“Who,” Godfrey asked from behind her frozen figure, “is Sherlock Holmes?”
“Sherlock Holmes was making inquiries about Godfrey’s father?” Irene repeated in disbelief.
“More about Godfrey, actually,” I said.
Irene glided like a sleepwalker into the hall, reaching to unpin her bonnet—a smart new one with “Paris” written all over it. Godfrey hovered behind her as she lifted her veil before the mirror. Despite her shock, Irene’s face radiated well-being. Three days in Paris had erased weeks of heart-break in Bohemia, as if that clever Parisian milliner had put stars in her eyes and roses on her cheeks along with the fashionable bonnet atop her head. I developed new respect for millinery then and there.
“Irene.” Godfrey spoke low, his gloved hands pausing urgently on her shoulders, “what is so sinister about this Holmes fellow inquiring about my father? I no more like having my family history unearthed now than when you did it, but surely the matter is not so serious as you seem to think.”
She gave him a vague, reassuring smile. “No, it is not, Godfrey. It is simply that the paths of myself and this Mr. Holmes have nearly crossed at times in the past. The first occasion was when Mr. Tiffany employed us both to trace the Zone of Diamonds.”
Godfrey set hat, cane and gloves on the hall console. “So the trail warms again. I wonder why?”
“Likely for the same reason that you wish me to concentrate on finding the Zone—the sale of crown jewels we have just attended in Paris. Perhaps Mr. Tiffany has engaged Mr. Holmes to renew the investigation.”
“Or this Holmes fellow has stumbled on a new clue,” Godfrey said. “I suppose I shall have to see him; better I be forewarned.”
“I regret greeting you with such disturbing news,” I put in, feeling utterly forgotten and more than somewhat aggrieved since my dramatic news had precipitated the conversation, “but when the gentleman gave his name, I thought my poor heart would stop.”
Good Night, Mr. Holmes (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 28