Lillie Langtry was one of those “professional beauties” of the Victorian era who were essentially famous for being famous—or perhaps infamous. Nowadays pretty girls shot to prominence through the cinemas, but professional beauties were a phenomenon of Holmes’ youth, a series of lovely young women of good station who made a minor splash during their first Season, then during their second worked their way up through the balls and dinner parties that mattered, capturing the eyes of Society’s fashionable painters, finally to explode into the public imagination through the thrilling new technology of the photographic camera. They would become necessary ornaments at every dinner party and social event, their lovely faces appearing in popular journals, shop windows, and even on the walls of private homes (Mrs Langtry’s portrait, rumour had it, had spent time on the bedroom wall of the young Prince Leopold until Victoria spotted it).
Of the professional beauties, Lillie Langtry was undisputed queen. Painted by Millais and Burne-Jones, sketched for post-cards, awash with invitations, friends with everyone from Oscar Wilde to William Gladstone, she had branched out (beauty itself being no guarantee of income) into acting, soap-endorsing, horse-racing, and a series of more-or-less discreet liaisons with earls, impresarios, potentates, and princes—most famously, the Prince who became Edward VIII. She’d lived in California for a time, raising horses, and married an American, gaining U.S. citizenship. Judge Roy Bean named a saloon for her. During her career, she had filled theatres acting in everything from vaudeville to Macbeth.
After which, apparently, she had married an English baronet and then retired—in amicable separation from her husband—to Monte Carlo.
I learned this from Holmes’ infatuated musings as we wandered towards the town. He shook his head in fond memory. “I first saw her on the Haymarket stage, when Watson dragged me off to She Stoops to Conquer. Our first winter on Baker Street, as I recall. An extraordinary presence.”
I tried to picture him and Dr Watson as silk-hatted young men-about-town, roaring in laughter at the comedy of manners that finds a high-born woman plotting to capture the affections of a man who prefers girls from the lower classes.
No: my imagination would not stretch that far.
“They say she was very beautiful.”
To my surprise, he had to think about it. “I’m not sure she was. Oh, certainly Mrs Langtry was well put together, but the appeal was not a surface effect. She was…forthright. When she looked at an audience—or I suppose at a painter or a camera lens—there was neither ambiguity nor hesitation. She was fully there, and one felt oddly privileged.”
I studied my husband, wondering if the sun was getting to him.
“A flight of fancy, I know,” he admitted. “And yet it is a perennial question as to why some individuals capture the imagination—the public’s heart, one might say—while others with what appears equal qualities and intelligence do not. It may indeed have something to do with the latter,” he mused. “Mrs Langtry had an exceptional mind, quick and supple, if largely untrained. I also found it little short of extraordinary how few enemies she made over the years.”
“It sounds as if you knew her. Other than from a seat in the audience.”
“We have met two or three times, though I was not using my own name. She even hired me briefly, back in the Nineties. A minor investigation to do with one of the trainers at her racing stables.”
English Society being a small village, there were few important people of the past two generations that Holmes hadn’t encountered at some point.
“Well, it looks as if you’ll have another chance to meet.”
To my surprise, considering how close-mouthed the residents had been when it came to finding Mrs Hudson, it did not prove difficult to narrow down the location of one of the Principality’s more famous residents. Indeed, I realised later, we might have stood on a random street-corner and asked the first half-dozen passers-by. Instead, we went about it rather more deliberately, choosing the sorts of shops that might cater to the great lady: first a stationer’s, then an upscale greengrocer’s, and finally a milliner so discreet the window had only a dramatically placed dusting of feathers atop an expanse of black velvet.
The delicate gent in this shop agreed that he knew her, protested that he couldn’t possibly reveal where she lived, admitted that everyone from the street-sweeper on up knew anyway, and when we regretfully made to take our leave, seized the opportunity to participate in the adventure, however small it might be, by revealing the stairway on which the Langtry house could be found.
We thanked him, promised we would never reveal his collaboration, and extricated ourselves before he could talk himself into closing up shop to accompany us.
* * *
—
Theoretically, a visitor could stroll from one end of Monaco to the other in an hour, and circumnavigate it in a morning. In practice, that only applied to goats.
The postage-stamp nation compensated for its brief outline by piling on as many additional square metres as it possibly could, via cliffs, chasms, tunnels, bridges, and the odd underground wine cellar. Its rapid development over the past half-century had begun with narrow viaducts thrown across ravines to tie together the various rocky plateaus, first for trains and then for other wheels. Any pedestrian who tried to give these a miss needed stout knees and good wind. I could see why Mrs Hudson had shed a stone.
This particular vertical thoroughfare had its feet in religion, with a church occupying the bottom of a deep gorge that separated the districts of Monte Carlo and La Condamine. The church of Monaco’s patron saint, Sainte-Dévote, stood tempting God’s patience with the billion tonnes of rock that towered on either side. A minor tremor would bury the church to its bell-tower—which was perhaps the point: that each day of its continuing existence proved the congregation’s excellent relationship with The Divine. However, as Holmes and I walked by the church’s façade, I could not help reflecting that St Devota—who came to Monaco posthumously when a dove guided the storm-wracked ship carrying her bones to safe harbour—had earned her martyrdom by stoning.
The Escalier Sainte-Dévote was precisely as advertised: a stairway which had been hacked into, and bolted on to, the side of a cliff. In the lower reaches, the cliff’s face was not quite vertical, although some of the sections above our heads could have satisfied a plumb bob. Over the centuries, determined plants had driven roots into invisible footholds. The semi-tropical equivalent of buddleia and wallflowers clung to every crack, with spiny cactuses and spear-tipped agaves threatening a careless step. Where larger hollows permitted actual soil to accumulate, trees had been nurtured, so that our climb up a hillside baking under the late afternoon sun would be briefly overshadowed by palms, citrus, or an occasional olive.
We paused, regularly, in these scant patches of shade so as to admire a flower, or a bird, or the view. The stairs went on. My throat grew parched. Even Holmes was beginning to look a bit worn by the time we reached the landing that our helpful shop-keeper had told us to look for.
There, in the inadequate shade of a lemon tree, we paused to admire the antics of some birds, spending an inordinately long time debating whether they were house sparrows or the Eurasian variety, with Holmes suggesting the rock sparrow, even though it does not resemble the others in the least. When we had finished the discussion—voting unanimously for the common sparrow—the steam had ceased to rise off our heads, and our legs were able to consider forward motion.
We found the door, we worked the knocker, we straightened our clothes and hair. The woman who answered was slim, French, forty, and clearly well accustomed to acting as a gate-keeper for Mrs Langtry. Naturally, she refused us entry until we had firmly insisted that her employer would wish to speak with us, and that we were friends of Mrs Clara Hudson.
She nodded, making her disbelief clear, and closed the door in our faces. A few minutes later, her footsteps returned,
the door came open again, and we were ushered through the villa and into the garden.
Where, in no time at all and in no uncertain terms, our case was knocked from our hands.
Lillie Langtry might be in her seventies, but she clearly saw no reason to permit age to slow her down, or even to deserve an acknowledgment. Her celebrated auburn hair was perhaps not quite the colour nature had intended, and her famous violet eyes had dulled to merely blue, but she had not ceded an inch of her height or a shade of her assurance.
She held out her hand like a queen. Holmes responded in kind, by giving her fingers the kiss he had merely sketched to the landlady earlier. I squelched the impulse to curtsy, and gave her hand a firm shake.
But she paid me little mind. Instead, she was studying my husband as if he were a box of chocolates. “I know you, don’t I?”
“We met many years ago, Lady de Bathe. A small matter of a missing letter.”
“You may as well call me Mrs Langtry, everyone does. A letter…? Ah! You’re the Pinkerton agent.”
I could feel his wince, but it did not show on his face. “Something along those lines.”
“What brings you here, Mr…Russell, you said? Another blackmailer?”
“A death. A young man found shot, in the house of one of your acquaintances.”
Her imperial flirtation went a touch cool. “You mean young Niko?”
“I do.”
“I have nothing to say about the boy, save that he was a nice lad, and hard working.”
“So I have been told, but it is your other friend who concerns me at present. The one in whose front room he was found.”
“Clarissa? What do you want with her?”
I thought it was time to interrupt, before Holmes gave her the unvarnished truth. “We want to help. She’s an old friend, and we’re hoping to give the police some evidence as to her innocence.”
“Oh, you needn’t worry about that,” Mrs Langtry said. “It’s taken care of.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Clarissa Hudson does not require your assistance. I’ve told the Inspector to let her out. He says it will probably not happen until tomorrow, which is irritating. Still, she should be here in time for dinner—I’ve told Mathilde to arrange something a bit festive, to take the taste of prison out of her mouth.”
Now, even at my relatively young age, I had spent enough time among the rich and powerful to be familiar with their blithe assumption of authority. Why I was shocked to find it here, ordering around police inspectors, I was not sure—but I was.
Fortunately, Holmes managed to keep a firmer grasp on the essentials. “Was she with you when the murder occurred?”
“Certainly,” she replied, then kicked the foundations out from under the statement by continuing, “What time was that, exactly?”
Exactly was an impossibility. Even approximately would require a close study of the police photographs, a visit to the scene, an estimate of the volume of blood spilled, the surface beneath the body, and the humidity and temperature of the room—followed by a lot of calculations on paper.
None of which slowed Holmes down. “Early evening,” he said. “Around sunset.”
“Then she was here. She hadn’t planned on it, since my afternoon salons end at six o’clock. However, I had dinner guests coming at seven, and the wife of one of them rang to say she was unwell, so I asked Clarissa to stay on in her place. It was to be informal, the men in day suits, and since she would not have to go home to dress, she agreed to join us. Mathilde produced a very nice piece of fish en papillote, and I served some of my own wine. Did you know I have a vineyard? In California? Well, to call it ‘mine’ is something of an exaggeration, but I did get it started. They tell me the future of wine lies in California.”
Holmes stepped deftly around the distraction. “Who were your guests?”
“I’m not sure I should tell you. Should I? I suppose it’s hardly a secret—they drove in openly through the streets. It was Sir Basil and Count Vasilev. They are old…friends.”
Did I imagine that brief pause before the word friends?
“Sir Basil. Do you mean Basil Zaharoff, the arms dealer?”
“Yes. And if I may be frank with you, he was the reason I asked Clarissa to remain here for dinner. It was Sir Basil’s wife who’d sent her apologies, a woman whose company I thoroughly enjoy. With Doña Maria absent, I thought the two gentlemen might find the situation…inappropriate. And in any event, having the two of them and the two of us made the evening feel more balanced.”
She was an actress, but not a great one. One could feel that she had in fact felt the need for support, rather than a mere balance of the sexes. “So, Sir Basil is a friend of yours?” I asked.
“No.” The reply had come too quickly, and she knew it. She gave an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, one would have to call him an old acquaintance. Clarissa and I met Zedzed in, oh, it must have been 1877 or so. In London, it was, at a ball. I doubt you ever saw her like that,” she said to me, “but Clarissa was stunning. So alive! The men positively flocked around her.”
Mrs Hudson? A glittering, attractive Mrs Hudson, clothed in silk at a formal ball. Clarissa Hudson and…Zedzed? A jarring diminutive, for a man into whose hands the nations of Europe would bleed. Clarissa and Sir Basil had known each other. When they were young, and attractive, and flirtatious. It was all beginning to feel like the day a child realises that her parents—her parents—had once…(had more than once…)
My appalled musings were shattered by Mrs Langtry’s delighted laugh. “Yes, dear thing, your Mrs Hudson cut quite a swathe through the blades of Europe.”
“And now she’s here,” Holmes broke in sharply, “still cutting a swathe through the ranks of the wealthy and the criminal.”
“Wealthy, perhaps, but criminal? Oh, yes, one does come across all sorts of individuals in Monaco. People come here for many reasons. One doesn’t tend to ask about their pasts.”
“Basil Zaharoff has a past that is difficult to overlook,” Holmes pointed out, his voice icy.
She sighed down at her hands. “He is a clever man, and can be utterly charming when he chooses. He was a familiar presence in the circles I once moved in—a regular at Sarah Bernhardt’s table—but he is not a person I generally invite into my home. My original invitation was to Count Vasilev, since Clarissa is rather hoping that he will support a project she has put before Princess Charlotte. But the Count then asked if he might invite Sir Basil and his wife. I agreed. Clarissa said she would leave before they all arrived, and speak with the count another time, but then Doña Maria bowed out, and I asked my friend to keep me company. And she did.”
“How do you know Count Vasilev?” I asked her.
“I’ve known Yevgeny for years. He used to spend the winter seasons here, when the Romanovs all came down from St Petersburg. And of course, he has lived here since the Revolution. He can’t very well return to Russia, since he was not only a personal friend of Nicholas, but he was the Czar’s banker as well. Although truth to tell, I don’t know if that was literally the case. I will say, Yevgeny seems to be one of the few White Russians who had the foresight to put money into European banks, before the War.”
“I met him the other night, at a party on the Cap d’Antibes. He’s an art collector.”
“This would be at Villa America? Yes, the Count collects many things, but I understand that modern art has caught his eye.”
“It sounds as though you know the Murphys, too?”
“I have met them, naturally. Not that I would regard myself as a part of their ‘circle.’ My interests lie more in theatre and dance.”
“Diaghilev rather than Picasso?”
“Yes—but, oh, the Spaniard’s sets for Parade during the War were intriguing, and his drop curtain for Le Train Bleu sent shivers up my spine. He’s married to a da
ncer, you know.”
“I’ve met her, though I didn’t realise who she was until—”
Holmes shouldered back into the conversation. “Was anyone else here, last night?”
“Just the four of us. And Mathilde, naturally.”
“That is your housekeeper?”
“My companion.”
That explained the woman’s somewhat possessive attitude at the door.
“And what time did the dinner end?”
“The men left early, just after ten o’clock. Clarissa stayed for perhaps half an hour—we both needed a good, stiff drink—then set off for home. On foot, though Mathilde offered to ring for a car.
“And that,” she said, “was what I told Inspector Jourdain. Now, I have an evening planned and need to dress. But perhaps you’d like to ring here tomorrow, in the afternoon? We shall see if Clarissa is feeling up to visitors.”
She rose, gracious but imperious, forcing us to our feet as well. She held out her hand, then waited expectantly for us to turn and follow the black-clad Mathilde from the room.
We had little choice but to do so. Through the house, out of the door, onto the street. The door was closed before we had turned around on the pavement.
* * *
—
The street looked remarkably normal. Not at all as it should to a person who had just been swept outside like débris from beneath a carpet.
“Well,” I said. The Jersey Lily had been a revelation. I might never look upon wrinkled skin in quite the same way. “Why do I get the feeling that she knew who you were?”
Holmes replied by drawing his cigarette case from its pocket.
An elderly man in work-stained clothing rode slowly past, his bicycle chain clicking. Once that excitement was over, I glanced at my husband, who was squinting through smoke as he meditated on a glimpse of distant mountains at the end of the street. Shadows were climbing up their flanks as the sun went low. The morning seemed a long time ago.
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