Chapel Noir (5 page)

4.
Not So Sweet a Home . . .

It has been thus enjoined to the maîtresses de maison only to
receive those whose physical appearance suggest that they have
reached at least their seventeenth year
. . . .
—
CIRCULAR, 1842

Irene and I were shortly facing each other across the divide of leather-upholstered carriage seats while the driver cracked his whip above the poor horses’ withers until our four-wheeler careened down the dark country road like a runaway beer wagon.

Bands of light from the carriage lamps streaked across our faces, and there was no talk during this jolting journey, not until the cobblestones of Paris came under our steeds’ hooves, and mist-filtered rays of gaslight streamed into the open carriage windows like skimmed moonlight.

I could smell the river and the evening damp, the incense of wood fires, the faint odor of manure.

At last Irene began conversing with our escorts in French, soft-spoken, probing. They answered shortly, almost gruffly. She turned to me.

“A ghastly crime of some sort has been committed. We are not to know the details because I am needed as a translator. They do not wish foreknowledge to taint my role. A young American girl was apparently a witness. It is she I will be questioning.”

“Inspector le Villard speaks English passably enough to interrogate an American witness.”

“You think so, Nell? His superior does not, and in such a case I agree with him. A woman will win her confidence much sooner.”

I lifted an eyebrow at her attire.

“If this crime is as brutal as I have been led to believe, my mode of dress will not even catch the poor child’s attention.”

“She is a child? Then it was well I came along. An English governess can handle a child like none other.”

“As you say.”

I always worried when Irene did not disagree with me.

“You did bring your notebook and pencil, Nell?”

“I am never without it. And I brought something else.”

“Oh?”

I leaned close to whisper into her ear, which was more accessible than usual with her hair pinned up. “My chatelaine. Did you not notice its ostentatious—and noisy—presence at my belt?”

Irene smothered another quirk of her lips. I suspect she had less faith in the powers of my chatelaine—a gift of sterling silver trinkets from Godfrey—than I did. But to me it served the same function as her little pistol, and I felt quite naked without it. What an exaggerated expression! I, of course, never felt naked at all; nor should any decent woman.

Our vehicle had drawn up behind a grand building, one of the magnificent
hôtels
of Paris, I perceived as Irene helped me dismount the high carriage. In Paris,
hôtels
had been the palatial city dwellings of noble families for centuries, and only had turned to other ownership and uses in our new industrial age. I do not know why the French must confuse the issue and call buildings
“hôtels”
that are not meant for public accommodation.

I lifted my skirts to keep them from sweeping up soot, mist, and other less discreet flotsam of the city streets. We soon were bustled into the maze of rear service rooms that support the massive facades of these grandiose erections.

A man in a rumpled suit awaited us in the ill-lit pantry. The inspector snatched a lit oil lamp from a crude table and led us onward by its light.

Soon we were coiling up a narrow rear staircase that reeked of the sweat of many workmen’s brows and . . . oh, garlic and coal and other noxious domestic scents that are banished from the front rooms.

My attention was fixed on not stumbling over my hems on the narrow, turning steps. The unintroduced Frenchman behind me seized my elbow quite firmly to pilot me upward without mishap.

At length we came to the third floor, where we were led down a hallway that went up three or four steps here, and down four or five steps there, until we finally entered a passage wide enough for us four to walk abreast.

It soon transpired that the three walked abreast, and I rustled behind. They were conferring in French again, whispered words I would have had trouble translating even had I been close enough to hear well. Again much mention of the mysterious
“Abbot Noir.”

Irene’s operatic background had made her a mistress of languages. I had noticed during my brief career as a governess that those who excel at musical matters also have a numerical and language aptitude, although I cannot say that Irene had any head for numbers at all. Unless they be on bills of exchange.

At a closed door both men took up posts on either side. The inspector flourished it open for us.

Irene entered at once. I would have hesitated, but feared that if I did, the awful man would shut the door in my face, and I was determined not to remain alone in a passage with two Frenchmen if I could help it.

So I swept after her, into the most unusual chamber I have ever entered in my life. And having visited Madame Sarah’s menagerie of peacock feathers, tiger skins, serpents, and panthers on the Boulevard Pereire, I had some experience of unusual chambers.

I was struck first by the warmth and light, only then realizing how uncomfortable our journey here had been.

Figured Aubusson carpets floated like islands on a blue-marble tile floor. Their soft colors of rose, aqua, and gold ran into each other as in a woven watercolor. The furnishings were as luxurious as the floor coverings. The room was filled with tapestried chairs and sofas, every arm and leg carved and gilded until the furniture seemed to be wearing court costumes trimmed with gold lace. A crystal chandelier dripped candlelight onto strings of crystals as precious as Marie Antoinette’s famed Zone of Diamonds (which Irene and Godfrey and I had rescued from historical obscurity, a tale which the world at large unfortunately knows not).

Already in those early days of our association I was picking up secret stones, usually in Irene’s service, for there is no doubt she rescued me from worse dangers of the street than mere urchins. She was convinced that this Godfrey Norton had knowledge of a missing jewel of Queen Marie Antoinette she was hunting for the American jeweler, Mr. Tiffany. I was to spy upon Mr. Norton as well as spin his script into print.

Suffice it to say that by the end of the affair Mr. Tiffany had purchased the French queen’s lost jewels from Irene for a king’s ransom, Irene and Godfrey were wed, and we all three had moved to France, with my two housemates then considered dead!

So here I was, in Paris, the gay and sinful heart of France, staring at Marie Antoinette’s partners in crimes against the people: portraits of pale-complected, fashionably overupholstered, red-nosed French aristocrats of eras gone by. This powdered-wig company literally paved the walls, all encased in lacy frills of gilt frames like so many Valentine’s Day offerings.

Amid all this . . . well, the French do sometimes have the perfect word for it; after all, they invented excess . . . amid all this
frou-frou
I finally detected a living, contemporary soul.

She sat alone in the very middle of a long, tapestry-covered Louis XIV sofa with as many gilt legs as a centipede that had wandered through a gold-leaf workshop.

I was struck by large, deep-set eyes in an oval face furnished with a pleasing generosity of chin and brow. With her dark hair done up in a far more mannered fashion than Irene’s and her girlish figure corseted into a sweet pink evening gown low of neck and almost nonexistent of sleeve, she yet looked as fresh-faced and dewy as any English lass of eighteen. My own former charge, dear Allegra Turnpenny—

Of course Irene had to step into this picture of dewy innocence in her dark men’s suit and shatter it.

“My name is Irene Adler-Norton,” she said in that businesslike American way she usually employed with older men of position and power. The greater the difference in Irene’s station and that of those whom she addressed, the less deferential she became. One would think this would turn her betters against her, but it never did. Indeed, they seemed to relish it as a welcome curiosity. There is no doubt that her years upon the stage gave her a formidable advantage in understanding, and manipulating, human nature. “And this is my friend, Penelope Huxleigh,” she continued, brisk but gentle. “We are here to help.”

All the while Irene was moving into the luxurious scene, a dark, trousered figure from a melodrama almost, save for her flagrantly female face and head of rampant hair.

She sat on a chair at right angles to the sofa the girl occupied, so I was forced to take the matching chair a full ten feet away.

“Although I have lived in London, Miss Huxleigh and I now live near Paris. And, of course, I lived in America for many years before I came to Europe.”

I had never heard Irene chatter so, or reveal so many details of our lives, history, and geography to a total stranger.

Then I saw that although the girl was the very picture of composure, so still that she might have been sitting for Mr. Whistler, the folded hands on her silken lap were white-knuckled, and her pleasant features had frozen into an expression of such rigid composure it almost reminded me of a classical masque of tragedy.

A decanter of some dark liquor sat on a silver tray surrounded by short-stemmed crystal glasses. One was half-full. I suspected it was untouched, because the French, extravagant race, are adamant about not filling spirit glasses full in order to let the liquors inside “breathe” and no doubt perform other tricks to seduce the unwary.

The girl seemed not to notice Irene’s odd manner of dress, or even what she said.

“What is your name?” Irene asked in the most kindly tone possible.

The girl glanced at her for the first time, the look of a startled doe upon her face. “Name? Ah . . .”

“I am called
I-reen-ee
here abroad, but of course I was simply
I-reen
in the States. Miss Huxleigh has always been Penelope. Until she met me and I began calling her ‘Nell.’ So what are you called, pray?”

Again, Irene’s chatter gave the girl time to gather her wits, which were apparently in flight. “They call me
Rose
here,” she said at last, as if not quite believing her own statement.

I spoke for the first time, in an encouraging way. “Rose. A lovely name. Very English.”

The blue-gray eyes feinted in my direction for the first time. “That’s how the French translate my name. At home . . . it really is . . . Pink.”

“Pink?” I repeated, taken aback by such an inappropriate appellation.

“Pink,” Irene said approvingly. “A pink is as lovely a flower as a rose, Nell, although it is more often home-grown.” She smiled at the girl. “It suits you. Now then, Pink, you must realize that the reason we two are here and not the French gentlemen of the SCirete, is that they believe that you would testify more easily to one who spoke your language, to another American, to a woman.”

The girl (I cannot call her Pink!) took a breath so deep it seemed to threaten her corset strings with breaking.

“You must excuse me. I have never seen anything so horrendous in my life.”

“It is not a very long life,” Irene pointed out.

“I am nineteen!”

This was declared as a challenge.

“With whom do you stay in Paris?” Irene went on.

“No one. I am on my own.” Her youthful indignation collapsed. “I stay here.”

“And what is this place?”

That question engaged our young miss’s full attention. She eyed the Old World richness, plucked at the bejeweled tissue of her skirt as if surprised that she was wearing it, and took another breath.

“It is a
maison de tolérance.”

Those words struck a chill into my soul. I knew enough French to recognize the oft-employed word for “house” that is as familiar as the word
“chez”
for the same meaning in English. And I understood the word
tolérance
in either English or French. Indeed, it was likely spelled the same in both languages and thus spelled out the odious situation for me. We were in what the French call a brothel. Oh, a very elegant brothel for the use of only the most blue-blooded, wealthy, and well-known roués, but a brothel nevertheless.