Femme Fatale (16 page)

“She was throttled.”

“Throttled? At a table with five other persons? Throttling is not a silent process and it requires the killer to come close. Yes, it was dark, but I can’t believe that no one would notice a strangler at work.”

“That’s just it. We saw her die. Or struggle at least. We assumed it was part of the show. I mean, mediums do moan and groan and speak in tongues and spit out spirit vapors . . . what were we to think?”

“Ah.” Irene sat on the chair that had been Pink’s uncertain step stool. “Her murder was accomplished in plain sight, but with
the murderer out of sight. This may be a more subtle and disturbing crime than I first thought. The woman fought for her life, with help only feet away and was . . . ignored. It was brutal and cruel to the victim, as well as to witnesses who now know that they understood too late. Anyone with black gloves and a mask could have stepped behind the eerily lit medium in the dark and manipulated the murder like an unseen puppeteer. You all would have witnessed the effect, but not the means. Who would kill in such a fashion, and why?”

I could keep silent no longer. Irene and Pink seemed to dance away from what to me was the central issue. “If no one was visible standing behind her, choking her, how was she killed? And don’t tell me it was a spirit guide!”

Irene looked up at Pink. “Yes, that’s a good point. Was there any misty apparition of the dead? The judge?”

“There was a misty apparition,” Pink said grimly. “Ectoplasm. The breath of the dead emanating from the medium’s mouth. It was utterly convincing. Not just a wee trail, as one sees of cigar smoke, or even one’s own breath on a frosty winter morning. It was as long as a snake and kept twisting up and up in spurts, almost like a serpent moves its coils. It made my mother shriek. I confess even I felt a chill at that abnormal substance’s dance, almost like a cobra rising from its basket to the keening of a snake charmer, and don’t forget that flute was floating and piping, too.”

Pink turned her glance on me, something of that uncanny fear still in her expression, except it was changing into anger. “Can you guess what that ectoplasm really was, Nell?”

How could I say? The soul after death surely does not come gliding back in snakelike form to reside in the mouths of mediums.

Irene anticipated Pink. “Eggwhite-dipped cheesecloth,” she said. “That soft, netlike fabric porous enough to strain something as solid as cheese, yet light and airy. Some mediums know the—art, should I call it?—of regurgitation at will. Instant ectoplasm. It’s a very old trick.”

Pink nodded. “Then the medium lay . . . still. Quiet. And we all realized that this was not part of the séance, but something else. I got up, and went to her. It was wrapped around her throat, that long boa of ‘ectoplasm.’ It was twisted and soggy and wrung so tight I couldn’t unwind it, couldn’t even get a finger between her neck and that . . . stuff. It was too late anyway, as Gordon quickly told me.”

“A macabre story,” Irene said after a pause. “Now, Pink. I have revealed the mechanics behind the séance. I have suggested who might, and might not, have been the killer. Now tell me why on earth do you think that this scene has anything to do with me? Personally?”

Pink did not answer. She asked another question instead.

“Now that you know what this murder involves and who was present, are you sure you want to know what I think?”

“Who
was
present? A group of mostly your selection, except for the medium and her unknown confederate. Why should I care who was present?”

“Are you saying that you don’t recognize any of them? Not a one?”

10.

Unwelcome Baggage

How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial
action may mean volumes, or their most extraordinary conduct
may depend upon a hairpin or a curling tongs
.

—SHERLOCK HOLMES, “THE ADVENTURE OF THE SECOND STAIN,”
SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

F
ROM
N
ELLIE
B
LY
’
S
J
OURNAL

I don’t quite know where my dislike of Englishmen comes from.

It can’t be from my adventures in the U.S., for the Brits are thankfully rare on this side of the Atlantic, although I have met a few in New York City reception halls.

I guess it’s their inborn sense of superiority; that aloof, supercilious air most of them disseminate like dandelions do seeds.

So I stood on the wharf in New York harbor, unhappily awaiting the docking of the Atlantic steamship
Ulysses
. Much as it was my idea and long-nursed machination, I did not welcome Sherlock Holmes to these bustling shores, except as a necessity.

In fact, I was amazed that he would come in answer to my cablegram at all, save I had used those most effective code words in his case: murder and Irene. And I had implied, a bit mendaciously, that it might be murders
plural
, a fact that might intrigue him after chasing a multiple murderer from London to Paris to Prague and beyond in the recent past. Yet I had a recent clipping in my sturdy leather handbag of a death as similarly bizarre as the one I myself had witnessed not long after. I had not yet shared it with Irene, but was saving it for Sherlock Holmes. I needed more than one freakish crime to command his demanding attention, since I couldn’t manage it by myself alone, as Irene could.

Obviously, the man was intrigued by this woman who had bewitched audiences and aristocrats and criminals. And, I must add modestly, I had also used another name with perhaps even greater cachet as a lure for this quintessentially disciplined Englishman: Baron Richard von Krafft-Ebing, the man who documented maniacs.

Certainly a mere enterprising female reporter for the
New York World
would not snag the attention of the globe’s first and finest and only consulting detective without the more attractive bait of Madam Adler Norton in her hip pocket.

And so it was with both faint hope and triumphant jubilation that I spied a tall erect figure, pipe firmly clenched in jaws, inching down the gangway among the usual horde of transatlantic crossers.

He looked most put out!

I couldn’t help smiling at his grim demeanor as he advanced, carrying one fat tapestry bag in lieu of other baggage. Somehow I knew that was his entire kit, and that it would contain all he needed to dress as the quintessential Englishman, to nurse a pipe, or to solve a crime.

After all, his stock in trade was smoke and magnifying glasses!

I stood among a jostling crowd of greeters, watching humanity flood down the gangplank amid shouts and huzzahs.

Had he really come? Had I tempted him with enough blood and beauty under siege to stir his deficient gallantry?

Although, when I considered it, I believed Mr. Holmes’s gallantry was of the mental, not of the physical kind found in that unusual Englishman, Quentin Stanhope, and the equally unusual Godfrey Norton, Irene’s better half, and indeed, the ideal husband for any modern woman who was still so backward as to deign to take a husband.

I mentally viewed the Englishmen I had encountered during my European adventures: Mr. Holmes, of course, thorny, eccentric, and horribly smart in a non-fashionable way. Irene’s husband Godfrey, a Daniel come to judgment among barristers, handsome and equable, if one likes that type.

Finally there was that elusive rascal Quentin Stanhope—mousy Nell Huxleigh’s would-be beau, of all things!—and my favorite Englishman, being adventuresome, gallant, and somehow distant from everything but faraway lands ruled by savage men and subservient women.

I liked to imagine that had I ever been so unfortunate to be sold as a concubine in the piratical Mediterranean, I should have ended up a sultana. There is historical precedent for such a spectacular rise, and I like to think of myself as spectacularly rising, if nothing else.

I rose on my toes at the moment, seeking to peer over the sea of heads in various hats and caps, to my quarry.

He wore country clothes no doubt suitable for the deck of a steamship: a long checked coat with a short cape attached, and a plaid billed cap with ear flaps tied on top, rather silly sporting attire that only an Englishman could wear with dignity. Despite this being his maiden voyage to these shores, from what I knew, he showed no need or anxiety to find a welcoming face. Despite knowing that I would be among the welcomers, he sauntered through the madding crowd, a figure uniquely serene in his composure and keen survey of the general scene.

In fact, the great detective did not deign to notice me, though surely he must have spied me, but required me to battle my way through the crowds to seek his side.

“Mr. Holmes!”

He paused at my call, took his pipe from his lips, and waited for me to win my way forward.

“Miss Cochrane,” he acknowledged me when I stood panting beside him, my hat leaning slipshod over my left temple. “I do not see Madam Adler Norton.”

“She is not here. Nor would she be. She has no idea you’re in New York.”

“And no idea, I see, that I am here on her behalf at your behest. I fear that ‘invitation’ is far too bland a word for your doings, Miss Cochrane.” He eyed the crowded, noisy dock with more than disapproval. “It was not your wire, nor the possible presence of Mrs. Norton that brought me here. Would you care to guess what other inducement was involved?”

Well, here I had one of the most talked-about Englishmen of the day at my fingertips, and he would have nothing to do with either fingertips or past acquaintance not forgot, or even a passing association with that paragon of song and story, Irene Adler Norton.

“Then why are you here?” I shouted over the blathering throng.

“As you deduced in your cable, Miss Cochrane, I have been thinking about Krafft-Ebing. In fact, I recently went to Germany to meet the man and report on the incredible case of the resurrected Ripper. Krafft-Ebing was quite insistent that such serial crimes are common, not an exception, and that I should investigate any instance of possible multiple murder to add to his catalog of such crimes. I agreed with Krafft-Ebing that it might be instructive. He is a man worth listening to.”