Chapel Noir Read online

  Chapel Noir

  By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates

  MYSTERY

  Midnight Louie Mysteries:

  Catnap

  Pussyfoot

  Cat on a Blue Monday

  Cat in a Crimson Haze

  Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

  Cat with an Emerald Eye

  Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

  Cat in a Golden Garland

  Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

  Cat in an Indigo Mood

  Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

  Cat in a Kiwi Con

  Cat in a Leopard Spot

  Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives

  (editor of anthology)

  Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (editor of anthology)

  Irene Adler Adventures:

  Good Night, Mr. Holmes

  The Adventuress

  (Good Morning, Irene)

  A Soul of Steel (Irene at Large)

  Another Scandal in Bohemia

  (Irene’s Last Waltz)

  Chapel Noir

  Castle Rouge (forthcoming 2002)

  HISTORICAL ROMANCE

  Amberleigh*

  Lady Rogue*

  Fair Wind, Fiery Star

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Probe*

  Counterprobe*

  FANTASY

  Taliswoman:

  Cup of Clay

  Seed upon the Wind

  Sword and Circlet:

  Six of Swords

  Exiles of the Rynth

  Keepers of Edanvant

  Heir of Rengarth

  Seven of Swords

  *also mystery

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint material:

  Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker. Copyright © 1996 by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf.

  Harsin, Jill. Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris. Copyright © 1985 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

  Hovey, Tamara. Paris Underground. Copyright © 1991 by Tamara Hovey. Reprinted by permission of Orchard Books/Scholastic, Inc.

  Jakubowski, Maxim and Braund, Nathan. The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper. Copyright © 1999 by Constable & Robinson, London. Reprinted by permission of Constable & Robinson.

  Schwartz, Vanessa R. Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris. Copyright © 1997 by The Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

  CHAPEL NOIR: AN IRENE ADLER NOVEL

  Copyright © 2001 by Carole Nelson Douglas All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  Book design by Ellen Cipriano

  Maps by Darla Tagrin

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Douglas, Carole Nelson.

  Chapel noir : an Irene Adler novel / Carole Nelson Douglas.—lst ed.

  p. cm.

  “A Forge book”—T.p. verso.

  Includes bibliographical references.

  ISBN 0-312-85493-5 ISBN 978-0-312-85493-5

  1. Adler, Irene (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Women detectives—France—ParisFiction. 3. Paris (France)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554.08237 C48 2001

  813’.54—dc21

  2001040151

  First Edition: October 2001

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Claire Eddy,

  with many thanks for her eagle editorial eye,

  and for her scholarly approach

  to the art of making books

  Acknowledgments

  The author owes much to the invaluable assistance of Delphine Kresge-Cingal, a professor at the University of Amiens, France, and her associate, Thierry Melan, founder of a French Sherlockian research organization, the Centre de Recherches Holmésiennes et Victoriennes (http://www.crhv.org).

  Thanks to the modern wonders of e-mail and the World Wide Web, both sources researched Paris both then and now, forwarding images of vintage Paris street maps and scenes.

  Delphine also read the novel in manuscript, offering encouragement, research information, and explaining the fine points of French language and usage.

  Where these have not been followed, it is due to English usage traditions with French words, or because the author needed to take a little literary license with the facts in what is ultimately a work of fiction.

  Delphine and Thierry were tireless detectives on the trail of particular street names and facts, and performed tenaciously enough to impress Sherlock Holmes himself.

  I also thank them for an honorary membership in the Centre de Recherches Holmésiennes et Victoriennes. I’m very glad that, at the end of Good Night, Mr. Holmes, I moved Irene Adler from London to Paris, where she has been so welcomed, and where her books are being reprinted.

  Also most helpful were Barbara Peters of The Poisoned Pen bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, and “Ripperologist” August Paul Alesky Jr., of Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, Illinois. I thank them both profoundly.

  —Carole Nelson Douglas

  Contents

  Editor’s Note

  Cast of Continuing Characters

  Prelude

  1. Somewhere in Paris

  2. Somewhere in France

  3. Nell and the Night Visitors

  4. Not So Sweet a Home . . .

  5. The Abbot Noir

  6. Frère Jacques, Dormez-Vous?

  7. Woman of Mystery

  8. Call Her Madam

  9. Horrible Imaginings

  10. Carried Away

  11. Rue Royale

  12. Family Resemblance

  13. Rogue Royale

  14. Gypsy Fortune

  15. In the Pink

  16. Jacques the Ripper

  17. La Tour Awful

  18. An Unappetizing Menu

  19. A Movable Feast

  20. Wild Oats

  21. The Women of Whitechapel

  22. The Judgment of Paris

  23. Deadlier than the Male

  24. Morgue Le Fey

  25. Dancing with the Dead

  26. La Mort Double

  27. The Skull Beneath the Skin

  28. A Werewolf in London

  29. Lost Soul

  30. Jack L’Eventreur

  31. Sins of the Son

  32. Sherlock the Shredder

  33. With Bated Breath

  34. Buffalo Gals

  35. Of Couches and Corks

  36. Couched in Ambiguity

  37. We Three Queens

  38. A Message from Abroad

  39. Last Tangle in Paris

  40. A Map of Murder

  41. The French Connection

  42. Tableaux Mordants

  43. Calendar of Crime

  44. A Confederacy of Paper

  45. Worlds Fair and Foul

  46. An Exhibition in Terror

  47. Paranoia

  48. No Quarter

  49. Lost Innocence

  50. Resolution

  Coda: The Vampire Box

  Afterword

  . . . she has a soul of steel. The face of the most beautiful of

  women and the mind of
the most resolute of men.

  —THE KING OF BOHEMIA, “A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA”

  Editor’s Note

  The release of this volume is extremely satisfying. Discreet chiding in academic circles has for some time labeled me an outlaw editor. My “crime”? Allowing several years to pass before presenting this fifth installment of the Penelope Huxleigh diaries, which record the life of the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes, the late Irene Adler of revered and enduring memory. Even my publisher and the public have joined in the general clamor for more.

  Rumors abound that the publication delay proves that the content of all the Huxleigh diaries is confabulated, that I am simply slow in carrying on the masquerade.

  As is usual with clamor and rumors, nothing could be farther from the facts. The reason for delay is the astounding nature of the following testaments that I have spent so many years verifying.

  In addition, I encountered among the Huxleigh material yet another document from a completely, shall I say, alien source? This yellow-bound journal or casebook apparently had been seized, or perhaps, more innocently, had fallen into the hands of the principals mentioned in the diary. It was written in a language other than English so I had to find a circumspect translator familiar with nineteenth-century usages who was willing to sign a letter of utter silence on the source and contents of this account.

  Let my critics know that I am working feverishly to complete work on the next and companion volume even as this one goes forth to meet its public.

  —Fiona Witherspoon, Ph.D., A.I.A.*

  April 2000

  * Advocates of Irene Adler

  Cast of Continuing Characters

  Irene Adler Norton: an American abroad and a diva/detective who is the only woman to outwit Sherlock Holmes in “A Scandal in Bohemia,” reintroduced as the protagonist of her own adventures in the novel, Good Night, Mr. Holmes

  Sherlock Holmes: the London consulting detective with a global reputation for feats of deduction

  Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, King of Bohemia: the Crown Prince who courted Irene years before, then feared she might disrupt his forthcoming royal marriage. He hired Sherlock Holmes to recover a photograph of Irene and the Prince together, but she escaped, promising never to use the photo against the King. They crossed swords again in Another Scandal in Bohemia (formerly Irene’s Last Waltz)

  Godfrey Norton: the British barrister who married Irene just before they escaped to Paris to elude Holmes and the King of Bohemia

  Penelope “Nell” Huxleigh: the orphaned British parson’s daughter Irene rescued from poverty in London in 1881, a former governess and “typewriter girl” who lived with Irene and worked for Godfrey before the pair were married, and who now resides with them in Paris

  Quentin Stanhope: the uncle of Nell’s former charges when she worked as a London governess; now a British agent in eastern Europe and the Mideast, he reappeared in A Soul of Steel (formerly Irene at Large)

  John H. Watson, MD.: British medical man and Sherlock Holmes’s sometimes roommate and frequent companion in crime-solving

  Inspector François le Villard: a Paris detective and admirer of the English detective who has translated Holmes’s monographs into French and worked with Irene Adler Norton in The Adventuress (formerly Good Morning, Irene)

  Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, head of the international banking family’s most powerful branch and of the finest intelligence network in Europe, frequent employer of Irene, Godfrey, and Nell in various capacities, especially in Another Scandal in Bohemia.

  Chapel Noir

  Prelude

  Little gleams of light . . . seem to come from tiny hut windows

  in the forest. “Driver, can’t we stop a minute at one of those

  huts, where the lights are?” “Lights! They’re wolves.”

  —K. MARSDEN

  FROM A YELLOW BOOK

  He is hungry tonight.

  He came home, such as it is, exhausted, confused, clad in a rough shirt other than he had worn on leaving. I insisted he wash his hands. (This is one habit he resists). The wash water swirled with a pink, pulpy substance he could not explain.

  He is a wanderer, as am I. Homeless and free, like a wolf in the woods, a hawk in the air.

  Sometimes I think he is a god and I am a devil.

  Sometimes he is a devil and I am a god.

  Which will win, good or evil?

  Who will win, God or Devil?

  I love this awkward language that yet plays a bit of unholy fun: subtract an “o” from “good” and you have a god. Subtract a “d” from “good,” add it to “evil,” and you have a devil.

  Another game of words: an Englishman, surely one of God’s most contradictory creations (or the devil’s) would like this. God backwards, in English of course—and to an Englishman there is no other country, no other ambition, no other arrogance—spells “dog.”

  So, another game of words: in the place of god or devil, let us put master and beast.

  So I am his master.

  So he will be my beast.

  And which of us is most god or devil? He, she. You, me. Good or evil? Writing in a language not one’s own permits all. Living in a land not one’s own excuses all. Having no god destroys the devil, so we cannot have that.

  This I record, whatever bestiality it celebrates, whatever gods and angels fall, whatever devils triumph.

  This I have chosen as my experiment. And one last question. Which is stronger, life or death?

  The answer is not as obvious as all the civilized world likes to think.

  1.

  Somewhere in Paris

  I often have this strange and moving dream of an

  unknown woman. . . .

  —PAUL VERLAINE, MON RÊVE FAMILIER, 1866

  FROM A JOURNAL

  Saturday, May 18, 1889.

  I must be strong and record my impressions before they fade.

  Yet . . . no wonder my penmanship resembles the thin, palsied scrawl of a very old lady, though I am not yet twenty-five. My hand shakes despite myself, as my body shivers despite the snapping flames I sit so near.

  I had hoped that my unconventional life thus far had prepared me to face disagreeable things, things that those who lead more circumscribed lives might call distasteful, even bizarre. Brutal. Shocking.

  But this . . . where to begin?

  With the beginning, I tell myself now. I take pride in not being the green girl I am taken for by the blind old eyes all around me. Buck up, my dear childish self! You are a mistress of deceit, and besides, the world will need to know the truth. Someday.

  How odd it is that when one is assaulted by the unendurable that the mind fastens on the irrelevant.

  So I stood alone and undiscovered on that horrible threshold and elected to notice that the center of the chamber was occupied by the most bizarre piece of furniture I had ever seen. A sort of barber’s chair by way of Versailles.

  Barber’s chair. The phrase puts me in mind of Sweeney Todd, the murderous “demon” barber of Fleet Street in London, the city which I last visited before this one.

  And, of course, thoughts of the barbarous Sweeney Todd made the rivulets of drying blood encrusting the chair’s brocade into something more than . . . distant and gruesome embroidery.

  Having forced my mind to admit what my eyes had already seen and repudiated by looking elsewhere, I forced my gaze to the figures that occupied the bloody appliance.

  My first thoughts are unforgettable, and so unlike me, who has seen much unpleasantness from an early age:

  I will not swoon.

  I will not vomit.

  I will not go mad.

  I WILL NOT!

  2.

  Somewhere in France

  Never go to France unless you know the lingo,

  If you do like me, you will repent, by jingo

  —THOMAS HOOD, 1839

  A secret is a stone. You pick one up and think, Oh, this is not so heavy. And it�
��s rather interesting, isn’t it?

  So you walk along carrying it for a little while. And you find it heavier. Yet you dare not just drop it anywhere, for simply anyone to find, so you walk with it for a long distance, for a long time. Then you find that you cannot let it go no matter how much you wish to. And you realize at length that it weighs the world.

  We all carry secrets we have picked up almost unwittingly. Almost, but not quite unwittingly. Some are mere pebbles. Others true loadstones.

  All weigh more than they are worth.

  I recently have found myself weighing one of my secret stones, the heaviest I have ever carried. I turn it over, examine it, consider passing it on to another. A secret shared has wings and becomes a confidence. And sometimes unwanted confidences can become insupportable stones for another.

  And so I walk on alone.

  Nothing is more soothing to the female soul than a quiet evening of needlework, if I do say so myself.

  This thought came to me as I crocheted a charming cover for the tabletop bell by which we summon our maid-of-all-work, Sophie. I do not know why a bell should require a crocheted cover, save that it would keep the dust off of it. Somewhat.

  Irene was reading a book, a French novel, I am afraid, on the chaise longue across the room. She would have been pleased that I thought she looked almost as decadent as Sarah Bernhardt in one of her swooning portraits.

  On his perch near the antique grand piano by the window Casanova was currently torn between gnawing a half-devoured grape and his own scaly foot. (I cannot choose which is the more loathsome occupation myself.) Occasionally, the parrot would croak out a word, but we two humans managed to remain silent and engrossed in our peaceful occupations.

  This evening in Neuilly-sur-Seine, not far beyond the gaslit mists of Paris, felt so unlike the hectic London days when Irene and I had shared quarters in the Saffron Hill district.