FEMME FATALE Read online

  Femme Fatale

  Sketch by Wilhelm von Kaulbach

  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

  Cat in a Midnight Choir

  Cat in a Neon Nightmare

  Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives (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

  Femme Fatale

  Marilyn: Shades of Blonde (editor of anthology)

  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

  Heir of Rengarth

  Seven of Swords

  Keepers of Edanvant

  * These are the revised editions

  ** also mystery

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

  FEMME FATALE

  Copyright © 2003 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.

  Edited by Claire Eddy

  Map by Darla Tagrin

  Title page art courtesy of California History Room, California State Library, Sacramento, California

  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.

  ISBN 0-765-30682-4

  First Edition: October 2003

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Kathy Henderson,

  a true blue friend and supporter for more than twenty years,

  with deepest thanks

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Cast of Continuing Characters

  Prelude: The Dead Departed

  1. Duet

  2. News from Abroad

  3. Foreign Assignment

  4. Calling Cards

  5. Maiden Voyage

  6. Motherland

  7. Domestic Disturbances

  8. Maternal Musings

  9. Crime Seen

  10. Unwelcome Baggage

  11. Old Lang Syne

  12. Of Freaks and Frauds

  13. Smoke Rings

  14. Curtains!

  15. Smoking Ruin

  16. Unburnt Bridges

  17. Origin of the Species

  18. The Dictating Detective

  19. A Deeper Solemnity of Death

  20. The Show Must Go On

  21. All Fall Down

  22. Ashes, Ashes

  23. The Detective in Spite of Himself

  24. Not Her Cup of Cocaine

  25. Playing Parts

  26. No Place Like Home

  27. Small Luck

  28. Fairy Godmothers

  29. The Woman in Black

  30. Perfidy in New Jersey

  31. The Body of Evidence

  32. Unjust Desserts

  33. Desserted

  34. Inhuman Nature

  35. A Sinister Surname

  36. The French Conjunction

  37. No Woman Is an Island

  38. Babes in the Woods

  39. French Medicine

  40. Unwanted Mother

  41. The Wickedest Woman in New York

  42. A Mesmerizing Experiment

  43. Double Death

  44. Maidenhair

  45. Social Secretary

  46. The Delectable Detective

  47. Women in Black

  Coda

  Selected Bibliography

  A Reader’s Guide

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  The author is grateful to Don Hobbs and Jim Webb, devoted Texas Sherlockians, for their assistance with matters of the Canon, especially to Don in the area of early editions of the Doyle works, and to Jim for his efforts in helping the Irene Adler series find a wider international audience.

  I would give a great deal to know what inevitable stages of

  incident produced the likes of Irene Adler. Show me a

  method of forming more women so, and I would show more

  interest in women.

  —SHERLOCK HOLMES, GOOD NIGHT, MR. HOLMES,

  CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

  Cast of Continuing Characters

  Irene Adler Norton: an American abroad who outwitted the King of Bohemia and Sherlock Holmes in the Conan Doyle story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” reintroduced as the diva-turned-detective protagonist of her own adventures in the novel, Good Night, Mr. Holmes

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

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

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

  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 two met and married, and who now resides with them in Paris

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

  Nellie Bly, a.k.a. Pink: the journalistic pseudonym and family nickname of Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, involved in the Continental pursuit of Jack the Ripper in Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge; a young woman with a nose for the sensational and her own agenda

  Oscar Wilde: friend of Irene Adler; a wit and man of fashion about London. He had not yet written any of his classic plays, but his very successful lecture tour of America in the early 1880s included the Wild West

  Bram Stoker: theatrical manager of London’s finest actor, Henry Irving, and burgeoning writer, who would pen the classic Dracula; Irene’s ally in the hunt for Jack the Ripper in Chapel Noir and Castle Rouge

  Prelude: The Dead Departed

  I almost think we’re all of us Ghosts. . . . It’s not only what we

  have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us.

  —MRS. ALVING, GHOSTS, ACT II, 1881,

  HENRIK IBSEN

  FROM NELLIE BLY’S JOURNAL

  This room is darker than a tomb . . .

  . . . although I must admit that I have only been in a tomb once and hope I won’t be in another one until I’m beyond noticing it.

  I haven’t, however, at
tended a séance before.

  Anyway, the darkness makes it blasted inconvenient for taking notes, but I guess that when one is awaiting an appearance by the dead departed a little irritation is small price to pay.

  I, of course, no more expect to see or hear the dead tonight than I’d expect P. T. Barnum to resurrect and turn tent preacher and start performing baptisms in the East River.

  But that’s my job: to put myself into situations I don’t much like and then tell everyone about it. That’s why I’m more widely known by a name I wasn’t born with: Nellie Bly. Now I have brought the name of Nellie Bly from the Pittsburg Dispatch and women’s interest news to the New York Herald. Not even feigning madness in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum was story enough to earn me respect in Pittsburg, but the sky is the limit in New York, for the new twelve-story buildings going up on Fifth Avenue and for me.

  I figure I can take pretty good notes even in the dark, being used to doing it daily. A daredevil reporter lives by her ability to discreetly record what others are doing. That’s why my notepad and a pencil are clapped between my knees in a sheltering hammock of skirt.

  It is not a posture recommended for ladies, but then who will see me in this gloom?

  A woman’s low voice suggests that I join hands with my neighbors. This I had expected. Part of the reason is, I suspect, to prove that none of us are the medium’s henchmen. Yet it would only take two henchmen (or one of those shopkeeper’s wooden display hands covered in a glove) to put the lie to our presumed linkage.

  My neighbors, though I can’t see them any longer, are decent sorts. One is my mother.

  The ladies have kept their gloves on, either for better deception or simply to avoid pressing flesh with anyone who might be unsavory, or, simply, a stranger.

  A small tingle works its way from my foot to my shoulder. It could be a cramp . . . or spirit fingers, perhaps?

  At the least I expect phenomena. At the most, I anticipate some ghostly voice from the past. Or perhaps suspended musical instruments that play “De Camptown Races.” Doo-dah.

  Really, mediums should be frank about their trade, sell tickets, and then tell the paying public all their tricks at the end as part of the show.

  I do not much believe in the dead returning, anywhere at any time, mainly because I am not much eager to meet my dead again . . . unless it were the judge. No, he is too wise to come back for a return engagement, especially after all that was done with his estate. One would think a judge could protect himself better from the grasping fingers of his nearest and dearest.

  Someone sighs. Not me. Not even the thought of all that my mother and I and my brothers and sisters lost at the judge’s death can make me sigh for the past. Regret is for lily maids of Astelot, and I am no lily maid . . . in the sense of shrinking violet. I don’t commit myself as to my state of virtue. Modern women are much better off being mysterious about that.

  Another sigh, deeper.

  Now I see. Or hear and understand, rather. This is the overture to the show.

  On my left, fingers tighten on mine. This is the aged Mrs. Beale, obviously not a shill with a false hand to palm off . . . unless the squeeze was to allay my suspicions before the hand was substituted. The press is cynical, they say, but we are mostly hard to fool, is all.

  There is no movement in the hand on my right, and I would expect none. Mr. Flynn is a nervous reed of a young man who swallows frequently. His thin neck reveals a huge Adam’s apple that bobs when he swallows like a homely toad balancing on a reed’s swaying end. Having been instructed to join hands and be still, Mr. Flynn will remain absolutely motionless, except for the frequent swallowing of said Adam’s apple, which I hear in the darkness as loud as if it were my own nervous gesture. And except for a certain dampness I feel leeching through my cotton gloves, despite their thickness.

  Oh, what a pathetic dance partner he would make, although I doubt this modern Ichabod would ever make so bold as to dance!

  But I mustn’t people the darkness with stories, a weakness for one of my profession. I must be a tireless witness.

  The next sigh is louder, extended, almost inhuman.

  I suspect some device. Perhaps a sort of bellows?

  Whatever the means, it does produce an eerie, shuddering sound. Of course we all know the bagpipe was invented to instill fear into the Scot’s enemies in the fog-shrouded glens. Some natives of Australia, I understand, play a weird keening pipe that is quite unearthly. And even the Swiss mountaineers in their cheerful, comic opera lederhosen send sound echoing eerily across the Alpine peaks.

  There are so many ways to buffalo people of any clime and place. I am not about to be alarmed by a series of sighs!

  Ah. But this last sigh has become a groan, moving from a contralto to a bottomless basso tone.

  I almost feel the table beneath my wrists tremble.

  Now that is a nice effect!

  Again, the sound. And now the floor beneath my—our—feet vibrates like one of the great bass drums in an orchestra.

  The hand on my left jerks in surprise. The right one holds steady, although the grip is tighter and the Adam’s apple is held suspended for the moment.

  Ah, a faint high keening. A performing flute, I think, this time. Soon some light should trickle into our tomb-dark chamber to show this brassy wand levitating in air, supposedly played by an invisible mouth breathing from dead lungs. Has anyone who attended a séance ever thought why the resurrected dead would want to join a band and what they would really look like?

  Rotting, crumbling flesh and all?

  Folks like to say my kind have too much imagination, and perhaps they’re right. But I’d rather have too much of anything than too little. I am given to understand that this is one of my greatest flaws. And strengths. And that is what brought the name of Nellie Bly from Pittsburg to New York City. I will not remain consigned to women’s interest news, but have investigated such topics as child labor and the miserable lot of working girls.

  Well, my knees are getting pretty tired of holding my writing implements in place for ready use, and I’m developing a better respect for the trickery of mediums, especially as it involves cracking lower joints as the famous Fox sisters did. Took patience and pain and practice, I bet. More than I have.

  So. Let’s get on with the show.

  Crack!

  Our hands spasm in one round of shock and horror.

  It was a sound like the snap of a woolly mammoth’s shoulder joint, not a woman’s; like the thick table legs breaking in unison.

  Then more of the reedy flute piping funereally above us.

  And we are all still in the dark.

  Not all of us, I think.

  At this thought, the tabletop proceeds to elevate, lifting our conjoined hands in the mockery of a Maypole dance position.

  Soon our wrists are at shoulder level, and my neighbor on the left is moaning softly. Like a ghost. Or a frightened woman.

  I do not have time or inclination to be a frightened woman . . . this levitation of my hands is loosening the grip of my knees. My notepad and pencil are about to clatter to the floor.

  Luckily a soft, thick rug underlies us all (and why exactly is it required, I wonder), and I may not be betrayed by my implements.

  Arrrrghhhh.

  This is a raw groan, neither instrumental nor human, but something in-between. Could a penny whistle be so perverted to produce such an outré sound? I wonder.

  I make a very bad audience for a medium, but then a woman who can feign her state of virtue is not one to be taken in, but rather one to take in others.

  I smile in the dark as I recall who knows my secret . . . and who does not.

  Arrrrghhhh.

  This is getting predictable.

  But then the dancing flute begins to sway and keen. Then one ever so gradually becomes aware that the gaslight sconces on the wall are warming with light as subtly as the dawn tinting the horizon with rosy fingertips . . . .

  All I can see is a
faint pale mask in the dark . . . the medium herself, only a face, a luminous oval like a Greek mask of either tragedy or comedy.

  Somehow the light, whatever its source, has bleached her skin to parchment, her features to holes torn in such a hide.

  Her eyes are pitch-black olives. Her mouth is a black plum, bursting with ripeness into a perfect “O.”

  And out of that mouth . . . drifts an airy wisp like breath made visible. A snake of smoke and fog. An endless excretion repellent in its implications . . .

  I am seeing the spirit substance called ectoplasm.

  Yes, I am seeing it. But how?

  While I watch, I feel the hands on either side clutch on mine like fleshly manacles that will never release. This visible thread—of breath or life or illusion—weaves like the pipe-enchanted cobra in an Egyptian marketplace, upward and obliquely and never stopping in its motion. It seems that something from our very feet and hands and throats is climbing to the ceiling on the staircase of our conjoined souls.

  Enough!

  I do not withdraw my hands, or my eyes, but I retract my suddenly childish desire to believe. The judge is dead. I am a woman grown. I will deceive, not be deceived.

  I feel my knees weaken and my precious pencil and pad slip unheard to the carpet.

  My eyes remain fixed on the flute around which the ectoplasm twines like rambling rose over trellis.

  The medium’s mask of a face still floats on the dark.

  “I hear the dead,” she intones, her voice as mechanical as one of those heard on Edison’s “talking machines.” “She is back! The Outcast. The Dancer among the Dead. She will never die!”

  And then I notice a strange occurrence in this room dedicated to producing the strange . . . the ectoplasm is weaving back down, as if a thread on a loom were to retrace its path.

  A voice without sound executing a glissando of motion, it curls back upon itself, upon its originator. It coils softly around the dark beneath the disembodied face, around the invisible neck.

  Then it tightens like a snake quite different from a striking cobra, a boa constrictor made of feathers and fog.