FEMME FATALE Read online

  This was the first time such an idea had occurred to me and I spent a few happy seconds considering a confrontation of that sort.

  “Your wish is too late, Nell, by a day,” Godfrey observed. His voice was tart enough that I gathered that he was not entirely happy with Mr. Holmes’s visit. Unlike Irene, he did not underestimate her innate ability to charm even the resistant.

  “He was too interested in that crackled old violin,” I said.

  “You sound as if you resent it.”

  “I suppose I resent anything that implies a bridge between two people who are opponents under the skin, if one of them is Irene.”

  “You see why you must go with her? You are her shield. She may need one more than ever if there is any truth that a mother remains to be found.”

  “Godfrey, you talk as if she has reversed course and decided to answer Nellie Bly’s impertinent summons. Irene’s will is an ocean liner. It will not be diverted from its mission by a . . . cheeky little tugboat.”

  Godfrey laughed so uproariously that Casanova lofted, squawking and fluttering his wings and Messalina scampered into the rhododendron bushes to hide. The mongoose was valiant when a cobra was in sight, but found the daily domestic hullabaloos of human life annoying.

  “Nellie Bly would not appreciate that comparison, Nell,” Godfrey observed when he could speak again, “but I do. I wish I could be there, I really do, when these two meet again on Pink’s home ground.” He sobered. “But the affair in Bavaria is too urgent to abandon.”

  “As bad as matters have been in Bohemia of late?”

  “Worse. I cannot say more, only that these small, so-called fairy-tale kingdoms spawn more intrigue than Sarah Bernhardt.”

  Mention of my bête noire had me rustling my figurative feathers as violently as Casanova his genuine ones. Godfrey swiftly passed over mention of Irene’s friendship with That Awful Actress.

  “At least Irene cherishes no deep or deluded affection for Pink,” he said, “so she will be skeptical of extravagant claims.”

  “She does not disapprove of her as much as I do,” I warned Godfrey.

  “Well, who could?” He smiled beneath his neatly trimmed mustache as a conspirator does. “You are not a person to be taken in by anyone, which is why you must accompany Irene to America. I fear that the matters she may encounter there could . . . impair her judgment.”

  “Judgment is my bailiwick, that is true, Godfrey. I suppose I can sacrifice my domestic comfort and moral unease to accompany her on yet another foray into foolishness.”

  “You know, Nell, I was sure that you would see it that way.” He seemed pleased.

  “We are united in our desire for only the right things for Irene.”

  “Indeed. As she is determined to desire only the right things for us. I believe I can convince her to go, for she will not be a whole woman again until she has laid this question to rest, and admitted as much to me last night, most reluctantly.” He sighed and stared at the fading lilacs. “I wish I could go, too. I’d like to see America, actually. Perhaps another time.”

  “I sincerely hope not, Godfrey! We will settle this vexing if unspecific matter on this trip and then have no need to set foot on that uncivil continent again.”

  “As we have put Bohemia behind us, this third and last time.”

  “Exactly.”

  Godfrey leaned past me to retrieve a grape and loft it toward the bush that hid Messalina. She darted out, dark and lithe, and captured the treat as if it were prey. “As we put all past matters behind us,” he said, “if we are lucky. Permanently.”

  Once he returned inside I gazed at my remaining companions. Messy had come to my hem, as she was wont when we were alone. Her bright animal eyes watched me, waiting for the next grape, or even a head pat. Casanova settled down on his perch and edged to my side, cocking his head and watching me as vigilantly as Messy.

  Lucifer was nowhere in sight, a cause for worry in the wise.

  “Well,” I said. Their heads lifted at the sound of my voice, a not unpleasant reaction. “There is more to this reversal of course regarding America than anyone is telling me. I imagine that is what married people do: make mysterious decisions behind closed doors. I do think that Godfrey, or even perhaps Irene and Godfrey together, also have concluded that an ocean voyage would do me good after the unhappy events of the past spring. Their maneuvering is pathetically transparent. They wish to remove me from my more recent unhappy memories. Will you get on without me for a few weeks, my little friends?”

  They did not answer, of course, but their eyes were bright upon me, and I realized that I would miss them, whether they would miss me or not.

  At that instant I felt other eyes upon me. I turned to find Irene poised on the stoop, watching me and my menagerie. I couldn’t be sure of how much of my monologue to the animal congregation she had overheard.

  While I flushed with guilt, trying to recall what I had blathered about, she found her voice.

  “I have decided I must go. Godfrey says you have agreed to accompany me.”

  “Well, yes, certainly. If you must go. Must you?”

  “I don’t wish to, but I fear I would regret it if I didn’t. I am not about to leave my history to explication by the likes of a stunt reporter like Nellie Bly. Consider this a mission of self-defense, Nell.”

  “I consider that acting in one’s self-defense when it comes to Pink’s actions is not only necessary, but wise.”

  “Then we both have reasons to go to America and stop her before she does us harm.”

  “My cause may be lost,” I said, “but I think yours may still be saved.”

  She came over to me and twined her arm in mine. “Nothing is lost unless we allow it to be.”

  “Cut the cackle!” Casanova screeched, edging down his perch to bawl the order almost into our very ears.

  Irene grinned at the parrot. “Good advice. It’s time to act. A pity we cannot import the parrot to America. He would give our forthcoming voyage a piratical flavor. I have always fancied wearing an eyepatch.”

  “An eyepatch, no! The small cigars and cigarettes are enough!”

  “This we can debate on shipboard,” Irene said, turning and escorting me back into the house. “A week at sea should do very nicely to settle the matter.”

  4.

  Calling Cards

  “Let me see,” said Holmes, “hum! Born in New Jersey in

  the year of 1858. Contralto—hum! La Scala! Prima

  Donna Imperial Opera of Warsaw—Yes! Retired from

  the operatic stage—ha!”

  —SHERLOCK HOLMES, “A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA,” 1891,

  THE STRAND

  FROM THE DIARIES OF JOHN H. WATSON, M.D.

  “There are gentlemen waiting,” Mrs. Hudson informed me when she admitted me to the Baker Street foyer.

  “Holmes expected to be back from his Continental wanderings by now.”

  “He did, and he is, Doctor, but he is not back from an errand about town. If you like, you may wait in my parlor.”

  “No, I doubt that’s necessary. Whatever their business, I can hold the fort, as they say in America.”

  I started up the stairs, certain that Holmes would not mind my entertaining his clients until he arrived.

  “Oh, Dr. Watson!”

  I paused and looked back. “Yes, Mrs. Hudson?”

  “One of them is . . . rather colorful.”

  Thus forewarned, and mildly intrigued, I made my way to the door at the top and knocked, not wanting to take Holmes’s guests by surprise, though these rooms had been my home as well.

  A tall, strapping man with a full red beard meticulously trimmed opened what had once been my own door.

  A redhead. Was that what Mrs. Hudson had meant by colorful?

  “I am Dr. Watson, an associate of Mr. Holmes’s. Since I too expected to visit him tonight I thought I might wait with you. I often assisted him on his cases, and it’s possible that he intends me to do so again.”<
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  “Wonderful to meet you, Dr. Watson,” the red-beard said with a hearty handshake. “Come in, of course. We welcome any friend of Mr. Holmes.”

  “But we are not a ‘case,’ ” came an amused drawl from beyond him in the chamber. “Nor do we require containment. That quite makes us sound rather more precious than any innate value we could ever have, like the family silver.”

  I stepped over the familiar threshold to behold a sight more exotic than any I had ever before encountered in those rooms.

  Mrs. Hudson’s “colorful” gentleman also stood over six feet tall, like Red-beard. His long, clean-shaven jaw was emphasized by the middle part in the wavy brown hair that was allowed to fall to either side like spaniel ears.

  He wore pale trousers and an olive velveteen vest with a violet cravat. While tall and relatively young, he was already running toward fat in his midsection, which not even his vivid dress could distract from.

  “Your doorman,” he went on, “is Bram Stoker, the eminent theatrical manager and novice writer. I am Oscar Wilde, the novice eminence and theatrical writer. And what is your specialty, Doctor?”

  “I have none. I am a generalist.”

  “Yet you and Mr. Holmes both take on ‘cases.’ ”

  “I suppose you could put it that way.”

  “Then I will! Who, pray, is the patriotic marksman?”

  For a moment I was nonplused, then I glimpsed the “V. R.” Holmes had etched in bullet holes on the parlor wallpaper. “Holmes.”

  “I applaud his penmanship and sentiments, but didn’t the landlady and neighbors and the horses in the street swoon from fright?”

  “I wasn’t here, but I suspect he did it very quickly, that being the point of the exercise.”

  Bram Stoker laughed with delight. “What a scene that would make on stage. I must borrow it for some production.”

  “I believe Holmes was bored.”

  Now Oscar Wilde laughed, less heartily. “I had never thought of such an exhilarating cure for boredom. I must try it when my critics are in the room.”

  “But there are so many of them, Oscar,” Stoker responded genially.

  “You are right. I would run out of bullets and have to resort to stickpins. But let us not stand on ceremony when there are chairs to be sat on.”

  With this Stoker settled in the basket chair and left Holmes’s velvet-lined easy chair to Wilde. I took my usual seat to the left of the fireplace. Thus we settled into an uneasy conversational lull.

  I knew who both men were, of course, but had no idea why they would consult Holmes.

  I made so bold as to ask them.

  “Consult Holmes?” Stoker asked, blinking his pale carrot-colored eyelashes. “Not at all.”

  “Quite the reverse is true,” Wilde said, crossing his legs to reveal olive silk stockings and shoes that were more slippers than brogues. “Holmes has, in fact, consulted us.”

  “Really?” Politeness would not allow me to probe further, but I couldn’t credit that Holmes would ever do any such thing.

  He was a man who kept his own counsel. That I had achieved so much of his confidence through our long association was a matter of great pride to me. Wilde’s supercilious manner felt sharper than it was probably meant. He had been studying the interior, and I recalled that he edited some magazine involving fashion and interior design and the like.

  “I see Holmes and I have a mutual friend.”

  My eyes went to the photograph of General Gordon on one wall, my sole contribution to the room’s bohemian decor.

  “The General?” I asked, startled, for he was not only dead but I could not imagine that Wilde had ever met such a military hero, and certainly I had not, despite my years of service in Afghanistan.

  “The diva,” Oscar said, smiling.

  That is when I remembered the photograph of the late Irene Adler that Holmes kept on the mantel along with a Persian slipper filled with pipe shag and his most recent correspondence transfixed with a jackknife.

  “That is a fine photograph of her,” Stoker said warmly. “Quite the most beautiful woman I ever met, with apologies to Ellen Terry, my own wife Florence, whom you also admired, Oscar, and your own Constance.”

  “Beautiful, yes,” I began, about to explain that she was also very dead, when the door from the stairway opened and there stood Holmes in his usual London garb of top hat and cutaway coat.

  He doffed the hat at once and welcomed the assemblage with one of his swift, tight smiles. “Watson! How clever of you to arrive in such a timely fashion to greet my guests.”

  I had the opposite impression, and stood. “I could see if Mrs. Hudson can offer us some refreshment.”

  “Capital idea, Watson. I just arrived on the boat train from Paris this morning and would welcome sustenance. Gentlemen?”

  Both men shook their heads with a smile. “No,” Stoker said. “We both are needed at the theater, and only stopped by to see you beforehand.”

  “Then Watson and I shall make a picnic of it, eh, old fellow! Do see what Mrs. Hudson can tempt us with. She is a jewel at sudden meals, which my work demands. There’s a good chap.”

  I very much had the impression of a child being sent to bed while the adults begin to discuss the most interesting matters. But off I went, hoping that Holmes would let me know the reason for this astounding visit later.

  Mrs. Hudson was the sort of landlady, and cook, who reveled in rising to occasions. I left her happily planning a tasty if impromptu repast, which somewhat made up for my speedy dismissal by Holmes.

  Once again I climbed the stairs and wondered at my welcome.

  The two men were standing, as though taking their leave.

  “We were just saying,” Wilde noted, “before Dr. Watson went to see to supper, what a splendid likeness of Irene Adler that is. I should have composed an ode to her years ago. She is the female equivalent of a Stradivarius, is she not, Holmes?”

  “Watson is the expert on the fair sex,” Holmes answered hastily. “I must keep my mind unclouded by such aspects as beauty. I do, in fact, find women as a whole to be clever but unreliable.”

  “Unreliability is their most charming attribute, my dear Holmes,” Wilde said. “The reliable is vastly overrated, far too unpredictable to count upon. Would you ask the wind to blow in four-four time? So, Dr. Watson.” Wilde turned to me with a slight smile. “Do you bow with every man of sensibility to the divine beauty of the lovely diva?”

  “A fine figure of a woman, no doubt, but—” I said, about to point out that she was dead.

  “No ‘buts,’ Watson!” Holmes interrupted me. “Wilde is the day’s supreme connoisseur of beauty. Be flattered that he approves of your taste. A pity you cannot stay,” Holmes told our visitors. “I have a rather good claret, but . . . a theater curtain waits for no man. It is interesting that you are beginning to write fiction, Stoker. My friend Watson has had some success in that direction.”

  “Really?” Wilde sounded so astounded I felt an immediate need to defend my efforts.

  “Not pure fiction,” I said hastily. “I am minded to write up some of Holmes’s most interesting cases, with the actual names and places disguised, of course.”

  “Of course not!” Wilde responded enthusiastically. “My dear doctor, actual names and places are what make for fictional success. So what have you written, or, more to the point, had published?”

  “Beeton’s Christmas Annual featured ‘A Study in Scarlet,’ which was released last year as a novel.”

  “The title has an artistic implication I adore, and ‘scarlet’ is such a divinely lurid word. Was there murder in it?”

  “Indeed, and much misbehavior by the Mormons in the American West, which led to a transatlantic quest for vengeance that devoured many years before the villains of the case were found dead in London.”

  “Mormons! Murder! Vengeance! Corpses in London, dear me. And the American West as well, which I found quite fascinating, and vice versa, during my lecture tours
there in early part of the decade. I am currently editor of The Woman’s World, so if you’d care to offer your work for the glance of my editorial eye, I would be happy to advise. I am always eager to encourage rivals. It gives my constant critics so many more worthy targets.”

  He aimed a languid forefinger at the wall and sketched an airy pattern. “I make a metaphorical statement. V. O. Either Very Old brandy, or Victorious Oscar. Come, Stoker, let us see what they are up to at the Beefsteak Club. I have a play or two of my own in mind, one involving an earnestly unfortunate fellow who was indeed a ‘case,’ or rather was found in one in Victoria Station as an infant. Mislaid infants! Possible bastardy! Perfidy in cloak rooms in Victoria Station. I may someday be as acclaimed as Dr. Watson and his sensational fictions. Adieu for now.”

  On that note the two men left our rooms, or Holmes’s rooms now, clattering and chatting together down the stairs.

  “Theatrical folk,” I commented, surprised by Holmes’s high spirits. He was already opening the claret and soon poured two glasses.

  “Isn’t it odd,” I asked, “that those men didn’t know Irene Adler was dead?”

  “Odd? Not at all, Watson. They live and work in the theater, where anything is possible.”

  “Why were . . . you consulting them?”

  “I was?”

  “So they said.”

  “Ah, did they? Well, Watson, you know how my cases sometimes involve persons of the most elevated rank in the realm, and the most sensitive subjects for the future of the Empire.”

  “Indeed. Was this latest European jaunt in the service of such eminent persons?”

  “Exactly. I soon may be required to go elsewhere as well, in the same service.”

  “And these two men—?”

  “Know everyone who is everyone, and everything about them. I can say no more, save that it is very encouraging that Wilde is willing to assess your work. I would pursue his offer.”