Castle Rouge - Softcover

1
 
Evening in Paris
 
She suffered the penalty paid by all sensation-writers of
being compelled to hazard more and more theatric feats.
--walt mcdougall, new york world illustrator, 1889
 
FROM A JOURNAL
 
I was born Elizabeth, but they call me Pink.
I have had to steel myself often in life.
First against my stepfather, Jack Ford, a drunken brute. Then against the men who said I had no right to exist as I was, who would patronize me.
Now against a woman who would appeal to my conscience.
I am an exposer and righter of wrongs. An undercover investigator. My mission is above conscience. My mission is my conscience.
She would divert me.
I do not like it, not even when she assembles Bertie, Prince of Wales; Baron de Rothschild; Bram Stoker; and Sarah Bernhardt into one room in Paris.
Hers.
Beyond this convocation of capitol B's the only person of interest who is missing is Sherlock Holmes, the renowned English consulting detective. Even this cold-blooded Brit hesitated--a few moments--in forsaking her and Paris for London and fresh insight into the most appalling murderer of the age, Jack the Ripper.
I should perhaps figure her into this scene: Irene Adler Norton, ex-diva, ex-American, ex-Pinkerton agent.
She is now also a woman deprived of the two personal props in her life: her husband, Godfrey Norton, and her friend and supporter, Nell Huxleigh, both English, both taken in mysterious ways by mysterious enemies.
I think of women in Greek tragedies: Hecuba in The Trojan Women, Medea mourning her faithless man and sacrificing her children, Electra murdering her mother. Women who like Samson shake the pillars they are bound to and make the known world tremble.
She is very dangerous right now, Irene Adler Norton, and I don't care to be here for the catastrophe.
She has blackmailed me, this woman, this implacable Fury. She has reached into me like the stage artist she was and captured my attention. She has sunk her tiny, precise teeth into my soul, found my aching vulnerabilities and bound me with silken fibers of steel.
She has offered me a story to end all stories. She has promised me Jack the Ripper.
I am proud of her and I do not trust her and I will serve my own purpose, not hers. Meanwhile, here I sit among some of the Great of our Age, and listen to them flounder in the face of one irrational killer.
"My dear Irene," says Bram Stoker, the first to arrive. "I am…speechless. Godfrey. Nell. Gone. I think of Irving. It would be as if God had died."
Bram Stoker. Manager of the finest actor in England (the world to hear him tell it), Henry Irving. An auld acquaintance of Irene Adler Norton. He is not so much of an old friend that she has not ruled him out as a new suspect in the recent Ripperlike murders of Pairs. In the London Ripper crimes of last autumn as well? Possibly. My special system of notes that only I can read records it all.
Nell had used to "take notes" for Irene when she solved cases the Pinkertons sent her way. Now I take notes. These are my property, for publication later, when I, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, am released from my vow of silence and fully free to be the daredevil girl reporter who has made my reputation: Nellie Bly, who will go anywhere to expose any wrong. That suits her.
"Bram. Thank you for coming." Irene takes his big hands in hers. They gaze at each other, people in a common profession feeling loss as it happens in the real world, not on a stage.
He is still a suspect in her cast of characters, a theatrical man married to an icy beauty, devoted to a domineering actor who both employs and uses him. Sweet-tempered Bram Stoker, free after midnight in any capital of the world, loving women or loathing them? Jack the Ripper? After what we have learned, she and I, it could be.
"It slays me," he says now, "to think of dear, sweet Miss Huxleigh in villainous hands." He delivers the line with conviction.
Such a big, bluff, hearty soul. Even I who detest the Englishman's sense of superiority adore Bram. He is Irish, after all, and they are battering my own country into submission with their energy and optimism despite the most shattering prejudice. Big red-haired bear, genial, social, interested in such dark topics as bubble up in his short stories…Iron Maidens and vengeance and blood, always blood.
His huge hands tighten on Irene's delicate ones. His are bone and muscle, masculine force. Hers are steel in velvet, feminine survival.
If Bram Stoker is Jack the Ripper, he is lost.
Baron de Rothschild arrives next. An older man, refined, powerful, quiet in that power. He, too, takes her hands. I am struck by the image of courtiers coming to pay respects to a bereaved queen. She has won hearts as well as minds.
Not mine.
He kisses the back of each hand. "Any agent, any amount of money, they are yours to command."
"Thank you," she murmurs, and shows him to a chair.
It is a seat no better or worse than any other in the room. This is a war council of equals, and she is Madam Chairman.
Sarah Bernhardt wafts in on a perfumed zephyr of ostrich boa and red hair as frothy, all fabric-swathed whipcord figure with a leopard on a leash.
"Irene! My darling! My adorable Nell and Godfrey missing! I have traveled all over the world. If you need the aid of any person of power anywhere, just let me know."
The leopard paces back and forth between the two women's skirts, purring.
The Divine Sarah bows to the Baron, nods at Bram Stoker, and arranges herself on a sofa between them.
The leopard watches Irene Adler Norton with bright predatory eyes, its vertical pupils black stab wounds in the glory of jungle-green iris.
Next comes the first of all of them: portly, blustering Bertie.
I cannot stand the man, though he is Prince of Wales now and will become King of England…if his black-bombazine-clad pincushion of a Mama ever dies. She has made mourning into an industry for thirty years. Bertie, christened Edward Albert, is fat, self-indulgent, and British.
But then, aren't all the English fat and blustering? Well, except for Sherlock Holmes, who is not fat, and Godfrey Norton, who is apparently not only not fat, but also not self-indulgent, a rare quality in an Englishman and in any man for that matter. At least in my limited experience. Actually, more than one man has been my mentor, but they are exceptions.
So is she, Irene Adler Norton, and that is why she is so dangerous, even to me, who am used to being dangerous to others.
Inspector François le Villard comes last, hat in hand, waxed mustaches gleaming like very pointed India ink calligraphy. He accepts a solitary chair.
I wonder if Sherlock Holmes has assembled a similar company of high and low and in-between in London to serve his purposes as he returns to turn Whitechapel upside down in a search for a new motive that will unmask the Ripper at last.
But I think that Mr. Holmes is a mostly solitary creature, like the web-weaving spider, and works and waits alone. Certainly he was appalled by the idea that I wanted to return to London. He claimed I had a duty to accompany the bereft Madam Norton. I have no duty but to my higher purpose.
Still, I find it most agreeable to sit here in this Paris hotel room, among the Mostly Great and Merely Interesting, taking notes as is my wont, and as was requested specifically by our hostess.
It is the actress who makes the opening speech.
"My dear Irene, I speak for all of us, I believe, when I beg to know what we may do to assist you? This sudden disappearance of Miss Penelope, not to mention your dearly beloved spouse, is what you call in English heart-rendering, I think. You play a scene more tragic than any written for me on the stage. Ask anything of us you will. Your wish is our necessity."
A grand sentiment, but the Prince stirs...