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Authors: Carole Nelson Douglas

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Traditional British, #Historical

Castle Rouge

BOOK: Castle Rouge
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Castle Rouge

By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates

MYSTERY

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

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

Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives

(editor of anthology)

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

Keepers of Edanvant

Heir of Rengarth

Seven of Swords

Castle Rouge

An Irene Adler Novel

Carole Nelson Douglas

A Tom Doherty Associates Book

New York

For Jennifer Waddell, first a fan, then a student assistant, always a writer herself, and always fabulous in every role, with many thanks for coming along on all the journeys with Irene, Louie, and me

Contents

Editor’s Note              

Cast of Continuing Characters              

Prelude              

1. Evening in Paris              

2. Plainsmen in France              

3. Somewhere in London              

4. Pitiless Whitechapel              

5. Inhospitable              

6. Ripper Redux              

7. Taking the Air              

8. Uneasy Allies              

9. The Devil His Own Way              

10. A Stray Chicken              

11. Cold Comfort              

12. Cork and Candle              

13. ’Twixt Heaven and Hell              

14. Unknown in Whitechapel              

15. The Wild East Show              

16. Nell Ungirds Her Loins              

17. Sterner Stuff              

18. A Lukewarm Baptism              

19. Sentimental Journey              

20. Of Corsetry and Atrocity              

21. The Queen and I              

22. Lone Wolf              

23. Rapunzel in Ash-blond              

24. Irene and the Gypsy Queen              

25. Alone              

26. Foreign Activity              

27. Auld Acquaintance Not Forgot              

28. “X” Marks the Spots              

29. Game for Dinner              

30. Digging Deeper              

31. In the Soup              

32. Caught Mapping              

33. Cryptic Doings              

34. Dance for Your Supper              

35. Bloody Words              

36. Alone at Last              

37. Sovereign Security              

38. Shades of Whitechapel              

39. Killing the Cobra              

40. Fleeing Prague              

41. A Guest              

42. A Mystery Man Indeed              

43. Before the Dawn              

44. Dangerous Explorations              

45. Trapped Like Rats              

46. A Midsummer Nightmare              

47. Nameless Practices              

48. Unholy Spirit              

49. Journey’s End              

50. Found and Lost              

51. The Disposition              

52. The Inquisition              

Afterword              

 

 

Castle Rouge

…she has a soul of steel. The face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men
.

—S
IR
A
RTHUR
C
ONAN
D
OYLE,
A SCANDAL IN BOHEMIA

Editor’s Note

With the release of this volume I finally sail past a rough patch in my ongoing effort to collate various and obscure nineteenth-century historical documents into a coherent whole.

If the reading public and the scholastic establishment have been impatient at the time this task has consumed, they must bear in mind how many threads go into weaving this series of tapestries.

Not only am I integrating the newly found and exhaustive Penelope Huxleigh diaries recording her life and adventures with Irene Adler, the only woman to have earned Sherlock Holmes’s respect, but also “lost” episodes from the supposed Dr. Watson accounts of the Sherlockian Canon as well as additional and mysterious entries from a yellow-bound narrative that have been inserted into this portion of the Huxleigh diaries, but are admittedly foreign materials I found with them.

That the subject matter of all these separate documents is the most notorious serial killer of all time, the still
publicly
unidentified slayer of women prostitutes known as Jack the Ripper, only makes the task more delicate.

In the previous account that I titled
Chapel Noir
, shocking revelations fixed on one suspect among many for the role of Whitechapel killer at the time. James Kelly was an upholsterer by trade and a convicted wife murderer who slipped away from an asylum early in his incarceration and was at large in Whitechapel before the Ripper slaughters began. Even more damning, Kelly left London immediately after the appalling mutilation of Mary Jane Kelly, generally considered to be the Ripper’s last act of destruction. He walked to the coast, whence he embarked for Brussels and from there walked to Paris. He remained at large for an unbelievable thirty-nine years, until, aged and confused, he surrendered himself to British authorities and ended his days in the asylum for which he had been destined far earlier in his career.

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