The Adventuress (4 page)

“She would do it again, a thousand times!” said I, eager to reassure Godfrey that Irene’s restlessness owed nothing to her domestic state. “If only—”

“Say it, Nell. You know that I rely upon you for the truth.”

I blushed. “I am not convinced that performing is a proper avenue for Irene just yet. The Paris theater bristles with petty jealousies and corruption, even more so than ours at home. A respectable married woman—”

“I thought Irene had served notice that she would never be ‘a respectable married woman’.”

“Surely she did not warn you so also?”

“But she did, and I quite approve. Respectability often cloaks the ugliness of hypocrisy, Nell. If Irene is free to be herself, she will earn the respect of those whose opinions really matter.”

“Then perhaps you will not find my next suggestion out of order.”

“Which is?”

“That you keep an eye open among your new associations for some small assistance that Irene can give you, in her old way of... looking into... matters.”

“You mean that I should find her work as an inquiry agent? Not a bad notion, Nell, although the kind of law that is practiced across borders and language barriers is tedious, unexciting stuff. Land and coin transactions, titles, inheritances. A missing heir is the tastiest bone I’m likely to turn up. Tame work, after Irene has unearthed an executed queen’s diamond girdle and escaped a vengeful king.”

“Still, it would not hurt to find something to occupy her.”

“You amaze me, Nell.” Godfrey finished his sugarless tea without complaint. “I thought you disapproved of Irene’s investigative ways.”

“There is much I disapprove of and cannot change,” I replied. “I disapprove of idleness more, for therein lie the seeds of mischief.”

“Perhaps Sarah Bernhardt will draw her into a tangle,” he mused. “Irene is as curious as a cat; she cannot resist a locked door or a buried body.”

I could not help glancing at Lucifer, whose cream- dotted whiskers were disappearing beneath the tea table.

Then Irene came in, boot-heels rapping the slate hall floor, cheeks pinked by the evening air. A small, dark cigarette was clasped between her pale lips. She cast herself into a chair, her trousered legs stretched to the fire that Sophie had lit earlier.

“What a frolic!” she began, regaling us with chapter and verse of her excursion with Sarah Bernhardt to the cafés. The recital took some minutes, only ending when Irene rose to mimic the needle-thin Sarah lounging among the dandies, and herself accosting an acerbic wit who had challenged her to a duel for the crime of topping his witticisms.

“A duel! That is going too far,” I said weakly.

Irene flourished her cane like a sword. “What an experience for an actress! We women are never allowed to execute—” Irene lunged fiercely with her blade at the fireplace poker—“the adventurous parts, not even in operatic trouser roles. Sarah could be my second. Don’t worry, Nell, these boulevard wits are great cowards; one cannot sit about and drink absinthe all day and cast
bon mots
into the air like seed to pigeons and still have any sang-froid left for duels.”

Irene lounged again on the chair. “But duels are not my interest, and I fear that these boulevard wits shan’t be for long, either—shallow, vain, foolish souls whose monocles magnify their own images rather than the world around them.”

She crossed a leg to reveal pale spats. “Well, Godfrey, what did you do today?”

“I didn’t see enough of you,” he answered promptly. Irene laughed and ran her fingers through her loosened waves of hair. Their eyes feasted on each other with such sudden intensity that I excused myself and retired to the music room.

At dinner an hour and a half later, Irene shone like a diva in one of her bare-shouldered Paris gowns. Her cheeks were flushed and her mood mellow, an effect I attributed less to her hours in the public company of Sarah Bernhardt and more to a private hour with Godfrey Norton, thank God

Chapter Three

W
HAT
T
HE
F
ISHERMEN
F
OUND

If as
showy a hothouse bloom as Irene Adler, now Madame Norton, suffered the pangs of transplantation, a shy violet such as myself underwent its own quiet attack of wilt.

I had not felt so displaced since I had become suddenly unemployed in London in 1881. The green girl whom Irene found faint from hunger and anxiety outside Wilson’s Tea Room and swept under her brown and copper faille wing had matured into an independent woman who had supported herself as a typist for the barristers of the Inner Temple—until now.

Although Irene insisted that the proceeds from selling Marie Antoinette’s Zone of Diamonds to Charles Lewis Tiffany be divided three ways, Godfrey and I knew that all of the money was rightfully hers. Godfrey at least had a claim through his late, unlamented father’s ori
ginal
possession of the jewels.  John “Black Jack” Norton had been a scoundrel even his wife and son had disowned), if not by marriage to Irene, matters that neither of them would consider relevant.

I had no claim except Irene’s generosity, and I was ever an ill recipient of charity. So I chafed at my idle state, but I could not soon repair it. Although I wrote and read French, I spoke far less Frenchily than the raucous Casanova, whose Parisian accent embellished scurrilous lines of Baudelaire.

A typist who requires a translator that she may function is no boon.

I felt as stranded in Ile-de-France as I had been on London’s teeming streets seven years earlier, dazed by foreign sights and sounds, dreadfully afraid that I was somehow being found wanting again.

Friendship had bonded me to Irene—that, and the notion that I was of some use to her. Now I had a rival even in that role, a red-haired broomstick of an actress who cast her sinuous coils around admirers like one of the gigantic parlor snakes she kept in her exotic rooms on Boulevard Pereire.

I mentioned none of these fears to Irene or Godfrey. Spinsters grow used to feeling redundant, I suspect, and to saying nothing.

Yet I hoped that Irene’s infatuation with Sarah Bernhardt would fade. They were too much alike; Madame Sarah’s erratic flame would ever vie with Irene’s steadier radiance.

“You have been quite as confined to quarters of late as Casanova,” Irene observed one morning as we lingered over breakfast. Godfrey had left for the day.

“There’s not much occasion for an outing in Neuilly,” said I.

“But there is all Paris!” Irene’s sweeping gesture threatened to overturn her teacup, filled with vile black coffee in the American fashion. Now that she had means, I had discovered that small cigars and cigarettes were not Irene’s only vice.

“Paris is a day’s expedition, and I do not care to risk myself or my French in such a frenetic capital.”

“Then we shall bring Casanova as translator.” Irene rose to feed that devouring beak the last of her croissant.

“Gracious, no! Should a Frenchwoman overhear his vile doggerel—”

“She would recite it along with the bird. Paris is not the bland, boiled-shirtfront city that London is. Paris is fresh, inventive, sophisticated—”

“Dissolute,” I finished.

“Daring,” Irene said in reproof. Her eyes sparkled a challenge. “Where would
you
like to go in Paris? Name a destination and it is yours.”

“Not Montmartre.”

“Of course not. Much too... Bohemian.”

“Indeed. Nor the Boulevard, not even in broad daylight.”

“Naturally not. Much too... Baudelaire-ian.”

“And I have seen Notre Dame—”

“Much too... Romanish.”

“You know what I would really like to see, Irene?”

“What is left?” she murmured to the odious bird, blowing a kiss at its huge yellow beak.

“Pretty bird, pretty bird,” the creature squawked.

“Bel oiseau, bel oiseau,
” Irene crooned until the parrot cocked its head and repeated the French phrase with irritating success.

“I should like to stroll the Left Bank,” I said, exposing a secret wish.

“The Left Bank! But, Nell, that is more Bohemian than Montmartre and the Boulevard put together.”

“I’ve heard that booksellers set up shop on the riverbank near Notre Dame. I should very much like to look for antique volumes there.”

“Bibles, no doubt.”

“I do know that
bibliotheque
is the French word for ‘library’. I wish to peruse this street-side library.”

“Bibelot
is the French for ‘bauble’; perhaps we can finish with a stroll down the Rue de la Paix.”

“Done!” said I, who had not expected to spend a dry two hours amongst musty volumes without trading Irene a jaunt into the glittering storefronts of the milliners and jewelers.

So we set out.

Autumn was a distant thought on the horizon that August day. Paris lay tranquil under robin’s-egg blue skies, most of its denizens having gone to the country on holiday. The Seine reflected Notre Dame’s famous towers in a wriggling fashion that resembled the work of those demented Impressionist paint hurlers.

We ambled along the Left Bank, visiting dried-up antiquarians who sold pieces of the past volume by volume. Their customers seemed universally attired in long coats, misshapen hats and too-short pants. Despite the unsavory company, I plunged into the bookstalls. My eager fingers (far cleaner than those of my fellow bibliophiles) soon were dusted with gilt from rich old pages. I quite felt a child again, exploring treasure boxes in the Shropshire parsonage lumber room.

Irene trailed me, playing the indulgent nanny and stopping now and again to skim some elderly theatrical memoir. I was quite aware that this outing was intended to humor me. After deep immersion in a Douay Bible—much too Romanish indeed; “blessed are the meek” had been rendered as “blessed are the debonair”—I turned to tell Irene that she was free to scamper directly over to the Avenue Filthy Lucre.

But Irene no longer followed me.

I turned again, feeling a mild thrill of panic. How would I ask these shriveled book vendors, whose French was no doubt whistled through toothless gums, where my companion had gone?

“Oh, dear,” I said, comforted by the sound of an English voice, even my own.

I looked up and down the avenue. Below the wall, on the walkway edging the river itself, the odd stroller was visible, but none wore a red felt bonnet with an upstanding crimson ostrich plume.

Oh! how would I describe Irene’s garb in my crippled French? I was lost beyond
chapeau. La plume de ma tante
did not seem to suffice for an ostrich feather.

I had removed my gloves before examining the dusty volumes, for I hadn’t wished to dirty the white kid. Now my bare hands flew to my face, where icy fingers chilled my fevered cheeks. I turned again, ready to screech Irene’s name publicly, like a fishmonger, if need be.

At last!—the very bonnet, bobbing along down by the river. I hastened to find stairs leading below.

Irene stood on a stone embankment by the gentle, lapping Seine.

“Irene!” I called from above.

She turned with an expression of intense distraction, even satisfaction. I had not seen her so vibrant recently, save in Godfrey’s company.

“Come down, Nell!” she commanded joyfully. “Watch your step! They’ve found something in the water.”

I paused in my instant obedience. “A dead fish, likely.”

Irene was craning her neck like a cockney gawker. “Oh, it looks a great deal bigger than that. Do hurry, Nell! I think it’s a body. I don’t want to miss it.”

“Irene, come back! Irene... Well, you shall certainly not approach those rude men unchaperoned.”

Once I had committed to the stairs, my feet stuttered down the risers, rushing me as if eager toward a knot of rough-looking men crowding the embankment.

Nearer the water, the picturesque river’s native stench reared its noxious head. I took one great breath and determined to inhale through my mouth thereafter. This resolve lent my voice the accents of an adenoidal child.