The Memoirs of Irene Adler: The Irene Adler Trilogy (24 page)

She had been interested in the act of suicide from an early age. Her interest in theology had made her aware of the many philosophical questions facing humanity, but with her optimistic outlook on life, she had never really considered it as a solution to life’s crises. Until now, that is. Whilst Saul and Sampson had recourse to self-immolation and this was not seen as sinful, St Augustine stated that it went against the “Thou shalt not kill” commandment. Thomas Aquinas shared this view, calling it unpardonable. For a while, her opinion was finely balanced. She would make another attempt to get herself on an even keel first, before making up her mind. She had already started considering the means of achieving her end.

‘But it’s too gruesome, so let’s not talk about it.’

Against all odds, some dear soul in Bethnal Green forwarded her letter to the
Alhambra
, and it finally got to me. I replied immediately, care of Maggie Hardy as directed. Of course I’ll find a way to visit you, I rashly promised, knowing that there was an interdiction on visits.

I posed the conundrum to the
Club
, and it was again Bartola who found the solution. The following Monday, a hansom cab arrived at the secure gate of the Asylum in Chiswick and demanded entry.

‘Dr Herman Von Ernst from Vienna and Nurse Adelheid Freud to visit Lady Mordaunt,’ Vissarionovich said in an unconvincing German accent, but it passed muster nonetheless, and we were allowed in. Matron came to greet us, and seemed delighted when the faux Viennese
savant
kissed her hands. He explained that Lord Mordaunt was worried about his wife, and had arranged for us to come all the way from Vienna to see her. Matron, overwhelmed by the foreigner’s charm, did not even wonder why his Lordship had not informed her about it. She said that she was indeed worried about her charge and that our visit was very timely as she had never seen her so depressed since she arrived in Chiswick.

The moment we were closeted in Harriet’s room she cried and laughed at the same time. We hugged and kissed and jumped in the air like real demented folks in an asylum.

We asked Matron for permission to walk with her in the garden and we expounded our plan to her. As we were leaving Matron came to say good-bye and promised to write to both Lord Mordaunt and Sir Thomas about our visit.

‘Matron,’ Vissarionovich said holding her hand in his for longer than may have been deemed proper, ‘with your heavy schedule, spare yourself that trouble. I will write a long report myself to Lord Mordaunt, copied to Sir Thomas and to your good self. I’ll never forgive myself if I let you use your valuable time in that superfluous task. Your mission is too important. Promise me you won’t.’ The good woman giggled happily and duly promised.

‘We have made some progress,’ the Viennese specialist explained, but we need to come for a second visit.’ Matron was delighted. ‘Please do,
Herr Doktor
Von Ernst, we will be expecting you,
guden arbend, bitter shun
...’ she cackled merrily.

‘Absolutely, ma’am we could do with a bit of sun,’ said my Russian companion who had very little German, but this had Matron in hysterics as she spluttered. ‘What marvellous sense of humour you Germans have. Bit of sun indeed.’

Naturally we were warmly received when we returned three days later. We had thought that even if Matron had not kept her promise, three days would not have been enough for her to have discovered our little fraud. This time, the
Herr
Doktor said that we would take Harriet for a short visit to the outside world. He took full responsibility for this. Matron laughed.

‘Whose hands could be called safer than yours,
Herr
Doktor?’

We had arranged a big welcome for Harriet in Water Lane, where all the members of the
Club
had assembled, to celebrate her rescue in style. We had previously discussed the arrangements with our kidnappee and she had been very keen on it. She was to stay in Water Lane and not move out except after watertight measures ensuring her safety had been taken.

For three weeks we did not allow her to venture outside, not even after dark. As we had expected, the moment they were apprised of the disappearance, Sir Thomas and Lord Mordaunt joined forces in an attempt to locate her. We heard that the police had questioned the staff at the Asylum at great lengths, to no avail.

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock Holmes was drafted in on the act. By a happy coincidence I had gone to the Alhambra to talk to PQR about a part and was next door when I heard Joe come into his office, separated by the thinnest of walls from where I was waiting, to announce Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. I stealthily twitched the curtain to see the great man. He was exactly as I had seen him at Baker’s Gallery when we had stolen the Millais painting. I daresay he was even wearing the same suit. Dr Watson looked lugubrious with his half-closed eyes firmly directed towards his shoes, but when he raised his head and opened them, you saw that they sparkled with kindness and good humour. Once they were closeted with the theatre director, I approached my ears and listened. It appears that Sir Thomas had come down to London and visited Holmes in Baker Street. He had entrusted him with the task of locating his wayward daughter and taking her back to Chiswick. ‘I don’t need to tell you that I suspect that she has been kidnapped by some foreign gangs and won’t be surprised to get a ransom demand soon,’ Sir Thomas seemed to have told Holmes. At first Paul Quentin truthfully said that he had no
recollection of the Scottish noblewoman, since he knew her as Thelma, and Holmes had to explain it to him.

‘I am of course quite determined to find the errant lady,’ Holmes told PQR. ‘If you have any intelligence of her whereabouts, I shall be grateful to hear it.’

As the two men left, I overheard Holmes tell Watson, ‘Matron talked of a Viennese doctor and his nurse. I’ll tell you this, Watson, if I have no idea who the chap is, but I am willing to give you long odds against the so-called Miss Freud not being this new thorn in my flesh, Miss Irene Adler.’

He and Watson took to going to the grand opening of shows, vaudevilles and plays in the West End. Harriet did not detest living in what might have become near prison conditions.

‘Irene,’ she told me one morning, ‘you remember that I refused to play “Clara de Foenix” because the part had been given to you first?’ Of course I did.

‘You must know what value I attach to friendship.’

‘My dear Harriet, I have always been aware of this.’

‘I’d do it again of course, I am fiercely loyal.’

‘I know that, Harriet, my dear,’ I replied, wondering why she felt it was necessary to remind me of this.

‘There is one thing. Don’t ask me to deprive myself of the favours of Coleridge.’ I immediately assured her that Cole and I were a thing of the past, and in any case, should a spark rekindle the dying embers, I wouldn’t mind sharing, would
she
? She grabbed me by the waist and gave me a hug. ‘Of course not, people don’t belong to each other.’ There is no real cure for Harriet’s condition. She told me about all the strategies that she had had recourse to. Meditation, starvation, prayers, cold baths, lengthy stretches on cold marble, self-flagellation, camphor pills, vegetarianism, bread, salt and water for a whole week, all to no avail. The
Club
members, including the Bishop volunteered to share her bed, and Harriet never had cause for complaint. She was clearly not going to spend the rest of her life cooped up in Water Lane. Little by little, we began venturing out, at first after dark, when we would take a brisk walk on Clapham Common. We progressed to late afternoon walks in the streets, visiting the new Penny Bazar which had recently opened in
Brixton, Harriet wrapped in a big shawl and wearing an ungainly hat—which she still wore with great panache.

We knew that the day would come when she would declare an ambition to do something more daring, such as attending a grand première in the West End. With my inability to find any challenge too daunting, I set about finding a plan when she mentioned that she “needed” to go to the revival of
The Pirates of Penzance
at the Savoy. Clearly she was finding her favourite pastime of being closeted in her own bedroom with the man who had caught her fancy that week too dull. Yes, dear Harriet, we all said, we’ll arrange it for you. Traverson, with his artistic flair, and I with my theatrical training, spent a whole afternoon applying make-up and lines on her face, transforming her into an Italian noblewoman. We booked a box and four of us joined her at that invigorating operetta, with much enjoyment and no hitch.

It was this disguise which gave us our most daring idea. An afternoon’s work had been enough to change her appearance, albeit in conditions where no one was going to be scrutinising her face to face. To all challenges, a solution exists. Once again, it was Bartola who brought us the catalyst we wanted. Shortly after we had discussed the problem, she rushed in one day brandishing a copy of
The Illustrated London News
. Without greeting us let alone giving us the hug which had become a tradition with the
Club
, she exclaimed, ‘I have found the solution!’ She opened the magazine even before sitting herself down.

Sir Mortimer Starfry, the Egyptologist, who had recently returned from his excavation in Esna near Luxor revealed that he had discovered new hieroglyphics which clearly proved that Egyptian surgeons of antiquity had not only carried out trepanation, but had pioneered and performed operations whose purport was to change the appearance of one of the less comely of the Pharaoh’s daughter. This young lady, identified by Starfry as Neferpatra, had been born with a squint and too small a mouth. It was the practice in those days, quoth
The News
, to let the afflicted child die, sometimes with a little chemical assistance from the court physician. However, Pharaoh Ramses had become surprisingly enamoured of the newborn the moment he caught sight of her. He threatened instant execution of anybody who treated little Neferpatra with anything
less than adoration. Immediately his trusted physician Sinuhe the Elder approached him and offered to treat the little baby. Ramses had warned the doctor. ‘Go ahead, but you know how I shall deal with you if you fail?’ Sinuhe had smiled, and said that he feared nothing. Sir Mortimer had explained the technique by drawings based on the hieroglyphics.

‘And oo are we to approach to carry out this impossible
intervention
?’ asked Armande. ‘I suppose this Sinuhe fello is long dead,
non
?
’
Artémise quietly turned his head to look at her in the eyes.

‘
Moi
!’

‘
Mais
Artémise, you are complitly
dérangé
.’

‘
Ma chère
Armande, did I never tell you that I did three years’ medical studies at
La Salpétrière
before, to my poor father’s despair,
Minerve
defeated
Asclepius
in an epic battle for my soul.’

‘This is a French way of saying that he abandoned medicine for art,’ the Bishop kindly explained.

We discussed changes and it was again Artémise who suggested that nothing changed a woman’s appearance more than the eyes. He saw clearly how to turn the fairly circular eyes of the subject into crystalline almonds. After studying her face from all angles, he declared that he would begin with her mouth. The artist explained that with the right dose of ether he would be able to carry out a near painless operation, consisting of just two minor cuts at the commissures of her lips to widen the mouth. Next, two needle holes at the extremity of each eye through which a thread would be introduced and then tied, after which Harriet would have eyes of the
amandula forma
. We naturally feared that Harriet might not be willing to submit to the ordeal, for clearly even with the ether, the cuts would still entail excruciating pain. We had clearly counted without her fascination with self-flagellating saints.

‘But that’s the best news I’ve ever heard!’ she exclaimed.

‘?’

‘?’

.

.

.

‘?’

‘How many times have I told you about my cold baths, my kneeling on sand, my hours spent on a cold marble floor...’ And she made a long list of those things. ‘I love pain!’ she exclaimed finally.

‘I promise you won’t feel a thing,’ Artémise whispered.

‘Now you’re spoiling it,’ Harriet said with that moue of hers which has begun to make me doubt my assertion that I have no Sapphic tendencies whatsoever.

The operation was a complete success and in a week all her scars had healed. The poor dear, who had lost a lot of her éclat in the last few months due to the uncertainties facing her, was successfully reclaiming her erstwhile luminosity.

We also got to hear of this woman who claimed to use a formula for dying hair black which was created by Galen in the first century. We got in touch with her, and when she had finished with Harriet, she looked like a Romany belle, which made us choose the Jewish name she now uses. I will of course not reveal it here for fear of compromising her anonymity.

We suspected that even her lynx-eyed sister Clarissa would not have known her if their paths crossed. Still we were not in a hurry to release her into the unforgiving world. We began venturing out more often, but her umbilical cord was moored to Water Lane.

After six months, we gathered that no one was interested in her any more. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson had stopped going to the theatre. To the Moncreiffes she was a burden and her disappearance was no doubt mourned but soon forgotten, with gratitude rather than chest beating. Her change of appearance had done nothing to alter the stunning effect she produced on all who met her.

We submitted her to the PQR test. Together we made our way to the Alhambra one fine day, and asked for an audience. Good manners not being his
forte
, he ignored me completely and stared at Harriet like a lovelorn teenager, stunned, but failing to recognise her.

‘Most certainly we always have a part for a young woman of your obvious talent. It’s only a formality but I’ll need to see you in action first.’ I knew what he meant, but kept quiet.