Who Thinks Evil: A Professor Moriarty Novel (Professor Moriarty Novels) (23 page)

“The speed of the response was enough to tell me something extraordinary was afoot. My brother is noted for his quickness of mind, but not for his fleetness of foot, and somebody had to do a bit of rushing about to get the reply out that rapidly. Not to mention quite a bit of prodding of the telegraph company.”

“I would think so,” Barnett agreed, having had some experience with the overseas cable office.

“As for the cable itself—” Holmes took the form from his pocket and thrust it at Barnett. “Extraordinary.”

Barnett read:

SEE BENJAMIN BARNETT STAYING AT HOTEL PEPIN LE BREF HE WILL EXPLAIN DO WHAT IS REQUIRED WELCOME BACK MYCROFT

“Extraordinary,” Barnett agreed.

“At first I thought it might be some scheme of Moriarty’s, so I cabled Mycroft, ‘What was the name of our dog?’ He replied—within the hour, mind you: ‘What dog don’t be asinine.’ So I knew it was truly from Mycroft.”

“Someone might have guessed that you didn’t have a dog,” Barnett suggested, just to be troublesome.

“True,” Holmes admitted. “It was the ‘don’t be asinine’ that convinced me.”

“Ah!” Barnett said.

“So I eagerly await your explanation,” Holmes said. “Have you, perchance, left the service of Professor Moriarty, who I assume is still safely in durance vile?”

Barnett opened his mouth and then closed it again. Holmes had been told to ask him something—but Barnett didn’t know just how much of the story he could, or should, tell the eager consulting detective. “I think—” he began.

“Monsieur Barneet—Monsieur Barneet—” The chubby concierge came plumping across the lobby waving a sheet of paper like a signal flag in front of him.

“Yes?”

“This gentleman wishes to see you,” the concierge said, coming to a stop and pointing a finger at Holmes.

“Really?”

“Indeed. And”—he offered the sheet of paper—“this cable has come for you.”

“Ah!” Barnett said. “I thank you.”

“It is of nothing.” The man nodded and returned to his station behind the front desk.

The telegram was brief:

MY BROTHER SHERLOCK IN PARIS WILL CALL ON YOU TELL HIM ALL MYCROFT

Well. That simplified things.

Holmes jumped to his feet and pulled at Barnett’s sleeve. “It seems that you must have quite a tale to unfold,” he said. “Come, let us go in search of breakfast, and you can tell me everything over a couple of croissants and some potted
confiture de fraises.
And a coffee or two, of course. Or do you prefer tea? No—surely coffee.”

Barnett laughed and followed Holmes out of the hotel lobby. “Is that one of your famous deductions?” he asked.

“Famous deductions? Really?” Holmes looked bemused for a moment and then responded, “No. Merely that you are a Yankee. I, myself, have a preference for coffee, as it happens. I find it stimulates the mind.”

They found seats outside a café that called itself Les Deux Puces and had tables stretching for yards along the street on both sides of a small black door. The croissants were warm and fresh, and the crocks of sweet butter and assorted jams were naive and unprepossessing but held hidden pleasures.

The story of the murders and Moriarty’s involvement took a while to tell, and Barnett was on his third cup of café au lait by the time he was done. Holmes let him run through the narrative once without comment and then went slowly back over the details to clarify what could be clarified and to get the whole story fixed in his mind.

“Hmmm,” Holmes said. “‘Feet, feet,’ eh? Small porridge on which to base a meal, I would say.”

“You disagree?” Barnett asked sharply, loyally unprepared to have anyone challenge the professor’s conclusions.

“No, no. I quite agree. French they are and therefore France it is. And a tremor anywhere in France is felt somewhere in Paris.”

“Exactly what the professor thought,” Barnett said.

Holmes frowned at that, but then looked up and tapped on the table with his forefinger. “So your little friend Tolliver is off scouting the underworld? He has, so I am given to understand, quite an extensive knowledge of the underworld.”

“So he claims,” Barnett agreed. “It is certainly true in London.”

“Ah!” Holmes commented. “Not surprising. After all, he is in the employ of Professor Moriarty.”

Barnett stared at him steadily for a moment and then said, “You also, I believe, have an extensive knowledge of the London underworld.”

Holmes leaned back and smiled. “A touch, Mr. Barnett,” he said. “A distinct touch.”

They were both silent for perhaps a minute, and then Barnett said, “Well, Mr. Holmes, what do you propose we do?”

“What were you planning to do before I arrived?” Holmes asked.

“I had some nebulous notion of approaching the, ah, ladies of the demimonde hereabouts and asking whether they or any of their friends—”

“Had been murdered and artfully dissected by a homicidal killer?” Holmes finished. “It won’t do, you know.”

“When you put it that way,” Barnett said, “I’m forced to agree. So, I repeat, what do you propose we do?”

Holmes laced his fingers together under his chin and twaddled them restlessly, staring off into space. “I know,” he said finally, “of one person who may be able to help us. If she’ll talk to us on this subject at all.”

“Who might that be?” Barnett inquired.

“She is known as
l’abbesse grise,
” Holmes told him. “Perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

“The gray abbess?” Barnett shook his head. “Never. Surely I would have remembered even a mention of anyone with such a title.”

“Ah, well,” Holmes said. “She is someone whom the streetwalkers of Paris turn to when they’re in trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“With the
flics,
with their clients, or money, or losing their domicile, or”—he waved a hand in the air—“whatever. She prefers to work in the shadows, but an occasional mention of her does surface in the mundane world. Which is how I happened to hear of her. I met her about two years ago, in relation to a case involving a rather highly placed Englishman who found himself in a spot of trouble. Curiously it transpired that I had met the lady before she took holy orders and I’ve had occasion to see her several times since.”

“So she is really an abbess?” Barnett asked.

“Indeed so. She is Sister Superior of the Paris chapter of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mary Magdala, an order of the Moldavian branch of the Catholic Church. One that the Church proper does not recognize, as far as I can tell. Although things occasionally get a bit murky when it comes to what the Catholic Church does or does not recognize.”

“Sister Superior?”

“For some reason she dislikes the title ‘Mother Superior’ and refuses to use it. She works from a small building on rue Montrose that I believe used to be what we would call a ‘gin mill.’ I’m not sure of the French equivalent.”

“I’m sure they have a word for it,” Barnett said.

“They have a word for everything,” Holmes agreed.

“From this former gin mill,” Barnett speculated, “she guides young ladies of the street away from their paths of sin? Teaches them knitting and good works?”

“Quite the contrary,” said Holmes. “She makes no attempt to turn the young ladies away from their chosen vocation. Although if any of them wish to take up some other form of gainful employment, she is ready to help. She dispenses helpful advice when asked and material and financial assistance when needed, although where she gets the money from is a question, since she doesn’t solicit funds for her good works in any way that I have been able to discern. Most of the nuns of her order are former women of the streets.”

“You’ve investigated her?” Barnett asked.

“I was curious. As I say, I had known her before.”

“Well. Shall we go visit her?”

“Finish your coffee and I’ll get us a fiacre.”

The vehicle that responded to Holmes’s hail was an aging one-horse, two-passenger fiacre with a collapsible top. They settled into the lumpy seat cushions, and Holmes gave the
cocher
directions.

As they rounded the corner at the rue la Fayette, the top of the great tower of M. Eiffel came suddenly into view in the distance, poking through the morning mist. “My God!” said Barnett. “So that’s what it looks like.”

Holmes squinted up. “It’s what the upper third of it looks like, anyway.”

“Quite a sight,” Barnett said.

“You haven’t been here since they put that thing up?” Holmes asked. “What do you think?”

“Damn! So that’s the tallest man-made structure in the world.”

Holmes nodded. “So I believe.”

“It’s awfully bare—skeletal.”

“That, I believe, was the idea.”

“Progress!” Barnett snorted. “Now, I believe, someone somewhere will find it necessary to construct something even taller.”

“Probably,” Holmes agreed.

The fiacre took another turn, and the top of the tallest man-made structure disappeared behind a hotel. Ten minutes later the
cocher
pulled his horse to a stop. “We’re two blocks away,” Holmes said. “I don’t think she’d like to have carriages pulling right up to the door.” He handed the coachman a few coins, sprang from the vehicle, and headed down the sidewalk, with Barnett a few steps behind.

The building was a grimy three-story affair that fit in well with its neighbors. Its only distinguishing feature was a sort of turret that began at the second floor and ascended past the roof, ending in a conical top with a pronounced tilt like a dunce’s cap. Holmes rapped at the door, which was opened by a short, stout middle-aged woman in a severe gray dress who glared up at him.

“Oui?”

“Je voudrais voir l’abbesse, s’il vous plaît,”
Holmes ventured.

There was a pause, and then the woman’s face contorted into what she probably meant as a smile. She was, Barnett decided, unaccustomed to smiling. “Ah!” she said. “You are ze Ainglishman who visited among us previously, is it not?”

“
Oui,
” Holmes agreed. “That was I.”

“Ze lady, she is upstairs. Come weeth me.”

L’abbesse grise
was younger than Barnett had thought she would be and—was it sacrilegious to think?—extremely pretty.
No,
Barnett corrected himself.
Comely.
It meant the same thing, but somehow it was a more decent way to put it when referring to a woman in religious orders.
Exceedingly comely.
She was dressed in gray, not in the robes of a religious order but rather in a severely cut silk jacket with puffy sleeves and a skirt that looked to his untrained eye to be in the latest fashion, or certainly not far behind.

She turned and stretched her hands out. “Sherlock,” she said. “How good to see you again.”

Sherlock?
Nobody ever called Holmes “Sherlock.” His brother, perhaps, but nobody else, and the French in particular were punctilious about correct speech, even more than correct behavior. A lot more than correct behavior, if it came to that, Barnett thought. Holmes and the
abbesse
must have developed a particularly close relationship in what must have been a very short time. Or perhaps … he decided not to take that train of thought any farther along the track.

“And is this,” the abbess asked, extending her hand to Barnett, “the elusive Dr. Watson, whom I hear so much of but never get to meet?”

Holmes chuckled. “May I present my, ah, friend, Mr. Benjamin Barnett,” he said. “Mr. Barnett, may I introduce the Princess Irene, abbess of the Paris chapter of the Holy Order of the Sisters of Mary Magdala.”

Barnett bowed slightly and shook the slender hand. “A pleasure, ma’am,” he said.

“No, the pleasure is mine,” the abbess said. “If you are a friend of Sherlock Holmes, then you are a friend of mine. But,” she added, turning to Holmes, “I hope someday to meet this mythical Dr. Watson.”

“I will bring him when next I come,” Holmes told her. “If I can convince him to leave the comforts of wife and home for long enough to embark on such a discomfiting journey.”

“He does not like to travel, then, this doctor of yours?” asked the abbess.

“Watson has traveled extensively,” Holmes said, “but I admit he doesn’t seem to be overly fond of the experience. It’s pipe and slippers and a well-done cut off the roast, with his good wife to look after him, that makes him happy these days.”

“So,” the abbess said. “What is it that brings you to visit me this day?”

“A series of mysterious murders,” Holmes told her.

Her eyes widened. “Really? What would I know of such things?”

“We can but hope,” he said. “If I may explain?”

The abbess sat herself on a delicate-looking chair by an even more delicate desk and waved the two men to sturdier wooden chairs at the side of the room. “Please begin,” she said.

“The situation is this…” Holmes briefly and concisely explained what there was to explain. The Abbess Irene followed the narrative intently and interrupted but twice to ask relevant questions. To the first Holmes turned a querying eye to Barnett, who replied, “A production of Arrigo Boito’s
Mefistofele
I understand. The victim was a singer named Mathilde van Tromphe.”

The abbess nodded. “Lyric soprano,” she said. “
Lirico-spinto,
as they call it. Impressive vocal technique. Wide range. I hope she recovers.”

To the second question Holmes again deferred to Barnett, who shook his head. “You’re right. There must be an aim—a purpose—to all of this, but what it is we do not know.”

A prolonged silence followed Holmes’s completion of the narrative while the abbess thought over what he had told her. “I may, just may, be able to help. Or at least add to your store of information. There is a girl…” She turned to her desk and took one of the new Waterman fountain pens and a sheet of paper from a drawer. Lowering her head to stare at the floor, she held the pen tentatively over the paper. She was, Barnett noted, left-handed.

After a minute she wrote a few sentences on the paper, folded it several times, and sealed it with a bit of gummed tape. “Margarete!” she called.

A young woman in a white smock and the sort of hat one associates with hospitals appeared in the doorway.