Femme Fatale (2 page)

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Don Hobbs and Jim Webb, devoted Texas Sherlockians, for their assistance with matters of the Canon, especially to Don in the area of early editions of the Doyle works, and to Jim for his efforts in helping the Irene Adler series find a wider international audience.

I would give a great deal to know what inevitable stages of
incident produced the likes of Irene Adler. Show me a
method of forming more women so, and I would show more
interest in women.

—SHERLOCK HOLMES,
GOOD NIGHT, MR. HOLMES
,
CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS

Cast of Continuing Characters

Irene Adler Norton
: an American abroad who outwitted the King of Bohemia and Sherlock Holmes in the Conan Doyle story, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” reintroduced as the diva-turned-detective protagonist of her own adventures in the novel,
Good Night, Mr. Holmes

Sherlock Holmes
: the London consulting detective building a global reputation for feats of deduction

John H. Watson, M.D
.: British medical man and Sherlock Holmes’s sometime roommate and frequent companion in crime-solving

Godfrey Norton
: the British barrister who married Irene just before they escaped to Paris to elude Holmes and the King

Penelope “Nell” Huxleigh
: the orphaned British parson’s daughter Irene rescued from poverty in London in 1881; a former governess and “typewriter girl” who lived with Irene and worked for Godfrey before the two met and married, and who now resides with them in Paris

Quentin Stanhope
: the uncle of Nell’s former charges when she was a London governess; now a British agent in eastern Europe and the Mideast; he reappeared in
A Soul of Steel (formerly Irene at Large)

Nellie Bly, a.k.a. Pink
: the journalistic pseudonym and family nickname of Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, involved in the Continental pursuit of Jack the Ripper in
Chapel Noir
and
Castle Rouge
; a young woman with a nose for the sensational and her own agenda

Oscar Wilde
: friend of Irene Adler; a wit and man of fashion about London. He had not yet written any of his classic plays, but his very successful lecture tour of America in the early 1880s included the Wild West

Bram Stoker
: theatrical manager of London’s finest actor, Henry Irving, and burgeoning writer, who would pen the classic
Dracula
; Irene’s ally in the hunt for Jack the Ripper in
Chapel Noir
and
Castle Rouge

Prelude: The Dead Departed

I almost think we’re all of us Ghosts. . . . It’s not only what we
have inherited from our father and mother that “walks” in us
.

—MRS. ALVING,
GHOSTS
, ACT II, 1881,
HENRIK IBSEN

F
ROM
N
ELLIE
B
LY’S
J
OURNAL

This room is darker than a tomb . . .

. . . although I must admit that I have only been in a tomb once and hope I won’t be in another one until I’m beyond noticing it.

I haven’t, however, attended a séance before.

Anyway, the darkness makes it blasted inconvenient for taking notes, but I guess that when one is awaiting an appearance by the dead departed a little irritation is small price to pay.

I, of course, no more expect to see or hear the dead tonight than I’d expect P. T. Barnum to resurrect and turn tent preacher and start performing baptisms in the East River.

But that’s my job: to put myself into situations I don’t much like and then tell everyone about it. That’s why I’m more widely known by a name I wasn’t born with: Nellie Bly. Now I have
brought the name of Nellie Bly from the
Pittsburg Dispatch
and women’s interest news to the
New York Herald
. Not even feigning madness in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum was story enough to earn me respect in Pittsburg, but the sky is the limit in New York, for the new twelve-story buildings going up on Fifth Avenue and for me.

I figure I can take pretty good notes even in the dark, being used to doing it daily. A daredevil reporter lives by her ability to discreetly record what others are doing. That’s why my notepad and a pencil are clapped between my knees in a sheltering hammock of skirt.

It is not a posture recommended for ladies, but then who will see me in this gloom?

A woman’s low voice suggests that I join hands with my neighbors. This I had expected. Part of the reason is, I suspect, to prove that none of us are the medium’s henchmen. Yet it would only take two henchmen (or one of those shopkeeper’s wooden display hands covered in a glove) to put the lie to our presumed linkage.

My neighbors, though I can’t see them any longer, are decent sorts. One is my mother.

The ladies have kept their gloves on, either for better deception or simply to avoid pressing flesh with anyone who might be unsavory, or, simply, a stranger.

A small tingle works its way from my foot to my shoulder. It could be a cramp . . . or spirit fingers, perhaps?

At the least I expect phenomena. At the most, I anticipate some ghostly voice from the past. Or perhaps suspended musical instruments that play “De Camptown Races.” Doo-dah.

Really, mediums should be frank about their trade, sell tickets, and then tell the paying public all their tricks at the end as part of the show.

I do not much believe in the dead returning, anywhere at any time, mainly because I am not much eager to meet my dead again . . . unless it were the judge. No, he is too wise to come back
for a return engagement, especially after all that was done with his estate. One would think a judge could protect himself better from the grasping fingers of his nearest and dearest.