Femme Fatale (21 page)

But eating cake was not a pleasant thought when it came fast behind memories of blood-spattered cellar walls in Paris.

At least these walls were papered, and the only likely looking “blood” was the dye in the crimson cabbage rose.

Finally Mr. Holmes turned his attention to the bay window and the velvet draperies that sequestered it from the room.

Here he paused to eye me where I stood as patiently as any soldier at his post. “I see that you were making merry with the draperies. I presume that was during a visit after the mischief had been done at the séance.”

The easy blush that had given me the childhood nickname of “Pink” suffused my face with heat. “Irene wanted me to examine the rods from a chair. I lost my balance and fell. How did you know that?”

“The scuff marks on the planks and wrinkles in the velvet are unmistakable.”

“Proof that the draperies fell down recently, yes. But how did you guess that I was involved?”

“I never guess, Miss Pink; I deduce. Remember that Miss Huxleigh recorded the footprint you had left in the murder room in Paris? Another of that size leaves a perfect impression on the edge of the carpet, there. No doubt that is the last step you took, all your weight on that one foot and the drapery fabric, before the rod slipped its anchor. The rings pulled off and you fell forward into the material, which was heavy and plentiful enough to cushion your tumble. Miss Huxleigh and Madam Irene came to your rescue and you all three reinstated the draperies, but in your haste missed securing one ring on the restored rod.” He held up the loose ring he had found. Wouldn’t you know it was a brass one?!

I sighed heavily, not much impressed by his mastery of a simple household accident that had no bearing on the crime.

His pale eyes narrowed at the now subdued draperies. “A pity
you were so clumsy. That set of curtains is the key to the entire séance and, indeed, the murder, and you managed to blur the evidence as effectively as any murderer could wish.”

“All I have imported from across the Atlantic so far is criticism.”

His dark brows lifted. “That is not criticism, that is fact. I deal in facts. Among them here are these: the fabrics in the room are heavy and thick, as ideal to take impressions as soft sand. When you waltzed with the falling curtains you were also waltzing with a ghost: the former presence of the man who murdered Madam Sophie.”

“It was a man, then?”

“A tall man, something over six feet, with either a deformity or arthritis in at least his left hand, that was not severe enough to prevent a swift garoting. He moved so quietly in the dark because both his shoes were muffled in a sort of flannel mitten, and he wore loose clothing all in black, also a sort of flannel, for I have found the tiny pills such fabric sheds. They litter the carpet, planks and especially the velvet curtains, whose nap traps threads and other bits of lint, as soft Brie does caviar.”

“He was dressed to murder unseen!”

“He was expressly and expertly dressed to deceive, and could have been the medium’s accomplice and had been before this, or he would not have been so dressed. As for murder, I can’t yet say what turned him to killing his partner in bogus spiritualism, although it’s possible someone else substituted for him.” He stopped regarding the curtains and frowned at the tiny notebook and pencil I had removed from my coat pocket, on which I was recording as many details as I could remember.

“Have you always taken notes so assiduously?

“Of course.”

“Have you always worn such checked coats?”

“Well, no. This is new.”

“Then so is your uncanny imitation of Miss Huxleigh. I had no idea you admired her so much.”

“I don’t! She is a perfect pickle of an Englishwoman and I am nothing like her.”

At this he smiled slightly. “Of course not. The admirable Miss Huxleigh is an utter original. I would almost call her Bohemian, but that would offend her belief in her complete conformity to the world’s opinion.”

“I thought it was Irene you admired.”

“You must realize that I have neither the time nor inclination for the art of admiring women.”

“If you are going to waste an instant on such a pursuit, you should know that Nell, despite a few stabs at playing a useful role in life, is not a modern woman.”

“Fortunately so! What is most interesting about her is that she little knows her own self. She is so stout-hearted precisely because she fears so much.” He chuckled, actually chuckled, although it was an almost mechanical sound. “I shall never forget her rather touching attempts to flirt with me in one of my less prepossessing disguises once in order to save her friends. It is something Watson would have done, had he been born a woman. Loyalty”—and here he regarded me as severely as a schoolmaster—“is the most sublime of the virtues.”

“I am loyal, first and foremost, to my readers.”

“
Hmmm
. It is interesting that they are the most distant individuals from yourself.” His glance released me as he examined the curtains again.

“How did you discern the size and condition of the man who stood behind these panels?” I asked.

“By the size of the shapeless footprints. And there is a hand print high on the drapery. The impression was deep and the fingers appear crooked, as if he clutched the cloth in a death-grip. He was nervous, very nervous for a veteran of séance manipulations, if indeed he was, so I assume that he knew from the first that murder would result.”

“How do you know that he was nervous?”

He smiled again, to himself. “Velvet records the emotions of those who wear or touch it. Dampness in the fingers or palms impresses a perfect image on the nap. I learned that trick from a reluctant colleague once, or perhaps I should say a dedicated competitor.”

“I thought you had no equal.”

“No equal, but would-be rivals: the police, for instance, who resent their professionalism being outdone by a mere amateur.” He shook his head at the scene before us. “If I were to go to the New York police and seek their suggestions on this case, which I would never do, they would no doubt regale me with Bertillon measurements of known stranglers, utterly unaware that this strangler was an amateur himself.”

“Bertillon measurements?”

“A system invented early this decade by a Frenchman. It uses calipers and compasses to identify criminals through an enormous number of inane measurements of their physical bodies, including the skull, as if what is in the head is less lethal than its outward dimensions. Mostly nonsense, of course, except for identifying a man whose measurements are already recorded, and even then offers much possibility for error. Since the system is amazingly time-consuming and cumbersome, it has become the darling of police forces the world over.”

“I have never heard of such a technique.”

“And I hope that few will ever hear more of it in future. Now, could we but make every criminal nervous and arrange an encounter with velvet in every case, we would have an excellent scientific means to match murderers to crime scenes, as I have noticed that the minute whorls on the fingertip offer amazing variety. I believe some attempts have been made in India and Japan to systematize the phenomenon, and I intend to experiment once I am back in Baker Street with my equipment at my own fingertips.

“For now”—he eyed the curtains again—“the best course is to
investigate the shady theatrical world that supports these shoddy illusions that pass as everything from bald entertainment to something so elevated as spiritual solace by communing with the dead.”

I shuddered a little. Perhaps by being stranded on the threshold I was subject to drafts. Perhaps dead spirits really did linger on this scene of mysticism and murder.

“If one really could conjure the dead,” I ventured, “I imagine that your cases would provide a virtual chorus of corpses.”

“The dead never frighten me, Miss Cochrane. It is what the living have done and may yet do that does.”

Englishmen! Cold fish, all of them, this one particularly so. Still, now I knew that I sought a tall and lithe, yet stiffening shadow, a mature man who perhaps once had performed until arthritis had disabled him, and then had turned his talents to polite fraud, and now had killed his employer. Was this for some reason he alone knew, or for another, larger purpose that encompassed more deaths?

Whatever his story, or purpose, I sensed that the nub of it, the center, the untold history, involved the child performer who had grown up to be Irene Adler Norton.

Phineas T. Barnum and his ilk would have the public believe that his freakish featured acts—the conjoined Siamese twins, the sword swallowers, the dwarves—were suitable objects of wonder and entertainment. It struck me that such shows pandered to the worst instincts of both performer and audience, that parading disability as entertainment diminished the humanity of each, and that the attraction of the rope dancer or the fire eater—even of the water-breathing mermaid—was the ever-present possibility of violent death.

And where there was possibility, there surely would someday be consummation.

15.

Smoking Ruin

The vulgar gape and stare, and are fully prepossessed that the
fair heroine is by nature gifted with this extraordinary
repellent to fire. Several of this salamander tribe . . . may now
be seen traveling from town to town
.

—R. S. KIRBY,
WONDERFUL AND ECCENTRIC MUSEUM OR MAGAZINE
OF MEMORABLE CHARACTERS

I had never sat in the audience at a common entertainment before.

The New Fourteenth Street Theater felt more like a hall than a theater. Obviously the performers had booked it for themselves. Just as obviously, the performers and their agents would pocket most of the profits.

Anyone could rent a hall in these days, advertise it, and sell tickets. Not everyone would attend, but quite a few had come forth for the performance of the sole Salamander sister. Oh, that did sound rather fishy!

The bottoms of my boots scraped across—I bent over to look, amazed—peanut shells. Indeed, folk all around me were either cracking their knuckles or breaking the backs of the humble
peanut, one after another. Neither activity was exemplar of polite public behavior.

But then the playbill displayed in front of the theater was hardly polite either. I had never seen such an assemblage of elaborate capital letters and exclamation points in my life!

And all this large type, following rows of fine type, was interspersed with small illustrations of very bizarre (and tiny) people doing the oddest things with the strangest mechanisms.

Around us thronged scores of people seeking entry to this shabby array of oddities.

Irene led the way and soon we were slipping into whatever free seats we could. . . . Actually, Irene had led us far closer to the stage than I would have chosen.

Beside me, Irene was as nervous as if she herself were slated to perform, but the program allowed for no such elevated artistes as opera singers.

There was Maharajah Sing-a-poor and his flying Persian carpet direct from Ali Baba’s cave. . . .

Little Dulcie and her performing pig-poodles . . .

Oh, and Salamandra the Fire-Queen, who appeared to be a solid woman in flowing robes surrounded by an aura of living flames . . .

Next to me in the audience, on the side Irene did not defend, sat a strange gentleman. Actually, he was no gentleman, for he wore a derby hat that he apparently felt no need to doff, indoors or in feminine company.

His elbows on the seat armrests nudged mine with ignorant rudeness . . . unless he was one of those pickpockets Irene had showed me on the omnibus in London years ago, who wore a false set of arms so his larcenous fingers could be at work behind them.

I leaned away as far as I could to avoid the odious and possibly thieving contact, but Irene on my other side nudged me back.

I pulled my elbows tight to my whalebone corset sides and thought of England.