My Sherlock Holmes Part 23

I drained my gla.s.s. Found my nearly dry clothing and the small stone I kept warmed by the brick. For night journeys I slipped the hot stone in my m.u.f.f and the warmth kept my fingers nimble.

Meslay may have arranged this meeting, but I would find out the purpose of my inquiries. Or wash my hands of it, I decided. So determined was I to make sense of this covertness that joy at my upcoming audition had withered.

I noticed Meslay, not sporting his das.h.i.+ng uniform but in a drab over coat, spooning soup at a long table in the bouillon de Peres. Steamed opaque windows gave a faint glow and fairylike appearance to the seedy place Pigalle outside. Pere Angelo greeted me, offering a warm handshake and a bowl. I stood in line, with the clochards, tired ladies of the night, and the a.s.sorted hungry of Montmartre. Fragrant and hot, the onion soup with thick, runny melted cheese always coated my insides.

This time I dropped some bills in the donation can, happy to be able to thank the fathers for their help.

"Why did you go in my room?" I asked, sitting down across from Meslay.

"And a good evening to you, too, Irene," he said, sipping the table wine laced with water.

"No more cat-and-mouse, I need to understand the purpose," I said. "Or count me out."

He grinned. "What about my information?"

"Good point, I don't know what I'm looking for."

"Exactement!" he said. "But be a good girl and tell me what your contacts say. Then I can prove how essential yours skills rate to my superior."

I knew Meslay wouldn't be a good contact to alienate. And after all, he paid me. I recounted a list of the informants. "See, that's all."

"But what have you heard ... anything unusual?" He leaned forward. "No matter how small."

Time to throw in Comte Esterhazy's nonappearance. I recounted the doorman's words about the men looking for him.

His face changed. I saw his knuckles whiten on the spoon handle.

"What aren't you telling me, Irene?"

Everything around us seemed to stop. Fear rose in my throat. He knew I held back things. I remembered the man tailing me. Had Meslay had me watched ... followed?

"It's Bijou," I said, "she's in the revue at Le Chat Noir, too. This Count Esterhazy is her paramour."

An odd smile crossed his face. He glanced at our table companions: an old woman who'd nodded out and a clochard attacking his onion soup with vigor.

"Make contact with Esterhazy," he said, his voice lowered but distinct.

"How would I do that?" I asked.

"But I've hired you, haven't I?" he said. "You figure it out."

"I'm sorry, Meslay, I know you've got a job to do and the money helps, but unless things get clearer consider my services at an end."

"Irene, the less you know ..."

"The less I can find out for you," I finished for him. "My word and discretion is to be trusted. I think Norton would have told you that."

And from Meslay's look I think Norton had.

"We know Esterhazy was a traitor."

"Who's we and what did he betray?"

"He sold military secrets to Germany. Not Captain Dreyfus. What we don't know is if he copied the Balkan plan and pa.s.sed it to Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm."

"The Balkan plan?"

"It's vital," he said. "If the Germans have the Balkan plan, they'll have the key to our defense strategy. Everything. But we can still change the plan and implement new strategies ... barely. But we must know."

But how did I fit in this? And what about Holmes?

"How can I find out?"

"He's a gambler. In debt."

I knew that much from Holmes but listened.

"We know somewhere he keeps a tally of his losses, his winnings, and the secrets he holds. He's joked to his colleagues he has a 'bank of secrets.'"

"What about Captain Dreyfus," I asked. "Will the military exonerate him then?"

Meslay's dark eyes burned.

"I can only speak for my section, but Esterhazy will suffer a court-martial," he said. "But I need your help to furnish the proof whether the plan is compromised."

Loath to say his name, I knew no other way but to ask bluntly. "What of the rumor of Sherlock Holmes?" I kept my face blank with effort. "At the Theatre Anglais I overheard a conversation. That's all. Supposedly he's in Paris."

"You've heard that, too, then, about Holmes?" he asked as if this were old news. Meslay shrugged, tore off a hunk of baguette. "He's sniffing around for the Crown. Unofficially, of course. The British want Holmes to lessen the impact of any files compromised by Esterhazy."

So Holmes worked for England and I for France.

"Does that mean he's adversarial to your ministry?"

"Tiens." Meslay crumbled the white part of his baguette, rolled the piece into small white beads. "It means England's for England and France for itself in how to keep the Kaiser at bay ... like time immemorial. Napoleon read their intentions correctly-selfis.h.!.+"

And wasn't France selfish? But maybe it was self-preservation since their home and hearth bordered Germany.

Meslay and I arranged another meeting. As I left, my heart weighed heavy. Conflicting emotions crossed through me. Here I was at odds with Holmes! Something I'd never wanted to happen again.

Yet Holmes hadn't appeared, and to be frank I had no binding obligation to England. Holmes tried to use my guilt to a.s.sist a king and country as they had used my late husband Norton.

The more and more and I thought the more I realized I had a job to do. Fortified by the hearty soup, I headed towards Le Chat Noir to find Bijou. My calling was acting. Time for me to use my skills.

"Not seen nor heard from Bijou," said Vartan, the wire-thin backstage manager, to my query. He looped his wool scarf around his neck. "Far as I'm concerned she doesn't need to come back. She's one who gets a luxury ticket and crawls back begging when it expires. Know what I mean?"

I wasn't sure but nodded.

"She borrowed a costume, some of my things. Know where she lives?"

"Doubt she's there."

"Why not?"

"Moved up in the world, hasn't she?"

Vartan had an ax to grind ... was it jealousy?

"But at least I could inquire as to where she's gone."

He stared me up and down.

"Alors," I said. "Making a living comes hard enough without buying new costumes."

"Rue Androuet. Her mother's the concierge of the corner building. Can't miss it."

I hiked the narrow Montmartre stairs called a street and by my place there stood Leonie in the shadows.

Her matronly eyes glittered with excitement. She pulled me back into the dark recesses of the stairs. "Don't knows as I'll get me job back but I got these for you, Madame Irene." She pointed to the hem of her long skirt. "A bag of papers."

"A bag?"

"Remember the concierge with the gamey leg ... the one I told you I help seeing as she's 'indisposed' sometimes? She don't throw away papers from the wastebaskets ... . I found out she saves them."

"And that's what you have in the bag?"

"Mail and letters, too!" Leonie nodded. "Thinks me daft and a bit slow, she does, but that's fine by me. Like you says, I'm to keep me eyes open and not much from me mouth. So yesterday, her leg was hurting something awful, swollen up it was, too. After I lit the fires, cleaned the big reception rooms, she says, 'Fetch the contents from the baskets.' I did and as I was fixing to slag them into the furnace she screams, 'Non, non in here!' Then she says pick up the letters from the boxes and takes some and don't distribute ... she gave me some daft excuse but I just nodded."

"Go on, Leonie, please!"

"Then I thinks back ... 'course, she has to have been been doing it while I'm there, too. But the kicker being these come from the military offices. Where the Comte Esterhazy worked. I only seen him the once. Yesterday. But he wrote on this here blue paper, this bordereau they calls it."

"Marvelous work, Leonie!"

"This here's a right jumble, but seein' as I had no time to sort it, I puts the blue bordereau on top."

"You're a fairy princess, Leonie!"

She grinned her lopsided way, her eyes sparkled, and I regretted how my life included her so little. I slipped a wad of franc notes in her hands, gave her a hug, and told her to stay home for a few days with her child.

In my garret I stashed the bag, knowing I'd later spread it out and try to make sense of it. The several crumpled blue bordereau I smoothed out, struck by the angular handwriting. But no signature! Merde!

One step forward and two steps back.

So now, all I could do was find Bijou and see if her trail led to Comte Esterhazy.

Trudging to rue Androuet, I realized it faced the Cabaret aux a.s.sas sins ... . Was that how Bijou met the Comte?

And it rested a block away from the place Goudeau ... where Holmes had met me!

I knocked on the concierge loge door. No answer. In the dim building courtyard, a woman bent over at the communal water spigot. She saw me and straightened up, then took halting steps with a bucket held over one arm. In the darkness, she appeared old and racked by slight shakes of palsy.

"Oui?" she said, wiping her other reddened hand on her none too clean ap.r.o.n, squinting at me.

"Bon soir, Madame, you must be Bijou's mother ..."

"Older sister," she said, interrupting me.

"Aaah, of course, please forgive me. The light is nonexistent and I was told Bijou's mother is the concierge here."

But Bijou's sister could be her mother, so haggard and worn she looked. Old before her time. Too many children? Too much work at the washhouse which I could see from her painfully chapped and sore hands.

"Neither one's here. My mother's gone to Lille, and Bijou ... eh who knows?"

I didn't believe her for a moment. About Bijou anyway. Those careworn eyes were street smart. And well they would be. Survival was tough on the b.u.t.te in Montmartre. Before I could say more, I noticed the portly man who'd followed me the other night, paused in the boulangerie window opposite. He wore a bowler hat, his gold watch chain glinted in the gaslight.

A baby cried from inside the loge and Bijou's sister hurried ahead. I walked with her, then paused at the large heavy door and bid adieu. Without so much as a good-bye she trundled inside the loge.

I saw the bowler-hatted man approaching the door.

Caught between an unfriendly woman and stalking man ... Where could I go?

The door leading to the downstairs cave lay ajar. I slipped inside, pulled it shut, figuring I'd wait until he left, then come out. But as I reached the end of the steep damp limestone steps a glow of light came from ahead. This was no dead-end cellar but a tunnel branching ahead.

Montmartre was full of limestone quarries, webbed by tunnels and full of quarried holes and pockets like cheese. Yet buildings were built over them. I followed the tunnel to the light. Could this be the adjoining cellar for Cabaret aux a.s.sa.s.sins?

On the damp wall crude lettering indicated the street names, gas main locations written in chalk. The smell of damp mold and refuse grew stronger. Mounds of moist earth and stacked wine bottles greeted me as I entered what appeared to be the cellar of the cabaret. Trying to keep my bearings I calculated this would be the right direction.

A low hum of conversation drifted from behind a water-stained wood door, buckled and sagging. The clammy feel in the air bothered me. Grabbing a smock from a pile of dirty blue ones, I took off my coat, slipped the smock over my muslin dress, smoothed my hair back, and tied a napkin over my head, as so did many washerwomen and restaurant kitchen scrubbers, I hoped my cover would tide me over until I discovered Bijou or the Comte.

I knew I didn't have far to go when I heard a load oath.

"d.a.m.n you, Esterhazy ... that's five thousand you owe! Settle your scores. Pay up!"

"Who are you?" A wine-laced voice hissed in my ear.

I jumped.

"The was.h.i.+ng up woman, sir."

"And what are you doing here?" This voice belonged to a very drunken man with stains and dribbles of food on his waistcoat. He held my elbow with a pincerlike grip.

Panicked, I looked around. "Them, sir." I said keeping my head down and pointing to a pile of dirty crockery.

"Get to it, then," he said, pinching my behind hard and chuckling.

He flung open the door. "Now, gentlemen, don't say I'm too late for the game!"

I looked up quickly. Inside, around an oval table, the air thick with cigar smoke, sat three men. Gla.s.ses and cards in their hands. Piles of colored chips and a whisky decanter were on the table.