My Sherlock Holmes Part 24

"Always ready for a new partner," said a voice. I looked closer. Bijou, fanning herself and clearly bored, leaned on that man's shoulder. Handsome and flushed, he sported a manicured red goatee and mustache. That must be him!

"Don't get out of this, Esterhazy," one of the other men said to him. "Settle up before ..."

"Let our friend join us," said Esterhazy, smoothing the edge of his mustache. The drunken man tottered inside.

"Clear this. Make me some room." He jerked his hand to me. "Did you hear me ... clear up!" he thundered.

My hand shook, but I kept my head down, picked up a tray and moved into the smoky cellar room. I prayed to G.o.d Bijou wouldn't recognize me.

"Bring us some more whisky," said the man.

"Good idea," said Esterhazy. "I'll pay this time."

"And how?" queried the suspicious man.

"A promissary note."

"Like all the others?" He shot his hand forward as Esterhazy scribbled something on a napkin.

"Take this," he said pus.h.i.+ng it in my hand. "Bring the Irish whisky and clean gla.s.ses."

"Yes, sir," I kept my voice low, my eyes down, and tried to breathe.

But servants were invisible except for easy shots of abuse. No one paid me any heed.

I swiftly loaded the tray, swiped the table with a cloth, avoiding the colored chips, and edged out.

"Hurry up! Help's become so lazy these days ..." was the last I heard as I hurried through the cellar looking for the stairs. I put Esterhazy's napkin in my dress pocket. As I emerged behind the counter in the cabaret, I shoved the loaded tray onto the counter.

The cabaret's tables were filled. Accordion strains and tinkling gla.s.ses filled the air. As I walked, several patrons, the worse for wear from drink, asked me to clear their tables. Ignoring them, I reached the heavy velvet curtain, hung to prevent drafts from entering the door.

As I opened the door I came face-to-face with the portly gentleman in the bowler hat whom I thought I'd escaped. He stared at me. I cringed. Someone jostled him forward and I, thankful for the scarf and still wearing the smock, lowered my gaze and kept going. My heart pounded. Once outside, I ran.

Suffice it to say, as soon as I reached a covered doorway, I tore off the disguise, caught my breath, regretting my winter coat left in the cellar. s.h.i.+vering in my thin muslin dress. I took a circuitous route back through Montmartre.

My concierge, Madame Lusard, handed me my mail. More bills. Inside my garret I kicked off my wet lace-up boots and set them by the warm brick.

Loud knocks sounded on the door.

Had Madame Lussard overlooked a piece of mail?

I opened the door to see the stocky side whiskered man, his wet great coat crooked under his arm. His small pig eyes filled me with fear. How had he found me?

"Madame Norton?"

I nodded slowly.

"Emil Cavour," he said, doffing his rain-speckled hat, panting from exertion. "Pardon my boldness, but I a.s.sure you we have something to talk about."

"Who are you, Monsieur?"

He tugged his goatee. "A question, Madame, that the wisest philosophers ponder even to this day. If you permit me entry, we can get out of hearing of your concierge."

Peering downstairs, I saw the glow of her oil lamp on the landing.

I had no recourse but to comply.

Emil Cavour had lamb-chop side-whiskers. He made himself at home on my garret's one chair, wobbly leg and all. He surveyed the costumes hangared on nails poking from the walls, as he lit a short stubby cheroot.

"Why do you follow me, Monsieur Cavour?"

"You favor the bohemian lifestyle, it appears, Madame Norton," he said, not answering me. "Some artistic bent?"

His presumptive manner rankled me.

"Liking and having no choice aren't the same thing," I said. "How does that concern you?"

"Nice view," he said, rising and approaching the window. Pinp.r.i.c.k lights dotted the blue-black Paris evening below. "We know Montmartre's a hotbed of anarchists, misfits seething to sabotage the Third Republic."

The startled look on my face did not go unnoticed by him. Did he follow me thinking I plotted to undermine the government? If so, how could I dissuade him without revealing Meslay's a.s.signment? But I'd jumped ahead ... . Who was he? ... Where were his credentials?

And then my eye caught on the bag, under the table, Leonie had brought me. What to do?

"My concierge's son's with the police," I said, putting on the expression I once wore at the baccarat table in the Monaco casino. I opened my door. "He's helpful. Very helpful when tenants are insulted. I'll ask you to leave before I feel so inclined."

"Asking me to leave, Madame Norton?" he said, his brow crinkled in amus.e.m.e.nt.

"My manners betray me." I smiled. "I always ask before I demand."

Cavour remained at the window. "Close the door, Madame. I don't think you want the building hearing about your past."

What had this portly weasel got up his cuffed sleeve? I could bluff, too. My debts were paid. Just paid. But no matter. I earned a living-albeit a spa.r.s.e one. I wouldn't reveal anything until he furnished credentials.

"A certain liaison with a then crown prince, Madame Norton, does that refresh your memory?"

I closed the door.

"Who are you?"

"Let's say I'm part of the greater good, as the military refer to themselves, safeguarding Mother France."

Some inner sense warned me to leave my brother-in-law Meslay's name unspoken. "The Prussian ignominy of 1870 and the communards tear the fabric of our society apart," he said, and his voice rose, as if addressing a crowd. He was almost comical but he knew my secrets. That made him dangerous and someone to be listened to. Had my former lover, the present king, kept me under surveillance? But I doubted that ... . Cavour's manner and rhetoric bespoke a disappointed warhorse.

His next words surprised me even more. "Bijou, the contortionist, at le Chat Noir mentioned you."

"That's why you follow me?"

"Let's say it makes you interesting."

"Yes, of course, we're in a revue popular with the working cla.s.s and the slumming aristos and bourgeoisie. Lines form down place Pigalle for the late-afternoon matinees."

"Count Esterhazy, a French officer, her paramour, interests us," he said.

"But why?"

"Be useful and I'll be useful to you," he said handing me a visiting card engraved with Emil Cavour, Office of Statistics.

"Ask Bijou yourself."

His small eyes narrowed. "Certain ministers in a certain government seem bothered by your ..."

"Existence? The fact that I withheld compromising evidence of the said monarch, but have not and will never, use it? They don't trust me, isn't that it, since they rank as connivers and deal with liars."

Cavour made a deep bow. "They never said you were smart." When he looked up his face contorted with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Deception is the currency, as you seem aware of, in these matters."

Bizarre. I wanted him to say why me and why now.

"Madame Norton," he said. "The evidence against Dreyfus must not be compromised. I count on your utmost cooperation."

"What kind of threat is that?"

"If one military man is attacked, we all stand with him."

"But I don't understand, why didn't you defend Dreyfus, an officer ..."

"He's a Jew, Madame," he interrupted. "They defend their own kind."

"So that's what this is all about?" Disgust rose in me.

"He was an outsider, of course; he sold secrets."

"a.s.suming he didn't, and someone else from the officer pool did, it would disgrace your branch. Never admit a mistake but blunder on. Isn't that the military motto?"

He raised his cane towards me. I'd scratched the truth and gone too far.

"Get out before ..."

The door opened. "I believe Madame Norton requested your departure. Of course, I'm ready to a.s.sist should you need help in that regard on the stairs."

Both Cavour and I turned. I stared into the face of Holmes, a.k.a. Due de Langans.

Sensing trouble behind the sarcastic tone, Cavour bristled a quick "good evening," glared at me, then left.

Holmes waited until he cleared the stairs, then stepped inside. Immediately he pinched the candle wick between his fingers, my only light, and went to the window.

"He's gone. But his spy, the organ grinder, has taken over watching you."

I found it hard to feel anger. Poor man, I didn't begrudge the organ grinder any job he could find in this cold.

"I could have handled that, Holmes," I said.

"And no doubt you would have done well, Irene. I, for one, have limitless respect for your capabilities. But nothing is the way you imagine," he said. "Trust me."

He approached me, then abruptly went to the bricked up chimney and sat down cross legged.

"But you have told me nothing. Nothing."

I went to the window, a dark frame of sky pockmarked with stars. "All this bone-chilling weather; it's freezing and it hasn't even snowed! I've never seen Paris with snow. Can you believe that, Holmes?"

"Neither have I, Irene," he said, his tone tinged with resignation. "I owe you an explanation."

"Explanation? Why not start with who you work for and why. Then we'll go from there."

"The only problem, Irene, is that the French and we English make the strangest bedfellows."

"You forget, Holmes, I'm American."

For once he was quiet.

I sat down, curled next to him, resting my head on his shoulder. The spreading heat of the toasty warm brick and his slow, steady breathing calmed me.

We sat quietly for I don't know how long. Until Holmes made up his mind to tell me what he wished. But ahead of our very eyes, under my gouged table, sat the bag Leonie brought from the ministry with Esterhazy's bordereau. And in my pocket his promissary napkin for whisky.

Somehow that all had to tie in.

"We don't want another war. With Kaiser Wilhelm least of all," Holmes said, with a sigh. "The Royal Navy hasn't recovered from the last one. Shocking but true, the navy keeps it hush-hush. Under wraps for years. Somehow the Balkan plan, with our diminished fleet and less than sterling capabilities, is something the French know about and privately gloat over. Yet, their fleet is almost as decimated, wouldn't withstand a German naval attack, and they would rely mightily on ours. The dastardly conundrum for all is that this information might have been furnished with military secrets."

So the British were "selfish," as Meslay put it but for good reason. And so were the French.

"But how can you tell if this Esterhazy pa.s.sed the Balkan plan on?"

Holmes stretched his long legs out. "Not the most imaginative fellow, he called it 'B' ... that's all. But we don't have copies of his bordereau; seems the concierge spies for the Germans and rifles through the trash."

I wanted to tell him that his toes almost touched them. But I held back. Whether from loyalty to Meslay or anger at the past history of the British using Norton, I wasn't sure, but I couldn't give Holmes the papers. I bat tled the curious attraction to Holmes, my equal and more, knowing any relations with him impossible.

"What real difference, Holmes, is it if you or the French find out in the end? It's poor Dreyfus who's imprisoned."

"Think of the greater good, Irene."

"Whose greater good?"

"A wise remark," he said. "But my employer will argue against that." He looked tired. Beat. "You know, Irene, this endless chess of European politics has run its course for me. After this, I'm retiring to the Somerset Downs."

Should I believe him?

And then big, thick, white flakes danced in the darkness. I ran to the window. Snow, like confectioner's sugar, dusted the cobbles and rooftops below. A little child ran in the street shouting "neige, neige" until his mother called him inside.

"Look, Holmes, it's snowing. Our first Paris snow!"