Chapel Noir by Carole Nelson Douglas Read Free Book Online

“This was her first day . . . night at the house. She did not know, or even recognize, the dead women. I understand that is quite understandable.” Both men nodded, dropping their eyes. “Apparently there has been an atrocity on a scale of The Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ You know the story?”
    Inspector le Villard nodded. “I am a student of the methods of foreign detectives, as you know, especially Miss Huxleigh’s countryman.”
    I shuddered for the first time that evening to hear a reference to the man, that all-too-ubiquitous consulting detective, Holmes.
    “Even fictional detectives?” Irene asked.
    “Mr. Poe’s setting was Parisian, and the investigator was French. C. Auguste Dupin,” he said as if savoring Napoleonic brandy. “You are right to invoke that long-ago tale. It is the closest thing to what has happened here, except for—”
    “Yes,” Irene said. “I must see the murder scene. Miss Huxleigh can remain here with Mademoiselle Rose.”
    “No!” For once the inspector objected before I could. “The scene is not fit for female sensibilities. You cannot see it.”
    “If you wish me to elicit every shred of testimony from her, I must see what she saw. I must know what questions to ask. In such cases, with the shock, she may have seen more than she realizes.”
    “That is true, but now that you have heard of the grotesquerie of it . . . I would not ask even my gendarmes to face such a scene, were it not necessary.”
    “Commendable, but I am not one of your gendarmes.”
    “You were not brought here for such viewing.”
    “I was brought here, and now I ask what will help me perform the service you requested. Nay, demanded. You and your anonymous Great One.”
    The inspector sighed and slapped the damp felt hat in his hands against his leg.
    The shadowy superior murmured a torrent of French.
    After some discussion between them, le Villard turned back to Irene. “You may go, but only because we must answer to your . . . sponsor. I will not be responsible for any hysteria.”
    “There will be no hysteria.”
    “Indeed not,” I interjected. “For I will go along.”
    The Frenchmen began blathering again, hysterically.
    Even Irene turned to me in disbelief.
    I explained myself to Irene. “I have seen the body on Bram Stoker’s dining-room table, I have been to the chamber of the Paris Morgue with you, remember? I cannot allow you to confront such perfidy alone, or not alone, I should say. I owe it to Godfrey that you do not go off unsuitably chaperoned.”
    She was not fooled by my invoking the proprieties, eternal pretext in my limited arsenal of argument. She laid a hand on my arm.
    “I will be all right, Nell.”
    “I know you will, for I will be there with you.” Then I added, “It would be cruel to keep me in the dark, when even that child has seen the truth, and survived.”
    “Not without brandy afterward.”
    “I will have brandy afterward if necessary.”
    Irene’s further arguments never passed her lips. She knew that if I was willing to take spirits, I was serious indeed.
    The inspector’s lively features had frozen into disapproving resignation. “Your presence was requested by an Eminent Personage. We must allow you to pursue actions you will deeply regret. I hope you will not try to misplace the blame.”
    Irene glanced at me. “I never misplace blame.”
    I inhaled as deeply as Miss Pink had a few minutes earlier. I must be prepared to face what I had demanded to see. I had no doubts it would be a vision of Hell.

    The Frenchmen, stiff with disapproval and with funereal step, led us down the back stairs to the first floor. Their dark figures, etched into murky relief against the rays of the lamp they carried, looked as misshapen as latter-day Quasimodos. I began to wonder if they had changed into monsters once their backs were turned upon us. The narrow stair, the sound of our footsteps as regular as the pounding of coffin nails . . . in truth, the mention of the