The Adventuress An Irene Adler Novel
, by Douglas, Carole Nelson
- ISBN: 9780765347152 | 0765347156
- Cover: Paperback
- Copyright: 1/5/2004
Honeymooning in Paris, Irene Adler and her husband Godfrey Norton become embroiled in the investigation of the drowning death of a sailor. Originally published as "Good Morning, Irene." Reissue.
Carole Nelson Douglas is the author of the bestselling Irene Adler historical suspense series, which includes Femme Fatale, Castle Rouge, Chapel Noir, and many more. She is also the author of the contemporary Midnight Louie mystery series set in Las Vegas, featuring the feline Sam Spade. She resides in Fort Worth, Texas.
Chapter One
Life After Death
and Other Inconveniences
The tragic and premature death of my friend Irene Adler was perhaps the most difficult circumstance of her life.
Dying while still young held a certain romantic, even operatic, appeal for a nature such as hers, with its keen sense of the dramatic. She eagerly scanned the London, Vienna and Prague newspapers, lapping up the homage of her obituaries with unconcealed glee.
“Listen to this from the Times: ‘possibly developing into the age's supreme dramatic soprano…a voice as darkly velvet as the finest Swiss chocolate, suited to the most melting renditions of Lieder since these classic songs' composition. As Sarah Bernhardt's Divine Voice elevates the spoken word, so the late Irene Adler's dusky soprano enthroned the sung syllable.'
“Why could I not have garnered such perceptive reviews when I was alive?” she demanded. “And I don't fancy that ‘possibly.'”
Although the news of Irene's—and her bridegroom, Godfrey Norton's—demise in an Alpine train wreck was as greatly exaggerated as was Mr. Twain's adventure into presumptive quietus a decade later, at first it seemed the ideal escape from an awkward situation. Now, in the summer of 1888, after the Great Adventure, it was proving merely inconvenient.
I had joined Irene and Godfrey at their villa in Neuilly, a charming village near Paris, to indulge in a period of self-congratulatory elation.
Numerous champagne flutes were lifted by the newlyweds; I myself frown on alcoholic beverages. (In France, I admit, it is hard to frown on anything, which is no doubt why that country has such a wicked reputation.)
We toasted their marriage; we saluted Irene's successful escape from London, and her continued possession of the photograph of herself with the King of Bohemia despite all attempts to wrest it away from her. Even I lifted glass and eyebrows in the hush that always followed mention of the name of our esteemed opponent, the consulting detective of 221B Baker Street.
We toasted, too, Irene's virtuoso hunt for Marie Antoinette's famed Zone of Diamonds, a floor-length girdle of knuckle-sized stones now absorbed into the workshops of Tiffany & Company. These were emerging anonymously one by one in brooches and dog collars adorning the world's wealthiest and loveliest bosoms and necks—some of the latter actually canine, such are the lavish ways of our day.
Irene's own souvenir of the long-lost bauble—a twenty-five-carat diamond in the old French cut that would serve as a ring or convert to a pendant—blazed gloriously at her throat on formal occasions.
Aye, there was the rub, as our Bard put it long ago in a different context. The diamond burned her throat like a fiery badge of mingled triumph and despair.
For she was mute to the world. The erroneously reported death—the Nortons had missed the fatal train, upon which they had reserved a compartment—had stilled Irene's singing career more effectively than had the king two springs before, when he had caused her summary dismissal from the Prague National Opera.
The magnificent gemstone, won by her own wit and no mere man's favor, could not be flaunted on the stage, where her performing sisterhood flashed the booty of their offstage labors in millionaires' boudoirs.
All the belated appreciation of her art rang hollow. Expeditions to the fitting rooms of Worth or Paquin could not console Irene for the loss of her work, her fame, her very identity. She bought gowns and boots and hats like a fiend in that first flush of escape, of triumph, of wealth that had been beyond supposing when she and I, the late Parson Huxleigh's impoverished daughter Penelope, had shared humble rooms in London's Saffron Hill district.
Yet none of these glorious gowns could appear on stage. When Irene faced French society, it was as “Madame Norton,” the unknown wife of a transplanted English barrister, not as Irene Adler, the American-born opera singer whose beauty of voice and visage had brought her worldwide recognition and adulation. Indeed, should anyone have recognized Irene—and she took an actress's care with her coiffure and clothing that no one should—she would have denied herself so convincingly as to lay her past to rest even more deeply.
As for her more subtle reputation as a puzzle-solver, that was left as far behind as were Saffron Hill and Baker Street.
Irene Adler—my friend and former chamber-mate, retired opera singer, one-time amateur detective, erstwhile actress—had all to which a woman of thirty could aspire: a handsome and devoted husband, money enough to live comfortably for some time, undiminished beauty and a wardrobe with which to embellish it; in short, she had unlimited time on her pretty, piano-playing hands…and nothing whatsoever to do.
Even mock Death does have its sting.
Copyright © 1991 by Carole Nelson Douglas
Life After Death
and Other Inconveniences
The tragic and premature death of my friend Irene Adler was perhaps the most difficult circumstance of her life.
Dying while still young held a certain romantic, even operatic, appeal for a nature such as hers, with its keen sense of the dramatic. She eagerly scanned the London, Vienna and Prague newspapers, lapping up the homage of her obituaries with unconcealed glee.
“Listen to this from the Times: ‘possibly developing into the age's supreme dramatic soprano…a voice as darkly velvet as the finest Swiss chocolate, suited to the most melting renditions of Lieder since these classic songs' composition. As Sarah Bernhardt's Divine Voice elevates the spoken word, so the late Irene Adler's dusky soprano enthroned the sung syllable.'
“Why could I not have garnered such perceptive reviews when I was alive?” she demanded. “And I don't fancy that ‘possibly.'”
Although the news of Irene's—and her bridegroom, Godfrey Norton's—demise in an Alpine train wreck was as greatly exaggerated as was Mr. Twain's adventure into presumptive quietus a decade later, at first it seemed the ideal escape from an awkward situation. Now, in the summer of 1888, after the Great Adventure, it was proving merely inconvenient.
I had joined Irene and Godfrey at their villa in Neuilly, a charming village near Paris, to indulge in a period of self-congratulatory elation.
Numerous champagne flutes were lifted by the newlyweds; I myself frown on alcoholic beverages. (In France, I admit, it is hard to frown on anything, which is no doubt why that country has such a wicked reputation.)
We toasted their marriage; we saluted Irene's successful escape from London, and her continued possession of the photograph of herself with the King of Bohemia despite all attempts to wrest it away from her. Even I lifted glass and eyebrows in the hush that always followed mention of the name of our esteemed opponent, the consulting detective of 221B Baker Street.
We toasted, too, Irene's virtuoso hunt for Marie Antoinette's famed Zone of Diamonds, a floor-length girdle of knuckle-sized stones now absorbed into the workshops of Tiffany & Company. These were emerging anonymously one by one in brooches and dog collars adorning the world's wealthiest and loveliest bosoms and necks—some of the latter actually canine, such are the lavish ways of our day.
Irene's own souvenir of the long-lost bauble—a twenty-five-carat diamond in the old French cut that would serve as a ring or convert to a pendant—blazed gloriously at her throat on formal occasions.
Aye, there was the rub, as our Bard put it long ago in a different context. The diamond burned her throat like a fiery badge of mingled triumph and despair.
For she was mute to the world. The erroneously reported death—the Nortons had missed the fatal train, upon which they had reserved a compartment—had stilled Irene's singing career more effectively than had the king two springs before, when he had caused her summary dismissal from the Prague National Opera.
The magnificent gemstone, won by her own wit and no mere man's favor, could not be flaunted on the stage, where her performing sisterhood flashed the booty of their offstage labors in millionaires' boudoirs.
All the belated appreciation of her art rang hollow. Expeditions to the fitting rooms of Worth or Paquin could not console Irene for the loss of her work, her fame, her very identity. She bought gowns and boots and hats like a fiend in that first flush of escape, of triumph, of wealth that had been beyond supposing when she and I, the late Parson Huxleigh's impoverished daughter Penelope, had shared humble rooms in London's Saffron Hill district.
Yet none of these glorious gowns could appear on stage. When Irene faced French society, it was as “Madame Norton,” the unknown wife of a transplanted English barrister, not as Irene Adler, the American-born opera singer whose beauty of voice and visage had brought her worldwide recognition and adulation. Indeed, should anyone have recognized Irene—and she took an actress's care with her coiffure and clothing that no one should—she would have denied herself so convincingly as to lay her past to rest even more deeply.
As for her more subtle reputation as a puzzle-solver, that was left as far behind as were Saffron Hill and Baker Street.
Irene Adler—my friend and former chamber-mate, retired opera singer, one-time amateur detective, erstwhile actress—had all to which a woman of thirty could aspire: a handsome and devoted husband, money enough to live comfortably for some time, undiminished beauty and a wardrobe with which to embellish it; in short, she had unlimited time on her pretty, piano-playing hands…and nothing whatsoever to do.
Even mock Death does have its sting.
Copyright © 1991 by Carole Nelson Douglas
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