Chapel Noir Read Online Free PDF Page B

dismount the high carriage. In Paris, hôtels had been the palatial city dwellings of noble families for centuries, and only had turned to other ownership and uses in our new industrial age. I do not know why the French must confuse the issue and call buildings “hôtels” that are not meant for public accommodation.
    I lifted my skirts to keep them from sweeping up soot, mist, and other less discreet flotsam of the city streets. We soon were bustled into the maze of rear service rooms that support the massive facades of these grandiose erections.
    A man in a rumpled suit awaited us in the ill-lit pantry. The inspector snatched a lit oil lamp from a crude table and led us onward by its light.
    Soon we were coiling up a narrow rear staircase that reeked of the sweat of many workmen’s brows and . . . oh, garlic and coal and other noxious domestic scents that are banished from the front rooms.
    My attention was fixed on not stumbling over my hems on the narrow, turning steps. The unintroduced Frenchman behind me seized my elbow quite firmly to pilot me upward without mishap.
    At length we came to the third floor, where we were led down a hallway that went up three or four steps here, and down four or five steps there, until we finally entered a passage wide enough for us four to walk abreast.
    It soon transpired that the three walked abreast, and I rustled behind. They were conferring in French again, whispered words I would have had trouble translating even had I been close enough to hear well. Again much mention of the mysterious “Abbot Noir.”
    Irene’s operatic background had made her a mistress of languages. I had noticed during my brief career as a governess that those who excel at musical matters also have a numerical and language aptitude, although I cannot say that Irene had any head for numbers at all. Unless they be on bills of exchange.
    At a closed door both men took up posts on either side. The inspector flourished it open for us.
    Irene entered at once. I would have hesitated, but feared that if I did, the awful man would shut the door in my face, and I was determined not to remain alone in a passage with two Frenchmen if I could help it.
    So I swept after her, into the most unusual chamber I have ever entered in my life. And having visited Madame Sarah’s menagerie of peacock feathers, tiger skins, serpents, and panthers on the Boulevard Pereire, I had some experience of unusual chambers.
    I was struck first by the warmth and light, only then realizing how uncomfortable our journey here had been.
    Figured Aubusson carpets floated like islands on a blue-marble tile floor. Their soft colors of rose, aqua, and gold ran into each other as in a woven watercolor. The furnishings were as luxurious as the floor coverings. The room was filled with tapestried chairs and sofas, every arm and leg carved and gilded until the furniture seemed to be wearing court costumes trimmed with gold lace. A crystal chandelier dripped candlelight onto strings of crystals as precious as Marie Antoinette’s famed Zone of Diamonds (which Irene and Godfrey and I had rescued from historical obscurity, a tale which the world at large unfortunately knows not).
    Already in those early days of our association I was picking up secret stones, usually in Irene’s service, for there is no doubt she rescued me from worse dangers of the street than mere urchins. She was convinced that this Godfrey Norton had knowledge of a missing jewel of Queen Marie Antoinette she was hunting for the American jeweler, Mr. Tiffany. I was to spy upon Mr. Norton as well as spin his script into print.
    Suffice it to say that by the end of the affair Mr. Tiffany had purchased the French queen’s lost jewels from Irene for a king’s ransom, Irene and Godfrey were wed, and we all three had moved to France, with my two housemates then considered dead!
    So here I was, in Paris, the gay and sinful heart of France, staring at Marie Antoinette’s partners in crimes