Part 5 (2/2)

I complied. ”It is no difficulty getting on my knees at such a scene, Irene. Prayers are needed here, if anywhere.”

”While you are praying, Nell, could you see if that chatelaine of yours bears a quizzing gla.s.s.”

”Quizzing?”

”A magnifying lens!”

”I do not think so . . .” There we were, prostrate in the presence of vicious death, hardly daring to breathe and yet splitting hairs and carpet fibers. ”My pince-nez, however, has magnifying properties.”

”Bless your nearsighted eyes! And hand me the spectacles.”

Irene barely glanced at my face as I removed my spectacles from the bodice locket that held them at the ready. She took them blindly.

”Ah!” she said a moment later, holding my pince-nez to her eyes like a mask.

”What is it?

”I don't know. But it is something. Do you have in that bottomless pocket of yours some . . . container? And a pincer of some kind? I see a few crumbs worth preserving. They do not seem native to this room and its purpose.”

”Container? Other than my pocket itself-”

”That will not do. These tiny crumbs would crush to powder.”

I thought furiously. It is my role in life to be useful if not decorative, and a dereliction in utility is most humiliating. ”I know! My, ah, my ah . . . etui!”

”You are sneezing from the carpet dust?”

Startled, it suddenly struck me that a word familiar to me would sound not like a word at all to Irene. Despite our grim situation, I found a nervous giggle bubbling in my throat. ”An etui is not a sneeze, Irene,” I objected. ”It is just the thing you asked for.”

”Forgive me, but an etwee is not from any vocabulary I have heard of,” she complained. ”Pray tell me what it is, if it is indeed a 'what' and not an inarticulate wheeze.”

Despite her tart impatience, so unlike Irene, by now the laughter was threatening to choke me, so unlike me. I was ashamed, but helpless. ”I'm sorry. I can't. I can't-” Now I did indeed sound as if I were about to sneeze.

Irene's fingers clenched on my upper arm. ”Hold tight,” she rather harshly advised me.

By now tears were blurring my eyes and streaming down my cheeks.

”Hush,” she whispered. ”We promised no hysterics.”

”But I'm not,” I was able to choke out. ”Having hysterics. I'm laughing, though I don't know why.”

Her voice was low and urgent. ”That is a form of hysteria, if you don't contain it.”

I gazed at her, seeing only through a wavy pane of gla.s.sy tears. ”I don't know why I would laugh in such a grim circ.u.mstance,” I managed to get out on a wavery sigh of words and whisper.

”Because our circ.u.mstances are ludicrous, Nell.” She allowed herself to sink onto her hip, after glancing carefully around at the carpet. ”We are searching for needles we don't know are there in a haystack of rococo furnis.h.i.+ngs, on our hands and knees, in the presence of crude death.”

”I cannot tell whether I am laughing or crying now,” I complained, wiping my cheeks with the heels of my hands, which were impressed with the costly whorls of the Aubusson carpet.

Irene regarded me carefully, and somewhat wearily. ”Why do you suppose the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy are always shown paired, tilted together like a pair of gossiping neighbors? When I was performing at La Scala in Milan, I encountered a composer, Ruggiero Leoncavallo, who was working on an aria by Pagliacci, the tragic clown. It is a virtuoso exercise in despairing laughter.”

I shook my head. What did opera have to do with my unforgivable behavior?

Irene took my wrists in her hands and pulled my fingers from my face, as one might demand the attention of a petulant child, save I was not petulant, but mortified.

”Nell, laughter and tears sit side by side in the chamber of the heart, as any actor can tell you. And any tenor who will someday sing Pagliacci can tell you that the same contraction of air and muscle that produces sobs produces laughter. The brilliance of Pagliacci's aria is its interplay of forced hilarity and unsurvivable despair.”

Having settled to a discreet hiccough during her lecture on the finer points of stage performance, I finally nodded, relieved that the irresistible urge to giggle had sunk beneath an exhausted melancholy much more appropriate to the situation.

”Now. What is this object by any other name? Besides a rose?” Irene smiled slightly.

I recognized the Shakespearean allusion. Strangely, all this stagecraft talk had given me a sense of distance from the terrible scene in which we played such ludicrous parts.

”My needle case,” I said with sobriety. ”Here.” I drew the long, narrow, enameled case from the chatelaine. I removed the needles, lancing them into temporary lodging in my skirt's st.u.r.dy twill fabric until the case was empty. ”It's meant to hold needles and bodkins and toothpicks, but may serve for other things. Will this do?”

”Admirably!” Irene p.r.o.nounced, inspecting it through her-my-spectacles. ”And the pincers?”

I extended the small sterling silver tweezers. ”I use these for picking up threads and beads.”

”Excellent.” In a moment she had bent to pluck some vague brownish yellow crumbs from the carpet. She dropped them into the enameled needle case.

She paused to eye me. ”How are you doing now?”

”Doing? That is such an American expression. I am not doing at all. I am pretending to be in another place at another task, breathing other air. Will that do?”

”It will,” she said. ”That is also a clue as to how our Mr. Holmes performs his miracles of detection in the face of human iniquity. He looks close, not far, dear Nell, and spares himself much anguish.”

”We are looking through a microscope then?”

”Yes. As a physician or a botanist. We look small, so that the large does not overwhelm us. Yes?”

”Yes.” I crawled forward behind her on my elbows and knees. ”It is most undignified.”

”So should we be in the presence of such indignities to the human body and soul. Does this not remind you of something other than the fictions of Edgar Allan Poe about the rue Morgue?”

”Oh yes, Irene.” I found my voice quivering and cast a quick glance at the heavens, which in this room was a painted ceiling of naked cherubs and naked ladies, a pairing I shall never understand. ”Despite the distance in location and in time, I find this scene most distressingly reminiscent of the depredations performed in London just last autumn.”

Irene rose to her knees, reminding me of some rearing centaur in her unnatural man's garb. Her hastily piled locks seemed to writhe in the wavering lamplight like the Medusa's snaky tendrils.

”Jacques the Ripper appears to have turned his ghastly attentions on Paris.”

”It does not make sense,” I objected.

”But it does make for murder,” she said. ”And politics. And a most brutal puzzle.”

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