Free Chapel Noir by Carole Nelson Douglas

soothingly. “Now we know that you have been a fine and brave witness from an early age, tell us exactly what happened, remembering that you need not spare us any impression, any fact. We are all women of the world, after all,” she added most speciously.
    “Right. Women of the world.” The phrase seemed to infuse the girl with backbone. “It was like this: I am new to the place, and was taking a . . . stroll to get my bearings.”
    “Then you were not expected in that particular chamber?”
    “Oh, no. I wasn’t expected to do anything except dress myself up, with the help of the French maid, and make myself available for inspection later. But . . . I am never one to wait well.”
    “Nor I,” said Irene.
    “Patience,” I put in, “is a supreme virtue.”
    Pink eyed me. “Maybe in your line of work, if you have one. Not mine.”
    Our return had indeed made her bold.
    She resumed her story, directing her words and glances to Irene.
    “So I was looking things over, peeking into this room and that to get the lay of the land, when I tried to push open the door to that room.”
    “Tried?”
    “Yes, ma’am! It didn’t open at first. The handle was stiff. But I pushed, and I was in like Blackstone the magician.”
    “Did you determine what kept the door from opening at first?”
    “No. I forgot that the moment I took my first breath over the threshold. I am from western Pennsylvania at least, and we have a few barnyards nearby, but I never smelled anything quite like that.”
    “Except in Les Halles,” I murmured.
    “Oh. I’ll not go there again. Slipping on pig’s intestines and all that.”
    “It is an honest marketplace,” I said.
    Her cheeks pinked scarlet at my meaning, and I suddenly understood the reason for her nickname.
    “I won’t be lectured,” Miss Pink told me sharply. “I’ve been on my own for some time now, and do the best I can.”
    “Have you done it here?” Irene asked. “Yet?”
    Pink’s cheeks remained cherry red. “None of your business, Missus Adler Norton. I have just been introduced to the house and procedures before that is made formal. I was strolling about to get acquainted with the lay-out. I hadn’t reckoned on finding what I found, though at first I couldn’t quite make out what was what.”
    “Were all the lamps still on?”
    “Bright as sunshine. If the odor had not warned me . . . but I soon saw the blood, then realized—”
    “What did you realize?”
    “That he’d done it again. The Ripper. The way those two women were cut up, carved up.”
    “How good a look did you get?”
    “I tiptoed as close as I could without . . . well, getting sick. You can’t really see much.”
    “Thankfully.” Irene doused the second little cigar end in the graveyard of the first. “I should like you to come home with us.”
    “Home?”
    Seeing an opportunity to save a soul, I leaped. “The most charming cottage in a village near here, Neuilly. Of course what is considered a cottage in France would be a country manse in England. We have a parrot there, and a cat, even a mongoose. And some . . . snakes.” My list trailed off. Miss Pink’s hazel eyes were not widening in youthful interest.
    “I have seen snakes before, Miss Huxleigh. We had plenty around Crooked Creek.”
    “Crooked Creek?” I repeated faintly.
    “Well, it’s no worse than Pondham-on-Rye or dozens of other English hamlets that are named like something you eat rather than live in. Wild western Pennsylvania’s the place I hail from, and I am proud of it.”
    “I am from New Jersey myself,” Irene put in, thus sealing the alliance between the Americans. “Tame eastern New Jersey.”
    “New Jersey? Really? How did you come to live near Paris?”
    “If you would join us in our palatial cottage”—here Irene glanced at me a bit sardonically—“I’d have time to tell you.”
    “Oh, no.” Pink’s curled head shook firmly. “I went to far too much trouble getting established at this place to