Free Chapel Noir by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

do? The companion admitted that they had been in London, but that was many months ago, and is irrelevant.
    Or is it?
    I cannot believe my luck, dreadful as the state of affairs is. I could not wish to be in more fortuitous circumstances. Not least among these lucky aspects is the fact that police have ended all custom at this maison de rendezvous for the time being. For the time being, Thanatos and not Eros is in residence here. Death and not Love.
    I admit that, for my purposes, Death is the much more desirable resident.

8.
Call Her Madam

    No doubt it gives one a comfortable feeling of wear smart
underclothing, pass the kind of laws that suit one and preach
endless sermons about virtuous behavior . . . But no sooner have
the streetlights been turned low than off they go
to pay us a visit .
— AMÉLIE HÉLIE, KNOWN AS CASQUE D’OR
    “What a willful and errant girl!” I said after Pink had left.
    “Don’t distress yourself, Nell. We at least offered her a chance to leave. And with the police coming and going, the usual activities of the house will be suspended for some time.”
    Irene cast a wistful glance at the brandy decanter. “I am afraid I shall have to interview the madam.”
    “Madame who?”
    “A woman who supervises a house of convenience is a called a madam, Nell.”
    “Supervises? You seem to imply some sort of order.”
    “A place like this is also called a disorderly house,” she said with a rueful smile.
    I was too confused to ask for further enlightenment.
    We went into the passage, where a gendarme in his handsome uniform of navy blue stood on guard.
    “Monsieur l’inspecteur?” Irene asked.
    The man led us to the front stairs and then down to the first floor and to a grand salon larger and even more lavishly appointed than the chambers upstairs.
    As we entered the opening double doors, we passed a white-veiled bride leaving in the company of a black-robed nun.
    Naturally, I stared at their departing backs, a most incongruous pair, but Irene paid them no attention. Or rather, I should say, they did not receive her prolonged attention. Irene’s eyes darted over every detail of the room and its occupants, even the departing ones, like emissaries from a crossbow.
    I was reminded again of her admonition to “look close” and see small.
    That seemed an impossible task in this vast, gilt-hung salon, with elaborate furniture floating like gigantic lily pads on its blue-marble floor.
    And this exceedingly large pond had its resident frog: a most unpleasant person sat like the spider in the center of this web of golden threads, stuffed into a gown of obvious green satin.
    Her red hair was frizzled into a fright wig. Her decolletage overflowed a wasp-waisted bodice like two loaves of unbaked French bread. She had a sharp nose above a cheese-soft chin that faded into the high collar of fat cushioning her throat like a necklace of fleshy aspic.
    Inspector le Villard hastened to this woman’s monstrous side and apparently explained who, or what, we were.
    Her bead-bright eyes moved like roaches in the suet pudding of her face to study us.
    “Entrez,” she urged at last. Pudgy, dingy fingers festooned with rings gestured us over the threshold.
    I noticed a motley assemblage of persons seated and standing elsewhere in the chamber, including a grown woman in a child’s high-waisted cotton frock, her hair in a pigtail and her hands bearing a pail and spade fit for a nursery outing to the seashore.
    There was also a wizened elderly man with a terrible squint and some large burly women in house servant’s clothes.
    Irene crossed the threshold as bid, but waited for the inspector to join her, as he finally did, most reluctantly.
    “These are employees of the establishment?” Irene asked in low tones, in English.
    “Yes. We have assembled everyone and are almost through with our questioning.”
    “What of the clients present at the time of the murders?”
    Even Inspector le Villard’s mustache