FEMME FATALE by Carole Nelson Douglas

Author:Carole Nelson Douglas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2007-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

By now Irene had become utterly engrossed in the search for some abiding woman in her past.

She would never admit it, and I would never make her admit it, but there is no doubt that her finger hesitated over the bell of the boardinghouse where Thumbelina resided. Irene never hesitated. It was her greatest strength, and her greatest flaw.

I made so bold as to lift my hand and push her finger down on the button.

Her eyes flicked to mine, startled. I almost never took the lead in anything. At least before Transylvania.

“Now is no time to play the indecisive schoolgirl,” I explained.

“It’s just that I do remember her now, Nell, and I am afraid of what we will find. She was a dwarf, enchanting to everyone while she was a child and a young woman. She must be past forty today, and—from what Professor Marvel said, and did not say—no longer well. I dread seeing what has become of her.”

“The dread becomes you, but you cannot stop now.”

“Why not?”

“Because she has heard the bell ring. You don’t wish to abandon her as if you were a mischievous, cruel child, do you, who comes near only to run away?”

“No! Of course not. The die is cast.”

“Now where did you get that—Caesar crossing the Rubicon—if you were so ill-educated as your background implies?”

“Professor Marvel? He knows everything. Perhaps I am a compilation of quick facts and that is all.”

“Nonsense! You have outwitted Sherlock Holmes and the King of Bohemia, and Jack the Ripper. You are more than a compilation of ‘quick facts.’ ” I took a deep breath that was too determined to be taken for a sigh. “Irene, I know that you stand on foreign ground that is also old to you. You mustn’t let it overwhelm you. We are investigating a puzzle that happens to be your past. It need not be . . . personal.”

At that she laughed. “Look at me! I’m as nervous as a schoolgirl, which is quite absurd, for it’s quite obvious from my history that I never went to school.”

“I disagree,” I replied in my strictest governess tone. “Having met your former associates, it’s clear to me that you did course work with the most eclectic and amazing scholars of your generation. Professor Marvel alone is the sum of at least fourteen Oxford dons.”

“Nell! You can’t mean that.” She began to giggle at the very notion, but I had never been so sincere in my life.

“I have never meant anything more. Since . . . meeting Sherlock Holmes I have come to see that the ardent pursuit of knowledge, any kind of knowledge, produces more honest learning than all the rote exercises in any schoolbook. It is a fine thing to be able to quote enormous numbers of Greeks and Romans, and there is wisdom there as well as snobbery, but unless the quotes are applied to something practical in modern life, they are only so much make-work.”

To this she had no answer, and thus was discovered gaping at me when her (my) ring was answered by .

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