Chapel Noir by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

say, December’s here already and January,
February and March are waiting for us and I’m one of
those plants which can’t stand the cold of winter. Would you
like to see my legs? Then they say, Come along in. And
indoors it’s so snug and warm that one immediately wants to
strip to one’s chemise and stay like that. A fortnight later
one’s so completely forgotten the draughty street-corners up our
way that the mere sight of a wet overcoat is enough
to astonish us .
— LA BELLE OTERO, MY DAYS AND NIGHTS
    After our inspection of the death chamber, we were taken to another grand chamber and there sat down to wait. Inspector le Villard seemed much surprised by our composure.
    Again ensconced in a grand but empty room, I occupied myself making sketches of the footprints on the scene in my tiny silver-encased notepad.
    “Four sets,” I noted. “Some dainty slipper impressions. A large man-size imprint, but narrowed with dandified daintiness at toe and heel. A massive imprint as undefined as a bottle side. And many man-size boot prints, uniform in shape if not in size.”
    Irene nodded as she studied my sketches over my shoulder. “The ladies, the police in their uniform boots, and two men, one well shod and one ill shod.”
    “What would an ill-shod man be doing in such a room in such a place?”
    “An excellent question, Nell. We shall have to see if a doctor was called previously, but I doubt it. Officialdom will only fully invade the scene now that our Eminent Personage is well away from the carnage.”
    Her last word suddenly took my mind and eye from microscopic distance to the enlarged view of everyday reality. I felt my stomach and my senses spinning.
    The only remedy was to resume my close-work. I began to wonder if this was why fancywork attracted me.
    I attempted a far more challenging artistic task: to draw an approximation of the barber’s chair.
    Irene inspected my efforts. “Very good.”
    “What is this thing?”
    Her lips pursed as she eyed me. “You have held up very well, Nell.”
    “You always manage to say ‘well, Nell,’ as if you were declaiming ‘how now, brown cow.’ ”
    Her laugh was weary. “Guilty. I have underestimated you, I admit. But then, you were not reared in America, and are unused to uncivil atrocities.”
    “Ah. The Red Indians, you mean.”
    “Ah, the White Devils, I mean.”
    “Is that not an English play by Webster?”
    “You have me there, Nell, as usual. No, what I mean is that because you have not been exposed to the incivilities of life that I and Pink have—”
    “That chit!”
    Irene eyed me until I blushed. “She is most forward,” I said.
    “Perhaps she has had need to be.” Her look was so abstracted that
    she spoke to herself more than me. “He , of course would make a thorough job of it. It is not enough to see signs if you cannot read them.”
    I did not ask who “he , of course” was. “We have the contents of my needle case,” I said in consolation, removing it from my pocket.
    “Which are teasingly familiar to me, but not in this form.” She frowned as she took the slender enamel container to a white-marble table topped by a great-globed lamp.
    Sitting beside the table, she shook a pale brown fragment onto the glaring marble.
    “A crumb, as you said,” I suggested as I followed her to the impromptu specimen table. “But why would anyone have eaten in there?”
    “A crumb could have been picked up on a boot or shoe and have dropped off in the murder chamber.”
    “Then it could have dropped off the footwear of those poor women.”
    I fought the memory of their feet, one of the few recognizable portions of their anatomy, clad in rumpled silken hose and embroidered satin shoes. Cinderella shoes. And then I remembered the Grimm fairy tale about the girl whose bloodred shoes would not come off until she had danced to her death.
    Irene lifted my spectacles to her face again, peering at the single crumb as through a lorgnette.