Castle Rouge Read Online Free

is. He certainly was at large in Whitechapel during the Ripper crimes and, what is most damning, just after the unthinkable slaughter of Marie Jeanne Kelly, he walked eighty miles to Dover and then sailed to Dieppe. From Belgium he came to France, thence making his way to Paris.”
    “Where,” Irene notes, “he managed to forge a link between himself and a member of the British royal family.”
    “Oh, I say now!” Bertie assumes full royal pout, pulling his embroidered waistcoat down over a substantial belly. “I have heard enough of these foul rumors trying to connect the Royal family to this Ripper fellow. That is the sort of outrageous gossip the sensational papers revel in. I can assure you that no member of my family would consort with the sort of persons to be found in Whitechapel.”
    “But Paris is not Whitechapel,” Irene says, “and the connection is not a rumor, as unsuspected as it might be to Your Highness. The inspector mentioned that Kelly was an upholsterer. He was apparently a good enough one to find finishing work with a reputable firm here in Paris, one that was creating a unique and exquisite piece of furniture for Your Highness, that was in fact, the structure upon which the two murdered residents of the maison de rendezvous were discovered.”
    The Prince is almost moved enough to bound up from his sofa seat. Almost, but not quite. It is too soon after lunch, which no doubt had been twelve courses.
    “No! The scoundrel! You are saying he had a hand in my, er, custom-appointed couch? This is revolting.”
    “Your Highness must have known the events that occurred upon the object in question during your absence.”
    “I was told that the piece was ruined and, of course, I would never reclaim anything that had played a part in a scene so opposite to the refined and joyous purpose for which it was intended.”
    Here I nearly snort my disbelief and contempt. This siége d’amour was a spoiled nobleman’s toy for cavorting with two bought women at once. To consider this a “refined” use was more than an upright and plainspoken American could stand.
    Fortunately, Irene has lived in Europe long enough to avoid plainspeaking when irony will do.
    Instead of launching the lecture I would have at this prince of lechery, she merely remarks, “Your Highness has put your finger on the most interesting feature of some of these latter-day Paris slayings: the choice of a refined scene of the crime, and of refined victims. Yes, one could simply say that James Kelly strayed onto the scene in the course of installing the furniture. Certainly, judging from the encounter we three women had with him later, he was unable to restrain himself from violence when in the presence of women of a certain type.”
    “Whores,” Sarah announces in her most ringing, stagy tones, and in English. “Oh, don’t frown at me, Bertie. You know you adore the female in every incarnation, from maid to mistress.”
    “So I was within moments of encountering this monster?” Bertie notes with a shiver.
    “So was Bram,” Irene adds.
    The heavy-set Irishman, who’d been content to cede his usual role as raconteur to Irene during this macabre discussion, finds himself the sudden center of attention. His cheeks pink above his bushy red beard. For all his hearty manner, he is a sensitive soul.
    “I had accompanied Irving to the maison on previous visits to Paris,” he says quickly. “Now that I am in Paris alone, I went only to pay my respects to the, er, madame.”
    He always refers to Irving as a demigod, presumably recognizable to all by his last name alone. Perhaps that is the role of a manager.
    This all-consuming position includes accompanying the Great Man to Paris scenes as scandalous as the cancan clubs and various maisons de rendezvous . When Englishmen visit Paris, there is only one thing they want to do, apparently. Except for Sherlock Holmes, which raises other, equally interesting speculations in my reportorial mind.