Castle Rouge Read Online Free Page A

Also raising speculation are the more macabre outings of Irving and Stoker along with hundreds of daily gawkers: the public display case of unidentified corpses at the infamous Paris Morgue.
    I realize how cleverly Irene has turned a condolence call into an interrogation, for two of the four men in this room had been present at the scene of the first two Paris murders and a third, the Baron de Rothschild, spirited both the Prince and later Irene and Nell from that same maison .
    I can see by the drooping of the inspector’s very disciplined mustaches that he had not known of the Prince’s presence in the house of sin and death, nor the fact that the…device upon which two women died had been commissioned especially for His Royal Highness. Being French and worldly, the inspector would not condemn the perverse intention, only the murderous turn its use had taken.
    “Kelly possessed a certain religious mania,” Irene muses for the benefit of her friends and suspects.
    I began to wonder if even the inspector and I are excepted from the suspect category, for of course I, too, had been present that night and had found the butchered bodies. Probably we are not. I am beginning to see that, like Sherlock Holmes, Irene is relentless in the pursuit of truth, though her approach is far less direct than his.
    I also begin to see that she arranges scenes like a playwright. First she assembles the dramatis personae, then she lets them speak among each other and thus speak the truth to her, all unknowing.
    It’s a theatrical approach that requires much patience and rehearsal before any denouement can be expected.
    “Nothing in Jack the Ripper’s London murders indicated a religious mania,” the Prince says finally, after long mulling over Irene’s comment.
    The inspector answers for her. “Allow me, Your Highness. I have studied the case most avidly. In all such murders of fallen women a religious mania is suspected. As the purported billet-doux from the Ripper said, ‘I am down on whores.’ Usually such reactions are moral. I believe that it is the frustration of the natural instincts that creates such madmen. In Paris, in France, we have made houses of prostitution legal for decades and inspect the women to ensure good health. It has eliminated much unnecessary disease and is the only reasonable approach to the situation. England and London are not so enlightened. Men who have contracted foul diseases from whores become murderously infuriated. It is no wonder that these Ripper slayings, and others that frequently occur in this Whitechapel district, are more common to England than to France.”
    “Until now,” Irene notes.
    The inspector flashes her an impatient look. “What? Two women at a reputable house?”
    I shudder to think what Nell would have to say about the very French notion of a “reputable” whorehouse were she here to ride scout on the discussion.
    The inspector natters on. “The third woman was either an unlucky laundress or one of the lone unfortunates, femmes isloée , who plies the streets on her own.”
    “You have not addressed,” Irene says, “the strange subterranean aspect of these Paris killings. That is another aspect purely Parisian: cellars, sewers, catacombs. Even the morgue and the wax museum were used to display the bodies in some bizarre manner.”
    The inspector shrugs, a classic French response to the mystery of life.
    “The Musée Grévin ,” he says grandly, “is far more than a wax museum, especially during l’Exposition universelle and the inauguration of La Tour Eiffel . It is a landmark of Paris. Might not even a madman wish to pay tribute to the attractions of the City of Light in planning his crimes?”
    “The Ripper managed to keep to obscure and hidden ways in London,” Irene points out.
    “London!” The inspector barely restrains himself from spitting. “Whitechapel. Paris has no such sinkhole as this. It is no mystery that the Paris murders involve a finer sort of